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Author Topic: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews  (Read 15119 times)

TaoPhoenix

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Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« on: October 05, 2019, 10:50 AM »

It's been a while, but Ludum Dare 45 - Oct 2019 is going on, so I want to return to my habit of reviewing a few games!

My grading style is fairly lenient. Many games have difficult levels, but I like it when games have at least a couple starter levels so that you don't wash out in seven seconds or such.

Let's see!
« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 06:18 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Sound Check - Coinbold
« Reply #1 on: October 07, 2019, 11:24 AM »
To warm up!

Coinbold introduced me to the Pico-8, designed to mimic Atari era games, purposely nearing the rough specs of that time.

Coinbold is a charming little proof of concept. You only need to collect three coins to win, and you get some nice 4 channel music at the end.

I'm rating this as a Specs Check for your computer - sound check, arrow keys working, et.

LD Page is here.
https://ldjam.com/ev...dum-dare/45/coinbold

Game Link for the browser is here:
http://image.onlyint...inbold/coinbold.html

Mouser had the idea to link to the Pico 8 page.
https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 12:55 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Emoji Overflow
« Reply #2 on: October 07, 2019, 12:53 PM »
Tower Defense!

I have a soft spot for the LD versions of Tower Defense.


This time the theme is hysterical, since we had an Emoji movie. The emoji's want to take over your phone!

Rated Phoenix Easy. One of my house rules for radomized Tower Defense is I'm quite fine restarting the game to get the important elements. So clearly the Dragon is sky high the best item in the game. It's a solid (and only) shooter.

It's harder to know what the others do. The Castle just seems like a blocker, then a lot of waves can get around it but the Turtle is supposed to slow the things down.

Presumably the FireBreather should singe and weaken them but there's no hp bars so you can't tell. There's also a Teddy bear, equally obscure.

Tips:

- The emoji animation is smooth, but the placement is modular, so place the first dragon either 6 or 8 spaces from your home base. They have quite a range. Otherwise you might get jammed up getting formations.

- The other assistants make good re-routers, so you can position them off center in various ways to force the emoji armies to herd back around into the dragon fire. Apparently they are in fact slow shooters and not inert, but still the Dragon is the most powerful.

- The big boss at the end really does take a lot of beating! But it's quite bulky and slow, so boxing it in completely near the front works quite well.

Great simple sprites and you do have to take a bit of care not to get sloppy. Also, it might nudge up a difficulty level if you don't get a dragon first pick and want to play it hardstyle.

Also, it's one of those games that after you win, you can try one more round to try to make art with the sprite patterns in pretty formations. :)

LD Page:
https://ldjam.com/ev...re/45/emoji-overflow

Game page:
https://olegludens.i...ch.io/emoji-overflow

« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 10:15 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Quick Links
« Reply #3 on: October 07, 2019, 01:40 PM »

The Howler

An interactive version of Edvard Munch's The Scream.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream

LD Page
https://ldjam.com/ev...m-dare/45/the-howler

Game Link:
https://blackthornpr...s.itch.io/the-howler

- ----------------------------


TaoPhoenix

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Vaahtera - a Tree Simulator
« Reply #4 on: October 07, 2019, 04:16 PM »


Pleasant little mini Sim where you grow (hopefullly!) a large tree.

The control are pretty simple as long as you get off the ground (pun!) by rememebering SPACE BAR grows the branch segment. It's easy to try to click the mouse or random keys.

Very simple ecology, though with a couple of fancy formulas. It's pretty balanced, but it gets a rating of Phoenix Easy-Plus because of a couple of traps.

You start off with a fixed supply of energy, and growing branches costs 50 energy. You can make leaves for free per se, though it seems it does take extra water. So at the base level, grow a bunch of branches, make leaves, so that it replenishes energy, and you need a threshold of 200 to make it rain.

There are only 2 pathways per branch and making leaves finishes off a branch, so some kind of wide base is recommended. Depending on how wide you start off, optimal seems to be about 7-9 nodes or so.

Tips -

- The Water counter is not steady paced! So especially later on, when you think you're cruising, it can race down and you have to hurry to make rain! This has destroyed two big trees so far! Then it slows down. Not sure if this is a feature! Also, a few times it really looked like my water was above zero but then it became game over.

- It's pretty easy to hit steady state, a little care in the beginning should do it. But I am beginning to think the final goal is to really make a fleshed out nice tree! I aesthetically went for a trunk in the beginning, thugh it's not required, but a V-shaped tree just looked ugly.

- The second thing earning the Plus is the branch design. Some variant of a binary splitting pattern is going on, with some unclear formula of when it widens branches (after making leaves!) so although the camera can move, I am trying for a single screen pic.

- It's a sim game, so it DOES take a couple hours if you are really going for a large tree. Turns out it can multi task the branches, so at first you can't see through the delay box, but then once you hit cruise zone you can build multiple branches at once, but I recommend surveying for a minute every few branches because of the quick water counter, and also to see your design after the boxes go away.

- There is no pause, I think, not counting things like shifting OS focus out.

- As is, the graphics are pretty nice once you start to get going. There is no gravity, so I have experimented with growing my branches partly upside down to work on fleshing out the tree.

I'll try to post a screen shot if I can get a really nice one!

LD Page:
https://ldjam.com/ev...dum-dare/45/vaahtera

Game Page:
https://wiekafe1.itch.io/vaahtera

For a screenshot, disclaimer - it's not completely right out of the game. I built half the tree, then mirrored and cropped it. The program doesn't really reward trunks, and I was getting fatigued from all the restarts!

But since I can't draw at all, it's still rather neat! I am a loose player - so I just considered my editing like an artist trimming the canvas or paper.



« Last Edit: October 07, 2019, 05:09 PM by TaoPhoenix »

Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #5 on: October 07, 2019, 07:49 PM »
Thanks for doing this thread. I'm following it with interest, and may include my own "review" or two at some point.

Or at least play some of the ones you linked.

But for now I just want to point out that you didn't include a link to the emoji TD game.

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #6 on: October 07, 2019, 10:16 PM »
Thanks for doing this thread. I'm following it with interest, and may include my own "review" or two at some point.

Or at least play some of the ones you linked.

But for now I just want to point out that you didn't include a link to the emoji TD game.

Good catch.
I posted the links.
And I'm a bit tired now" :)

Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #7 on: October 07, 2019, 11:52 PM »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #8 on: October 25, 2019, 10:26 AM »
Quick links post for games that I've played, with varying results, so that they don't get lost on my hard drive or forgotten altogether.

https://ldjam.com/ev...dum-dare/45/catsaway
Runner with fun hand drawn art and rather offputting music! What happens to the experience if you play this sound off?

Poop Sim - funny little Pico 8 platformer
https://markuslindgren.itch.io/spoop
Rating - Prob Phoenix Easy-plus - the difficulty seems curved generously to at least get a few levels; I just haven't taken a lot of time on it so it's here.
https://markuslindgren.itch.io/spoop

Witches Beware
http://mabl.dk/Unity/witchesbeware/
"Slow move" collect objects unlocks game state. Very dark! Lots of people went with a Halloween theme along with the compo one.
Someone said it's Don't Starve style art. I may hold onto this one for a full review when I want to knuckle down to play it right. You can mis-decide to do an action that probably blocks the win without directly knowing it.

Tower of Minos
https://schellingb.g...hub.io/TowerOfMinos/
Half Tetris Half Platformer. Clever!

Harder than it looks because even if you're good at tetris, you can't move the blocks, so on the platform side either the long horizontal one flattens you or you can get boxed in and have to hard restart. Well into Phoenix Medium but fun!
- ---------------
Random Non-game findings section

Wolfram Tones
http://tones.wolfram...0zdUOkIxrVxePCNaA5WU
« Last Edit: October 25, 2019, 11:47 AM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews - More Quick links
« Reply #9 on: October 26, 2019, 01:10 AM »

Just because there's only so much one can handle per post, I'll be splitting the quick links.

First up is one I def want to eventually do as a full post.

Fruit Mamba
https://ldjam.com/ev...-dare/45/fruit-mamba
https://bobvanderlin...thub.io/fruit-mamba/

Charming little puzzle game with a snake that grows as it eats fruit. Simple crisp graphics - there's some counting involved, so I'm glad it's not using a 3d renderer.

Level 2 is JUST at a sweet spot I didn't flash right through it, but you feel it has to be doable with a good calculated snap. I don't know about level 3 yet. Ratings are in the perspective of the player, but I'll call this Phoenix Easy-Plus, because you can let it sit there - no enemies, no decaying game elements, no timers, etc. So you can dawdle, attend to life, and so on. I hear there aren't many levels, but it's got an interesting gravity mechanic that's tricky to master. Isaac Newton Plays Centipede!
:)

Update: Level 2 is way harder than you'd think, and the devs were saying they were torn between two details in the mechanics, so the next few are far easier!


 
« Last Edit: October 26, 2019, 01:23 AM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews - Epoch
« Reply #10 on: October 26, 2019, 03:12 AM »
I found another really fun one!

Epoch
https://ldjam.com/ev...udum-dare/45/epoch-1
https://riodsh.itch.io/epoch

Cute little animation up top, but the main game is combining things, starting from just a stick and Philosopher's Stone, and trying to build yourself into a stone age civilization.

Apparently I got decently far, more than some of the LD players who posted notes.

Epoch 25 of 30.PNGLudum Dare 45 Reviews

I beat it!

So ... rating ... when there's no kill or timeout, that's notable. And methodical work does pay off. IT just takes a while, and tip - there's one or two transactions that have to be done in a certain order! That might stump a lot of people because most of them are simple matches. So it's still a pretty good screen shot. After I rest up, I'll think if I want to make this a spoiler enhanced walk-through. Possibly another post, so people can play this straight from this post and there's still work to do after my screen shot.

This is my first favorite one so far.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2019, 02:22 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #11 on: October 26, 2019, 03:05 PM »

With the funny name Lucky Legal Llama, is a sailing demo of a game mechanic.
But even if there isn't very much gameplay, it has a nifty Scotch-Irish Opening song!

https://ldjam.com/ev...45/lucky-legal-llama
https://cole.klssn.com/ludum-dare-45/


Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #12 on: January 12, 2020, 03:29 AM »
I don't know what happened. I intended to browse the LD45 entries myself as well as play some of the ones you wrote about here. But somehow I missed and/or forgot about this thread and now it's been so long I'm not sure I feel it's relevant enough to me anymore for me to personally delve into any of the entries.

That said, as of now I'm planning to participate in and submit an entry for Ludum Dare 46 this April, if the schedule for it manages to work for my situation. So I expect I'll be starting a new thread about that in a couple of months. :Thmbsup:

Thanks anyway for often starting up these kinds of threads. There are so many entries that you can't possibly view them all, so it's nice to see what interesting games other people discover and what they think of them.

Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare 45 Reviews
« Reply #13 on: April 22, 2020, 08:34 AM »
I just discovered this one. It's entertaining.

Minute to Ship.pngLudum Dare 45 Reviews
https://hydezeke.itch.io/minute-to-ship

Make sure you've got a microphone connected when you use it. It allows you to record some sound effects to use in the game.