Things are getting worse by Dyn 2019-05-05T03:34:05Z
Funny game, but the gameplay leaves much to be desired. Was this entry rushed to finish?
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Zesix
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Tell a Fairy Tale | jam | 2381 | 2.79 | 2.73 | 2.92 | 2.99 | 2.56 | 2.77 | 2.46 | 2.72 |
| 2019 | 44 | Your life is currency | 👥 | Heart of the Grove | jam | 114 | 3.93 | 3.32 | 3.73 | 3.68 | 4.46 | 3.86 | 4.00 |
Funny game, but the gameplay leaves much to be desired. Was this entry rushed to finish?
Hilarious game, I love the humor and mood. Well done!
Oh wow, I wasn't expecting another team to have a similar idea to ours haha. I like the humorous take on the idea. Well done!
Well done with the mood and graphics, especially the vfx! Atmosphere is on point, though the gameplay felt a bit too beginner-oriented.
A game about tough choices! Great (and relatable) take on the theme, even if it hits a little close to home sometimes haha. Well done.
I love the art style! May I ask what it was made in?
Really fun game. Had to play it a couple times to get a feel for the last boss, so the sudden spike in the difficulty felt out of place. Otherwise though, great entry!
I love the art style! Any software / tips for creating aesthetics like these?
Funny - great job with the mood! However, the game's difficulty level seems overtuned. Were you the only one testing it? You might have made it harder as you got better haha.
I love the nostalgia aspect of this game and the tie-in to Wolfenstein. Like you said, it's unfinished, so it's hardly a 'game', but I did enjoy my short time trying the gameplay.
I love the graphics, noir art style, and mood. The gameplay seemed lacking, but otherwise a polished entry. Well done!
This was actually a lot of fun. Overall production is great, though I'm not sure I like the melee attack - that felt out of place for this kind of game to me. Great job with the entry though!
Pretty innovative - a rhythm game about painting! I do wish there was music to it since the mood is a bit bland without any audio, but an interesting entry for sure. Great job!
Your team has now established a solid track record of impressing :) I love the overall production and how well it all feels together. Very well done!
I love the cute graphics! Fun mood ^_^
This game is hilarious! Well done on the mood and gameplay.
Cute puzzle game. As mentioned by another, simple concept, but fun and definitely an interesting thinking challenge. Well done!
Very impressive visuals and effects! The game feel is a bit too stiff it feels like, and there are some bugs (which I'm sure you are aware of). Overall though, great entry!
Pros: - Story - Assets, though graphics implementation felt like it could use more work.
Cons: - Clunky movement. Not being able to jump or even slope handling meant that I got stuck moving forward every time I hit a rock, and for this reason I did not finish the game. - I really felt like I should be able to click to see the next part of the story instead of waiting the fixed timeframe. With so much story involved, it starts to feel tedious and reading breaks immersion.
Honestly, I found this one difficult from a player perspective. It was unclear what was going on :(
I love this! Gameplay-wise it's similar but even more polished than our entry. Looks like we both had similar game ideas for the theme. Well done!
Graphics, as mentioned by others, was definitely strange. However, the game felt decently cohesive for being a mash-up of mechanics. Innovative entry, well done!
Cute game, great pixel art and feedback with the screenshake! Fits thematically, but wish there was audio.
I think the graphics are decent, but there are some consistency issues with the art style. The gameplay felt a bit incoherent - some aspects felt smooth, but others needed some refining. I also have a soft spot for Construct 3 since I started with C2 before moving to Unity. I think you did a great job, though you should probably opt out of Audio if you don't have any :o
I love the art style, but as others have said, the instantaneous death is jarring and in many ways feels unfair because some attacks are not telegraphed well. Overall love the production, just needs more tuning and tweaking.
I have a soft spot for this graphics style, and I love the polish that went into this game even if there are some bugs (which are to be expected for a jam entry). Great job overall!
The color scheme probably isn't the best because the colors are close together. I'm not colorblind but I could see a colorblind person having issues with this. That being said, I found the gameplay to be fun. Well done!
First entry I've played that is also a TD game (ours is sorta like a TD, but not exactly). Took me a bit to get the hang of it, but felt rewarding to do so. Seems like a bit more time on polish could have been added, but the core gameplay is very well put together. Great job!
Cute entry. Great use of free assets!
Really needs better explanations but the mood is on point haha
The game felt a bit slow, but I liked the concept!
I'm very impressed that you pulled this off with DOTS over a weekend! I'm personally learning Svelto.ECS at the moment, with the intention of hooking it up to Unity ECS for rendering and physics once that is more stable. The game itself felt sort of like a tech demo to me more than a game experience, possibly because I wasn't fully clear on what things I could do.
One of the most impressive entries I've seen this jam. Well done on all aspects!
Innovative entry with the offspring vs. continue as-is mechanic. Wish there was audio to help with the mood. Definitely fun for the time I put into it. Well done!
Cute and fun game. Some bugs, but that's to be expected for an ld entry. Well done!
Interesting entry, didn't expect to find an ASCII art game in this LD :P
Great art direction, though the gameplay felt repetitive after awhile. The pacing / ramp-up seemed overtuned to developer testing so it wasn't as beginner friendly for learning what the minions do. However, the overall production value is excellent for a jam game. Well done!
Wow, the feels. Best mood I've experienced this jam for sure. Great choice of art style too! Well done. Was the story inspired by a personal event?
I love graphics like this! Can you share / write a postmortem of how you did it? Great job on this entry!
I'm no good at these types of physics games lol. But still a fun and interesting entry! The graphic design of putting the letters on the keep is very intuitive. Wish there was sound, but I understand that's probably due to time constraints. Overall, great job!
Great job on submitting! Finishing is a feat in and of itself so you should be proud! The graphic style is cute though the game felt a bit... rigid? Not sure how to describe it. Could be the time constraints didn't allow for more fluid gameplay polish. Still, congratulations!
The low poly aesthetic brought me here. Loved the small board game style feel of it, though animations and sounds could have been improved / added. I imagine that's due to the time constraints of the jam. Great entry nonetheless!
This got pretty intense really quickly haha I do like the combination of genres - clicker + MOBA-like. Well done on the gameplay!
Wow, I love this graphical style. It's a great homage and you nailed capturing the craziness. Great job!
@wittycognomen , we did not. Most of the aesthetic is made from scratch. Just not the characters.
@gord10ahmet , flying around is the only mechanic. We chose not to make extremely explicit instructions on the gameplay because it's a simple, artsy entry. You wow the kids and avoid the staff as it says. However, I've added an update that states this more clearly.
Thank you for your honest review, @mhykah !
@123seven3 , most of the level is made from scratch, just the characters aren't.
@fabula-rasa , @johnnydalvi , good points. I've just pushed an update where the staff are easier to spot while flying.
I went back and forth on the camera controller. We originally planned to just have it top-down and you can't zoom in at all, but I felt like the level was beautiful so if you wanted to zoom in while dazzling the kids, you'd be able to do so. But flying while zoomed in wasn't the experience we wanted (too difficult to navigate indoor rooms), so I had the camera snap back to the overhead view so you can see where you're flying. But as you two mentioned, that made it difficult to identify the staff. But now the experience should be more pleasant with this update :)
@robowarrior1982 , the restart key shouldn't matter since you only get the option to restart when you lose and the key is explicitly stated on the defeat screen. Our key choice for the restart isn't a legitimate gripe about the game. As for a pause menu - we unfortunately didn't have time for that, and quite frankly most other entries don't have one either, including yours. All this being said, I'm glad you enjoyed our entry :)
@xeno-software , valid points. To clarify: You don't lose because you ran out of time, you lose because you got caught by the staff. We tried a third person controller but it made navigating indoors difficult. You aren't a human stuck on the ground, you're a nimble fairy, so you wouldn't be moving the same way Snake does in MGS. It was tough trying to capture the flying indoors feel (not many games are both flying and indoors lol). Thanks for sharing your feedback!
@marcmagus , as far as I know, we didn't bring our game to your stream to play. Was someone else impersonating that he made our game? I watched your highlight and your concerns are valid. The camera controller is something we should have spent more time on, but we didn't allocate enough time to gameplay testing. Unfortunately, an uncommon entry like this really has to nail so many things right to be considered good.
@splitpainter , thank you for the comments. I do try to submit original entries when I do jams. Tinkerbell is something we debated on - if we used a non-Disneylike Tinkerbell, it may not be clear it's Tinkerbell since the general association for her is the blonde-haired green-clothed fairy Disney is known for popularizing. But for those who have a greater background with the history of Peter Pan productions, yes, we could have made Tinkerbell look like any fairy. I figured if the fairy didn't look like Disney's Tinkerbell, we'd get some complaints about the fairy's look. And of course we got complaints because she DID look like Disney's Tinkerbell, so it's likely a consequential choice either way.
Really cute graphical style, though might benefit from a soft ambient light so the shadows aren't so harsh. Overall, well done!
This entry has incredible production and it shows (and yes, I did notice you have a 'jam guide' in your readme for your team members haha). I personally related to the headspace being full and the challenges of navigating daily life while trying to keep track of things (though thankfully I don't have anxiety). Amazing and memorable entry.
This is one of the few complete entries I've seen, and the fact that you did this all on your own is insanely impressive. Just checked out your blog too - I will be going through your articles and hopefully learning how you do some of this stuff!
So glad you kept going and were able to submit! Great job!
A great second entry! You are improving :)
Gosh, this art style is the cutest! I've played a lot of entries this jam and I have to say, this is one of the few truly polished entries. Just curious - how did you get started using Asesprite and sprite design / animation? I've always been interested in creating this art style but wasn't sure how.
Took a bit to get a feel for the game and controls, but to be fair every game I've played this jam had that (with one or two exceptions). Overall, a great simple gem of design. Innovation points for making a rhythm game!
This entry is a marvel of level (puzzle) design. The simple graphics also fit well. Great job :)
I love the procedural level generation animation! Even though you weren't able to add decent art and sound, you did a great job overcoming some technical hurdles with this entry. Great job, Johnny :)
First visual novel I've tried this jam :) Love the art style, great job!
The graphics are cute! Took a couple tries to understand what to do, but that's par the course for most jam entries (including ours). I did feel the game was a bit too easy, but that's better than too hard. Great job!
Words cannot express how much I love the different production elements of this entry. Will you be writing an article / postmortem? I'm curious how you created this and would love to work with a hand-drawn style in a future project. High marks all around for this entry!
As others have mentioned, the art style is super cute! Very impressive for 48 hours!
This game made me laugh. Amazing entry, well done haha
I'm a sucker for turn-based tactics games. Pretty fun, well done!
I love the graphics! Definitely felt like the gameplay could use some tuning, but with the time constraint, that's understandable. Well done!
Such a beautiful, Zelda-esque game. Great job!
This is really cute! A shame there wasn't enough time to implement gameplay.
Really tough game, but maybe that's because sometimes the plant is ahead / above me but I have to turn sideways to spray it (some of the angles are non-intuitive). Interesting concept though!
3D in GameMaker with Mobile Suit Gundam vibes?! YES.
This art style is amazing! I hope you write a postmortem as I'd love to attempt something like this. RTS was the genre I grew up with and I like the spooky theme you took with it. Great entry, great job!
This is madness. I love it. Will you be writing an article breaking some of this down? I'd love to learn how you did this using only VFX Graph. There wasn't much gameplay as you mentioned, but the audacity of this entry led me to give it high ratings across the board anyway.
My goodness, this entry has such great production level. AMAZING job!
Oh, the audio in this entry is spectacular, well done there! Does the leaderboard work, or is it just an homage to the arcade games of old? Surely someone has scored higher than me lol. Great entry, well done!
Cute entry!
I love this art style! The ship control felt difficult, but I imagine it's more realistic than most games. Overall, great job!
A Construct entry! I was wondering when I would find one haha. I started with C2 back in the day before I got into programming and the foundations C2 taught me really helped. This game is super weird and I love the direction you took the theme. Well done!
Love the minimalist art style and the simplicity of the game design. Well done!
I have a soft spot for typing games and I'm glad to see the optimized production here, utilizing kenny assets to make up for graphical skills. Was fun for me to play but the difficulty spiked pretty fast. I imagine if there was more time there would be more gameplay testing, but that's understandable in an event like this. Great entry nonetheless, well done.
I love hand-drawn styles! You guys really put a lot into this game, probably too much and not enough gameplay testing since I ran into some things that I got stuck in. But wow, what great effort. Amazing entry!
Echoing what others have said, your entry could benefit from instructions (I ran into this issue with my submission too, so it's understandable) and a bit of polish. But overall, this is not a bad entry, just needs some tuning (difficult with the time constraints).
Whoa, neat art style! Great job with this entry :)
Simple graphics and relaxing gameplay held together by a great choice of color palette. A truly unique entry, well done!
Cute art style! Also interesting to hear it was developed on Linux. I've got a soft spot for Linux dev so it's great to see an entry here.
I love this art style! As others mentioned, the run and gun gameplay felt different from what I'm used to in similar games, but a great entry nonetheless!
Loved the mood of this game, especially the How To Play instructions xD Sadly I didn't get very far as I'm not very good at platformers, but great job!
The other comments express my thoughts, but it looks like this is your first LD and your first entry. Congratulations on submitting! That is a huge feat itself - you should feel proud :)
The traditional graphics were nice, but the controls definitely felt like they could use work.
I love the graphical style and this type of gameplay is right up my alley. I think it was too bright sometimes (maybe use some darker hues somewhere?) and even put on my sunglasses once, but I still enjoyed it. Overall, amazing entry though, well done!
Wow this gets intense pretty quickly - the rain bouncing off the edge of the level got me at first haha. I lasted 141 seconds. Great job on the simple graphics, gameplay, and style!
Loved this entry - fitting theme, great mood. The UI doesn't match up with the graphical fidelity of the rest, but I assume that was due to time constraints. Great job!
The production level of this entry is insane. The design is pretty good too! One of the few entries to get 5 stars from me :)
Loved the cute art and audio!
This might just be my favorite entry in this entire event. Amazing job in every aspect :O
Interesting take on the theme - I like the detective / case solving idea and this is the first entry I've played to go that route. Great use of tradeoffs / choices in gameplay too. Well done!
Such a fun little gem. Great production all-around :)
Very unique graphical style, so well done there. It's pretty obvious a lot of heart went into this game, but due to time constraints many bugs slipped into the gameplay. Some of the pathing was frustrating, especially when it came to trying to get my second henchman to fight an enemy that was down a narrow hallway. Still, great job though, especially for a compo entry.
This is the first casual / relaxing game I've played this jam and I love it. Thank you for making this!
This game is a wonderful gem. Thank you for creating this!
Love the homage to Halo. Humorous take on the theme haha. Well done!
Took me awhile to understand the gameplay, but that's par the course for these kinds of immersive artsy games (we have similar complaints on our entry, though people have been hating pretty hard on our graphics). I love the atmosphere and the mood of this entry, and this is definitely the best atmospheric submission I've played so far. Will you write an article breaking down the scene setup and postprocessing effects? I'm curious what all was involved :)
Have you ever played the arcade game Killer Queen? This made me think of that. Great job on this entry!
Such a cute entry. Well done.
I'm a sucker for hand drawn graphics. I imagine time constraints prevented you from adding animation other than the rabbits jumping? Encountered an issue where there was an apple behind a tree but wasn't able to pick it up even though I clicked a hundred times. Overall though, great work and great job on submitting, especially if this is your first time doing LD!