Don't Mess With Totems by winesays 2015-12-18T17:15:00
Simple, nice to play, and with some fun character/humor.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → YoungHorses
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥉 | 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Snakedate | jam | Innovation | 4.36 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Snakedate | jam | 90 | 3.89 | 3.89 | 4.36 | 4.32 | 4.04 | 3.82 | 4.39 | 3.81 | 53 |
Simple, nice to play, and with some fun character/humor.
I like the movement mechanic, both in terms of feel and variety of challenges. It took me a while to get the hang of holding both mouse buttons to set up a double chain, and often times I would slip up and release one early (killing myeslf).
This game really felt fantastic, and I refused to stop playing until I had beaten the first stage (and then the second for good measure). The difficulty is high, but I thought it was fair.
One complaint, the noise that plays when either you or the boss dies is very jarring and sounds much louder than it needs to be. I lost a lot of times, and I grew to dread hearing that noise again.
The mood is great. The controls are innovative, that's for sure. You could say that being very slow and very deliberate about every action lends a zen-like quality to getting around the entire garden. But, I would say the third time the game wanted me to go all around the screen to poke/collect things I was over my limit on zen. The 'smash' ability changed the pathways I was able to take so it felt a bit different than the first time I wandered the screen. But the 'zap' just felt like a way to buy time.
I love this take on deck-building games and Rock Paper Scissors, and it was especially smooth and accessible.
I admit at some point late in the game it became hard for me to know what would happen when all of my special abilities went off. When I play paper is scissors and scissors are rocks, and my opponent plays rocks are paper, the results end up feeling random. But, I think that's a matter of how often transmutation cards end up being drawn, and it would feel less chaotic if I just had less of them.
I like the simplicity of the survival mechanics, and how they all hinge on whether or not you can keep your wheat growing. The atmosphere and pacing work well to convey a sense of desperation.
Comments above have gone into greater detail about the mechanics, but I'll bring up my greatest gripe. I didn't like that I had to be standing right next to an object to pick it up. With point-and-click controls my expectation is that my character would move withing range of the item and pick it up automatically. So I wasted a lot of clicks being just slightly out of range. The pace of the game means that a bad click at the wrong time means death.
I love what was here! Would love to see more done with this, I'm a fan of using physics to solve otherwise simple problems.
It's interesting that the game sort of gets easier the more hurt you are (in that I always survive much longer as the dragon than I do as the egg or jumping egg). The health system is less like a number of mistakes you can make, and more like three separate games you play right in a row.
Had a good amount of fun with this one. Reminiscent of many other rhythm games, but the themes were followed well and the overall layer of polish was nice.
I like the concept of limiting a platformer to two controls and then stretching the imagination to figure out how to fit otherwise simple actions inside of it. I was not able to get over the tall wall (just after learning wall jump) that requires some sort of wall jump/bullet turnaround combo move.
I like the look and concept, especially how the sumo can grow larger than the ring itself. When I played, the controls for moving felt very unresponsive unless I was performing a dash (that is, anything other than a dash didn't seem to move me). Still had fun, is nice for multiplayer.