Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Zack HD
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | And Then You Fall | jam | 1140 | 3.13 | 3.21 | 3.08 | 3.35 | 2.81 | 3.45 | 3.17 |
Reminds me a lot of Vectorio, I really like the concept. I'm a big fan of games like these so I was glad to see it pop up. I just wish I had more resources at the start to be able to make some mistakes for learning's sake. Solid entry.
Absolutely incredible the game was full of all sorts of twists and turns and was incredibly fun and funny. The choirs were an the icing on the cake and really made the experience incredible. What really made my jaw hit the floor was when I accidentally killed a villager with a pig in a panic. Seeing the opportunity, I then sacrificed them to the pit, and then got a resounding chorus and a full bar from it. That entire moment from accidental realization to execution was such a masterclass of game design, bravo.
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This was one of my favorite games of the Jam. Its incredibly well polished for being made in such a short amount of time, I really enjoyed the puzzle aspect. It is so freaking cute too. Great time waster to play while fighting my own bout of sleepiness... yawn!
What an incredibly quirky and creative game. I love the mashup of retail, shootem up, and dinosaurs for some reason?! It is very much its own thing and I absolutely love its absurd charm. The humor was incredibly on point and I was constantly surprised and laughing. Whats even more impressive is that this is a compo entry so you had only 48 hours to do this incredible work.
As someone who worked in retail for 5 years, I applaud this game.
I really love this game. Its like "toss the turtle" but with rockets! There is so much charm here, I love the diamonds in the night part of the sky and it drove me to keep playing to see if there was anything else (of which of course there was when you fly high enough). I kept getting the up and down controls confused, but I don't know if that is a me thing of if that is a gameplay thing. Great job.
An incredible shoot em up, I got *very* excited when I saw the art for this, it reminds me an incredibly a lot like (CellCraft)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APrr-Nl9Sss]. There is a lot of edutainment potential here, you could use this game as a launch pad to teach about subjects like water nucleation. Regardless I was a little appointed to find that I couldn't get my ice crystal to evolve, but I did very much enjoy the sound design (very clean and pleasing, incredibly thematic), the theme, the art style, and the mechanics implemented are fun and enjoyable.
I very much love this game, truly and accomplishment for 72 hours. Well done.
I love the core mechanic and the concept of the game, it is really fun spinning the wheel of death and slaying many foes. I like the variety in the game play, and the core loop is very engaging. However I was consistently having some issues with the game consistently working with its collision detection in certain conditions. Consider the following screenshot:
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I should, 100%, be able to hit these guys, based on what I learned from the first round. This problem only occurs when playing with keyboard in windowed mode (not full screen) with the keyboard and never using the mouse. After round two the game's collision checking just completely breaks.
Despite that bug, I love this game. I'm just glad there is a way to get around it to play the game like normal. Well done on this entry.
It took a little bit to figure out at first but I really enjoyed the core mechanic. The first rocket launched and just kept going and was never seen again, which got a good laugh out of me. Its just a little slow and not much going on otherwise.
Very lovely entry, I very much enjoy weird and quirky games like this one, as well as tower defense games, so this was right up my alley. I enjoyed the theming, how the world would be taken up by horror the more creatures got through... the only thing I didn't like was that the trees and such could actually be overridden by towers: I had thought that they were permanent fixtures that deliberately prevented optimal play.
Incredible entry otherwise. I love it.
I love the main mechanic, the level design is superb and was masterfully done especially considering how much time you had to make this. The twist near the end caught me off guard. Incredible puzzle platformer, well done
Couldn't get the game to run on the toaster that is my PC, but I don't hold it against you. I absolutely LOVE the pixel art in this game and the premise, kudos for that.
A very cute and interesting management sim game about little beavers doin beaver things. Full of charm and demands your full attention. Very well done.
A really solid shoot em up. I wanted to do power-ups like you had for my own entry but I had ran out of time, but I was glad to see them in yours! The power ups kinda remind me of DX-Ball for some reason, so I initially avoided the damage up/health up because I thought they were bad pickups.
Great game.
A good attempt! I was getting a lot of bad runs due to issues with the map generator, particularly I got this one where the green portal generated in a room with a glitched entrance. Totally understandable issue though with how little time there was to actually make these games. I enjoyed the worldbuilding and setting from what I could gather from the gameplay and art alone.
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I love the core idea of this game, I'm getting some serious Newgrounds, early 2000s flash games vibes from this. I really liked the worldbuilding as well. I would like to hopefully see this developed into a full title, maybe combine some additional elements like waves, towers, etc. My only critique is that the squadron people did not have their own colors once on the map, so I couldn't tell who was who after ten seconds. (aside from Gold, Gold Team Rules!)
Respects were paid to those who fell protecting Hope. F.
As soon as I opened this game I knew I was in for a treat. :joy_cat: What an incredible game that's all about managing keeping the hoomans and their grubby hands away for as long as possible. Incredibly well executed and absolutely adorable.
Also: thank you for putting a picture of your furbaby in the credits, such a fine unpettable friend~ :heart_eyes: 11/10
I cried with laughter when I hit the ground: "IMPACT!" The game exclaims in impact font in the classic white text with black boarder. The game is a lot of fun, it has a lot of charm and the UI is pleasant and clean. Music was spot on for the game. I enjoyed hitting objects with my face. I just wish there was more object variety, but honestly that's such a small nit pick. Great work.
What an incredible entry, very fleshed out and well polished. I really like the level design on display here as well as how well the main mechanic works in practice. Its incredible just how much you managed to accomplish in 72 hours. Bravo.
I saw a preview of this game on my feed while I was working on mine and I knew I had to play it as soon as I could. It reminds me of old flash games, very nostalgic. I love the visual style and the little woosh of the cannon going by. I like the simplicity of the gameplay loop.
One of the things I noticed was that the game never really got any harder without upgrading, so there wasn't any extrinsic motivation for me to do so. When I did upgrade the game got way too hard all of a sudden and it wasn't fun anymore. But that's okay, considering how much time we have to work on these things, balance is the last thing on our minds.
I feel the game could benefit from a wave system, if you would choose to continue working on this game after LDJ50. It would fit the theme well (asteroids often come in waves, or showers), it would give the player time to make decisions in the upgrade menu, and it would give them time to mentally prepare for the onslaught of the harder difficulty of the next wave. This would be better than upgrading frantically between shots.
Overall a lovely game, well done.
As soon as I saw this on your twitter feed I got very excited. As someone with a personal game project in development with worldbuilding revolving around gods like Ra, Odin, and such this really excited me! I got even more excited when I realized it is a tower defense game; I love tower defense games.
I love the art style, it is bright and cute and blends well with the humor. The gameplay is nice and the fast forward button was **greatly** appreciated. The lack of a tutorial explaining any enemy types, also lack of indication of wave composition or wave direction was something I missed but considering the time limit I'm not too surprised they are absent. As someone who has written with these gods for a while (especially Ra), I appreciate the care you've taken into their characterization and differentiation from their cannons.
Very well done. I'm excited to see this develop into a full game. 💖
This was a lot of fun to play. I enjoyed the story, the tower placement mechanics were a bit difficult to overcome at first but I got the hang of it. This game has a lot of charm, by far one of the most charming I've played to date out of all the entries. Would love to see a full game based on this concept.
Obviously the Lily and Bella must get married in the end.
What an incredible entry, the dialogue is the best I've seen in the entire Jam. I was laughing the entire time. The game is oozing with so much charm its like a waterfall. Its incredible what you were able to accomplish in just 72 hours. The rhythm segment was an unexpected twist and it helped to vary up the gameplay. I hope you make this a full game in the future.
A really solid pinball game. I like the enemy mechanic with the workers heading to the bottom; they were surprisingly easy to hit and the board was well engineered with this mechanic in mind. I was a little upset that I couldn't hold the accuation of the flippers by pressing and holding the button, typically I cradle a pinball as part of my playstyle. The music was very nice. Overall a solid experience! Nice to see a pinball game make it into this Jam.
Glad to see another SHMUP made it into the Jam, I'm glad your realization of the theme and "do-anything-and-the-game-will-end-faster" mechanic came out better than my own. Your game is clear, to the point, and full of humor. My only complaint is the movement is a bit jarring, and there is a collision bug with the borders to sometimes cause the game to prematurely end even though you are in the center. Good entry.
At first I was bad at reading and played the game like I thought I was supposed to (didn't read the text), then laughed when the final boss exploded on because of a "Imp'a-tient", escaped and accidentally destroyed the world in the process. I laughed really hard, really great game premise.
Second run through I end up being freed, poisoned and on a sliver of my health! My sacrifice will not be in vain. :joy_cat:
This was incredibly fun and simple: At first I thought I was gonna be stationary but then I took off into the abyss with glee and then ran North America First into an asteroid. 10/10 would cause a mass extinction again. I also loved that you could press and hold the shoot button, that was an unexpected detail. Art style is incredible. Only down side for me as was mentioned above was game was incredibly loud on start up.
I enjoyed this game a lot, incredibly ambitious given the time constraints: AI and path finding is not easy to get right in such a short amount of time. I would love to see this fleshed out as a full game as I loved the concept, but there were a lot of issues with the mouse soft-locking randomly that impacted my enjoyment.
I absolutely love the title: an incredible subversion of the early pandemic sentiment. This is giving me some serious Total Carnage vibes for some reason. I really love its arcade-y feeling and the feeling of impending doom. Game looks amazing, love the way the slime looks too. I just wish there was more to collect or do in the game, but a minor gripe honestly. Really great entry, I hope you continue with this concept.
Thank you @fzsa-v @fjlucas @raptor851 @joshua-steward and @kirill-islibaev for your your feedback. In hindsight, the issue was that I attempted to do too much at once for the Jam and needed to focus on one or two key mechanics; I would have gotten it done for the Comp if I had managed to do that. It wasn't so much feature creep as the whole concept was too large & complex, I thought I had reduced it down to a small enough size but I'll have to go even smaller in scope next time.
If I choose to continue with this project post-jam I'll be sure to try and improve/fix the controls and simplify the experience. I'm not really happy with how this turned out, but I'm still proud that I managed to finish. @fzsa-v I'm glad you loved it and recognized the use of sin(), I really appreciate your suggestion about the pattern because it was really quite hard for me to figure out in the space of the jam.
@binaryspark Hey thanks for letting me know, if you could provide a screenshot of the crash message I'll get a fix out as soon as I can. I'll investigate personally later today and do some fixing within what is allowed in the jam rules.
@nyanpierre @kingofspill @postpostscript Thank you for your lovely feedback I appreciate all of you. I would have loved to include sound feedback and more visual feedback, but alas it had to be cut due to time constraints. Shouldn't have in hindsight, its a critical need for communicating to the player. I know that for next time.
@mopifish Thank you for your honest review, I really am glad you enjoyed it! I am actually glad you had that 'art gallery' experience, it was actually my intent and you didn't "read way too much" into it at all. I intended to make an experience where I communicated a lot of things I personally went through- and still am going through- with post viral illness. There is a lot of my self in this, and I ended up with an incredibly weird, almost feverish abstraction.
I know this game's presentation and mood isn't for everyone, but I am glad some people enjoyed it.
About you issue: The strike system is based on how much you miss of the collectable 'merchandise' in the 'customer' phase (the weird purple person), those being being the cat, piggy, and vase. I had intended to make a tutorial system (much like your game, Life Finds a Way) explaining the mechanic, but I ran out of time. It is very much a my fault thing, it is poorly communicated and a wall of text right when you start the game isn't a good replacement for good game design.
Thank you @possiblyaxolotl @lvl99chicken @dingledorf @vrerabek @lisichka @ternox @justuspan and @phoenixofforce for your reviews! I appreciate all of your comments and feedback.
@justuspan in regards to the refill mechanic, its a known issue: there is an indicator but its so small and non-descript (little boxes to the left and right of the player 'heart') that it doesn't make for good UI or feedback. I was originally going to add numbers and labels to those boxes but I ran out of time.
@ternox Thank you so much for playing my game! I'm really sorry it crashed on you, I was hoping I had fixed all the crashes. If you happen to remember what the error message had said or have a screenshot that would be much appreciated. I spent a good amount of time yesterday doing a code review and fixing crash bugs as I found them, but clearly there are some underlying gamestate issues that can only be solved with a complete rewrite.
I'm also surprised a lot of people are liking the music a lot! I don't consider myself a musician by any means, but I worked really hard to learn what I do know now because its important to me that my work have original compositions. If anyone is interested, I have posted the OST of the project unreleased tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwJaxnDMQLM
Thank you to everyone for your support, it really does mean a lot!
Thank you all for the feedback @ardakrkz, @lex , @sheol , @jakubbala , and @anaxie-studio!
@anaxie-studio Thank you for playing and pointing out issues you had, it helped to better contextualize some of the other feedback I had gotten. It will help me better understand how to communicate level boundaries.
@aerloth Thank you for your lovely and in-depth review! I'm really glad you 'got it' with this experience. I was really inspired by Undertale, it really made bullethells more approachable, so I did end up taking a few ideas wholesale for my own purposes. I really did miss out with the sound effects aha, something I for sure will not miss out on implementing next time. I learned a lot from this experience, and Ludum Dare 51 is already turning out to be a really big deal for me. Also looking forward to seeing what you make for your next entry. :eyes:
If I could give this 6 stars for humor I would, The tutorial was an absolute joy to play and the pop cat demon caught me completely off guard. An hidden gem among all the other entries, this frantic subversion of the 'god' game is a welcome and unexpected departure from the genre. I would love a full version of this game. My only issue is that the tutorial was a bit too hard so I didn't really get to learn everything at a tutorialy pace (I failed right when the bamboo popped up).
Incredibly entry, I absolutely love this.
An interesting concept and jarring experience for sure. I like the adaptive music, it was an incredibly nice touch. The text constantly overlapping made me a bit sad because I was interested with what was going on in the world and I could rarely read any of it. I also wished doing actions in the game had more feedback to know I did something. Overall an excellent exercise in futility and on point with the theme.
What an interesting game! I was really drawn into the color mixing aspect, but I then proceeded to forget to make sure my head was in the right color space (RYB not RGB) and I died because of it LOL! It feels like everything happens in this game a little too slow, and it was frustrating to accidentally restart harvesting a plant by clicking it again because there was no/not enough feedback.