Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Xopods
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Po | Cm | Te | Jo | Co | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 17 | Islands | Sky Traders of Jupiter | compo | 54 | 3.29 | 3.07 | 3.13 | 3.20 | 4.07 | 1.43 | 3.33 | 5 | ||||||
| 2009 | 14 | Advancing Wall of Doom | The Dark at the End of the Tunnel | compo | 21 | 3.60 | 3.47 | 3.32 | 4.16 | 3.63 | 3.29 | 2.44 | 3.53 | 3.06 | 3.00 |
Xopods leaves an average of 10.0 feedback comments each event.
LD17 — Islands (10)
Treasure Tub by Jonny D
Visual presentation not bad... nice the way the boats go behind the lip of the tub. Good concept too. But the gameplay is just hard to follow... not enough visual feedback on when I'm hitting my enemies, when I'm being hit, how long it's going to take me to fish, etc. I don't have speakers, but I gather from others' comments the sound is pretty good, so maybe that's what I'm lacking... but lots of people play with sound off anyway, so a game shouldn't rely on it.
Anyway, good effort, and I think you should polish it up, even if I didn't enjoy this 48h version as much as the other commentors did.
Eviction by Wobly
I got really excited when I saw this, because the graphics are beautiful. Unfortunately, the game isn't that much fun - not terrible... I played once through, but didn't feel like trying to beat my score. Part of the problem is that when an enemy is hovering at the same level as a platform, it's very easy to kill, but when there's no surface you can stand on to put yourself at the same height, it's nearly impossible without ignoring all the others. At least if the house platform and the one to its left were at different heights, it would help a bit.
Also, you've used an island as a setting, but only one island, and it doesn't influence the gameplay at all, so low marks for theme.
Love your pixel art, though, and if there were a category for competent coding, you'd get good marks for that too, as it runs well, I didn't find any bugs, etc.
The Floor Is Lava by NMcCoy
Interesting mechanic, though it took me a couple of plays to understand everything. Does the difficulty go up as you get further? I couldn't tell. I got up to around 160 Awesome after a few playthroughs, which I guess is pretty good going by other people's comments.
I gave this 3/5 overall before, but I've come back to up it to 4/5 because I noticed I've given almost everything 3/5 and this was the most fun and innovative I've encountered so far.
My main complaint with the controls is that there isn't enough visual feedback that you're bouncing into the air after hitting the lava. I kept trying to guide my dot onto an island when that happened, rather than watching the shadow, leading to multiple lava hops and, usually, death.
Conquistador by invicticide
Kind of an obvious concept to work with, but a fun one. In a way, going obvious is in itself original - I've seen more sky islands (my own game included) than water islands.
Obviously, the game could use improved graphics and, as you say yourself, more events, better balance, etc., but it's a good start. Reminds me of Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, which isn't a bad thing. I hope you continue to work on it now that LD is over!
The Noah's Ark by desertdweller
Kinda funny, I guess, but not really a game. I know I'm being a party-pooper here, but lots of people worked really hard on their games for this comp, so unlike the other commenters, I'm not going to give good marks to a gag entry.
Napol�©on et la punition myst�©rieuse �®le du diable by joaquim
Your collision box is way too big; the player keeps colliding with things that he really shouldn't, given the size of the sprite. In particular, horizontally, the collision box for a sprite in a platformer should always be significantly narrower than the graphics themselves.
I played as far as the second island, but given the boring and frustrating gameplay, I wasn't going to press on, since the story didn't seem particularly compelling.
Also, French isn't my first language, but even so I found a couple of spelling and grammar errors in the first cutscene: "bensoin" instead of "besoin" and "se venger" instead of "me venger."
Eden Island by brandoncash
Nice graphics and sound, interesting concept... but as others have said, it's not really a game. Which is fine, since you said you hadn't finished.
Also, they may have changed the rules, but last I knew, part of the point of Ludum Dare was that you had to do it alone - no teams.
ROW, FUCK!!! by tembac
One of my favourites so far. I think you're on to something here... the extreme high-speed gameplay is fun, and you feel like you're dodging stuff even if it's really just fluke. Main complain, already made by someone else, is the way you "stick" to an island if you don't hit it with enough speed to break it. Would be better if you bounced back more, and there was less "friction" when rubbing against it.
Message by belbeeno
Nice little adventure game. Would have liked at least some semblance of animation on the part of the player avatar, other than bobbing in the water - a little bobbing while walking, bending over when dropping a board or whatever.
There's a neat point about game design to be observed from this. Players complain about not knowing that they "could" do something... but when you make all the options explicit, most puzzles in this style of game become very easy. Here, the puzzles are based around figuring out what's allowed within the constraints of the game engine. The downside is that it's frustrating for the player when they can't find the answer, but I personally find it more satisfying when I do.
Finding the solution to the second puzzle was my favourite moment.. I won't describe it here as I don't want to spoil it for others.
Dreams of how we once were by Perrin
An interesting experiment. I can see how this could be quite an evocative medium for an art game, exploring environments and being given snippets of emotional recollections regarding them. Not sure exactly how the islands tie in, except to structure the story into chapters, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that.
My main problem with it is that when you fall, it respawns you back at the beginning. A few islands in, I stepped back to take a better look at something and fell off the edge, and didn't feel like walking back through everything I'd already seen just to get to where I was. Like walking through a door at a museum, finding you're back at the entrance, and the door has locked behind you.