It sounds like you’re not using X-Decor-libre but only X-Decor which is the original but outdated and very buggy. I assure you X-Decor-libre does support the 50-move rule (but a player must invoke it for it to count as draw (I applied FIDE rules)) and castling, too. Also, you need at least Minetest 5.7.0 for X-Decor-libre.
Strange. I am unaware of any of the bugs you just mentioned. Sure you use the latest version of X-Decor-libre (libre8)? If yes, I would like to see the crash logs.
So, thanks for the review. Now that the game jam results are finally in, here's a longer reply:
Actually, this game was never meant as a "soulslike", as in "absurdly difficult". The large amount of mobs was not intended. The problem is that I've put too few restraints on mob spawning in so that mobs just keep spawning and spawning and killing them doesn't help to stop the spawning. Mob spawning is kinda broken and in fact, this is the last item on my TODO list before I ran out of time. :-/
There actually ARE limits to mob spawning, but obviously these restraints are just unbalanced and way too "permissive", i.e. allowing too many mobs to spawn. I think the biggest problem was that killing mobs doesn't stop or even slow down the infinite stream of mobs. So the current winning strategy is to run, which wasn't really intended lol.
Are you sure it's the projectile HIT sound that has a high frequency problem? I would say if any sound is a problem, it'll be the SHOOT sound since it's much higher pitchde than the hit sound. But anyway, I'll add that to the TODO list. This is actually one of the very few problems in the game I was NOT aware of before submission.
PS: I'm also planning to write a making-of and post it in the forum thread soon(ish). Stay tuned for that (and the post-jam update :P).
Item pickup does work reliably but you must stand VERY close to the thing. I think I should increase the pickup range
The unexpected part is the reveal in the final level where you learn where all the shadows are coming from. Your light orb literally says the word "unexpected" in the dialog. THAT is the unexpected part. OK, OK, I admit this is quite "forced". tbh I mostly ignored the theme but still tried to apply it somehow. lol now you know the truth. :P
Goal could be communicated better: Yeah, the wizard is a little cryptic and doesn't explain what the light crstals are for which I think is pointlessly confusing. But apparently not THAT confusing since you obviously managed to break the shadow bush barrier
No boss music: Yes, but this is why: This was the first time ever I composed and published my own music! This already cost me a lot of time. Adding a boss music would have completely destroyed my time schedule. And actually I tried anyway but failed to come up with a good melody but failed as I'm not really a musician lol so I just had to scrap the idea. I'm still immensely proud I managed to put any of my music in the game in the first place tho :P
Boring boss fight: Yeah, my experience with mob development is still low and it's a very very basic mob but at least it's not as broken as the other mobs. But I see if I can make the final boss more interesting
No feeling of progress ... I don't know what to say about that. Very subjective, hard to "fix"
I'm happy you like the light orb. I spent WAY too much time on making it work absolutely smoothly with natural-looking movement without lag .
I don't think I used the damage indicator in a hacky way. It works perfectly, does it not?
The reverb works with the most boring trick ever: Duplicate the normal stone nodes, but add a reverb sound. All reverb sounds are actually new sound files, too. Totally unimpressive programming-wise but the player doesn't have to know :D
The dialog text bug is the worst bug in the game ever because in the final day, I actually added code to make the font smaller on small resolutions but some people still got the bug because I chose a bad cut-off point :-( I'm SUPER mad about this bug because my last-day bugfix was still buggy lol
Good point about the floating stones. I think I should make the chasm waaaaaay deeper so it's actually believable that you die
Great job in finding a way to escape the level! I tried hard to make that impossible but I overlooked something lol. The forest level is the last level I made in the final day so it was hastily put together lol. Not surpried it is THAT level that still had a bug
I agree there are WAY too many mobs. Mob spawning is the most broken/least polished aspect and the only thing left on my TODO list before I ran out of time. Sadly, due to personal life issues (nothing serious, don't worry) and just bad time planning, I failed. I decided to make a game with mobs this time, which was a big risk because of my lack of experience with them. Maybe if I had chosen a less risky game idea, I would have won. :P
I basically agree with most criticisms expect for the "unexpected" part.
But yes, mobs are by far the least polished part of the game and you're right, it is indeed infinite spawning. Also, just way too many of them spawn.
My excuse is that I had poor planning and time management and "fixing mob balancing" was the last item on my TODO list. :-(
Basically I took a risk by attempting mob development and failed. Yeah, that's the thing with risks lol. ;-)
This game was meant as partly combat- partly exploring-style but it was NOT intended that mobs overwhelm you and annoy you all the time.
The idea was, once you defeated some mobs of an area, you are free to explore (at least for a while). Sadly, none of that managed to get in the game. Time constraints. :-(((
As for "too many collectibles": They are all optional tho and you don't even have to find all to get max. HP. Other people seemed to like the collectibles. I'm not sure what I should change here. You can complete the game and ignore all vases (although it's harder then). Maybe you're saying the game would have been better without any vases, or just with fewer? But then, most other players liked them. Difficult decision on what to do post-jam. :-/
I agree with the dialog problem, the appearance mid-combat feels a bit off, too. I'll see what I can do.
But to be honest, I'm a bit mad tho that you outright refuse to complete the game (just like with Glitch last year) after only 1 death. :-( I don't like this (even if I agree with most of your criticisms). I feel like you give up way too early on game jam games. I noticed this with your other game reviews, too.
Anyway, I think all these problems can be fixed. Most importantly, I'm planning to rework mobs completely post-jam.
I'm glad you liked the game, even the mob combat, although mob combat is the least polished aspect of the game. I also noticed there are some dirty tricks where you can just slaughter the shadow mobs without getting hit once, thus quickly getting most upgrades. Although I think not many people found these dirty tricks. Mobs in general are not the smartest and I definitely need to fully rework them. Many players had problems with the mob fight and I fully expected this. I sadly didn't have the time to polish mobs more but I'm planning a post-jam version. If you're interested, I will also write a making-of and post it in the forum thread.
I also agree that Glitch is better (simply way more polished).
The shadows still spawn, and there appears to be no increase in light.
Maybe I shoudn't have built the exit portal in the boss room then to hide this issue. XD
I only added it so you can go looking for the remaining vases. A treat for completionists, basically. ;-)
The in-world excuse is that "the forest still needs time to heal" but this is very lame, of course.
Yeah, since you can return to the Tree of Life, the environment should definitely change.
And yes this was a time constraint thing.
Yeah, basically I took a risk this time by trying a game with mobs, something I have not much experience with. Additionally, I decided to do everything myself, even the music. Which I did. (I'm going to post a making-of in the forum thread soon(ish).)
But I had a lot of problems with time management this time and also pointlessly lost time due to personal matters and procastination.
But ultimately I just ran out of time to polish the mob fighting. :-( The mob spawning is clearly unfair (it never stops spawning) and that's because I didn't really complete it. Basically all the criticisms WRT mobs I got from you and others I agree with and these are problems I am very aware of. Mobs are the only item that were left on my TODO list when time ran out. :-(
Anyway, I think this and some other problems can be fixed.
The most polished mob in the game is the light orb, I think, which I'm actually very proud of how smooth it works.
Interesting how you like the graphics when some other people hated the looks for some reason and thought Glitch looked better. Well, I guess you can't please everyone. :D
My excuse is that I just had poor time management and planning. I think it wasn't that great of a game idea in the first place, plus I was struggling with ideas for a long time. Also, building the map. I also had other difficulties, and you can read more about that in the making-of that I'm going to post in the forums eventually.
Basically I decided to take a risk and try something with mobs. Risky because I still don't have much experience with them.
I wanted to polish everything. But mobs are clearly the least polished thing and it's basically the only big item left on the TODO list before I ran out of time. And I completely agree mob spawning is pretty broken. Fun fact: It was even more broken on the last day, with so many mobs spawning in the old mine that you just can't fight your way through even when maxed-out. I fixed at least that but obviously that's far from enough.
Long story short, the way how mobs work now is not intended and this game was not meant to be ridiculously unfair. Basically all your criticisms about mobs I agree with and are just the result of poor time management. Mobs are the least-polished aspect by far. Of course that's all planned for the post-jam version.
Thanks. Yeah, I spent a lot of time on polishing the light orb behavior and it shows; I wanted to make at least one "mob" with very fluent and believable movement. My trick is to not waste time in writing a mob API in the first place but just directly code everything into the entity. You will read more about that in the making-of I'm going to post in the forum thread eventually.
Sadly, the other mobs are not even close as polished (YET!) as you can see from the other reviews.
my only request is that i'd love upgrades to really beat up the shadow mobs after destroying the boss :p
An interesting idea. You can already return to the Tree of Life (the level hub) after you defeat the boss (who dropped a lot of shadow fragments). An exit portal will open in the boss room. But the world doesn't really change. I'm not sure if I'll add this idea; first I have to balance the main game more (especially mob combat).
I never planned to add more "lore" to the game. The story is intentionally kept very minimalist and is mostly just an excuse plot like in Super Mario games. I wanted to focus more on the gameplay.
As for "drive", I don't know exactly what you mean but my excuse is that, this time I managed my time too poorly (I will post a making-of in the forum thread later if you're interested).
This game is/was incomplete at the date of submission. A lot of the story is clearly missing. The intro kinda works and you get a little dialog at the beginning, then you get to explore some rooms of a building in the barren snow desert but there's not much to do except walk and look. So the gameplay is very very incomplete.
I recommend to check this game out at a later day, when it's complete.
My favourite entry for this year's game jam.
You encounter ruins and a ghost. You find things that make you go to the past, then to the future and there is 5 time periods of a citadel.
You then have to use the seeds of plants and timetravel to reach different parts of the citadel. Each time period unlocks new speeches of the ghost which is a nice touch.
I played this game for like 2 or 3 hours because I also wanted to find all 7 artifacts. (and I did. Woohoo!)
The map is well-made and must have taken ages to piece together.
Using plants to rise in height feels awkward. What I did was I placed an acorn and jumped to the corner and made future travel hoping it'll let me, then I move quickly back to the tree. Only takes me like 50 tries but it works somehow. Awkward. Unless this is cheating?
You'd think that standing on top of a small tree then going to the future would work but no.
The challenge is to obtain several important items and reach tricky locations by clever exploring and timetravel. The final goal is basically to reach the top with a special item.
But that's not all! There are artifacts! These are a clever addition and they kept me hooked a while longer although they were completely useless. And some artifacts had really clever locations. Sadly they don't unlock anything, not even a secret dialog.
The music is simple but sets a good tone. I wish there would be more sound effects. There isn't even a footstep sound yet.
Shadows seem to not work in this game? Every block seems to glow?? It looks certainly a little weird but you get used to it.
I don't really understand where the "unexpected" comes in but whatever.
The submitted game jam version sadly had a lot of small bugs and it crashed when I destroyed the crystal (but this was the end anyway). I really want this game to become bugfree and more polished in future versions.
Anyway, this game definitely kept me busy from start to finished including bonus items, so good job!
The beginning of the game looks like an outright bug. After a first briefing, the screen is (almost?) completely black. I thought the game is broken because I couldn't see the vent I am supposed to open. It is VERY dark and I had to find it basically blind. And the vent glows but it is VERY hard to see. Not a great start.
Once I finally entered the facility, the real game began.
There are a couple of very basic rooms to explore but they're mostly useless. Lots of robots move around but they're harmless vacuum bots or mini-tanks? There is an adventure-game-like interface of inspecting, reporting, using things you see. Sadly, much of it is unfortunately unused.
The game has a lot of dialog but using chat for it is a terrible idea: Font is too small.
Eventually I found some kind of "robo-labyrinth". You try out some very basic puzzles where you can guide robots through mazes with instructions (move North, South, etc.). I wasted my time "solving" the puzzles but the actual goal is to just start the puzzles and pick up the robot that looks different because it's the battle robot. I solved all puzzles but it's no challenge at all; you just need to count the squares, basically.
Once you picked up the battle robot, you must reach the exit and that's it.
I have died like 2 times for no apparent reason. Suddenly a screen showed up telling me a robot killed me. I don't know where it came from and it was an insta-death. Very confusing.
The game idea is relatively unique and hasn't been tried out too often. Trying to explore the world (almost) only by sound. Interesting, but I find it to be very confusing in practice. The README explains things well, but I still didn't get very far.
You're not entirely blind. Blue particles float upwards from blocks, so they're an useful indicator of the landscape while still leaving much ambiguity. I like that concept, so you're not staring at a completely black screen all the time. XD
I managed to dig a few blocks like dirt and sand. But the pickaxe seemed useless. I tried to dig stone for like 1 minute but apparently stone is unbreakable in this game, even with a pickaxe. There are "achievements" but I only found 1 for digging lots of sand, maybe? I don't know what the other achievements are.
My biggest success is killing a few chicken for food.
The world itself must be very barren. I walked 1000s of blocks but all I found is dirt, sand and stone, and what seems to be the occassional cave. Leaves and woody-like blocks exist but are rare. I don't think I ever found a forest.
Item selection is confusing. You have an "audible" hotbar, meaning by switching tools, you hear a sound. Each thing has its unique sound, which is nice, but you still have to guess what each sound means. And I think this is where the whole item system kinda falls apart, sadly.
Low health is signalled by heartbeats but I find it stresses me out so I just restart the game when I take damage lol.
The sound design isn't that great. The sounds that are in the game are pretty good, but there are too few of them overall. There's music, but it plays too rarely. If you don't do anything, the game is often silent. There is a lack in ambient sounds which for a game like this is a bummer.
I get the game is supposed to be about blindness but I think the whole UX needs to be reworked entirely cuz I simply don't have any idea WTF I'm doing lol.
This is a very simple but clean Chess implementation. The pieces look nice, you know whose turn it is. En passant works. Castling works. Basic draw conditions work. And the computer opponent is stronger than me, but then, I'm terrible at Chess, rofl.
Dead position detection is incomplete but that's a known problem in Chess software. Also, promotions always promote to queen, you can't choose.
What I criticize is that you must use a chat command to start the game. Why not use blocks or buttons or something on the chessboard instead?
But this isn't Chess. It's Chess with luck. Every few turns, something random happens. A piece disappears or gets added. Two pieces are swapped. A lot of pieces disappear. Night mode gets activated. You travel back in time. And so on.
While this is an "unexpected" idea, I think the random events are just too random. Worst, they are just very poorly balanced. The developer just took a few simple ideas and threw them in. Any random event can make or break the game at any time. The Showdown events removes all pieces except kings and queens and is probably the most broken event lol (in terms of gameplay). One random events leaves the board in an seemingly "illegal" state: Sfter two pieces are swapped, it can happen a pawn ends up at the other side of the board but it does not promote so it can't do anything anymore.
Another UX criticism I have of the luck element is that you don't see which pieces got removed/added/swapped/etc. You have to recall it from memory somehow (VERY hard). This makes it awkward to play. So the luck is not only too random, but also too confusing.
I give this a negative rating because the luck elements kinda ruin the game. If the luck elements would have been more balanced or be more fun, that would be different. To be fair, there's a "normal chess" mode but this wasn't the point of this game.
Well, this is something special. It replicates the UI of old OSes from like 30 years ago and captures the look-and-feel ... somewhat. Even the booting screen is (somewhat) replicated.
It supports multiple windows (but overlapping is buggy). It can run multiple "applications" (read: windows) at once.
The most impressive part in mineos is "Boom", a simple Doom-like shooter completely within a window. This window is very small but it actually works. The game itself lets you just shoot things, there is no mission, health or pickups, but it's a great proof-of-concept.
There's also a Pong clone (sadly, no win condition, too) and a ... Lua interpreter (which is very hard to use since you must type with a on-screen keyboard).
I am a bit disappointed there aren't more applications or things to do, or that at the very least , the existing things weren't more fleshed-out. The icons on the desktop can only be dragged but are otherwise non-functional so a bit more polishing would have been nice.
But still: Thumbs up because of the innovation. Although there is not much to do and it gets boring fast and there isn't much in terms of gameplay, it's the technical innovation that you check out.
[NOTE: This review is for the game jam version of the game]
The game mechanics are pretty simple: You get a magic staff and it has 3 capabilities: You can float, you can shoot blue projectiles of ... something and you can become small.
The rooms are pretty simple parcour and/or puzzle maps. Only one room has frustrated me a little because the timing of your jump had to be near-perfect, but I still managed to do it. The "shooting" and "become small" abilities work exactly as you think and they work perfectly.
The "floating" ability feels kinda awkward tho. Basically it just deactivates gravity for you for a few seconds, so you have to first jump, then activate the ability and time it VERY precisely. It works, but it's awkward to use. I wish this ability had been more fleshed-out. I would strongly recommend this in case a larger, more serious version of the game is planned.
The game is pretty short. At the end there's a simple but solid boss fight. It crashed but I could restart and finish the game.
The game is okayish but not great. It's well enough executed for a neutral rating. Neutral because the floating is not well balanced and there is one room that was pointlessly frustrating because you needed perfect jump timing. With better polishing and levels, I would have given thumbs up.
PS: My game completion time was 24 minutes, 18.467227 seconds (very precise game timer lol)
This is just low-effort trolling. You click on a lever, then it's game over. LITERALLY.
The rest of this ... thing ... is a lengthy on-screen text basically mocking the player. Basically: How you could have been so stupid to expect a real game? The text isn't even funny or clever, just insulting. I kind of hoped the REAL game would start after the text but nope. That's literally it. There is ONE joke, and it's not even funny.
OK, there are "achievements" for such challenging things like "look at the ceiling" (before pressing the lever) but that's all the content you will get.
This entry is so lazy, not even most of the code was written by the submitter, a lot of code is just borrowed. This is not against the rules, but I think this is missing the point.
The balance is kinda broken because I ran out of time. :-( I plan to fix this post-jam.
Fun fact: The spawning was even worse before release. Now it's a bit better. I guarantee the game jam version is still winnable, so keep trying. Hint: Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade!
There is a workaround for your dialog text bug: If you reduce the window width by just 1 pixel less than 1920 pixels (which is exactly your resolution. Ouch!), the font will become smaller. I actually worked to fix the problem at the last day of the development time, but it seems I have chosen the wrong cutoff point. :-(
I really like the idea of a camera mod. Create an image of what you see and put it on a wall later. This could be used for various creative things. The picture taking itself works fine but is oddly done with a command rather than an item or something.
Sadly, due to the limitations of Minetest, there are several drawbacks and limitations:
Only b/w images
Objects and players are invisible to the camera
Custom block shapes are not supported. In the photo it either becomes a full block or no block. E.g. plants are not drawn correctly
Picture calculation is slow, it can take several seconds
Making a picture blocks the entire server. So while the picture is calculated, everything else comes to a screeching halt
While the first 3 limitations may be acceptable, the performance problem is the biggest show stopper right now.
This mod clearly tries to put Minetest to its limits and it's definitely worth checking out because it's something very unique. But I don't recommend this mod for actual gameplay or server use. Consider this mod experimental.
Most sectors (=levels) are indeed completely handmade, but two sectors were created with the help of a procedural generation tool called “Perlin Explorer” (a mod you can find on ContentDB): The sector “Far Lands” as well as the mysterious final sector. The result of this tool was a basis on which I built upon manually. The final result of all levels is still static, the sectors are always the same.
To learn more about how this game was made, read the Making-of.
I don’t know why, but I just can’t get myself to like this minigame. I feel like the FPS genre doesn’t really work for Minetest, as Minetest was never made for this.
I recognize all the features and depth in this game, but no matter what, I just can’t have fun. Doesn’t matter if I win or lose, it just gets boring for me. It's hard to explain, but somehow the controls just feel a bit off and don't feel like that of a proper FPS.
Also, you have a special tool that you can use to do super jumps which sounds awesome on paper but in practice you first have to select the super jump tool first and then punch the ground. It's inconvenient and slow to use and it doesn't feel smooth; other "parcours"-focused shooters like Red Eclipse do parcours better IMO.
The game isn't bad tho, there clearly was a lot of thought and effort put into it. Maybe I'm just not the right type of player, idk. So: Neutral rating.
NOTE: A previous version of this review complained about a major lag problem in this game, causing misses far too often, making it practically unplayable to me. But this issue has now been resolved, I can actually hit things now. So I replaced this review with a re-review. The old review rating was: Neutral (so no change).
This is one of my favourite minigames on the A.E.S. minigame server and it gets better the more players there are. This one is reason alone to go on the server.
It's basically a deathmatch, but fantasy-style. Sounds simple, but it isn't because of a non-trivial set of weapons of a class you can choose: Warrior and Mage. And its fun to play. Hard to explain, you just have to try it out yourselves.
The two classes seem to be more or less balanced except MAYBE the "fist" ultimate because it seems it can never miss unlike the mage's ultimate. On the other hand, the mage's ultimate can kill multiple players but it can miss. So I am not sure if this is good of bad balancing.
The UI is very polished apart from a few little bugs (all reported).
A minor criticism I have is that most player hits are silent from the attacker's perspective. This is most irritating when hitting someone with a sword.
I haven't worked w/ arena_lib a lot so far but from what I've learned by going through the documentation and fixing some bugs of existing minigames, I think it seems quite powerful. What is especially interesting is the editor mode where you can edit arenas with special "items" in your hotbar which act like some kind of "mini menu". It is unusual but I understood it somehow.
Nothing of the mod's design seems to disturb me so far, coding with it is fairly reasonable with no weird surprises.
A minor downside are the signs because they introduce non-translatable text. Signs are hardcoded in arena_lib and can't be removed but I've read it is possible to add alternative entry methods (not tested so far).
The only major criticism I currently have is that there is no player or admin manual, only a programmer's manual because not everything is obvious from the player/admin perspective (although it is mostly intuitive already). For example, I don't know how many players are aware that you can rightclick the signs to enter spectator mode. And it also took me quite some time to figure out how to set up my own test world with arena minigames because the documentation doesn't say.
Arena_lib has been successfully supporting the A.E.S. minigame server which is I guess evidence enough for it's power. Overall, I can give it a clear recommend.
I think this is currently the worst minigame on the A.E.S. minigame server right now. The premise is as simple as it is boring. You just jump from platform from platform. The game will get faster over time, until it hits a limit and that's the only thing that changes. Yawn.
The reason why I think this game is so boring is because it's so repetitive. There are always 9 platforms and each round the same thing happens: 8 random platform disappear. Yawn. The game doesn't even try to be a little bit more interesting by adding some variation, surprise, challenge. The only difficulty increase here is by speed which I feel is not enough.
Balancing is also an issue. Sometimes, a jump is just physically impossible that even perfect timing and jumps won't save you. This is often the case late in the game when you must from one corner to another. While I understand the game wants to prevent games from going on forver, it still feels poorly balanced. Because the timer doesn't seem to take the required jump distance at all.
There is no consideration of colorblindness at all.
Then, the mod's coding is just horrible. The logic is very much hardcoded and painful to set up. You have to manually set the coordinates for all 9 platforms. PAIN. There is no consideration for extensibility at all. So if someone wants to seriously improve ColourJump: Don't. Burn it all to the ground. Instead, start it from scratch; it'll be easier.
I'm sorry but I'm not taking any feature suggestions for this mod. I want to preserve the original xdecor mod as much as possible and keep it stable. If I would start feature work, too, I not only risk losing compability but it's also adding more work. X-Decor-libre is not my top priority anyway.
I think the simple enchantment system is "good enough" for now and I don't want to put much extra work into it, unless there are bugs.
Also, remember, the way X-Decor (the original one) was always designed about simplicity anyway. The mechanics it adds are all super simple so it's unlikely that kilbith would have made it more complex anyway.
I want to preserve the graphics of this mod and I won't do changes, except for fixing bugs. So the admittedly odd 2D style will remain for the time being.
But at least the lantern sounds are now fixed in version 'libre3'.
It sounds like you’re not using X-Decor-libre but only X-Decor which is the original but outdated and very buggy. I assure you X-Decor-libre does support the 50-move rule (but a player must invoke it for it to count as draw (I applied FIDE rules)) and castling, too. Also, you need at least Minetest 5.7.0 for X-Decor-libre.
Anyway, let’s continue this discussion here: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=28891
Strange. I am unaware of any of the bugs you just mentioned. Sure you use the latest version of X-Decor-libre (libre8)? If yes, I would like to see the crash logs.
How far in the game did you get? Did you at least reach the Hub?
So, thanks for the review. Now that the game jam results are finally in, here's a longer reply:
Actually, this game was never meant as a "soulslike", as in "absurdly difficult". The large amount of mobs was not intended. The problem is that I've put too few restraints on mob spawning in so that mobs just keep spawning and spawning and killing them doesn't help to stop the spawning. Mob spawning is kinda broken and in fact, this is the last item on my TODO list before I ran out of time. :-/
There actually ARE limits to mob spawning, but obviously these restraints are just unbalanced and way too "permissive", i.e. allowing too many mobs to spawn. I think the biggest problem was that killing mobs doesn't stop or even slow down the infinite stream of mobs. So the current winning strategy is to run, which wasn't really intended lol.
Are you sure it's the projectile HIT sound that has a high frequency problem? I would say if any sound is a problem, it'll be the SHOOT sound since it's much higher pitchde than the hit sound. But anyway, I'll add that to the TODO list. This is actually one of the very few problems in the game I was NOT aware of before submission.
PS: I'm also planning to write a making-of and post it in the forum thread soon(ish). Stay tuned for that (and the post-jam update :P).
(to be continued ...)
I basically agree with most criticisms expect for the "unexpected" part.
But yes, mobs are by far the least polished part of the game and you're right, it is indeed infinite spawning. Also, just way too many of them spawn. My excuse is that I had poor planning and time management and "fixing mob balancing" was the last item on my TODO list. :-( Basically I took a risk by attempting mob development and failed. Yeah, that's the thing with risks lol. ;-)
This game was meant as partly combat- partly exploring-style but it was NOT intended that mobs overwhelm you and annoy you all the time. The idea was, once you defeated some mobs of an area, you are free to explore (at least for a while). Sadly, none of that managed to get in the game. Time constraints. :-(((
As for "too many collectibles": They are all optional tho and you don't even have to find all to get max. HP. Other people seemed to like the collectibles. I'm not sure what I should change here. You can complete the game and ignore all vases (although it's harder then). Maybe you're saying the game would have been better without any vases, or just with fewer? But then, most other players liked them. Difficult decision on what to do post-jam. :-/
I agree with the dialog problem, the appearance mid-combat feels a bit off, too. I'll see what I can do.
But to be honest, I'm a bit mad tho that you outright refuse to complete the game (just like with Glitch last year) after only 1 death. :-( I don't like this (even if I agree with most of your criticisms). I feel like you give up way too early on game jam games. I noticed this with your other game reviews, too.
Anyway, I think all these problems can be fixed. Most importantly, I'm planning to rework mobs completely post-jam.
So, stay tuned for the post-jam version! :P
I'm glad you liked the game, even the mob combat, although mob combat is the least polished aspect of the game. I also noticed there are some dirty tricks where you can just slaughter the shadow mobs without getting hit once, thus quickly getting most upgrades. Although I think not many people found these dirty tricks. Mobs in general are not the smartest and I definitely need to fully rework them. Many players had problems with the mob fight and I fully expected this. I sadly didn't have the time to polish mobs more but I'm planning a post-jam version. If you're interested, I will also write a making-of and post it in the forum thread.
I also agree that Glitch is better (simply way more polished).
Maybe I shoudn't have built the exit portal in the boss room then to hide this issue. XD I only added it so you can go looking for the remaining vases. A treat for completionists, basically. ;-) The in-world excuse is that "the forest still needs time to heal" but this is very lame, of course. Yeah, since you can return to the Tree of Life, the environment should definitely change. And yes this was a time constraint thing.
Yeah, basically I took a risk this time by trying a game with mobs, something I have not much experience with. Additionally, I decided to do everything myself, even the music. Which I did. (I'm going to post a making-of in the forum thread soon(ish).)
But I had a lot of problems with time management this time and also pointlessly lost time due to personal matters and procastination.
But ultimately I just ran out of time to polish the mob fighting. :-( The mob spawning is clearly unfair (it never stops spawning) and that's because I didn't really complete it. Basically all the criticisms WRT mobs I got from you and others I agree with and these are problems I am very aware of. Mobs are the only item that were left on my TODO list when time ran out. :-(
Anyway, I think this and some other problems can be fixed.
The most polished mob in the game is the light orb, I think, which I'm actually very proud of how smooth it works.
Interesting how you like the graphics when some other people hated the looks for some reason and thought Glitch looked better. Well, I guess you can't please everyone. :D
My excuse is that I just had poor time management and planning. I think it wasn't that great of a game idea in the first place, plus I was struggling with ideas for a long time. Also, building the map. I also had other difficulties, and you can read more about that in the making-of that I'm going to post in the forums eventually.
Basically I decided to take a risk and try something with mobs. Risky because I still don't have much experience with them.
I wanted to polish everything. But mobs are clearly the least polished thing and it's basically the only big item left on the TODO list before I ran out of time. And I completely agree mob spawning is pretty broken. Fun fact: It was even more broken on the last day, with so many mobs spawning in the old mine that you just can't fight your way through even when maxed-out. I fixed at least that but obviously that's far from enough.
Long story short, the way how mobs work now is not intended and this game was not meant to be ridiculously unfair. Basically all your criticisms about mobs I agree with and are just the result of poor time management. Mobs are the least-polished aspect by far. Of course that's all planned for the post-jam version.
Thanks. Yeah, I spent a lot of time on polishing the light orb behavior and it shows; I wanted to make at least one "mob" with very fluent and believable movement. My trick is to not waste time in writing a mob API in the first place but just directly code everything into the entity. You will read more about that in the making-of I'm going to post in the forum thread eventually.
Sadly, the other mobs are not even close as polished (YET!) as you can see from the other reviews.
An interesting idea. You can already return to the Tree of Life (the level hub) after you defeat the boss (who dropped a lot of shadow fragments). An exit portal will open in the boss room. But the world doesn't really change. I'm not sure if I'll add this idea; first I have to balance the main game more (especially mob combat).
I never planned to add more "lore" to the game. The story is intentionally kept very minimalist and is mostly just an excuse plot like in Super Mario games. I wanted to focus more on the gameplay.
As for "drive", I don't know exactly what you mean but my excuse is that, this time I managed my time too poorly (I will post a making-of in the forum thread later if you're interested).
So more polished than Chess in X-Decor-libre?
This game is/was incomplete at the date of submission. A lot of the story is clearly missing. The intro kinda works and you get a little dialog at the beginning, then you get to explore some rooms of a building in the barren snow desert but there's not much to do except walk and look. So the gameplay is very very incomplete.
I recommend to check this game out at a later day, when it's complete.
My favourite entry for this year's game jam. You encounter ruins and a ghost. You find things that make you go to the past, then to the future and there is 5 time periods of a citadel. You then have to use the seeds of plants and timetravel to reach different parts of the citadel. Each time period unlocks new speeches of the ghost which is a nice touch.
I played this game for like 2 or 3 hours because I also wanted to find all 7 artifacts. (and I did. Woohoo!)
The map is well-made and must have taken ages to piece together.
Using plants to rise in height feels awkward. What I did was I placed an acorn and jumped to the corner and made future travel hoping it'll let me, then I move quickly back to the tree. Only takes me like 50 tries but it works somehow. Awkward. Unless this is cheating? You'd think that standing on top of a small tree then going to the future would work but no.
The challenge is to obtain several important items and reach tricky locations by clever exploring and timetravel. The final goal is basically to reach the top with a special item.
But that's not all! There are artifacts! These are a clever addition and they kept me hooked a while longer although they were completely useless. And some artifacts had really clever locations. Sadly they don't unlock anything, not even a secret dialog.
The music is simple but sets a good tone. I wish there would be more sound effects. There isn't even a footstep sound yet. Shadows seem to not work in this game? Every block seems to glow?? It looks certainly a little weird but you get used to it.
I don't really understand where the "unexpected" comes in but whatever.
The submitted game jam version sadly had a lot of small bugs and it crashed when I destroyed the crystal (but this was the end anyway). I really want this game to become bugfree and more polished in future versions.
Anyway, this game definitely kept me busy from start to finished including bonus items, so good job!
This is the whole gameplay: You click on two things, then walk to the finish line and it's game over. Yeah, it's disappointing.
BONUS: The only room you'll ever see has eye-cancer-inducing colors lol.
I have no idea what this game means and what it was supposed to be. Looks like a last-minute panic submission to me (for the Game Jam). Sorry. :-(
Another sad case of "author ran out of time"?
The beginning of the game looks like an outright bug. After a first briefing, the screen is (almost?) completely black. I thought the game is broken because I couldn't see the vent I am supposed to open. It is VERY dark and I had to find it basically blind. And the vent glows but it is VERY hard to see. Not a great start.
Once I finally entered the facility, the real game began.
There are a couple of very basic rooms to explore but they're mostly useless. Lots of robots move around but they're harmless vacuum bots or mini-tanks? There is an adventure-game-like interface of inspecting, reporting, using things you see. Sadly, much of it is unfortunately unused. The game has a lot of dialog but using chat for it is a terrible idea: Font is too small.
Eventually I found some kind of "robo-labyrinth". You try out some very basic puzzles where you can guide robots through mazes with instructions (move North, South, etc.). I wasted my time "solving" the puzzles but the actual goal is to just start the puzzles and pick up the robot that looks different because it's the battle robot. I solved all puzzles but it's no challenge at all; you just need to count the squares, basically.
Once you picked up the battle robot, you must reach the exit and that's it.
I have died like 2 times for no apparent reason. Suddenly a screen showed up telling me a robot killed me. I don't know where it came from and it was an insta-death. Very confusing.
Overall, the game is too short and not fun. :-(
The game idea is relatively unique and hasn't been tried out too often. Trying to explore the world (almost) only by sound. Interesting, but I find it to be very confusing in practice. The README explains things well, but I still didn't get very far.
You're not entirely blind. Blue particles float upwards from blocks, so they're an useful indicator of the landscape while still leaving much ambiguity. I like that concept, so you're not staring at a completely black screen all the time. XD
I managed to dig a few blocks like dirt and sand. But the pickaxe seemed useless. I tried to dig stone for like 1 minute but apparently stone is unbreakable in this game, even with a pickaxe. There are "achievements" but I only found 1 for digging lots of sand, maybe? I don't know what the other achievements are.
My biggest success is killing a few chicken for food.
The world itself must be very barren. I walked 1000s of blocks but all I found is dirt, sand and stone, and what seems to be the occassional cave. Leaves and woody-like blocks exist but are rare. I don't think I ever found a forest.
Item selection is confusing. You have an "audible" hotbar, meaning by switching tools, you hear a sound. Each thing has its unique sound, which is nice, but you still have to guess what each sound means. And I think this is where the whole item system kinda falls apart, sadly.
Low health is signalled by heartbeats but I find it stresses me out so I just restart the game when I take damage lol.
The sound design isn't that great. The sounds that are in the game are pretty good, but there are too few of them overall. There's music, but it plays too rarely. If you don't do anything, the game is often silent. There is a lack in ambient sounds which for a game like this is a bummer.
I get the game is supposed to be about blindness but I think the whole UX needs to be reworked entirely cuz I simply don't have any idea WTF I'm doing lol.
The "air sword" is an old Minetest meme and it's getting stale. I think it is time to put it to rest.
As for the "game", this is literally an empty game. Just forget it.
This is a very simple but clean Chess implementation. The pieces look nice, you know whose turn it is. En passant works. Castling works. Basic draw conditions work. And the computer opponent is stronger than me, but then, I'm terrible at Chess, rofl. Dead position detection is incomplete but that's a known problem in Chess software. Also, promotions always promote to queen, you can't choose.
What I criticize is that you must use a chat command to start the game. Why not use blocks or buttons or something on the chessboard instead?
But this isn't Chess. It's Chess with luck. Every few turns, something random happens. A piece disappears or gets added. Two pieces are swapped. A lot of pieces disappear. Night mode gets activated. You travel back in time. And so on.
While this is an "unexpected" idea, I think the random events are just too random. Worst, they are just very poorly balanced. The developer just took a few simple ideas and threw them in. Any random event can make or break the game at any time. The Showdown events removes all pieces except kings and queens and is probably the most broken event lol (in terms of gameplay). One random events leaves the board in an seemingly "illegal" state: Sfter two pieces are swapped, it can happen a pawn ends up at the other side of the board but it does not promote so it can't do anything anymore.
Another UX criticism I have of the luck element is that you don't see which pieces got removed/added/swapped/etc. You have to recall it from memory somehow (VERY hard). This makes it awkward to play. So the luck is not only too random, but also too confusing.
I give this a negative rating because the luck elements kinda ruin the game. If the luck elements would have been more balanced or be more fun, that would be different. To be fair, there's a "normal chess" mode but this wasn't the point of this game.
Well, this is something special. It replicates the UI of old OSes from like 30 years ago and captures the look-and-feel ... somewhat. Even the booting screen is (somewhat) replicated.
It supports multiple windows (but overlapping is buggy). It can run multiple "applications" (read: windows) at once.
The most impressive part in mineos is "Boom", a simple Doom-like shooter completely within a window. This window is very small but it actually works. The game itself lets you just shoot things, there is no mission, health or pickups, but it's a great proof-of-concept.
There's also a Pong clone (sadly, no win condition, too) and a ... Lua interpreter (which is very hard to use since you must type with a on-screen keyboard).
I am a bit disappointed there aren't more applications or things to do, or that at the very least , the existing things weren't more fleshed-out. The icons on the desktop can only be dragged but are otherwise non-functional so a bit more polishing would have been nice.
But still: Thumbs up because of the innovation. Although there is not much to do and it gets boring fast and there isn't much in terms of gameplay, it's the technical innovation that you check out.
You just walk around the world and it replaces blocks around you. That's it.
And even this mechanic isn't well-implemented, I get spammed with performance warnings.
[NOTE: This review is for the game jam version of the game]
Sadly, this game was released in a near-empty state when the game jam development time ended. There was only a single room and nothing to do in it.
I'm waiting for the shiny "official" release with actual gameplay and I might update this review then.
[NOTE: This review is for the game jam version of the game]
The game mechanics are pretty simple: You get a magic staff and it has 3 capabilities: You can float, you can shoot blue projectiles of ... something and you can become small. The rooms are pretty simple parcour and/or puzzle maps. Only one room has frustrated me a little because the timing of your jump had to be near-perfect, but I still managed to do it. The "shooting" and "become small" abilities work exactly as you think and they work perfectly.
The "floating" ability feels kinda awkward tho. Basically it just deactivates gravity for you for a few seconds, so you have to first jump, then activate the ability and time it VERY precisely. It works, but it's awkward to use. I wish this ability had been more fleshed-out. I would strongly recommend this in case a larger, more serious version of the game is planned.
The game is pretty short. At the end there's a simple but solid boss fight. It crashed but I could restart and finish the game.
The game is okayish but not great. It's well enough executed for a neutral rating. Neutral because the floating is not well balanced and there is one room that was pointlessly frustrating because you needed perfect jump timing. With better polishing and levels, I would have given thumbs up.
PS: My game completion time was 24 minutes, 18.467227 seconds (very precise game timer lol)
This is just low-effort trolling. You click on a lever, then it's game over. LITERALLY.
The rest of this ... thing ... is a lengthy on-screen text basically mocking the player. Basically: How you could have been so stupid to expect a real game? The text isn't even funny or clever, just insulting. I kind of hoped the REAL game would start after the text but nope. That's literally it. There is ONE joke, and it's not even funny.
OK, there are "achievements" for such challenging things like "look at the ceiling" (before pressing the lever) but that's all the content you will get.
This entry is so lazy, not even most of the code was written by the submitter, a lot of code is just borrowed. This is not against the rules, but I think this is missing the point.
The balance is kinda broken because I ran out of time. :-( I plan to fix this post-jam.
Fun fact: The spawning was even worse before release. Now it's a bit better. I guarantee the game jam version is still winnable, so keep trying. Hint: Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade!
There is a workaround for your dialog text bug: If you reduce the window width by just 1 pixel less than 1920 pixels (which is exactly your resolution. Ouch!), the font will become smaller. I actually worked to fix the problem at the last day of the development time, but it seems I have chosen the wrong cutoff point. :-(
I'll push a bugfix post-jam.
There is a part in the game where the "unexpected" comes in.
There is a part in the game where the "unexpected" comes in, you just didn't reach that part yet.
(I'll post a more lengthy reply later.)
Thank you. I do have high ambitions with this game and I'm still working on it.
I've just added the sneak animation to the TODO list of the game (although low priority).
I really like the idea of a camera mod. Create an image of what you see and put it on a wall later. This could be used for various creative things. The picture taking itself works fine but is oddly done with a command rather than an item or something.
Sadly, due to the limitations of Minetest, there are several drawbacks and limitations:
While the first 3 limitations may be acceptable, the performance problem is the biggest show stopper right now.
This mod clearly tries to put Minetest to its limits and it's definitely worth checking out because it's something very unique. But I don't recommend this mod for actual gameplay or server use. Consider this mod experimental.
No, rubenwardy is only half-correct.
Most sectors (=levels) are indeed completely handmade, but two sectors were created with the help of a procedural generation tool called “Perlin Explorer” (a mod you can find on ContentDB): The sector “Far Lands” as well as the mysterious final sector. The result of this tool was a basis on which I built upon manually. The final result of all levels is still static, the sectors are always the same.
To learn more about how this game was made, read the Making-of.
What does this mean? If this is a bug, it should be on the issue tracker. Otherwise this sentence should be removed.
I don’t know why, but I just can’t get myself to like this minigame. I feel like the FPS genre doesn’t really work for Minetest, as Minetest was never made for this.
I recognize all the features and depth in this game, but no matter what, I just can’t have fun. Doesn’t matter if I win or lose, it just gets boring for me. It's hard to explain, but somehow the controls just feel a bit off and don't feel like that of a proper FPS.
Also, you have a special tool that you can use to do super jumps which sounds awesome on paper but in practice you first have to select the super jump tool first and then punch the ground. It's inconvenient and slow to use and it doesn't feel smooth; other "parcours"-focused shooters like Red Eclipse do parcours better IMO.
The game isn't bad tho, there clearly was a lot of thought and effort put into it. Maybe I'm just not the right type of player, idk. So: Neutral rating.
NOTE: A previous version of this review complained about a major lag problem in this game, causing misses far too often, making it practically unplayable to me. But this issue has now been resolved, I can actually hit things now. So I replaced this review with a re-review. The old review rating was: Neutral (so no change).
This is one of my favourite minigames on the A.E.S. minigame server and it gets better the more players there are. This one is reason alone to go on the server.
It's basically a deathmatch, but fantasy-style. Sounds simple, but it isn't because of a non-trivial set of weapons of a class you can choose: Warrior and Mage. And its fun to play. Hard to explain, you just have to try it out yourselves.
The two classes seem to be more or less balanced except MAYBE the "fist" ultimate because it seems it can never miss unlike the mage's ultimate. On the other hand, the mage's ultimate can kill multiple players but it can miss. So I am not sure if this is good of bad balancing.
The UI is very polished apart from a few little bugs (all reported).
A minor criticism I have is that most player hits are silent from the attacker's perspective. This is most irritating when hitting someone with a sword.
I haven't worked w/ arena_lib a lot so far but from what I've learned by going through the documentation and fixing some bugs of existing minigames, I think it seems quite powerful. What is especially interesting is the editor mode where you can edit arenas with special "items" in your hotbar which act like some kind of "mini menu". It is unusual but I understood it somehow.
Nothing of the mod's design seems to disturb me so far, coding with it is fairly reasonable with no weird surprises.
A minor downside are the signs because they introduce non-translatable text. Signs are hardcoded in arena_lib and can't be removed but I've read it is possible to add alternative entry methods (not tested so far).
The only major criticism I currently have is that there is no player or admin manual, only a programmer's manual because not everything is obvious from the player/admin perspective (although it is mostly intuitive already). For example, I don't know how many players are aware that you can rightclick the signs to enter spectator mode. And it also took me quite some time to figure out how to set up my own test world with arena minigames because the documentation doesn't say.
Arena_lib has been successfully supporting the A.E.S. minigame server which is I guess evidence enough for it's power. Overall, I can give it a clear recommend.
I think this is currently the worst minigame on the A.E.S. minigame server right now. The premise is as simple as it is boring. You just jump from platform from platform. The game will get faster over time, until it hits a limit and that's the only thing that changes. Yawn.
The reason why I think this game is so boring is because it's so repetitive. There are always 9 platforms and each round the same thing happens: 8 random platform disappear. Yawn. The game doesn't even try to be a little bit more interesting by adding some variation, surprise, challenge. The only difficulty increase here is by speed which I feel is not enough.
Balancing is also an issue. Sometimes, a jump is just physically impossible that even perfect timing and jumps won't save you. This is often the case late in the game when you must from one corner to another. While I understand the game wants to prevent games from going on forver, it still feels poorly balanced. Because the timer doesn't seem to take the required jump distance at all.
There is no consideration of colorblindness at all.
Then, the mod's coding is just horrible. The logic is very much hardcoded and painful to set up. You have to manually set the coordinates for all 9 platforms. PAIN. There is no consideration for extensibility at all. So if someone wants to seriously improve ColourJump: Don't. Burn it all to the ground. Instead, start it from scratch; it'll be easier.
I'm sorry but I'm not taking any feature suggestions for this mod. I want to preserve the original xdecor mod as much as possible and keep it stable. If I would start feature work, too, I not only risk losing compability but it's also adding more work. X-Decor-libre is not my top priority anyway.
I think the simple enchantment system is "good enough" for now and I don't want to put much extra work into it, unless there are bugs.
Also, remember, the way X-Decor (the original one) was always designed about simplicity anyway. The mechanics it adds are all super simple so it's unlikely that kilbith would have made it more complex anyway.
I want to preserve the graphics of this mod and I won't do changes, except for fixing bugs. So the admittedly odd 2D style will remain for the time being. But at least the lantern sounds are now fixed in version 'libre3'.
This sounds awfully redundant to the
playerphysicsmod:https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/playerphysics/
I'm not happy with API mods proliferatng if they do the exact same thing. Just creates dependency hell. :-(