Zou. Petit article cheapos qui recycle des trucs déjà produits : les commentaires de mes revues de jeux du Ludum Dare pré-précédent. Je me permets parce que le mois dernier vous avez eu deux articles, alors ça va bien. J’oserais dire que ces commentaires comportent des descriptifs de qualité et des suggestions détaillées. Ça vaut ce que ça vaut (le vaut est un animal à poil ras).
Oh, et ça fait le deuxième article de suite qui est en anglais. Vous y survivrez, n’est-ce pas ?
Les jeux sont à peu près classés par ordre croissant de ma kiffitude personnelle. Si vous avez un peu de temps pour en tester quelques-uns, prenez en priorité ceux de la fin, qui sont justement estampillés « kiffitude ».
C’est parti pour du copié-collé frénétique !
Paper Route
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/paper-route
- Overall:3.0
- Fun:2.5
- Innovation:2.0
- Theme:4.0
- Graphics:3.0
- Audio:3.5
- Humor:2.0
- Mood:4.0
I encountered some bugs as other people said. But it was not too much annoying.
It is very frustrating to have McLudum giving you so many newspapers at start, and seeing nearly half of them immediatly lost, because the carriage can not hold them all.
I did not managed to get past level 2, but I’m not good at this sort of games.
There seems to be a story with your father, that’s always good to add this in a game.
Nice game, even if I’m not skilled enough for it.
Akameis
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/akameis
- Overall:1.5
- Fun:1.0
- Innovation:2.0
- Theme:3.5
- Graphics:4.0
- Audio:4.0
- Humor:3.0
- Mood:3.5
Technically and visually, it is really beautiful. Voxels are cool, and I like the fact that you can see the previous level below. It makes the tower more realistic.
About the time management
However, the turn-based/real-time logic is hard to understand at first, and cancels the interest of many monsters.
I did not immediatly realize the voxel-thing on the top right is a sort of hourglass that indicates the time before the next automatic turn.
The green monsters do not move when you move in real-time (by using the space bar), so you can dodge all of them easily. But at the opposite, the arrows move at the same time of the hero, and also with the automatic turn. This combination is rather illogical. And you often have to wait automatic turns for long seconds, to dodge some arrows that passes by.
Either you use a complete turn-based logic, like the game D.R.O.D., or you use a complete real-time logic, where every elements move at its own rythm. But mixing both is weird and unpractical.
About the hammer
I thought I could break scenery objects with the hammer, in the hope of hidden bonuses, but scenery are unbreakable.
If you push « Z » without any direction, you smash the ground under you, making you fall and die.
I tried to smash the ground under skeletons with the hammer, but each time I got shot at blank point, because of the weird turn-based/real-time logic, and the fact that there is no visual information indicating that a skeleton is about to shoot.
So IMO the hammer is useless.
About the rest.
You can’t go back to the main menu when you click « how to play », and I had to reload the whole web page.
Arrows stays in place when you restart after dying.
3D is cool, but if you can not turn the camera, it is sometimes hard to see where objects are, or what is behind other objects. In an early level, I stupidly died because I did not realized a bomb has no floor under it.
Sorry for this “hard” review, but all these tiny buggy details makes your game quite painful to play, and gave me really little fun.
The totally safe and explosion free heist
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-totally-safe-and-explosion-free-heist
- Overall:1.5
- Fun:1.0
- Innovation:2.0
- Theme:4.0
- Graphics:2.0
- Audio:3.5
- Mood:3.0
Nice game. You added some perspective feeling with the top half of the hero that can traverse walls, but it introduces a bug. The bullets starts inside the wall, and are instantly cancelled. You can not fire when you stand near a wall.
I liked the guards that spawns after you picked up the bionite. It adds a real importance to the fact that you get instakilled when you hold the bionite.
It needs an ending. Spoiler alert : nothing happens when you finish all the levels.
At the last level, there is a heart floating in space. Is it possible to take it, or is it just a decorative troll ?
Uns’Table
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/ld49-uns-table
- Overall:3.0
- Fun:2.5
- Innovation:1.0
- Theme:4.5
- Graphics:2.0
- Audio:4.0
- Humor:3.5
- Mood:3.0
I love the word game in the title.
It is sometimes hard to guess from the description which object must be brought to Uns. (I tested all the consumable objects for the « savourly ingredient »). And it’s sometime a bit long to get the object you want.
Does the object you are holding change the fights ? A sword increases the chance of not being hit, an armor absorbs some damage, … That would be cool. Also, we do not know how the level of the character affects the fights.
Aimless Wizard
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/aimless-wizard
- Overall:3.0
- Fun:3.5
- Innovation:2.5
- Theme:4.0
- Graphics:3.5
- Audio:3.5
- Humor:3.0
- Mood:1.5
Nice idea and nice “aiming instability”.
However, your game has a little default common to many games : there is no collision between monsters. As you turn around them, they all pack together in the same spot. Having lots of monsters is not much dangerous as having only a few. And when you hit the pack spot, it’s an XP jackpot.
I would have implemented collision handling and lowered the monster generation rate. It would have increased the feeling of being overwhelmed by your enemies. Here, they just feel “immaterial” and not so harmful.
Some clear delimitations of the game area would have been appreciated. It’s a little annoying to plan fleeing to the left and realizing you can’t because you bumped into the invisible border of the world.
And maybe add more randomness to the target movement. They straightly move in the 4 directions or the diagonals. That would be funnier and “more instable” if they moved in any direction, while changing it progressively.
Anyway, I liked this moment of monster genocide and reached level 8 !
Doc. Noggin
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/doc-noggin
- Overall:4.0
- Fun:4.5
- Innovation:2.5
- Theme:1.5
- Graphics:3.5
- Audio:4.0
- Humor:2.0
- Mood:3.0
The sprite choices are a little WTF. On one side, the teeth, syringe, pills and microbs suggest a medical world, which is consistent with the game title. (Maybe I am inside a body I have to heal ?)
But on the other side, there are fuel cans, moving fires, levers, blocks, and stars as background. It may be hard, but you should try to find “medical” equivalent to all these unrelated objects.
Level design looks sometimes strange. Some levels seems to be really big, but you only have to explore a little to find the exit. I do not know if it is made on purpose. It may be a good idea, because it suggests that you’re in a world bigger than what you are able to realize, like a body if you are a micro-organism.
It needs a scenario, or at least some explanations. What is this strange grey-ball-character I have to get ? Why is the world “unstable” ? What am I supposed to do here ?
Even with these little drawbacks, I was hooked and could not stop until I won the game.
(Spoiler alert) : I really liked the mechanic of coming back accross all the previous level.
Music and “special effects” are great.
Thank you for this really cool game !
Orbital Cascade
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/orbital-cascade
- Overall:3.0
- Fun:4.0
- Innovation:1.5
- Theme:3.0
- Graphics:4.5
- Audio:4.0
- Mood:3.5
Great game. A nice tribute to Asteroids, Lunar Lander and all of the kind.
Controls are hard, but that’s totally assumed in this sort of game.
The GUI is quite messy. Writing « status » next to a bar graph does not help. The status of what ?
I took some time to realize the status is the health of the Earth. I suppose it decreases when a satellite escape from the screen and crashes on the Earth, and it regenerates with the time. But I’m not even sure it works like that. It seems to randomly increase and decrease.
Also, if it works like this, what about burning satellites which you can’t destroy ? Do they make the status decrease ? If yes, it’s rather unfair.
The spaceship health bar is shown on several little ship. It looks like you have several « discrete » lives. But in fact it is a continuous health bar splitted in 5 « mini-health bar ». That’s quite uncommon. And the visual difference between an empty mini-health bar and a full one is not strong enough. It’s hard to quickly take account of your whole current health, whereas it’s the most important thing in the GUI !
As some other people did, I played the whole game with the mouse button pressed, so this feature is useless. Do an automatic metal collect, or add the necessity to aim a satellite with your mouse.
I like the initial radio communication, to set a plot and to explain how to play. Just one thing : you choosed silver as the metal collected from satellites, to express it is valuable and to justify the fact that the player is paid for that. But then the player beams all this precious silver to the earth to have it destroyed in the atmosphere. What a spoil ! It would have been more consistent to tell that the player collects scraps, destroys them, and then the human on earth are so happy with it they instantly pay the player.
Apart from these little drawbacks, the graphics are really cool, the sound is good enough and it’s really fun to play. It gives this incentive of « just one last play to see if I can get more upgrades ».
Congrats !
ecosystem except there is no equilibrium and everyone dies probably
kiffitude de type : c’est un jeu où on code + la personne ayant créé le jeu assume totalement que tout a été fait à l’arrache.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/i-cant-think-of-a-name
- Overall:3.0
- Fun:5.0
- Innovation:3.5
- Theme:1.5
- Graphics:1.0
- Humor:4.5
- Mood:4.5
I love the concept, and I also love all the clues revealing that you may have realized the game in a sort of urge :
- the main title
- the url of the game : « i-cant-think-of-a-name »
- the ludum description : « …actually that tagline doesn’t really make sense anymore. »
- the in-game description : « I didn’t have time to write a good tutorial, but I do have examples »
This game is totally experimental and raw, which I love too.
In case you do not know it, you should visit the site codingame.com, where you will find plenty of bot-coding games, to compete against other people. And maybe you should also test the old text-mode video game ZZT, which has its own level editor and its own programming language.
Thank you, and keep up experimenting !
Volatile Defender
kiffitude de type : jeu squaritable + graphisme + « allez juste une dernière partie ».
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/volatile-defender
- Overall:4.5
- Fun:4.0
- Innovation:2.0
- Theme:4.0
- Graphics:5.0
- Audio:4.5
- Mood:4.5
Simple but original concept.
I did not want to look at the tutorial at first, and did not realize you could look back whith the « space » key. It may be a good idea to tell this action in your game description.
I like the fact that robots destroy bonuses when they walk on it, it adds some strategy, with choices like : « I should keep this bonus on the ground for later, but I take the risk to have it eaten by a robot ».
IMO, the hero is a little too slow to move from one tile to another, and the bonus lasts a little too short. It generates a little frustration because a big part of the bonus advantages are lost, as you fire in the void while moving in front of your next target.
Really great graphisms and music. The best I have seen for this Ludum Dare, so far.
Parcel Panic
kiffitude de type : j’adore le mini-univers du jeu + j’ai totalement trippé dans mon commentaire.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/parcel-panic
- Overall:3.5
- Fun:4.5
- Innovation:3.5
- Theme:1.0
- Graphics:4.0
- Audio:3.5
- Humor:1.0
- Mood:5.0
The difficulty of the game, that many people felt, would not be a problem if it was brought gradually. It may be a good idea to use all the suggestions in previous comments to make the game easier, and removing them as the player progresses.
- lower global speed (player movement and energy loss).
- parcels and energy bar stays longer on the ground, then you make them stay shorter.
- the parcel destination is directly marked on the map and does not go away.
- then the parcel destination is indicated on the bottom, as it is now, but it does not go away.
- then the parcel destination goes away.
- then some parcels may be heavier and slows you down when you carry too much of them (instead of decreasing your energy faster, which you don’t really realize while you play).
- then, why not making it more difficult than it is now ? Remove the letters on the buildings ! After all, you know this place by heart now.
The possibility to cycle between the parcels you own may also be a good thing. So that you can optimize your deliveries. To keep track, in your own memories, of the parcels destination, they could look different. Like in the reality.
I really liked the small world where you are. The road to the left is here to show this world is inside a greater one, but you know nothing of it. It increases the microcosm effect. While playing, I felt like the local hero of the quarter, the person who everybody knows, and who is useful for everybody.
I really like the fact that you put different building types. A, B, C, I, J and K are clearly house of rich people, with fences to be protected from the others. D, E and F looks like middle-class houses. G and H are big buildings where all the poors pack themselves. Even in a small world like that you can make appear social differences, which is an interesting idea.
The post office may not be a good idea. It suggests that this small world has contacts with the outer world. I would have put a more local building : « the janitor desk » or something like that.
An idea comes to me while I’m writing this comment. You should have different types of parcels, and use them as collectibles in the game. You could have a menu where you see the list of all the collectibles you gained, and read their descriptions.
You could have parcel types that clearly shows that the expeditor and destinator hate each other, and other that shows they love each other, or many other feelings.
Here are some ideas :
- a letter with a heart drawn on it,
- a present that looks really expensive,
- a postcard that you can read,
- a letter whose address is written like : « old dork Jack »,
- a parcel with white powder on it,
- a beer pack,
- a parcel that smells shit,
- a dead animal,
- a bullet,
- …
As you play a game, you could imagine and guess the life of all the people in the microcosm, as you learn which type of things they send to each other. How would you feel, as the local delivery hero, when you end up knowing everything of all you neighbors ?
When a game starts, you could randomly choose some specific situations, that the player would discover progressively : a rich house that sends parcels with white powder to all the middle-class and poor buildings, two middle-class neighbors that sends normal parcels at the beginning and then hate parcels (bullets, dead animals, …), expensive presents sent from a poor buildings to a rich house without any returns, love between a rich and a poor, …
Whoa, I realized I totally tripped on this game. That was cool. Thank you for your game. Do what you want with all these weird ideas.
Voili voilà
Et voici Chun Li en version un peu plus ronde que d’habitude.
Réchèr : le Grand Tout 