FoonLudum Dare ExplorerUsers → zchen

zchen

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMo
202046Keep it aliveDisposedjam15343.353.213.333.573.423.473.50
201944Your life is currencyGachajam3233.662.983.523.514.483.344.16
201841Combine 2 Incompatible Genres👥Don't worry, all pets go to pet heavenunfinished
201739Running out of PowerSouthcompo4773.053.233.042.232.952.331.722.73
201738A Small WorldForgetcompo3.002.004.003.502.502.003.50

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by zchen

LD38 — A Small World

Transistor Soup by stuntddude 2017-05-11T07:44:20Z

Good job with this entry! I enjoy logic puzzles and I had fun with your take on logic gates.

Grall Axy by LooksLikeSomething 2017-05-07T08:09:23Z

Cool little game! I like how traversing the planet becomes faster as the planet gets smaller, neat little come back dynamic you have there. Good job on the feedback, the trails which kind of tell how fast the meteors are moving as well as the pulsing red ring around the planet are nice touches. I was slightly confused by the jumping, it seemed a little inconsistent with the jump height and I couldn't get what caused me to jump different heights each time.

Good job!

The Little World by JayTord 2017-05-07T06:10:59Z

Interesting game! The volcanoes and baobabs got pretty intense. I found myself doing a lot of clicky very quickly. Got repetitive after a few days. It was cool to see the planet grow and develop though.

RGB by madmaw 2017-05-07T06:01:06Z

Interesting take on using color as mechanics. The "one control moves all" mechanic and the color mechanics seem to be quite disjointed and don't build on top of each other very well. The game may have benefit more if there was a focus on one or the other. Good job on the level design though, I can see the thought put into the level layouts and what you wanted to teach the player.

Forget by zchen 2017-05-08T07:50:52Z

Thanks for the feedback! I put quite a bit of effort into the animations to create that atmosphere and effect, glad to hear that it's working to a degree!

LD39 — Running out of Power

Neutron Escape by HitchH1k3r 2017-08-01T12:57:49Z

The charging of the jump was a bit unintuitive. It would have controlled a lot better if it was hold jump to charge and release to execute the jump. Also the platform placement for the climbing corridor segment was a little too cramped, it was easy to hit my head on a higher platform and fail the jump, it was quite frustrating especially with the explosion chasing you.

The art looks nice and consistent. Good job!

Portals and Boxes by Luis Giron 2017-08-05T06:04:42Z

Cool little game. Good job on the graphics and audio.

There were a lot of hidden rules that were kind of frustrating to figure out in the second level. The difficulty spiked from the first level to the second; a few more simpler levels before the last one would have been good. Also the portal graphics were not obvious as to which one was the in or out. Something you could do is add an arrow pointing into the portal for an input portal and an arrow pointing out for an output portal.

Good work.

Recapitate by superpokeunicorn 2017-08-01T02:47:15Z

Awesome job on the gameplay, audio and art. They were all quite polished for 48 hours of work. I think you have a neat little mechanic with the head attacking. If you plan on working on it any more I think it would work well if there was a way to recall your head back to you early. This would give players a chance to do more skilled attacks against different enemies. Good job!

Cellephant by hippy-dave 2017-08-01T02:09:57Z

Impressive work on the generator. I initially felt like the progression was too slow but now that I know it was generated I'm quite impressed and feel like there's some potential with some balancing. The levels did get a bit tedious and stopped being engaging around the level 30+ mark for me. I quickly got bored of working out the perfect path every time. A new game play element to change up the experience would help but I'd imagine it would make the generator a lot more complicated. Good work!

A Night at Grandpa's by Kingethaniel 2017-08-01T01:20:53Z

Good job on the sound effects to create the atmosphere and mood, it's so important for a horror game. The art had a good effect too. The first time I saw the old ladies in the first room it freaked me out a little bit, a good stark contrast to the innocence of the art style.

The gameplay felt more like a matter of luck and skill since using the light drained energy so quickly and getting hurt in the dark didn't feel very fair. If you decide to build on this idea in the future you can definitely do more with the sound in gameplay, i.e. the sound of something hazardous getting louder if players get closer to it to give players a chance to navigate in the dark.

Good job!

Battery Penetrates by ToadieTechnika 2017-08-01T04:13:48Z

Interesting entry! I struggled awhile to figure out how to control the game. I like the abstract yet suggestive nature of the game. Good job :thumbsup:

Running on the Power of Love by nervous-composers 2017-08-05T05:38:58Z

I had a good laugh at the end of the game. Really impressive graphics and audio. The evolving objects in the world as you ran with the love song in the background gave an oddly unique feeling of progression. You can almost feel the 'power of love' growing. Great work on the mood there. I do feel like game play is lacking but it doesn't feel like it was a priority in this game and that's okay.

Keep up the good work!

Pathjumper by mrnyarlathotep 2017-08-05T05:23:07Z

The game looks great! From the menu screen to the assets in game, well done with that. My immediate feeling was that there was a lack of purpose in the game.

I'm not really sure what I should be doing. After playing it for awhile I guess it's to survive as long as possible. I think the game would benefit from a 'score' screen at the end of each play through to give a sense of achievement and also a goal for the next play through, e.g. "I survived for 30 seconds! Maybe I can survive longer if I used a different strategy."

Keep up the good work!

Wind-Up Knight by joemag 2017-08-05T05:31:44Z

Impressive entry! It's a cool take on the theme and I definitely felt like I was running out of power as I played through the level. Those sound effects were spot on haha, points for humor on that. The game eventually became a click-fest for me but even that created a unique experience of multi tasking and balancing which system to wind up at any one time.

Good work!

Armless Kairo by thomas-olsson 2017-08-01T12:33:17Z

Great job on the graphics. I thought the gameplay was kind of neat, with the throwing, once you unlocked the companion. Also I felt a tinge of sadness at the end when I escaped (don't want to include spoilers but I think you know what I'm referring to). I felt like the theme was quite weak though, it felt like something that was slapped onto an action-platformer rather than the focus of the game.

Overall, I enjoyed my time playing the game. Good job!

Cute Chute by xel 2017-08-06T03:27:54Z

Polished entry! I'm very impressed by the art and audio, from the animations to the SFX. The game play was lacking a bit but I feel like it wasn't the focus for this game. Overall it was an short enjoyable experience. Good work!

Dim Wit by benbennett 2017-08-05T06:16:43Z

Awesome game! Really neat and simple mechanics. The music was jolly and it matched the game play well. Some room for improvement. It would be good for the entire game to be keyboard controlled, such that the play again button doesn't need a mouse. Also some more feedback when getting the button presses right would be nice, i.e. some SFX or particle systems. Good job!

South by zchen 2017-08-01T02:12:54Z

Thanks for the feedback guys! I would love to hear how far players got, i.e. which loop number you got up to.

My personal best right now is loop 16, but I'm sure there are some beastly players out there who can top that.

South by zchen 2017-08-01T03:51:17Z

@superpokeunicorn That's a great idea! Man, I can just imagine the slow down effect on the music while everything else is slowly passing you by. Thanks for the feedback and playing!

South by zchen 2017-08-02T03:40:40Z

@mrnyarlathotep Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. The beginning does take a while to ramp up. There are some visual changes towards the later half of the game. What loop did you play up to before it got repetitive?

@joemag Thanks for the feedback! That's a good point, the game is a little bare at the moment.

South by zchen 2017-08-03T03:17:03Z

@mrnyarlathotep Thanks for the update. No, I won't say it's on you, I do think the pacing is a little bit off at the start of the game.

@angela-he Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the increased intensity in later loops. I did have this idea in mind for the mobile market! I'm interested in exploring new and exciting ways to control a first-person shooter on a touch screen. Still a prototype for now and I'm working on another game so any future work on this idea will have to wait. Yay, I'm happy you like the start screen. It's my own lazy way to do away with a tutorial and make the main menu a bit more interesting. Thanks for playing south!

South by zchen 2017-08-05T05:05:38Z

@jusw85 Thanks for playing and your feedback! I'm happy you liked the atmosphere and the build up. I did a few small changes every loop hoping that together they would have an effect on players. Hey! A fellow sg developer! I'm working overseas at the moment but I always look forward to going to game dev. meet ups in Singapore. Maybe I'll see you around!

South by zchen 2017-08-06T03:11:35Z

@xel Thanks for playing and commenting! Good catch on the start button. It's not the most effective tutorial but I didn't have much time and it helped me kill two birds with one stone. I agree about the progression of loops, it's not very obvious and the gap at the end of the loop kind of looks like a hazard. Yes I got some inspiration from Superhot!

Sea Life by Laien Pathfinder 2017-08-01T02:34:34Z

Good job on the message. For me Sea Life was more about getting the message across than the game play before of how things were balanced. It did that for me in the short ~5 minutes of the game I played.

Ready, HANDHELD! by emanvidmaker 2017-08-01T01:31:42Z

Interesting little game. I enjoyed the game slowing down and growing darker when you're running out of batteries. It was a cool effect and created a some tension and urgency when moving through the level. I'm not sure what the 'coins' did, I skipped picking them up in the second level. Good amount of content created for 48 hours!

There's like almost a full second of delay when pressing the jump button for me. I'm not sure if it's just my device but for a platformer that was the most frustrating thing about this game; having to do precise jumps with a delay in the controls. Also the collision with the walls were a bit strange. There were times where the character would get caught by the side of the walls and even allow players to jump off the sides, I'm not sure if it's a wall jump feature or not since there was no feedback for it.

HE BEAT HER. by Angela He 2017-08-01T03:34:03Z

Super impressed by this game! The art is amazing for a game jam entry. There were parts of the game which got me pretty engrossed, especially when I'll be chasing down a lead. The audio did a great job setting the mood too. Good design sense with providing hints. I'm not a big adventure/story game player so it took me awhile to realize I could do certain actions. I even managed to get a 'justice' ending without using some actions (I took a peek at the walkthrough after I finished).

I would have liked to be able to play the game from just my keyboard, especially since the main interaction is through typing. I'm not sure if it's possible right now but I often had to switch to my mouse to click on stuff, i.e. when I lost.

Overall I'm really impressed with the polish of this game. Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing what else you make in the future! :thumbsup:

Dear Leader's Love Powered Peace Bomb by Zyzzyzzyz 2017-08-01T02:24:53Z

Neat little game, my highest score would be around 2500. It would be good to let players see what they scored after they lost since I'm so focused on dodging in the game I won't actually keep track of the score. Good job!

Battery Worm by ExciteMike 2017-08-05T06:30:14Z

Interesting visuals. It's pretty cool that the map is a loop and you can see the other end of the map. The game got pretty tedious after awhile. Moving around didn't feel very good, especially when you speed up when collecting batteries, so that was kind of a conflict between the core mechanic and the goal. Good effort.

Lost Cluster by Raymoclaus 2017-08-05T07:05:32Z

Neat little game. Great job on the music and the atmosphere it builds. It does feel like you're drifting in space.

I'm not a fan of the control scheme, I'm very clumsy when using it, especially when I don't know which direction the ship rotates to orientate itself. It can be frustrating for the ship to get stuck unexpectedly because of the control scheme.

An improvement I would suggest is putting in a radar mechanic to find the batteries. Using the radar will send out a wave which generates an arrow on the edge of the screen to indicate the general direction of the batteries. But the catch is that using the radar would use battery so now the players have an interesting decision to make between locating the batteries at a cost or taking a risk wandering about without using the radar.

Keep up the good work.

No Colors Here - My First Ludum Dare! =] by Pieve 2017-08-01T01:46:09Z

The camouflage mechanic doesn't feel very useful. It makes it so that I don't lose but it seems like the enemies still follow me so I'll lose eventually. I ended up winning by just getting the first generator then outrunning the enemies to get the rest. Maybe if the camouflage mechanic did something to distract enemies so that you can run away it would feel better to use.

LD44 — Your life is currency

BulletHearts by beta 2019-05-01T22:45:57Z

Nice looking game! I enjoyed your high risk, high reward take on the game. It really amped up the challenge and the excitement of the game. The graphics look super nice too, the japanese words are a nice touch, what made you decide to go with them?

I wish the movement was faster though. The slow movement speed took away for me the intense action of the game.

Great job overall!

Gacha by zchen 2019-05-04T09:56:38Z

Thank you all for your kind words! It means a lot to us knowing that people enjoyed our simple, cosy game.

What would you folks like to see most in a game like Gacha? We're always open to suggestions on what people might like in our games.

Gacha by zchen 2019-05-07T22:28:40Z

@solifuge Oh gosh, thank you for your kind words. It means a lot to us and it's always special to feel like you're not struggling alone. Here's to making good art! (credit Mr. Gaiman)

@hermbit Anytime, that's why we do it. I'm glad you enjoyed it :slight_smile:

Thank you all for playing and your feedback! We're keeping track of all your suggestions and bugs found!

Gacha by zchen 2019-05-14T05:26:00Z

@angela-he Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed the game. The art was all the work of the amazing [@_jewellpopp](https://twitter.com/_jewellpopp)! We took awhile to brainstorm little life experiences that we related to so I'm happy that they spoke to you too. Yes, till next jam! Are you working on anything else at the moment?

@ddrkirbyisq Thank you for the feedback! It means a lot to us when players enjoy a game enough to share it around. And yes, we love alpacas too haha. I have a small-kid-sized alpaca toy sitting in the corner of my room.

Slavers Market by Ranzor 2019-05-04T21:33:38Z

Cool take on the theme! The art and music worked really well to sell the setting. I think the game just need a few critical quality of life features; i.e. showing the profit/loss for the slaves you own (depending on the current trend) and showing when a new trend has come in. I also think the goal is too hard (is that 1 million?!). I played for 10 minutes but after selling most of my slave I only had 20k (I hope it's not cause I was bad at the game). It would have taken me more than 8 hours to finish the game haha.

Good job overall!

missed messages. by Angela He 2019-05-01T23:17:32Z

Great job as always, Angela! The mood created by the art, tiny interactions and music really pulled me in. From there I just felt compelled to replay and discover more about the game. The writing really brought it home for me. It just resonates with me and interactions I've had with loved ones.

You're right though, a tad unthematic haha, I too struggled to do something different with the theme. I'm really glad you created what you did though. Thank you

Teller Me More by hollowspecter 2019-05-04T21:01:09Z

Great work with the art and music! Really sold the feeling of being behind the teller desk. The gameplay felt like it was lacking some feedback though, it would be fantastic if customers reacted to if they got the right amount of money or not. Also, could the withdraw button and dispense button be combined into 1? I was a bit confused at first on how to withdraw money.

Good job overall!

Penny Arcane by SamStallion 2019-04-30T06:28:32Z

Solid art and music! I personally found the gameplay getting repetitive quickly. I feel like the theme of 'use life to attack' creates an incentive to stick to normal attacks and stay back. Maybe if you have a system that rewards aggressiveness, like in Bloorbourne where you gain life back for attacking continuously and not just when you kill an enemy.

Good job!

Social Livestock by Cikyt 2019-05-01T22:40:43Z

Neat game! I liked that you went with continuous movement instead of discrete grids like in a lot of runners. It felt pretty nice and flow-y to control. I would have liked the 'lifetime' stat to tie into the money you're collecting a bit more to follow the theme. Good work overall.

Over by alixmi 2019-05-01T22:52:09Z

I got 19 souls! Cool game, felt like a modern, poetic, pac-man. I don't feel like the 'currency' part of the theme was very strong in this. The graphics, audio and mood really made the game for me. Great work overall!

Wild West Devil Pact by Skyball 2019-04-30T06:47:41Z

I enjoyed the art and puzzle platforming mechanics! Despite the character and environmental art being a total mismatch in terms of the pixel densities, its understandable for a jam game and had a certain charming quirkiness to it.

The collisions did feel a tad wonky, i.e. getting stuck on walls and switches. The combat also felt off with the bullets having unnatural arcs to them, especially when coupled with the bouncing.

Great job on the level design! I really enjoyed certain parts where the enemy had the high ground and it felt like you were being ambushed. Good work!

Kill The Money by Copper_Aardvark_Games 2019-05-04T21:19:59Z

The art and music were well done! The controls felt a bit off at first since it was mouse controlled. If the LMB didn't do anything else but fire the weapon it would have been easier to understand the controls if the game was entirely keyboard controlled. I wish the theme was stronger, it felt like the life and ammo were just reskinned to 'cash' and 'change' but it didn't have any change to gameplay.

Other than that, you got a solid action platformer here. Good job!

Kill The Money by Copper_Aardvark_Games 2019-05-04T21:37:34Z

@copper-aardvark-games Ah, you're right! I totally forgot about the shop. I even spent life to get the double barrel pistol.

LD46 — Keep it alive

O Captain! My Captain! by jamioflan 2020-05-03T10:23:44Z

Very impressive entry! I'm blown away by the sheer amount of assets y'all created for this jam. Everything from the models, music, and voice acting! I also appreciate the thought put into the camera angles, like how the screens fit nicely in the frame when you're in the flight pit or when you take off from the fuelling station the rainbows rocks are in line with your view.

As for improvements, I felt like the ending felt abrupt and forced. Mind you, it had the desired effect and I did feel for my robot companion a little bit. But I think some environmental foreshadowing might make the ending feel more natural. It could be as simple as a notice board that says, "SHIP DAMAGE DETECT. SCHEDULING DE-COMMISSION.", inside the ship where the player is bound to walk past and glance at as they do the missions. Also my audio was quite soft as a few people mentioned.

Overall, I'm super impressed by what you all pulled off this jam. Great job everyone!

Acorn City by testlab 2020-05-03T09:54:51Z

Cute entry! You did a great job on the squirrel model and animations. I think the gliding is an awesome addition too.

A few improvements, I think for a 3D platformer, depth perception can always be tricky, having a drop shadow for the acorns (even a faked one with a texture) would make the collecting experience much smoother. Also the world felt quite big to me, instead of a spurt control, I would prefer the default speed to be 'spurt speed' and Left-Shift could be a 'walk' control instead when the player needs more control.

Overall very impressive for a jam entry, good job!

a new life by Angela He 2020-05-05T10:00:56Z

Angela!! Thank you for making such a touching game jam entry again. T-T

I'm currently in a long distance relationship and the video call sequence hit me pretty hard. It's heartbreaking to think of anyone who can't be with their loved ones for one reason or another. Regarding the game's design, I really like that the chapter select system creates an accessible way to replay the story but you avoid the loop being "replay last chapter and try different choice" by making consequences span multiple chapters.

It's tricky to give constructive feedback since most of it was so well done, but in effort to do so I have a small nit-pick. Near the start of the game, because I chose to not look at my phone, I never got any notice about the virus before the decision for the wedding was presented. So it feels a bit unfair when you need to restart because you didn't have the knowledge required to make an informed decision (I guess it's a good representation of life haha). It would also be nice if the restart sequence sent you to the chapter select instead of the menu.

Overall, I'm blown away again by what you're capable of in such a short amount of time. Keep creating amazing things!

Keep'n It Alive by Ifman1 2020-05-12T12:08:20Z

The animations and music blew me away! Great work. When you're on beat, nothing really seems to happen except your character dancing. It would be nice to have some feedback to show that I'm on track and not missing anything.

Slime Knights by Kittennation 2020-05-11T22:25:09Z

I like the slime knights haha, they're a cute idea. The game probably needs some balancing for now, it seems really hard to die because the slimes seem to be healing even when I'm not at the safe zone. That's probably what's causing the confusion too cause the slimes just keep walking forward after they naturally heal.

RESCUR'ROBOT by jiukka 2020-04-22T12:57:38Z

Solid music, good job creating it in such a short period of time. The game wasn't very engaging for me. I wished there were some interesting choices for me to make or some story unfolding as I play. Good job on the graphics and effects. I like the particle effects around the robot and the human.

The Last Raccoon by IceBox246 2020-04-22T12:44:35Z

The amount of art you created for this jam is impressive! I wish the tower designs worked better with each other. I just found myself using the more expensive tower and the cheaper towers became useless. I liked how you had a story and really ran with it. The screen when you lose really did the trick for me, I immediately went to play again haha.

Soul Dungeon by VugarS 2020-05-11T21:49:38Z

Solid entry! You got all the elements of a tight game loop going on. As many people mentioned, some balancing to the difficulty to make it ramp up faster in later levels would make this shine. Good job!

Covid Runner by Cipery 2020-05-11T22:34:37Z

Quite a nice looking game! I thought the humour was pretty good! It's a shame you didn't include the humour rating. The shooting felt a lot out of place, I found that I could just hold down the shooting and spam it as I ran so it didn't make much of a difference to the difficulty. It might be a tighter game without the shooting and you just jump/slide around corona viruses.

Timewalk by Gossian 2020-04-23T10:55:55Z

The first thing that drew me in was the visuals. Good job on creating an atmosphere that was tense and interesting.

The gameplay was very confusing so me. It felt too random and that it was almost better not to click on an moments. It can be quite a deep metaphor for people who lack meaning in life because they're overwhelmed by what seems to be the meaningless randomness of life. But other than that it didn't make for a great gameplay experience.

Well done on the music, I was very impressed when it started to get more and more intense.

Keep Floating by JoaoG 2020-05-10T02:29:49Z

Good job on getting everything together in such a short amount of time! The strength of the mechanics was that they were simple enough to pick up and jump into immediately.

I thought the 'pick up lives' part of the game felt a bit out of place. I was a good way to add a change in pace and give players a break but it felt too disruptive to the score chasing nature of the game. I think a small improvement would be instead of having the 'pick up' game every time you lose a life, have it at some interval, so maybe every 100 or 200 points. And instead of picking up lives, make it a bonus round, where picking up boats will add to your score. That way you mix things up but still have both parts of the game cohesive and build towards the score chasing experience of the game.

Again, well done on bringing it all together for the jam, the art, mechanics, sound, and even story/references. Good job!

Left Behind by gamedevpersian 2020-05-10T03:50:06Z

Good job on creating that starting sequence with the storm, it was interesting enough to grab my attention at the start. An improvement for the narration text, to avoid skipping text accidentally, would be that pressing E displays the full text and pressing E again when the full text is displayed would skip to the next one. Also some visuals to show that there is more to explore at the edge of a screen (especially in the base) would be helpful. I almost didn't realise there was a second part. Overall, well done on complete this!

Prometheus by Nathan Dimmer 2020-05-12T11:53:23Z

Great job! I can honestly say your entry was one of the most fun I've had with the jam games. It can be a bit frustrating at times because it's not clear where the hitboxes start and end. The elements of a solid platformer are there though! Well done.

Dying Ember by Michael Sjogren 2020-05-11T22:09:22Z

Good job, you got a solid platformer here. The game looks quite pleasing with the minimal graphics and the lighting from the fire. Small improvement I'd suggest is to no have a restart screen and send the player straight back to the start of the level when they die, it just makes it way smoother to play when there's a chance the player might die a lot. I also like how you paced the level to teach different ways of using the mechanics. Well done!

Core by ZenithSal 2020-05-11T22:17:36Z

I quite enjoyed this! Tight gameplay that came across immediately so I could jump in and enjoy it from the get go. It would be great if there was a way to control the sensitivity cause I don't have a lot of mouse space to scroll. I reckon there's a potential addictive mobile game here if you keep working on it. Good job!

Sentience Protocol by Disthron 2020-05-05T09:07:54Z

I was drawn in by the visuals! I think the premise starts off as intriguing, but the gameplay doesn't do much to support it. I think the main issue is the lack of feedback regarding the consequences of your choices. Without knowing the impact of it, the choices quickly start to lose its meaning to me as a player.

Good job getting all this done during the jam. There's potential in the concept!

Silkworm: Keeping the Game Alive by Roey_Shap 2020-04-23T11:22:08Z

Very impressive entry! I think the thing that stands out to me the most is the amount of content you got into the game (3 mini games?!) and the thought you put into the design of the gameplay and story.

Personally, I found the dialogue starting to feel like it's dragging on a bit just past the mid way point, around the Chameleon part. I also feel like the Chameleon mini game and eventually its end game ability was quite lacking. It was not as interesting as the mole mini game and I didn't notice what the ability did in the end sequence, I just spammed P and went on my way.

I felt like the mole mini game had a decent amount of challenge, which was nice to find in what felt like a mostly narrative game. Also the tying together of the mechanic at the end was a really nice touch. Good job overall!