I got a 185. Reminds me of my all time favorite highscore game Mr. Oops! Music was nice. Penguin could look penguinier. Difficulty scaling seemed a little harsh.
My record is 207 good job for beating my my high score @dick-clause. The Reason why the screenshot`s high score only says 142 is somehow I deleted my high score.
constructive feedback: There were a few times where the fish was on the edge of the map, which seemed to get me killed as I had no time to react to spears. The the back of the spears also would hurt me when I would walk into them, seems like should only be the spear tip. Super minor things, but I feel like I need to give something constructive.
positive feedback: The art was super cute. I like the little pixelated fish. It was really easy to pick up and figure out the goal too. Thanks for providing an HTML version! Overall great little project!
Thank you @matt2728 and the reply to your constructive feedback is I tried making only the spear tips kill, but it made the game to easy. I might try again later. I was going to make the fish on the outside of the grid be worth more points, but I got kind of tired working on the Ludum Dare project.
Fun to play, I was rubbish best I got was 87. I kept getting unlucky at the edges, living life dangerously :smile: . One suggestion would be to have extra tiles around the edge that you can't walk in but to show the spears approach.
I got 235 :D It's simple and fun, although it's a bit unfair since you have very little time to see spears coming from the edges when you have to collect fish on the outermost squares.
Simple funny game, the penguin looks so awesome :) It was quite strange when I received some points just because I stay in one place and spears are flying by. Also it is very difficult to avoid the spears if you stand at the edge of the map. Maybe it will also be more convinient if only the spear point can damage, not the whole thing. Several times I died because I move into the spear edge which is not sharp.
Nice fun little game, though I think the colliders on the end of the spear might be to big which caused me to die once or twice. Still a good polished fun addictive game!
A bit on the simplistic side but does it really well. Agree that map could be bigger and spears spawn too fast at the edges. Perhaps a warning indicator outside the grid whenever a spear is about to spawn on a cell would be good.
I agree about making the backs of spears not kill you - maybe just the very back quarter or something? But the music is great and doesn't get annoying, and I like the cute little penguin! I played through a few times and got 179 which apparently isn't as good as lots of players here! I actually disagree about the edges of the screen - I think it makes moving there an interesting risk, but I would make the grid bigger so there's more room to move around inside. Cool game!
Highscore : 122 ( 3 tries ). Music is nice but it kind of didn't match the game for me. It's too peacefull while there is some intense action :) Anyway, I enjoyed it. Nice work !
Nice and simple game! I would've wished that the wooden parts of the spears didn't kill the penguin and would either let the penguin clip through them or block the penguin from moving towards the spear.
My record was 257, a few times got trapped in almost inescapable situations. Also felt that being killed by the rear of the spear limited my ability to move around as the spears would then take up between 2 to 3 tiles at any one time which considering the 5x5 board represents quite a bit of space for each set.
I managed to get 202 points after some tries. The penguin is cute but the spear hitbox could be a bit smaller so you don't get killed by their shafts so much.
Nice and simple game. 144 was my record. A bit of a shame that the wooden part of the spear kills you as you get trapped in some corners.. Graphics were a little too simple (a more detailed penguin would have been nice). But definitely a game that gets you to want to carry on playing.. Well done
The short play sessions and simple gameplay make this perfect for a jam game! Sound effects would've been a great addition but the chill, relaxing background music makes up for that. Awesome job overall, the game is polished and really fun to play!
I like it! Has potential. I'll admit I read the title wrong. I thought it said, "Don't stay alive" and that really intrigued me, so I was a little disappointed that it wasn't about trying to die as quickly as possible. haha! But seriously, well done. I would recommend making it a little faster and feel a little snappier.
That's more fun than I would have thought, good game !
The major improvement I can suggest is to work on the audio, the music add some contrast with the game, but does not fit well enough with your theme of a penguin hunting fishes
And I would have liked some audio effects when you grab a fish or when you get hit
Nice game, it resembles those old nokia phone games! I missed some annoying SFX like playing a bit to every move... :laughing: I liked it, a really nice concept!
Pretty cool! It was kinda unforgiving. The fact that there was no telegraph at all where the spears would be coming from made being on edge extremely dangerous. And if you're trying to just hang in the middle, the spears will pretty quickly drive you to the edges and your impending doom. Adding something like a brief danger icon on a spot just before the spear would appear there would help immensely.
I'd also like to see the tail end of the spears be less dangerous. Something like 10% of the tail of the spear could be non harming to make squeezing between spears more possible. And actually that could be taken even further and added to the tip too on a lesser scale. It would create more of these "close calls" (so actually instances where the player should have died but didn't) which are always fun and make the game seem more fair. Sure it would be very stack towards favouring the player but when you die and even have a slight inkling that you didn't hit the spike, it feels bad. A classic shmup mechanic which just makes the game feel better and less unfair.
Game development is full of these little tricks that stack the favour towards the player just to seem fair and to be more fun. Stuff like jump button buffering before actually hitting the ground from a previous jump or the so called "coyote air" which lets the player still jump for a tiny bit of time even after running off the ledge. That's what the player is trying to do, don't punish them for their silly slow human reflexes.
Restarting could be quicker. Sometimes the runs take just mere seconds, and it takes almost as long to restart and get the controls back to you.
Obviously there are stuff that could be improved. Sound effects for starters. It's a simple thing to add to make the actions seem more impactful. Then of course some special effects and (more) animations. You say there are cool animations but there were barely there and were very subtle. I'd like to see more. Maybe an idle animation for the penguin easily implemented with just by adding some squash and stretch. Fish too could be flopping around, just little position and rotation animations. The penguin could use some more black to be actually more easily distinguished as a penguin. Then the final visual thing I'd change is revising the color palette. I mean, so much brown.
Why submit to jam and not compo? Just for the extra day?
The gameplay is simple yet fun. What's not fun is even if I only touch the last millimetre of the wooden part of the spear I'll still die. And as other's mentioned above, some indicator wold be nice, so we can know from which direction to expect the spears.
With a little more improvement it could be a really good mobile game. Keep it up!
The game is genius in it's simplicity - in a way of old Nintendo game & watches. You can play it with 4 buttons, it keeps repeating the basic mechanic, but you can still have a lot of fun with it. Believe me if I'd have it as a kid in form of a handheld, I'd have played it all the time, and never get bored of it.
Single thing I'd tweak a bit would be having shafts of spears more forgiving your touch. Sometimes you really wait for the moment when you can already pass and I appreciate when there is more space for mistakes than being strict and exact.
Very simple game. It's addictive to stay alive for a little bit longer than before. But what I don't like about it is that you can only move full squares while the spears can move freely. You can't squeeze between a small gap between two spears because of this and another problem is that you also die from colliding just a little bit with the harmless end of the spear. I think it would be a better game if the penguin could also move freely along the game board, maybe with a cute little penguin-walking-animation.
I was approaching 200 and felt pretty good but then I accidently moved into the back of a spear. Made me surprisingly angry. I tried again and was hit by the first spear.
I'm bad at the game, I only manage to just past 100. I love how simple, yet fun the game is. I really like the minimalist art style you have and the music is way too beautiful. Great Job!
Nice game with simple but addictive mechanics. The difficulty scaling over time is quite good but the spears coming totally randomly (I guess?) causes sometimes situations you cannot escape from... But in general it was quite fun!I got 139 points.... (By the way...... the tone of yellow for the beak was really hard to see on top of the white body for me)
Really cool game and fun to play! My highscore was 240 so that's good for me. The difficulty scaling felt really polished and the game mechanics were simple und fun to play with. It was a bit hard to predict an arrow on the edge of the playground - especially when fish was lying in a corner and I wanted to grab it but died instead.
Still good entry with nice, funny music playing in the background!
A really nice game that plays well. It seems to\ get difficult pretty fast, but others seem to like the scaling so maybe its just me. Arrows move real fast and are hard to predict as the come out of nowhere with no warning. The game was fun and quite addictive. Music sounds nice and wacky, but didn't really fit the theme to me. The game matches the theme pretty well, but the biggest killer to me was the static feeling art. I love me some smooth feeling animations. Other than that, Great job on your submission!
This was really cute, well-scoped, and it felt the most like a "real" game out of everything I've played so far. Like others have said, I kept running into the back of spears, but for a 72-hour prototype, this is really solid.
Pleasant experience overall. As others have already mentioned, it feels rather complete and well polished. However, it is a little too unforgiving for my taste. Dieing because you hit the back of a spare, which had already nearly left the tile is more frustrating than enjoyable. Adding a system of lives - giving the player multiple chances - would have greatly reduced the frustration feeling in my opinion.
Nice little game and its pretty addictive! Didn't manage to get any higher than 68 as I kept jumping on the back of the spears but it didn't stop me trying for a good while :laughing: Good job!
Very fun and cute game. Really liked the contrast between the gameplay and the music. Loved how the difficulty escalates. Some sound effects would add a little touch to this game. Great work!
Fun and addictive! Maybe adding something to tell if a spear is coming from the edge would help survive a little bit longer without dying from random appearance when the player is on the edge of the stage will help the impression of mastering the game. Also, adding SFX will help engagement. You got a nice game there. Do continue working on it. Nice music by the way. I love those computer-generated stuff. Good work!
Simple but effective game play loop. Seemed to me like the spears spawn at random with an increasing frequency, which ultimately may lead to undodgeable combinations of spears at some point, I guess. That's at least what happened to me. The music had a nice ring to it and was catchy. Loved it! The art was basic but worked in this context. Solid job on a one man entry.
The game could be so much better. I think that with the time you had you could have made a great game out of this, but you bombed it. I don't mean to be mean though. It was still kinda good. But I am disappointed.
Pretty fun, with calming music. I think it would be nice if only the spear tips killed the penguin. Every time I died it was from walking into the back of a spear. It would also be nice if we could see more around the edges of the board, so that going to the edges of the board would be less dangerous. Good entry!
Challenging ! Sometimes I'd end up in an impossible position where there was no escape from the spears early on. Maybe a bit of logic on the spear generation, to ensure that there's always an 'escape' would be good ( how thin / skilled you have to be to use it is another thing! )
The mechanics is simple and nice. I think it's the simplicity that makes this game addictive. I love how challenging it becomes as the time passes. Well done!
Well that became really addictive in a really short amount of time. Great example of how to use deceptively simple controls to maximum effect. That was fun, and challenging. Well done.
I really enjoy theses little concepts. Often, the more simple the mechanic is, the more we have fun to play it. And this is the case with this little cute game. I would say it's not really in the theme for me, because almost all the game consist to keep your character alive. But you have made an addictive game. And the art is clean. Nice entry.
Very nice and addictive game! I got 274 as my best score. The music is nice, although quite strange given that it’s a game when you get impaled by spears regularly.
Comments77
That music is relaaaaaxing.
Well done. The music is so relaxing that I can play that addictive game forever.
constructive feedback: There were a few times where the fish was on the edge of the map, which seemed to get me killed as I had no time to react to spears. The the back of the spears also would hurt me when I would walk into them, seems like should only be the spear tip. Super minor things, but I feel like I need to give something constructive.
positive feedback: The art was super cute. I like the little pixelated fish. It was really easy to pick up and figure out the goal too. Thanks for providing an HTML version! Overall great little project!
Music is nice but it kind of didn't match the game for me. It's too peacefull while there is some intense action :)
Anyway, I enjoyed it. Nice work !
I would like that the wooden part of the spear stops the pinguin instead of killing it.
Music was relaxing. A bit short, but not annoying at all.
I would try another color palette, but that's just personal preference.
Cool game!
Nice entry!
It's a simple game, but it's balanced / progresses in difficultly well, making you want to keep playing.
Would be nice if there was a little more forgiveness on the moving into the space of an square and arrow has *almost* left.
The major improvement I can suggest is to work on the audio, the music add some contrast with the game, but does not fit well enough with your theme of a penguin hunting fishes
And I would have liked some audio effects when you grab a fish or when you get hit
I missed some annoying SFX like playing a bit to every move... :laughing:
I liked it, a really nice concept!
But honestly there's a good concept and pleasant graphics. Would be nice if you had for example 3 lives but that's just a suggestion. Good job!
Pretty cool! It was kinda unforgiving. The fact that there was no telegraph at all where the spears would be coming from made being on edge extremely dangerous. And if you're trying to just hang in the middle, the spears will pretty quickly drive you to the edges and your impending doom. Adding something like a brief danger icon on a spot just before the spear would appear there would help immensely.
I'd also like to see the tail end of the spears be less dangerous. Something like 10% of the tail of the spear could be non harming to make squeezing between spears more possible. And actually that could be taken even further and added to the tip too on a lesser scale. It would create more of these "close calls" (so actually instances where the player should have died but didn't) which are always fun and make the game seem more fair. Sure it would be very stack towards favouring the player but when you die and even have a slight inkling that you didn't hit the spike, it feels bad. A classic shmup mechanic which just makes the game feel better and less unfair.
Game development is full of these little tricks that stack the favour towards the player just to seem fair and to be more fun. Stuff like jump button buffering before actually hitting the ground from a previous jump or the so called "coyote air" which lets the player still jump for a tiny bit of time even after running off the ledge. That's what the player is trying to do, don't punish them for their silly slow human reflexes.
Restarting could be quicker. Sometimes the runs take just mere seconds, and it takes almost as long to restart and get the controls back to you.
Obviously there are stuff that could be improved. Sound effects for starters. It's a simple thing to add to make the actions seem more impactful. Then of course some special effects and (more) animations. You say there are cool animations but there were barely there and were very subtle. I'd like to see more. Maybe an idle animation for the penguin easily implemented with just by adding some squash and stretch. Fish too could be flopping around, just little position and rotation animations. The penguin could use some more black to be actually more easily distinguished as a penguin. Then the final visual thing I'd change is revising the color palette. I mean, so much brown.
Why submit to jam and not compo? Just for the extra day?
Anyways, good job! :thumbsup:
The gameplay is simple yet fun. What's not fun is even if I only touch the last millimetre of the wooden part of the spear I'll still die. And as other's mentioned above, some indicator wold be nice, so we can know from which direction to expect the spears.
With a little more improvement it could be a really good mobile game. Keep it up!
Single thing I'd tweak a bit would be having shafts of spears more forgiving your touch. Sometimes you really wait for the moment when you can already pass and I appreciate when there is more space for mistakes than being strict and exact.
And I love penguins.
I suck, but well done!
Still good entry with nice, funny music playing in the background!
Good music and cute blinking animation xD
Overall, it is a good entry. Good job :smile:
Keep it up!