Tension by JustinMullin 2021-04-26T15:45:36Z
Moody and atmospheric. I felt that the controls were a little bit unresponsive and gummy, but the core game was interesting and puzzle-like.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → youthfulIdealism
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | GOBLIN HAMBURGER LASER ARENA | compo | 367 | 3.56 | 3.90 | 3.37 | 2.31 | 3.42 | 3.88 | 3.43 |
Moody and atmospheric. I felt that the controls were a little bit unresponsive and gummy, but the core game was interesting and puzzle-like.
The day was uncomfortably short. I feel like I'm missing something--is there a way to beat the game, or is it a "survive as long as possible" thing?
I didn't mind the gather-the-wood gameplay. Initially I thought that if I got 10 wood, I'd win.
I actually was questioning the whole way through whether or not the game was online-enabled and I was playing with other ludum-dare-ers. Something about the semi-random behavior made me think that I might be playing with other humans who were also trying to figure the game out. The movement reminded me of something I might see on tanks.io, and getting randomly shot by one person and having the rest of the people neutral reinforced that impression. So, I'd say you actually did pretty well with the AI, if your goal was to create something human-like.
I thought this was an interesting start. I particularly liked the spaceship UI, color palette, and sounds. I do have some more critical feedback. (disclaimer: I didn't finish 100%--you need a few more events, which you already know. :) ) All the critical feedback makes the assumption that you keep working on the game... I think you've got an interesting base to work off of.
- I thought the 3d view was completely unnecessary. I'd recommend either cutting it, or replacing it. Allowing the player to balance power management in-flight with different consequences to different powered modules would be pretty interesting. - You need more components. Figuring out how to path to the right components is trivially easy (which is fine, because building a game in 42hrs is very hard). There's interesting puzzle gameplay to be had in making it a little harder to path to the components.
The experience was good, and I hope you keep working on this game! I can see a lot of potential here.
Well done. Very atmospheric, nice graphics, You can shoot things.
I would really have liked to see hitmarkers of some kind for the gun--particles when the bullets collided with the walls, for example. Because I couldn't tell where my bullets were landing, it was very difficult to aim.
Wow! That was fantastic! The controls took a little getting used to--using both X and SPACE with the same hand was pretty unfamiliar to me--but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. Squishing the mouths with the rocks they threw onto my balloon was particularly satisfying.
I enjoyed the puzzles, and I enjoyed the pixel art. I'm intrigued by the novelty of having an LD game playable on the NES...
A couple critiques: it would be nice if the dimension-shifting sparkles stood out more starkly against the background terrain. Sometimes it was kinda difficult to find them.
I didn't like the sections where there were agility/timing puzzles coupled with multiple areas, because I'm clumsy and would die and have to redo a large chunk of gameplay.
It's obvious you put a lot of energy and love into this, and I enjoyed it!
Because the movement is so slidey, I often ended up sliding over the edge past the bottles. Often, there wasn't a good way back up. This meant that I missed bottles.
I also got attacked by a shark while falling, which felt bad because I didn't have time to dodge.
I liked the underwater audio and thought it was very atmostpheric.
Playing on singleplayer.
The graphics and audio were quite good, but I had issues with the controls and pacing.
The controls felt gummy. It was like there was a delay of a frame or three between pressing the key and the player acting on the keypress.
The enemy bounce-box was very large relative both the the player swing and to the enemy image.
These two issues compounded each other. Because the controls are gummy, swinging takes much longer than expected. Because the enemy box is big, I'd get thrown around far before I expected. This was frustrating.
I also got stunlocked on a small platform with a wall. Because the enemy box was so big and the platform so small, I got perpetually pushed back into the wall.
The pacing felt odd. I expected a combat game, and instead spent thirty seconds doing some slow platforming. Ensuring enemies are spawned shortly after the game begins would be an easy fix.
The thing where the player crouches and is stunned when jumping to a platform below was interesting and realistic--jump recovery isn't easy. However, being unable to control the player for a few seconds felt bad. I would strongly recommend doing something to add "coolness" to that moment, to make being stunned "worth it"--particle effects when the player lands, pushing back nearby enemies, that sort of thing.
I think you've got a good base to work off of, but I'd really like to see some optimization around the controls.
Well put together. Very good level design.
The controls and the speed of both the player movement and projectiles required more precision than I enjoy... but I think that's more of a "I'm not the right audience for this game" than "This is bad".
This was a very interesting concept, and I think you executed fairly well given the timeframe. I'd really like to see a second pass at this with time spent on the "feel" of the movement, animations, and baddies. I don't think I've ever seen that core mechanic before, it's very unique!
Nice art, very good audio. Being able to skip the introductory voiceover would have been nice, because I read everything on the game page. :)
I enjoyed that you managed to tell a short story with very little time.
Wow. This was really well done. Definitely one of the more memorable games I've played so far. I got eaten by the kraken, but perhaps I'll try again.
I loved the atmosphere, I loved the controls, I loved groping blindly through the dark. The satisfaction of getting through that very first portal was a really great moment--The little lights closed in around me, first one green, then two green, then one yellow, then both yellow. I was gripping the controls, ready to slam on the breaks, then the lights turned green and dissapeared, first one, then the other.
Really great.
Moody, atmospheric.
I had a great deal of difficulty aiming with any accuracy. The fire rate was so slow that I kinda questioned why I had the gun in the first place.
Some particles whenever the bullet hit the wall would feel significantly bigger for cheap.
Because I stopped using the gun and started running past enemies, I got shot in the back a lot. This didn't feel good, because I didn't see the attack coming or have the opportunity to dodge. I would recommend either buffing the gun until the player is incentivized to take on the enemies head-on, or finding a way to project the enemy attack... something like a laser sight perhaps?
I was fairly impressed with the graphics, I felt that they were very good for a 48-hour 3d build.
I really liked this. The pixel art was fun. The gameplay was simple and satisfying. The animation and feel of the controls was very good. This was very well done.
Good gravy, the animations! xD
This really is good work.
Did you happen to watch Vlambeer's video on gamefeel? A lot of the techniques you're using remind me of stuff covered in that talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
This was a well-done, fresh take on the 2D mining genre. I enjoyed it. The music was humorous, the gameplay was engaging, the graphics were internally consistent.
Something about the controls and movement felt a little cranky. I'm not 100% sure what it is... but I think if you click anywhere below the player (rather than immediately below), he should mine down, anywhere to the right, he should mine right, etc. The level of precision I needed to click the exact tile I wanted to mine was a little bit too hard for me.
I think this was very well-done, and I'm glad I got to play it!
I enjoyed playing this! The graphics, while simple, were internally consistent, effective, and charming.
My critique: clicking the wrench to repair the buses felt a little bit finicky. Intuitively, I wanted to click the bus to perform the repair instead of the wrench. Expanding the clickbox to encompass both the wrench and the bus would feel much better. Making the waymarkers and buses expand slightly when you mouse over them would also make a world of difference. It would be nice if the bus made money on both ends of the route (even if you halve the amount of money made) for consistency, and so that it's a little easier to evaluate the value of the route. A small animation when the bus makes money might be nice.
I think you've got a really good base to keep building on, and I very much enjoyed what I played. This is well-done.
(Disclaimer: I got to 74%, not the end.)
Solid game.
I'm not sure if it's just a quirk of the browser, but for me, the pixel art was very blurry.
The biggest thing the game would benefit from is a "drop faster" button.
Heya, I've rated around eight games, and I wanted you to know that this one was my favorite so far. I love the kinetic animations for the submarine, I love the net, I love the fish, I love the upgrades, I love the controls, I love getting under fish and throwing them into the air with my submarine. Literally the only thing I would change so far is adding sound, but you already know that.
Wow. That was fantastic. Music is spot-on, graphics are spot-on, interface sounds are spot-on, gameplay is fun. I normally try to post at least one critique, but I literally can't find a flaw to dissect. Good job!
This was really quite beautiful. It's one of the more aesthetically pleasing entries I've seen.
From a design perspective, I have a pair of critiques.
First, it's not clear to me why I should pick up the items floating down the river. I don't know what they get me. Do they unlock more story?
Second: The items floating down the river come from the lower half of the screen, so I feel like I need to watch the lower half of the screen in case I miss an item. But all the story is taking place on the upper half of the screen. So, if I watch the lower half, which is beautiful but largely unchanging, I feel uncomfortable because I might miss some of the story. But if I watch the upper half and the story, I feel uncomfortable because I might miss some of the item pickups.
This was very well done. The audio was fantastic. The aesthetics were fantastic. The pacing and tone were very nice. You guys did a very good job.
The aesthetics are fantastic. The audio is decent, and paired very well with the alternating-click-to-reel mechanic. I really liked the alternating-click-to-reel mechanic. It felt visceral.
My primary critique is that the tutorial sequence was so long that I couldn't keep all the instructions in my head. I suspect that the game is intuitive enough for some of the tutorial steps to be removed.
Consistent artstyle, movement felt good (though, I did get stuck a lot), particularly around the spawn.
I didn't get any audio. Is there no audio, or did something get screwed up on my end?
This was very well done! The art was solid and internally consistent. The audio was really nice. I liked the controls.
I felt that this was very well put together. The biggest critiques I have are that the game would benefit tremendously from coyote time (being able to jump for an extra frame or three after leaving a ledge), and it would benefit from being able to see what materials you need in order to get the upgrade you're looking for. This would help the player to know what they want to collect and dump.
Well done!
Nicely implemented game. Consistent artstyle. I liked the narrative about debt.
I died at 94 meters, shortly after starting the game (twice). I was immediately killed by green slimes. The dynamite did very little damage to either the slimes or the walls.
Are you supposed to dig with the dynamite? Are you supposed to kill the monsters with the dynamite?
This was well-done! I loved the audio, and was very impressed with how you created such a good walk/run animation with so few pixels. The balance between staying low on the screen to maximize your distance from the wolf vs staying high on the screen to minimize berry-collection time was interesting.
This is a very strong game. Aesthetically, it's internally consistent and beautiful. The gameplay is satisfying and interesting. Making the root speed an upgrade was particularly clever--it means that higher-level players get to go much faster through stuff they've already played. I don't think I've seen a game quite like this.
Played and rated.
If you want more ratings, try to play, rate, and comment on other people's games soon after submitting. This will raise your scores and make it easier for other people to find your game and play it. I suspect that leaving constructive comments is the best way to get ratings--if you leave a comment that's useful, I think people will often play your game as a "thank-you".
Interesting idea, execution could use a little work. I'm going to offer some criticism, but please don't let me discourage you. Everyone starts somewhere, and I think you're in a good spot to keep practicing and come back next year to kick this jam's butt.
I think you know all the obvious areas to improve--adding some sort of challenge or social experience, adding some basic animation and pushing the graphics a little further, sound, all that jazz. So, instead, I'm going to focus on the quickest *non-obvious* mechanical ways to improve this.
When the player moves, the camera moves exactly with the player. This is perfectly OK, right up until the moment the player jumps or falls. When the player jumps, it immediately becomes impossible to read any text on the screen. It also becomes difficult to see the terrain, because the terrain is moving on the screen quickly. This also presents particular difficulty when the player is jumping from platform to platform. The camera follows the player up, which makes the platforms go down, off the screen. This means the player can't actually see the platform he's trying to land on.
One thing you might try to solve this is called "camera lerp". Basically, you detach the camera from the player. Then, you have the camera smoothly move *toward* the player location, instead of being perfectly attached. This means that the up/down movement of a jump isn't so violent, and when the player is jumping across a horizontal gap, the camera lag would enable him to keep the platform he's jumping towards on-screen.
(If you wanted to get really fancy, you could attract the camera towards what the player needs to see. That way, when the player needs to move down, the camera would show the place he's trying to get to so that he can aim the jump.)
Your game is played in the browser. The arrow keys do something in the browser. They make the screen scroll up and down. This means that while trying to control the player with the arrow keys, the browser is jumping around! If you submit another game in the browser, try adding WASD support so that the screen doesn't move.
Adding coyote time would make the jump feel much better.
The jump feels very floaty. This may be a personal preference thing, but I don't like floatey jumps in a platformer. They feel weird. Playing around with the jump math would probably be a good use of time.
Be sure to join in again next jam!
One trick to buy yourself more time--the rules say that you can use any code you already have lying around. This means that if you're prepared with animation and physics code, you can use it! This also means that you don't have to write it during the jam, which gives you more time.
I didn't get any audio. Did I run into a bug, or was there just no audio?
This game was fairly pretty.
I got 7677.
This was nice!
There was no audio--I'm not sure if this is something wrong on my end, or if there was actually no audio.
I enjoyed the balance between expanding and defending, and I thought that choosing between upgrading my moneymaking vs upgrading my final score was interesting. There's something in that particular mechanic to be explored, I think.
There's some relatively small stuff you can do to level this up pretty quickly:
- WASD/arrow-key camera controls - Moving the camera using only the mouse on the edge of the screen feels unresponsive - An indicator showing where you're being attacked. - If you want to be really fancy, showing different indicators for "my turrets are being damaged" and "my infrastructure is being damaged" would be wise. 90% of the time, my turrets can take care of themselves, so I don't care *too* much about that alert. But if the bugs got through my turrets and are chomping on the miners, I care a lot. - updating the pipe graphic logic so that they have bends instead of only crosspieces
Something to think about: I didn't like that I had to stretch my pipe way far out and then defend *the whole length of the pipe* evenly. It meant that I didn't have to make very many interesting decisions, because the whole pipe needs the same amount of turrets. Having predictable spawnpoints for the bugs would make this play a little more like a tower defense, where protecting certain points on the map is more important than others. Having obstacles that the bugs can't walk through (and that I can't pipe through) would also help this.
I think this game is pretty snazzy!
@refrax295 that's funny--I tried WASD (web version) and it didn't work for me. It might just be something wrong on my end--perhaps I had caps lock on or something.
Well done.
It would have been nice for the shark eyes to stop glowing when they die. I often had trouble telling if something was dead or not.
I'll echo the sentiment that sometimes there needed to be more contrast between the darkness and projectiles/enemies. Or perhaps the flashlight simply needed to be stronger?
I liked the fast movement and shooting.
Barely won my first round through. Learning curve was a little steep, and the difficulty curve was also a little steep--the enemies went from barely damaging my plants to totally overrunning them in a split second. I won because I got the reactor item, which meant I could place tons of lights in rooms very quickly, even though the bugs were chewing through my defenses.
I thought that this was fairly good, and I might keep playing it. I'm betting there's a surprising amount of depth in there.
Thinking on it more--I think you've chosen an interesting design space in the intersection between tower defense, roguelike, and exploration game. I'd encourage you to keep going!
Your use of audio to set tone was skillful. That the events I encountered were all negative was very harsh. As a result, I didn't really want to explore. I think it would be a good idea to mix in some very positive events, give the user a dopamine rush every now and again to keep them going.
I really liked the game on a conceptual level--the overhead tile exploration with an emphasis on audio for storytelling. I think you're onto something here.
Fun! I particularly enjoyed the cheerful audio and overly-positive-corporatepunk voiceover. I got some vaguely portal vibes from that. Trying to make do without jumping was an interesting challenge, it meant that the strategy was to avoid getting boxed in somewhere you can't get away from the mines.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you All!
@sbug I'm sorry to hear that it was laggy for you. I made some architectural design choices that, in retrospect, were very poor. It doesn't lag at all on my machine, but I'm totally unsurprised to hear that it lags on other machines.
Thank you!
Thank you all!
@pfeyffer that's unfortunate. I didn't think it was possible, but obviously it is. Sorry! I'm glad you enjoyed the game otherwise. :)
Thanks, @jedemac ! I appreciate the detailed feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you all!
@bidentworks Oh, no, I didn't even think about AZERTY keyboards! I've patched in arrow key support for you.
@bidentworks Awesome, glad to hear it!
@anton-savinov Thank you!
Thanks!
Thanks!
Thank you!
Thank you!
@mdotedot `But I needed to get back and read the instructions which is a bad thing.`
This is fair. I'm glad you enjoyed it otherwise! Thanks for the constructive feedback. :)
@lmb `I have a personal gripe about those games that use the keyboard to move and the mouse to shoot. I’d love to see how this game would play on an analog gamepad (use the analog stick to walk on the exact direction you want to shot, then just shot). I think it would feel much better!`
That's amusing, I have a personal gripe with gamepads as an input medium... probably something to do with the games I grew up playing rather than an actually-useful design issue. To each their own lol. I haven't found an input library for Javascript that supports gamepads... but if you happen to know of one, please share! Even though I don't much like gamepads, they're one of the only ways to do good couch-coop on PC, and I'd like to be able to support them as a result. I'm pretty committed to JS at this time; the iteration speed is *so fast*.
`I think the game was not a good fit for the theme`
I also agree that my use of the theme was a little bit of a stretch.
I'm glad you otherwise enjoyed it!
Thank you for the constructive feedback!
Thanks to everyone who I didn't personally respond to, as well. I'm glad you all enjoyed the game! :D
Thanks!
@cppchriscpp Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
`I do think the last wave might have been just a touch too tough, cutting down on the enemies just a little might’ve made it less painful.`
I definitely agree that the last wave is inconsistent with the difficulty curve of the rest of the game. Making that design choice was definitely a tradeoff--I wanted it to be just difficult enough to get the player to make more than one attempt (I think three attempts would be right on-target), but not so difficult that the player felt that it was unattainable. I didn't necessarily want everyone to see the end. I wanted that piece of humor to be a reward for the player who enjoyed the game enough to invest a little more into it, and I wanted it to feel like an acheivement.
That said, I am still a bit on the fence as to whether or not it was too much. It's difficult enough that I get through it maybe one in every four or five attempts, and I'm the one who made the game and has been playing it continually throughought development. Then again, I am unabashedly quite terrible at this kind of game. I'm definitely willing to countenance the idea that the last wave is too much to achieve my intent effectively.
`While it took me a few seconds to realize...`
Mdotedot also expressed this sentiment; I think I need to continue to work on my mechanic communication. Tutorials, man. Bane of my existence.
`I try to give some constructive feedback on any entry I rate`
Thanks, I really appreciate it! I'm kinda wishing for a mechanism to give out extra hearts on feedback. I want to show appreciation for everyone who took the time to comment on and play my game by hearting their comment, but answers that are both thorough and constructively critical like yours are the best, and it'd be nice to have a mechanism to reward them extra. It's always really nice to hear "I liked your game!" from people, but it doesn't help me to improve. "I liked your game, here's the stuff that was effective and here's the stuff that was ineffective" is so much more useful.
`I try to give some constructive feedback on any entry I rate, so I’ll mention that the audio got a little bit repetitive over time. Making the repeated loop a little bit longer, or adding another instrument might have helped.`
Agreed!
`There are some great sound effect generators out there`
I actually started the build with JSFXR, but I couldn't get the gamefeel I wanted with it. If there are other good audio generators, I'm all ears! A game like this really needs audio with "oomph".
I definitely agree that it's a bit ambiguous. With one exception, all the audio I used was from the [GDC audio bundles](https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc#1605030813191-c5a1f3d0-8baf), which are accessible to everyone. (The exception was a CC-0 sound from Freesound.) I've done my best to ensure everything was a derivative work... and while I technically downloaded all the sounds years before the event, the libraries are so big and I use them so rarely that I was essentially finding each sound from scratch. I'm fairly sure I'm in-line with the spirit of the rules (especially since I opted out of the audio voting), but I may indeed have broken the letter of the rules.
I appreciate your feedback and position. I may be able to do mic sounds in the future. If I can't do mic/generator sounds, I will certainly continue to opt out of audio voting.
Thanks, JJ! Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
@kooky I'm glad you liked it, thanks!
`I definitely got Crypt of the Necrodancer vibes (one of its bosses in particular) from the setting you chose, is that where you took any inspiration from?`
Nope! Crypt of the Necrodancer is one of those games I'd like to play, but haven't tried. I haven't made the purchase because I know I can't get a ton of use out of it; pumping that much music into my ears for an extended period would give me a headache.
`Also, out of curiosity, may I ask which engine you used?`
I wrote a Javascript (Typescript) engine for myself a few days before the event:
https://github.com/youthfulIdealism/js-engine/tree/88fa4593bf7ab28386be22dafa07724f6ccd3c15 (Specific version linked, if you go to https://github.com/youthfulIdealism/js-engine/ in a few days, I'll probably have taken a pass at fixing it and pushed an update)
It is currently not a good engine. The biggest misstep causes each render pass to be O(N) (where N is the total number of entities in the game, particles included). I used a lot of render passes, and was not shy about spawning a lot of entities or particles. This misstep can be fixed with a little elbow grease, however...
...There are also bigger developer-ergonomics issues with the engine. It's perfectly possible to write neat code with it, but doing so slows you down and spreads the code out into too many pieces. It is my fervent opinion that a library is not good if ergonomic issues encourage messy design, regardless of any internal neatness or performance.
It is currently my intent to radically redesign it. I'm probably going to move to something resembling an entity-component system.
I also need to find a way to make a fast dedicated particle system without dipping too deep into complex stuff like WEBGL. I like particles too much to want to worry about messing about with them.
I'll be sticking with Javascript for the time being, regardless of how I redesign it. Despite all it's bizarre quirks (I'm lookin' at you, "truthyness"), the iteration speed I get out of JS is unparalleled. Iterating quickly has real power.
@kooky It occurred to me that I talked about what *wasn't* my inspiration without talking about what *was* my inspiration.
I built and released a game a couple years back. My failure to market the game aside, the biggest failing of the game was the gamefeel. It just didn't feel good to control. As a result, I've been experimenting with gamefeel for a couple years. I'm fascinated by it, and really want to get it nailed down well.
Other than playing games actively instead of passively, my biggest direct inspirations in gamefeel come from a talk Vlambeer gave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
I definitely haven't mastered gamefeel yet, but I'm making a dedicated effort and have obviously come a long way since my last game.
Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it!
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@leyamez I watched! Thank you for playing it!
`I think the movement felt a little bit too restrictive when you had a lot of hamburgers, which made it really really hard to get more when they were across the map from each other.`
I totally agree. I'm a little conflicted whether the design is fundamentally flawed, or whether it leads to all the interesting gameplay. At higher levels of play, hamburger management becomes a critical issue--picking up lone hamburgers and offloading them onto the weak enemies in order to increase the odds that three hamburgers spawn next to each other and provide an opportunity to nail a strong enemy is the strategy.
If I increase the 3-hamburger player speed, then the projectiles are no longer a real threat.
I'm definitely in agreement that the chore of hauling your behind across the map to grab that third hamburger detracts from the fun significantly, particularly if you've killed off all the tiny enemies.
Perhaps is I made it so that the player could regurgitate hamburgers? That way, you could build a stockpile of hamburgers in a strategic location and then use them all at once? That seems interesting. I'm sort of tempted to do a post-jam version of this.
Thank you!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I felt this was really well done. The gameplay and audio worked together very well to create a great deal of tension, the graphical style was very fresh and put-together. My only critique is that it's difficult to tell the low beams apart from normal supports at high speeds. Making the beam overhang a different color might remedy this.
Piloting the drill through the caves was like piloting a hippopotamus through a skate park, only the hippopotamus kept getting overturned and squishing the cameraman.
Speaking of the cameraman, the camera kept getting stuck at a weird angle and wouldn't unstick no matter how much I moved my mouse.
The overheating was frequent enough to be more frustrating than interesting.
I get the impression that this is a couple hours of work (mostly on controls and camera) away from being a really interesting and enjoyable game. The music is fun, the voice lines are funny, and the controls give the impression that the drill has real weight. When I managed to haul the drill to a wall, destroying the wall was very satisfying. The music is good and fits.
I particularly liked the audio. It was very atmospheric.
Unrelated to the game itself--it'd be nice if the files in your Google Drive were zipped, so that I could download them in one click instead of individually.
I intend to leave another comment once my download has finished and I've played.
Very well done! I don't think I've seen anything quite like this. It felt like playing a two-player puzzle platformer with only one player.
The main critiques: - Going over even a small ledge feels stressful, because I know I won't be able to go back. You've taken great care in your level design to ensure that this doesn't cause any problems, but it still *feels* uncomfortable. In a game with an expanded scope, I would expect elevators or (ugh, stairs) or something that will let the player quickly ascend, to relieve this tension. In a game-jam game, though, I wouldn't necessarily consider elevators in-scope. - Minor nitpick: the save points looked like doors, and I intuitively wanted to go through them.
This was a joy to play.
The music was really nice. I enjoyed the procedural animations; having done a tiny bit of that myself I know it's harder to do right than one would think.
My critique is that it was a little confusing that the eels could eat your tentacles, but had to get to your body to do so. As a result, it felt kind of weird to lure the eels into my tentacles so that I could ink them.
I appreciated the bittersweet end, which went well with the music.
Entertaining, nice, stylistically consistent graphics. Having successfully extracted the moth, I started a new round and shoved it as deep into the ear canal as possible. The result made me chuckle.
While all the challenge of the game comes from the floppy ear-picking instrument, it'd be nice if it was just a tad stiffer. As-is, it's very difficult to come up with a technique that can be perfected through trial and error.
I liked the animation, particularly the player's bendy torso.
I would recommend either revealing the cards before the player makes a choice, or giving the player an upgrade without making them pick. Making a choice between three options but not knowing what the options are isn't really making a choice. It's just rolling dice.
I would also recommend making the early waves very short. If there's not much peril to the player, there's not much tension to keep their attention.
Nevertheless, this was well-put-together.
I ran into a game-breaking bug--I fell off when trying to climb off the top of the screen.
I enjoyed this. I have no idea why I'm trying to collect ducks, but the humor of doing so is fun.
The whole thing where you find skeletons labeled with names and ambitions spoke to me... especially since that's *not* something we often see in modern life. Survivorship bias gives us dreams that are lavish and unrealistic. It would be better if we could all see the skeletons and ambitions scattered about the place. It's unfortunate that we hide them.
Well done.
This is one of the more complete games I've reviewed. The artstyle and music are internally consistent, and the suite of animations is complete. The puzzles were well-executed.
I'd really love to have a button to restart quickly. Tap R to restart. Because I have to wait for the score screen each time, I can't get a hang of the movement.