That was a very low effort criticism. Besides, what else are we supposed to say other than "shit" when the game is literally about it? "poop"? "feces"? "excrement"? Some people just want to feel offended.
This isn't a game. You can't do anything. Don't bother with this.
This is just the default world generator that generates ONE block. That's it. I don't even know what the author intended to create here, very confusing.
I'm sorry, but no recommendation, this is way too incomplete, too little gameplay. This looks like a prototype tho, so I'm still interested to see where this game will go in the future, if it is continued post-jam, because I'm kinda curious about the concept.
Gameplay
Sadly, there is not much you can do yet. Probably this is another prototype for the game jam. Your main mission is to collect 5 asteroids with the "power hammer" tool and then you win. :-( And you basically just have to wait until they randomly drop from the sky. The mapgen is also very, very simple and mostly, although the MASSIVE ravines look really cool. I was promised an alien fight but even after 3 playthroughs I never encountered them. (?????) I like that you have a companion, the C.O.M.P. Unit. This reminds me of some really old-school sci-fi stories. There are special abilities you can use with your two tools, but what use do they have if there is nothing to fight? :(
Graphics
I was pleasantly surprised. Interesting art style and use of contrast which sets the world apart from default Minetest Game textures. The game logo could still do some work tho.
Sounds
This one had a surprise: It has speech output for your companion "C.O.M.P.". And the music seems to be composed and created by the author as well. Very nice! Even if the music is a bit simple, I really like that someone made music for the game specifically for the game jam.
Stability / Performance
The game is stable. It greets me with an harmless error message about missing river water, but not real bugs. I had no performance problems on a >10y computer. 60 FPS effortlessly.
Very minimal. The worms look kinda cute, but not very detailed. I observed only two behaviors: Sliding around, and sleeping. The worms don't interact with each other. The asteroid is a flat orange which is ... meh. There is a very blurry space background. The menu interface doesn't look too great either.
Stability / Performance
It doesn't crash, but: The game greets me with a "missing image" error. Space worms can get stuck if you raise the ground into them. There are no performance problems at all. At least the worms seem to be intelligent enough to avoid the void or walls, so the very minimal basics seem to work. That's better than nothing, I guess.
Music / Sounds
It is silent except for a few click sounds. :-(
UI/UX
It's not self-explanatory, and the buttons look like they are written in an alien language. But I still was able to figure out what it all means, so the UX is fine.
Absolutely no recommendation as a game. This is just too boring even as a tamagotchi. It is probably WIP/incomplete anyway. At this stage, it might serve as a screensaver at best.
"Gameplay"
This is a very early prototype, so there is very little of what you could call "gameplay". You mostly just watch forms slide around on an orange asteroid, that's it. You can raise the ground at certain places and add new space worms with a maximum of 3. That's it. You can't even undo the raising of land, that's how incomplete this is. It gets boring instantly, sorry. First, this is not a game, as there is no gameplay. It is more like a tamagotchi. That alone isn't a problem, but even as a tamagotchi is has nothing to offer since you just can't do anything. And if all you can do with the worms is just watch, you can hardly call it a game.
It's still interesting to see new concepts being tried out in Minetest. I believe something like Adopt a Space Worm! was never even tried before, so I give a few points for the idea. :P
Oh wow! So many 3D models and textures! That must have taken a long time to put together. Also, the map is BIG and pretty detailed for the given time frame. There are many rooms you can explore and many items you can find, although most items still seem to be dummies. I think this alone gives the game potential for future releases, but it obviously needs more work. The map
It rare you see hi-res textures actually being used in a Minetest, we're all so used to 16×16. XD But it makes sense
Music / Sounds
With 2-3 small exceptions, the game is completely silent. :-( Seems like there wan't time for that.
Story
Oh no, it seems the author ran out of time. :-( I like the idea of a mystery / adventure-style game to figure out what went wrong, but currently, the story is more like an jigsaw puzzle where like 80% of the pieces are missing, in a bad way. The few pieces that are available aren't really written out yet. It seems the story writing must have been done as a last-day panic effort. For a game like this, story is key, hopefully a future version will improve on this. Although, maybe you might even get away by throwing away all text in the post-jam version (should you attempt it) and still have a good game.
What's good is that the game's premise is very clear right from the start.
UI/UX
It's the standard Minetest controls, you can't do anything wrong with that. A lot of furniture randomly drops items when clicking them. I'm not sure it's a good idea the game lets you toss away ALL items tho (possible unwinnable state?). The game sometimes uses red text on a blue background, ew! (My eyes are still bleeding ...)
Many events are told to the player with chat messages, rather than a dedicated (and more pretty) UI. :(
Performance / Stability
I had no performance issues. The game, like most submissions, greeted me with many console warnings. But I found no real bugs, so the game seems stable.
No recommendation, because the gameplay experience is still bland due to incompleteness. A lot more work is needed, but it's a start. To players I advice to just wait until the complete game gets released. Currently, this is mostly feels like an early demo version. I think the size of the map was ultimately this game's downfall, the author made the map WAY too big and then was unable to create a complete (or even semi-complete) experience within the time frame. I still appreciate the work that has been put into this MASSIVE map already, I think I should check out this game again if a post-jam version is planned. Although the game got no recommendation, I do NOT say it's worthless. I would love to see an actual polished adventure/mystery-style game in MT.
Gameplay
First of all, this game might be the first attempt to create a non-trivial adventure/mystery-style game in Minetest ever (together with Piranesi, I guess). The attempt alone is cool, it's high time that Minetesters explore new genres. :-)
Sadly, the result ultimately falls flat IMO. You explore the various rooms and collect items and clues, except the only item that actually matters are the keycards that unlock new rooms. Oddly, the key cards just magically increase your security clearance by using them in mid air (not at a terminal)??? There are working computers which their own GUI, which is nice, but you can't do much with them yet. A minimal game functionality is available: You can open doors and close them and the security clearance is checked properly.
The graphics look simple yet pretty nice. The game is dark and you better never ever lose your flashlight. Thankfully, the game has a (small) chance to give you another flashlight in one of the many boxes, but it's still PAIN.
Stability / Performance
The game is mostly stable, but a bit buggy. The spider egg tasks don't register, so I guess that means the game is currently unwinnable, and I remember getting unknown items sometimes, but overall it's playable. There is a HUGE number of console warnings. But for a game jam the bugs are still on an acceptable level, since it's not really about the game goals, I guess (I hope these are just dummy goals, to be replaced later). I had no performance issues.
The game goals technically can be exploited by placing the same thing over and over again to increase the counter. I can also technically nerd-pole to the top walls, but this is not really useful, as the walls are short and nerd-poling in this game is actually pretty expensive, other than in Minetest Game.
There are 3 manuals to find, which explain different tasks you might do: Repair computers, repair an O2 filter and refuel the ... engines? However, it seems some that two of the things the manuals explain aren't actually possible to do in the game yet. :( I did manage to repair a computer tho.
There are "Incase of Emergency tasks" but this looks more like a ripped achievement system than actual game goals. This looks WIP. It would be nice if you could actually do repairs to trigger some secret event and whatnot. These game goals feel kinda like a grind. The coal task is definitely the biggest grind.
The only enemy are spiders, but they are really fast and hard to kill. But if you know how to avoid (or kill) them, they should pose no threat.
Sounds / Ambience
This submission has by far the best audio ambience and sound design of this year's game jam. A really eerie and dark soundtrack / ambience, and it also doesn't feel repetitive even after a long time of play. Also, the node sound effects are great, with great attention to detail. Different sounds make different sounds, and it's all heavy metal. There's also an echo effect which makes sense in this environment. Play with headphones! Sound design is an often completely overlooked part of games, so I really like to hear something like this in Minetest. Good job!
I give this one a recommendation for the sound design ALONE, even if the game is lacking a bit in content and the goal is a GRIND to achieve. I hope this one will get expanded (and bugfixed) post-jam, I am looking forward for an update.
Gameplay
The gameplay is basically ... survive, I guess? You run in a seemingly endless expanse of metal rooms, except it's not rooms, it's walls in a chaotic pattern. This game must have been directly inspired by SCP stories from the Internet, I guess it's not a coincidence that the letters "SSP" are similar to "SCP". :-)
You constantly run throughout the rooms, hoping to find something new and punch to destroy objects like drawers, storage boxes. Most of the "rooms" look alike, but they are not identical, it's chaos. Normally I would find such things boring fast, but the ambience REALLY carries the game. I found two rare special structures: The engines with coal stacks inside, and a filter system. Apart from that, it's boxes, computers, drawers and some random electronics.
The game tells you very little about what happens, you have to figure (most) things on your own, but this adds to the mystery. You get hungry fast, but there are plenty of food boxes, but you still need to restock constantly, so you need to explore further. I think the game still needs to add a few more special structures to be not monotonous, however, the endless repeating halls still have something spooky ...
Like in most game jam entries, I was greeted with a few console warnings. Also, using the spray gun triggers an error message (not a crash). I found no other bugs. The biggest problem for me is performance; I had serious performance problems. This is the only game of this game jam with performance problems for me. The mobs are lagging so much, they keep killing me without me being able to even see the projectiles. Also, placing a lamp takes ages until it actually appears. Everything in this game reacts slowly. This unfortunately ruins the game. I still managed to win the game legit somehow. I am aware of the system specs in the README, but I think this high demand is kind of unjustified given the low-res (but great!) graphics., probably the game's performance can still be improved without losing features. If the game had really high-end graphics or something like that, I might have been more tolerant of performance problems.
Story
The story is simple yet it makes sense. It's special enough that I actually still remember it after a few days.
Mapgen
The whole map is so surreal. It reminds me a lot of spooky SCP stories you find on the Internet. Onc I got the map item, I saw how simple the map actually is, but the eff
The game displays the purpose of your tools at the beginning ... ONCE. In a tiny font. If the message is gone, it's gone forever. So if you missed it, you have to figure out everything on your own. The inventory screen looks cool, but it didn't really understand what everything means at first, especially the abbreviations which aren't explained anywhere.
I also wish the game would display in the HUD what I've just mined. I never know whether I just got saturnium or an organic, and how much.
It took me a while to figure out how my tools actually work, even with the explanation (which I of course instantly forgot, lol).
The game compass/map is confusing to use, I never know where I'm heading.
Scaffoldings and lamps don't seem to be really useful, and I also cannot remove them. If I can't reach the plant on the ceiling, I just look for somewhere else, this is more convenient than building the (relatively expensive) scaffolding.
The intro UI is strange, you have to press Esc to proceed with the intro story. (Why not a "continue" button?)
The game ending is also aprupt. The screen suddenly turns black and I first thought it was a bug, only in later tries I noticed there was an outro text.
The ambience is great. It's a good mix of music that fits the game's theme perfectly. Each layer has its own mood. Unfortunately, there are (almost) no sounds but I think that's OK. The ambience is still not as good as for Secrets of the Space Parable (SSP). :-P
Graphics
Definitely the coolest graphics of the game jam. The formspec design looks very polished and cool, it's very unique. There's even a custom font. The node textures are also pretty nice, it's alien-looking, I like how the various layers become hotter and hotter. The atmosphere is very believable, you really feel like you're on an alien planet. I like the night sky is dark blue instead of pitch black, matches well with the ground. A lot of effort was put into making the game look great. This game is kind of an art form, although I still have criticisms …
First, the particles the plants emit are very small, I almost didn't notice them at all, so these particles are pretty pointless if you can't see them. Second, most organics look well made, except those plants that have a "flat color" for some reason. I don't know why some plants only have 1 color, they don't match with the theme at all. I like most layer "stone" textures, except the one right below surface (the "Defrosting" one), because you can clearly see the pattern repeat itself. The other layer textures look really cool, how the become progressively hotter and hotter.
(Pro-tip: Minetest actually allows you to let a texture span over multiple nodes.)
First of all, even if this game is incomplete, this game demonstrates greatly how games can be a form of artistic expression. This game is clearly a very special and unique submission for tha game jam. I like that a lot! But I still have to give a "No recommendation" due to massive performance problems. This is a shame, as the game is otherwise something really special, I really hope the problems will be fixed and the game will continued to be worked on post-jam, it 100% has HUGE potential. I am looking forward for a post-jam version of this game. It's stuff like this why I like the game jam, even if not every submission passes the park.
Gameplay
This is unique, yet familiar. It takes on the "mining" genre with a twist. The custom mapgen definitely is a huge plus for this game. Your goal is to go deeper and deeper.
The mapgen is good, you will be able to go down relatively easy, don't have to backtrack often and frequently find large cavities. What's unique are the ores, which might come in high and low quantities. Alien plants grow on the floor and ceiling.
You collect resources while venturing down and have to evade ... aliens?
This game should actually be called "Speedrunning Down" because that's the winning strategy. :D My winning strategy is to first stockpile enough saturnium and steel on the high and safe layers, and then YOLO downwards as fast as I can, not even trying to fight the enemies. When I get hit, I briefly heal my self, then continue to speedrun downwards. I also try to avoid large caves due to the enormous amount of enemies.
Maybe it would be better if the game had some other method to prevent the player to venture down too fast.
What was confusing is the game tells you to go to a spot on your radar but I did that and found ... nothing. Strange. Probably this wasn't coded yet?
This looks like a VERY VERY VERY early prototype and there is almost nothing you can do. No sounds, no music, no explanation. You spawn in a space station and there are a couple of blocks you can pick up and place somewhere else but that's mostly it. You can also "warp" your space station apparently but I don't know what it does. I am VERY confused and I don't know what else to say. The README file also openly admits you can't do much, so …
Obviously, I cannot give a recommendation for such an early game. I might still check it out later, just in case.
The game is unstable. The game greeted me with one console warning. The game crashes often when I dig. One minor bug I found is that I can't throw away items, they instantly return to my inventory. I had no performance issues.
Graphics / sounds
I think it's OK but not great. The sky is convincing, because it is always black, even at daytime and you can also see the stars at daytime. Good one! And at night, the Earth rises instead of the Moon, and the Earth texture is really good!
The GUI sadly only has the default style. The node textures are meh. Since the world is having HUGE expands of the same node, the repeating pattern quickly becomes an issue. Hint: Minetest allows you to let a texture span across multiple nodes, read about the world-aligned textures in lua_api.txt.
Story
There technically is a story, but it's an excuse plot since it is essentially "Worker, do your job!". Unfortunately, the instructions only appear when you start the game, you can't get your briefing back.
No recommendation, because there's way too little to do, and it crashes often. However, I like this submission a LOT more than Occupy Moon since at least an actual effort was made to do something new from scratch rather just mushing together Minetest Game and Technic. So, I appreciate the effort. :-) Maybe this game will be more interesting with more missions, content and in general just more stuff to do and more challenging gameplay.
Gameplay
The gameplay is very simple: You grab your jackhammer and dig as many moon rocks as you can, then you return them to the base. There's a catch: Your jackhammer needs to recharge, so you might need multiple travels. But this is really the only thing the game has to offer: Once you collected 50 rocks of a total of 4 types, you win. The game's only real challenge is to remember your base location, which is easy if you place moon rocks as some kind of waypoint markers. Not every rock will be right at your doorstep, so you might need a longer trip. But that's really the only challenge.
I don't think it is even possible to die / fail, or at least that's very hard to achieve.
Mapgen
Unfortunately, it appears it's just the default mapgen with different blocks. Since it's a moon game, I would at least expect something like moon craters, but I could not find anything unique about the mapgen. The strangest thing about the map is the HUGE amounts of moon ice.
No recommendation, this game is just a prototype, the gameplay doesn't really work yet.
Game Jam comment
This game was created for a game jam, but it has clearly missed the point of it, because there is a HUGE number of pre-existing mods, but the goal was to create game from scratch. Using some existing code is OK, but this one apparently includes half of Minetest Game and the Technic mod and even more; that's way too much for a game jam IMHO. For that reason alone I cannot give a good rating for this game jam submission. The README lists the pre-existing mods. The only mod that is not listed is weld_all. I looked at this and apparently it is responsible for the checmicals sampler and supply rocket and missions. This is a bit too little effort IMHO. The bulk of this game is this clearly carried by the other mods.
But I am going to pretend I'm not aware of that …
Gameplay
This is very clearly an alpha stage game. Not even the moon gravity is working! And everything about this game I have to get from the README. At first, the README told me I had to install an inventory mod myself. :( Then I tried to start with farming. This part worked, but growth is slow and boring. Unfortunately, I quickly got stuck as I have been unable to produce power for the technic machines. The game doesn't even tell me how the basic Technic stuff works, but I still remembered the basics. Sadly, the solar panels don't work, and that's apparently the only way to operate a working furnace, so I can't even cook glass, apparently, so I came to a screeching halt. And then I lost interest.
Graphics, sounds, controls, etc.
No comment, most content is just copied from other games/mods.
No recommendation. This game just offers way too little in terms of gameplay to be interesting, and it's a grind.
Gameplay
Frankly, it's a boring grind. There are only 3 things to do: Fly to astroids, mine and craft stuff to advance the story. Later you get to search for blackboxes, and then the game ends. Meh. I appreciate the innovation of flying in a spaceship, but movement still feels a little bit laggy sometimes. You can safely crash into asteroids without taking damage.
The universe is made out of asteroids, but they are very repetitive. The map generation appears to be procedurally generated, but it looks the same everywhere. The astroids don't look "natural" to me either, they look more like blobs than asteroids.
Graphics
The graphics are a werid mishmash of high-res and low-res textures, it's not a good overall. The menus all use the boring default graphical style. :-( The health indicator also uses the default texture.
UX/UI
It's all pretty confusing. For some reason, you must combine a stick and a broken drill to even get started (???). Later, I was flying in slow-mo for a long time until I realized I must release the handbrake. XD. The game doesn't have any HUD indicators. Also, the various ship's crafting features are kinda confusing as well, and I had to try out various combinations. The crafting system is pretty weird, so you collect every asteroid to craft "gravel mix" and this in turn gives you ... fuel?!
Music / sound
I really like the music, it gives the game a good "space explorer" vibe. Quite a contrast to the graphics. But there are no sounds.
Story
The story isn't really noteworthy. It a generic "lost in space" story that we all heard hundreds of times. Other game jam entries had more memorable stories.
Stability / performance.
The game is mostly stable, but I found a funny bug: You can drop items and they … fall down in space?! I had no performance issues.
I want to stress that I take ZERO offense by the game's theme of death, destruction and brutality. I was purely commenting on quality. I personally think it's OK if Minetest games sometimes go the "dark" or "brutal" way as well, but that doesn't excuse low quality. There are many brutal games out there, and they always were a core part of gaming, so it was only a question of time that they will come to Minetest eventually. Which isn't a bad thing, actually. :-)
I think it is actually a bit brave you posted this here, you might be the first one ever to actually post a very openly brutal game. That alone deserves a bit of respect (even if the quality is bad). It's stuff like this why I like the game jam, you never know what to expect!
The map looks very incomplete. The buildings have the beginnings of an interior design, but most rooms are empty. The outside design is very incomplete. It's a few buildings, with a few simple decorations like a traffic lights and a gate, but that's mostly it. There are huge empty areas. There aren't any cars, nor is there a lot of stuff that burns. But there are many people, some peaceful, some hostile. It's pretty chaotic.
Your spawn point is really bad. You spawn in one of the houses, and you have to run down the stairs, but you're too fast for the stairs and will take fall damage.
Stability / performance
The game is unstable, although playable if you know the bugs. The game crashes when rightclicking elevators or mailboxes. I also fell out of the map twice somehow. I had no performance problems. The bombs are also not very reliable, they sometimes randomly go through solid blocks without hitting them.
Graphics
The graphics are a mix of Minetest Game, X-Decor and some (apparently) simple hand drawings. It doesn't look great. Fire creates HUGE smoke clouds, so I give a plus for that gimmick. :D
Sounds / music
The music is minimal and cheesy, and I don't like it. It doesn't fit the game's mood of "death and destruction". The sound effects feel a bit minimalist either, pretty boring.
Story
Frankly, the story feels kind of forced into the game. In the game it isn't even clear who your enemies are. Okay, there are the cops. But the game told me I was drafted but where are the soldiers?
No recommendation. The core gameplay just doesn't work out, as the only thing that you can reliably attack are windows, and even then your ammo is limited and there is no way to refill. And everything else about this game is not good either.
Gameplay
It's very simple. You run around a town and firebomb everything on sight. And that's basically it. There is a destruct-o-meter but pretty much the only thing that raises is are glass windows. A few other things can be destroyed as well, but they are too rare in the world to be relevant. My record was to get the destruct-o-meter to 100, then I ran out of ammo. The town itself looks very incomplete, there are a lot of empty areas. There are cops that try to kill you on sight, so you have to be on the run.There are 3 weapons: Fire bomb, pipe bomb and your fist. The fire bomb makes a lot of fire, but it doesn't seem to be very useful with destroying things. The pipe bomb is your main weapon, but it seems to be only useful to destroy windows and the occasional furniture. Most things appear to be immune to damage.
Once your run out of ammo, you only have your fist left and the game is basically over. There are no ammo pickups or anything like that, which is a huge bummer. When you die, you just respawn with your entire inventory and score. The game doesn't even restart properly when you die.
The game isn't fun at all, the core gameplay mechanic just doesn't work out, especially since you apparently can't actually attack a lot of things to increase the destruct-o-meter and you have to deal with a SINGLE ammo supply for the entire game, and the game doesn't even restart properly.
The game is stable. It greeted me with various console warnings. Movement felt a bit jerky, but this was not game-breaking at all. I didn't find any real bugs. I had no performance issues.
Sounds / Ambience
The node sounds are OK. The klots sounds fit perfectly, the sounds of other blocks are a bit ... wrong? When you bump into metal, you hear a glass sound. The ambience is still great. Very calm and fitting, good "thinking music". Good attention for detail: The "boom" when you get sucked into the wormhole, or the special ambience sound when you did something right in the puzzle. Overall clever use of ambience. It's very good ambience. This game has IMHO the second-best ambience of the game jam. (The best ambience IMHO is SSP (Secrets of the Space Parable)).
The biggest UX issue is the reliance on color, so colorblind people are screwed, I guess. Just a reminder, ca. 10% of men are colorblind!
The controls are very easy to understand, but my 2nd-biggest criticism is the movement. The movement controls are fine, but the movement itself feels a bit ... laggy? So the movement just doesn't feel right, which was pretty irritating. I guess doing zero-G movement in Minetest right is hard.
Theme / Story
The game has no text (except in the end) but still manages to tell a mini-story. I even found a little secret, a block of bones in a sliding door. :D The space theme works very well for this game, it fits perfectly with the puzzles.
Graphics
The graphics are (mostly) copied from MTG and Sci-Fi nodes. My initial thought when I started was "Oh no, not another MTG ripoff!" because of the MTG textures. But the space station was well-designed. I've never seen Sci-Fi nodes being actively used anywhere, so that was a pleasant surprised (even if the textures are not new work). My biggest criticism of the textures is resolution. The klots have hi-res textures, while everything else is 16×16. This is an obvious inconsistency for no real good reason. The game makes a good use of the particle use, both for broken glass in space and the wormhole.
A BIG recommendation from me, EXCEPT when you're colorblind, then not (hopefully this gets fixed). Overall, I was pretty impressed by that one, but please figure out the accessiblity thing. Apart from that, the game still can use a bit of polishing and especially content, but hey, it's a game jam! :D
Gameplay
This is where the game shines. You have to figure out everything on your own, but the game is never unfair to you. Every concept is introduced one after another. It seems a lot of time was put into level design, even with a lot of attention for detail, which I appreciate a lot. The core feature of the game, the pushing and pulling of klots, works perfectly. The movement of the klots is completely smooth, both visually and physically; even a player collision was considered to prevent awkward overlaps. That alone is quite an achievement, WOW!
There aren't a lot of levels, and the game sadly ended before it really began, but this is a fake complaint, as it is WAY outweighed by quality. Thinking of good levels for such a game isn't easy, I guess.
The graphics look mostly like MS Paint drawings by an absolute beginner, especially in the story part. The blocks are simple but fine tho. The formspec / GUI has an awful choice of colors.
Music / sounds
The soundtrack is a bit cheezy, but OK. The sound effects are OK, but nothing too exciting. The robots don't make any sounds.
Controls
Good. The game uses standard Minetest controls so there are no surprises. It is a bit weird at first that you poo by the "place" key apparently but you get used to it instantly-
Stability / performance
The game is unstable. The game doesn't crash, but there are some "missing image" errors and numerous console warnings. The biggest problem is performance. Robots spawn at an alarming rate and eventually there are so many robots the game slows down to a crawl and Minetest reacts very slowly after placing blocks, up to a point where the game is almost unplayable and I have to restart.
Absolutely no recommendation. Both the game itself as the gameplay design are too broken.
Gameplay
It's really bad and doesn't make any sense. A seemingly infinite amount of robots starts to chase you. You have two abilities: You poo, which places a poo block where you look (???). With the plunger you turn a poo block into a package (??????). The robot army becomes huge very quickly so unless you stack yourself up or don't immediately wall yourself in poo, you will die very easily. The goal is to place 200 poo blocks and then "package" those 200 poo blocks (??????). Oddly, it doesn't matter if you die, because your poo counter doesn't reset, so you will win eventually, even if you die like 100 times lol.
The robots are really fast and you have to be constantly on the run; if you stay for even one second, you will die. I found two winning strategies: Stacking yourself up (nerdpoling), or walling yourself, both of them bypass the robots completely and you can easily complete the goal without dying. That's another minus from me, that the game can be essentially be exploited that easily.
Story
Well, the story is essentially just an excuse plot. It's kindergarden-level humuor. I want to be clear this whole "poo" theme does NOT offend me, this doesn't give the game a penalty. My issue is the game just does a really poor job at it. I think it IS possible to do piss/poo humour right; South Park is a famous example.
Very simple. It's the standard Minetest controls. You have an inventory, but this time, you have a HUGE hotbar so you never have to open the inventory menu. I like this, makes gameplay much more convenient. But there is a downside: The inventory menu is empty, so I could not sort my inventory like in many other games for Minetest (except for dropping my stuff on the ground and picking them up by hand). Also, the game doesn't display the names of any item anywhere.
There is a catch: If you're colorblind, you're screwed because the game heavily relies on color. :-(
Overall rating
It PAINS me to say this, but no recommendation from me. The reason is the high number of crashes, game-breaking bugs and numerous ways to reach an unwinnable state. The game would be pretty good if it were more stable, and this is the reason for my "no recommendation". PLEASE fix the bugs post-jam, I want to see a shiny polished version of this; it would make a GREAT addition to the collection of Minetest games, this game, it's something very special. Oh, and please make the game colorblind-accessible.
This is where the game sadly falls flat in my opinion. This game is seriously broken. First, there is a LOT of console warnings. On the first start, I spawned in mid air and fell into the infinite void of despair. I deleted the world and tried again, then it worked. The worst part is that the game crashes frequently when I move from room to room.
Also, there are numerous other bugs. In the graveyard, when I dig up some of the graves, there is just endless air! Also, when I fall out the world, the game does not react in any way. I have to cheat and fly back to where I came from. :(
In the forest with the "gearbox", I can use items on these nodes, but they get destroyed.
Fire can destroy the floor of rooms, another way to fall out of the world.
If I leave an item in a room, it's gone forever (even for key items).
And the list goes on and on and on ... (Don't worry, I will post it all on the bugtracker).
A few small bugs are fine, but in this case, it's just too many, and game-breakers. This is too much even for the Game Jam. Please fix your game. :P
Performance
No issues. 60 FPS constantly on a >10y old computer.
It re-uses a lot of graphics from Minetest Game and other mods. :( The textures aren't bad, but I've seen them soooo often, it doesn't give a special feel anymore. But I'm obviously very biased as a Minetest old-timer. :D But that doesn't mean the room design is bad, quite the opposite.
Sounds / Music
The sounds are the standard Minetest Game node sounds. The MTG sounds are OK, and I can live with them, but a lot of actions are without sounds: Using a key, reading a book, etc. There are no music nor are there ambience sounds as well, which is disappointing, this game could have really benefit from an ambience, even a simple one. Many other Game Jam entries had an ambience and/or music. But this wasn't really an issue for me, I still had fun.
A big general downside of the gameplay right now is that is seems there is a LOT of ways to leave you in an unwinnable state (like when you toss away an important item), this needs to be addressed in future versions. I think the game should always guarantee you're never in an unwinnable state and can always continue, this is just fair given that some puzzles are really tricky.
Enough complaints! I LOVE that there is healthy amount of rooms to explore, and the room designs are really cool. A lot of effort was put into this, and I appreciate it a lot, this is what carries the game, this is where the game shines the most. The nodes still need polishing tho, as some nodes do unexpected/annoying things or have annoying collision boxes (like the candle), but overall, it's OK. Even if I didn't solve most puzzles, I did made progress and had a lot of fun doing so.
Story
The story is apparently kept quite vague. You aren't told much, just little pieces of information. Which isn't bad actually. The pieces you get do form a story eventually, and I actually liked that one. There is an explanation about what happened in the past. I think this submission has the best story of all game jam submissions. Good job!
The idea of a "cursed house" isn't new. "The Shining" written by Stephen King is a famous example. But that's not a bad thing at all! I like when something like that is turned into a game, and yes, I WAS surprised when I first entered the house. I like the game just throws you into this cursed house and you must figure things out. The gameplay is simple, yet hard: You run around from room to room, try to figure out what is happening and slowly piece things together. The puzzles are not easy, but I made some progress. I found different special rooms, and 2/3 crowns. I also managed to get the axe and get access to the ice in the smelter room, then failed to move on.
From that point on, I had to cheat my way through the rest by looking at the code (sorry ...) and I was BAFFLED by the solution (and found more crash bugs, lol), something I would not have found out in AGES. What tripped me over are the furnaces. I tried to smelt the crown, and not all the other metal things, lol. Also, putting the colored liquids in the cauldrons in a certain order???? At least I now know where the color combination comes from, but still! I think a few puzzles would be fairer if the game gave you more feedback. I thought the cauldrons are useless since nothing happens if you put a bottle in it. Yes, there are star particles but I thought it was a bug, I still had the liquid, there was no splash sound, etc. With more feedback, the player would know that you can ACTUALLY interact with the cauldrons (even if they don't know what use they have yet).
I have NO idea how on earth I should have known that I must put the purple/fake purple liquid in those "bowl" nodes. Is this part of the game still incomplete, maybe? Probably I hacked myself through too much. :D
The gear mold is also a bit nasty. You can cool down the gear at ice, but not at water???? Pfff ...
Before you read ahead, be warned of SPOILERS! My summary is that I really like the game, but I don't recommend it YET because of critical bugs that ruin the experience. But I also recommend to players to just wait and check this game out later, when the bugs have been fixed. That way, you will have a more pleasant experience. Keep this game on your watchlist, folks! The game is also not accessible to colorblind people (yet).
If you want to read my REAL review (with MEGA spoilers), go in the comments.
There is a simple space ambience track which is very calm but I think it fits the game perfectly. There are no sound effects. :(
Controls
Easy: You just look where you want to go and hit Jump to move. There is also a level reset feature. A particle stream clearly shows the direction of where you would go.
There are some caveats: If the node you target is far away, it is sometimes hard to guess whether you hit it. There is no crosshair. The particle stream is a nice effect, and is a clever way to show the player the direction, but it's someimtes tricky to see your true destination until you hit Jump. Oddly, the game allows you to use the minimap (useless).
Stability / Performance
The game is stable. Launching the game greeted me with a few warnings (undeclared globals), but I didn't find any real bugs. There are no performance issues. 60 FPS constantly on a >10y old computer.
Theme
It's set in space, so it fits the Space theme. And the game idea completely makes sense to take part in space as well. It even has "Space" in its title.
I recommend it! The game is very short and could use some polishing as well, but overall I can still recommend it. I did have fun figuring out the puzzles and the game is stable. Just because it's short doesn't make it bad.
Gameplay
The concept is simple: You just move until you bump, or into one of these "grid nodes". I'm glad there is another node type added, and not just the solid one.
The puzzles are fun and and interesting. This is one of the game in which you have to think first, and then do something, or else you fly off into space and regret your decision. :D But this isn't annoying, you can always insta-reset.
It's a bit surprising that all levels are mushed together, in one big map. Normally, in games like these, levels are clearly separated. But I think this is fine. When you fail, you get teleported the the start of the level, not of the entire game. There is no level selection but that doesn't really matter as it's only 7 levels. That's really the only real downside of the game: It's over before it has really begun. :(
Graphics
Graphics-wise, I feel this is a bit TOO simple. There's just 3 nodes with no variation. There was also no decoration besides the skybox. This isn't really a problem tho, but graphics-wise, it had more porential. What annoyed me a bit were the grid nodes. It is not easy to distinguish between a grid node, and empty space between two grid nodes. The empty node looks like a grid node as well. These grid nodes definitely could've seen a graphical improvement because currently, it's kinda confusing. If you fly off into space (and fail), you just insta-teleport back to the level start, with no graphical effect at all. :( Overall, the minimalist graphics are pretty OK tho, although not great. Exception: Level 7. Here the flat color 100% makes sense and is pretty clever.
By the way, these bugs are already officially fixed by you now, which I hereby acknowledge:
Buggy lighting
Coin display overlap
Mirror
The repetitions have become less bad, but IMO the best solution is put all levels in a pool. When a new level is chosen, draw from that pool randomly, removing the level from the pool. Repeat until the pool becomes empty. When the pool is empty, reset the pool. This method guarantees that repetitions only happen once you completed every level once. It does't make sense to allow ANY repetitions until they're impossible to avoid. I might submit another PR for that if you're OK with this.
Oh, this is great to hear a post-jam version is planned!
OH! That explains it! Well, I found all 5 meterorites before the first night with no effort; the game is too easy then. :D
That was a very low effort criticism. Besides, what else are we supposed to say other than "shit" when the game is literally about it? "poop"? "feces"? "excrement"? Some people just want to feel offended.
This isn't a game. You can't do anything. Don't bother with this.
This is just the default world generator that generates ONE block. That's it. I don't even know what the author intended to create here, very confusing.
Overall result
I'm sorry, but no recommendation, this is way too incomplete, too little gameplay. This looks like a prototype tho, so I'm still interested to see where this game will go in the future, if it is continued post-jam, because I'm kinda curious about the concept.
Gameplay
Sadly, there is not much you can do yet. Probably this is another prototype for the game jam. Your main mission is to collect 5 asteroids with the "power hammer" tool and then you win. :-( And you basically just have to wait until they randomly drop from the sky. The mapgen is also very, very simple and mostly, although the MASSIVE ravines look really cool. I was promised an alien fight but even after 3 playthroughs I never encountered them. (?????) I like that you have a companion, the C.O.M.P. Unit. This reminds me of some really old-school sci-fi stories. There are special abilities you can use with your two tools, but what use do they have if there is nothing to fight? :(
Graphics
I was pleasantly surprised. Interesting art style and use of contrast which sets the world apart from default Minetest Game textures. The game logo could still do some work tho.
Sounds
This one had a surprise: It has speech output for your companion "C.O.M.P.". And the music seems to be composed and created by the author as well. Very nice! Even if the music is a bit simple, I really like that someone made music for the game specifically for the game jam.
Stability / Performance
The game is stable. It greets me with an harmless error message about missing river water, but not real bugs. I had no performance problems on a >10y computer. 60 FPS effortlessly.
Graphics
Very minimal. The worms look kinda cute, but not very detailed. I observed only two behaviors: Sliding around, and sleeping. The worms don't interact with each other. The asteroid is a flat orange which is ... meh. There is a very blurry space background. The menu interface doesn't look too great either.
Stability / Performance
It doesn't crash, but: The game greets me with a "missing image" error. Space worms can get stuck if you raise the ground into them. There are no performance problems at all. At least the worms seem to be intelligent enough to avoid the void or walls, so the very minimal basics seem to work. That's better than nothing, I guess.
Music / Sounds
It is silent except for a few click sounds. :-(
UI/UX
It's not self-explanatory, and the buttons look like they are written in an alien language. But I still was able to figure out what it all means, so the UX is fine.
Overall rating
Absolutely no recommendation as a game. This is just too boring even as a tamagotchi. It is probably WIP/incomplete anyway. At this stage, it might serve as a screensaver at best.
"Gameplay"
This is a very early prototype, so there is very little of what you could call "gameplay". You mostly just watch forms slide around on an orange asteroid, that's it. You can raise the ground at certain places and add new space worms with a maximum of 3. That's it. You can't even undo the raising of land, that's how incomplete this is. It gets boring instantly, sorry. First, this is not a game, as there is no gameplay. It is more like a tamagotchi. That alone isn't a problem, but even as a tamagotchi is has nothing to offer since you just can't do anything. And if all you can do with the worms is just watch, you can hardly call it a game.
It's still interesting to see new concepts being tried out in Minetest. I believe something like Adopt a Space Worm! was never even tried before, so I give a few points for the idea. :P
(review continues in comments)
Graphics / Map
Oh wow! So many 3D models and textures! That must have taken a long time to put together. Also, the map is BIG and pretty detailed for the given time frame. There are many rooms you can explore and many items you can find, although most items still seem to be dummies. I think this alone gives the game potential for future releases, but it obviously needs more work. The map It rare you see hi-res textures actually being used in a Minetest, we're all so used to 16×16. XD But it makes sense
Music / Sounds
With 2-3 small exceptions, the game is completely silent. :-( Seems like there wan't time for that.
Story
Oh no, it seems the author ran out of time. :-( I like the idea of a mystery / adventure-style game to figure out what went wrong, but currently, the story is more like an jigsaw puzzle where like 80% of the pieces are missing, in a bad way. The few pieces that are available aren't really written out yet. It seems the story writing must have been done as a last-day panic effort. For a game like this, story is key, hopefully a future version will improve on this. Although, maybe you might even get away by throwing away all text in the post-jam version (should you attempt it) and still have a good game.
What's good is that the game's premise is very clear right from the start.
UI/UX
It's the standard Minetest controls, you can't do anything wrong with that. A lot of furniture randomly drops items when clicking them. I'm not sure it's a good idea the game lets you toss away ALL items tho (possible unwinnable state?). The game sometimes uses red text on a blue background, ew! (My eyes are still bleeding ...)
Many events are told to the player with chat messages, rather than a dedicated (and more pretty) UI. :(
Performance / Stability
I had no performance issues. The game, like most submissions, greeted me with many console warnings. But I found no real bugs, so the game seems stable.
Overall rating
No recommendation, because the gameplay experience is still bland due to incompleteness. A lot more work is needed, but it's a start. To players I advice to just wait until the complete game gets released. Currently, this is mostly feels like an early demo version. I think the size of the map was ultimately this game's downfall, the author made the map WAY too big and then was unable to create a complete (or even semi-complete) experience within the time frame. I still appreciate the work that has been put into this MASSIVE map already, I think I should check out this game again if a post-jam version is planned. Although the game got no recommendation, I do NOT say it's worthless. I would love to see an actual polished adventure/mystery-style game in MT.
Gameplay
First of all, this game might be the first attempt to create a non-trivial adventure/mystery-style game in Minetest ever (together with Piranesi, I guess). The attempt alone is cool, it's high time that Minetesters explore new genres. :-)
Sadly, the result ultimately falls flat IMO. You explore the various rooms and collect items and clues, except the only item that actually matters are the keycards that unlock new rooms. Oddly, the key cards just magically increase your security clearance by using them in mid air (not at a terminal)??? There are working computers which their own GUI, which is nice, but you can't do much with them yet. A minimal game functionality is available: You can open doors and close them and the security clearance is checked properly.
(the review continues in the comments)
Graphics
The graphics look simple yet pretty nice. The game is dark and you better never ever lose your flashlight. Thankfully, the game has a (small) chance to give you another flashlight in one of the many boxes, but it's still PAIN.
Stability / Performance
The game is mostly stable, but a bit buggy. The spider egg tasks don't register, so I guess that means the game is currently unwinnable, and I remember getting unknown items sometimes, but overall it's playable. There is a HUGE number of console warnings. But for a game jam the bugs are still on an acceptable level, since it's not really about the game goals, I guess (I hope these are just dummy goals, to be replaced later). I had no performance issues.
The game goals technically can be exploited by placing the same thing over and over again to increase the counter. I can also technically nerd-pole to the top walls, but this is not really useful, as the walls are short and nerd-poling in this game is actually pretty expensive, other than in Minetest Game.
Gameplay (cont'd.)
There are 3 manuals to find, which explain different tasks you might do: Repair computers, repair an O2 filter and refuel the ... engines? However, it seems some that two of the things the manuals explain aren't actually possible to do in the game yet. :( I did manage to repair a computer tho.
There are "Incase of Emergency tasks" but this looks more like a ripped achievement system than actual game goals. This looks WIP. It would be nice if you could actually do repairs to trigger some secret event and whatnot. These game goals feel kinda like a grind. The coal task is definitely the biggest grind.
The only enemy are spiders, but they are really fast and hard to kill. But if you know how to avoid (or kill) them, they should pose no threat.
Sounds / Ambience
This submission has by far the best audio ambience and sound design of this year's game jam. A really eerie and dark soundtrack / ambience, and it also doesn't feel repetitive even after a long time of play. Also, the node sound effects are great, with great attention to detail. Different sounds make different sounds, and it's all heavy metal. There's also an echo effect which makes sense in this environment. Play with headphones! Sound design is an often completely overlooked part of games, so I really like to hear something like this in Minetest. Good job!
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Overall rating
I give this one a recommendation for the sound design ALONE, even if the game is lacking a bit in content and the goal is a GRIND to achieve. I hope this one will get expanded (and bugfixed) post-jam, I am looking forward for an update.
Gameplay
The gameplay is basically ... survive, I guess? You run in a seemingly endless expanse of metal rooms, except it's not rooms, it's walls in a chaotic pattern. This game must have been directly inspired by SCP stories from the Internet, I guess it's not a coincidence that the letters "SSP" are similar to "SCP". :-) You constantly run throughout the rooms, hoping to find something new and punch to destroy objects like drawers, storage boxes. Most of the "rooms" look alike, but they are not identical, it's chaos. Normally I would find such things boring fast, but the ambience REALLY carries the game. I found two rare special structures: The engines with coal stacks inside, and a filter system. Apart from that, it's boxes, computers, drawers and some random electronics.
The game tells you very little about what happens, you have to figure (most) things on your own, but this adds to the mystery. You get hungry fast, but there are plenty of food boxes, but you still need to restock constantly, so you need to explore further. I think the game still needs to add a few more special structures to be not monotonous, however, the endless repeating halls still have something spooky ...
(text continues in comments)
Stability / Performance
Like in most game jam entries, I was greeted with a few console warnings. Also, using the spray gun triggers an error message (not a crash). I found no other bugs. The biggest problem for me is performance; I had serious performance problems. This is the only game of this game jam with performance problems for me. The mobs are lagging so much, they keep killing me without me being able to even see the projectiles. Also, placing a lamp takes ages until it actually appears. Everything in this game reacts slowly. This unfortunately ruins the game. I still managed to win the game legit somehow. I am aware of the system specs in the README, but I think this high demand is kind of unjustified given the low-res (but great!) graphics., probably the game's performance can still be improved without losing features. If the game had really high-end graphics or something like that, I might have been more tolerant of performance problems.
Story
The story is simple yet it makes sense. It's special enough that I actually still remember it after a few days.
Mapgen
The whole map is so surreal. It reminds me a lot of spooky SCP stories you find on the Internet. Onc I got the map item, I saw how simple the map actually is, but the eff
Controls/UX/UI
The game displays the purpose of your tools at the beginning ... ONCE. In a tiny font. If the message is gone, it's gone forever. So if you missed it, you have to figure out everything on your own. The inventory screen looks cool, but it didn't really understand what everything means at first, especially the abbreviations which aren't explained anywhere. I also wish the game would display in the HUD what I've just mined. I never know whether I just got saturnium or an organic, and how much. It took me a while to figure out how my tools actually work, even with the explanation (which I of course instantly forgot, lol). The game compass/map is confusing to use, I never know where I'm heading. Scaffoldings and lamps don't seem to be really useful, and I also cannot remove them. If I can't reach the plant on the ceiling, I just look for somewhere else, this is more convenient than building the (relatively expensive) scaffolding. The intro UI is strange, you have to press Esc to proceed with the intro story. (Why not a "continue" button?)
The game ending is also aprupt. The screen suddenly turns black and I first thought it was a bug, only in later tries I noticed there was an outro text.
(review continues in next comment)
Music / sound
The ambience is great. It's a good mix of music that fits the game's theme perfectly. Each layer has its own mood. Unfortunately, there are (almost) no sounds but I think that's OK. The ambience is still not as good as for Secrets of the Space Parable (SSP). :-P
Graphics
Definitely the coolest graphics of the game jam. The formspec design looks very polished and cool, it's very unique. There's even a custom font. The node textures are also pretty nice, it's alien-looking, I like how the various layers become hotter and hotter. The atmosphere is very believable, you really feel like you're on an alien planet. I like the night sky is dark blue instead of pitch black, matches well with the ground. A lot of effort was put into making the game look great. This game is kind of an art form, although I still have criticisms …
First, the particles the plants emit are very small, I almost didn't notice them at all, so these particles are pretty pointless if you can't see them. Second, most organics look well made, except those plants that have a "flat color" for some reason. I don't know why some plants only have 1 color, they don't match with the theme at all. I like most layer "stone" textures, except the one right below surface (the "Defrosting" one), because you can clearly see the pattern repeat itself. The other layer textures look really cool, how the become progressively hotter and hotter. (Pro-tip: Minetest actually allows you to let a texture span over multiple nodes.)
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Overall rating
First of all, even if this game is incomplete, this game demonstrates greatly how games can be a form of artistic expression. This game is clearly a very special and unique submission for tha game jam. I like that a lot! But I still have to give a "No recommendation" due to massive performance problems. This is a shame, as the game is otherwise something really special, I really hope the problems will be fixed and the game will continued to be worked on post-jam, it 100% has HUGE potential. I am looking forward for a post-jam version of this game. It's stuff like this why I like the game jam, even if not every submission passes the park.
Gameplay
This is unique, yet familiar. It takes on the "mining" genre with a twist. The custom mapgen definitely is a huge plus for this game. Your goal is to go deeper and deeper. The mapgen is good, you will be able to go down relatively easy, don't have to backtrack often and frequently find large cavities. What's unique are the ores, which might come in high and low quantities. Alien plants grow on the floor and ceiling.
You collect resources while venturing down and have to evade ... aliens?
This game should actually be called "Speedrunning Down" because that's the winning strategy. :D My winning strategy is to first stockpile enough saturnium and steel on the high and safe layers, and then YOLO downwards as fast as I can, not even trying to fight the enemies. When I get hit, I briefly heal my self, then continue to speedrun downwards. I also try to avoid large caves due to the enormous amount of enemies. Maybe it would be better if the game had some other method to prevent the player to venture down too fast.
What was confusing is the game tells you to go to a spot on your radar but I did that and found ... nothing. Strange. Probably this wasn't coded yet?
(the full review continues in the comments)
This looks like a VERY VERY VERY early prototype and there is almost nothing you can do. No sounds, no music, no explanation. You spawn in a space station and there are a couple of blocks you can pick up and place somewhere else but that's mostly it. You can also "warp" your space station apparently but I don't know what it does. I am VERY confused and I don't know what else to say. The README file also openly admits you can't do much, so …
Obviously, I cannot give a recommendation for such an early game. I might still check it out later, just in case.
I don't know what else to say.
Stability
The game is unstable. The game greeted me with one console warning. The game crashes often when I dig. One minor bug I found is that I can't throw away items, they instantly return to my inventory. I had no performance issues.
Graphics / sounds
I think it's OK but not great. The sky is convincing, because it is always black, even at daytime and you can also see the stars at daytime. Good one! And at night, the Earth rises instead of the Moon, and the Earth texture is really good! The GUI sadly only has the default style. The node textures are meh. Since the world is having HUGE expands of the same node, the repeating pattern quickly becomes an issue. Hint: Minetest allows you to let a texture span across multiple nodes, read about the world-aligned textures in
lua_api.txt.Story
There technically is a story, but it's an excuse plot since it is essentially "Worker, do your job!". Unfortunately, the instructions only appear when you start the game, you can't get your briefing back.
Overall rating
No recommendation, because there's way too little to do, and it crashes often. However, I like this submission a LOT more than Occupy Moon since at least an actual effort was made to do something new from scratch rather just mushing together Minetest Game and Technic. So, I appreciate the effort. :-) Maybe this game will be more interesting with more missions, content and in general just more stuff to do and more challenging gameplay.
Gameplay
The gameplay is very simple: You grab your jackhammer and dig as many moon rocks as you can, then you return them to the base. There's a catch: Your jackhammer needs to recharge, so you might need multiple travels. But this is really the only thing the game has to offer: Once you collected 50 rocks of a total of 4 types, you win. The game's only real challenge is to remember your base location, which is easy if you place moon rocks as some kind of waypoint markers. Not every rock will be right at your doorstep, so you might need a longer trip. But that's really the only challenge. I don't think it is even possible to die / fail, or at least that's very hard to achieve.
Mapgen
Unfortunately, it appears it's just the default mapgen with different blocks. Since it's a moon game, I would at least expect something like moon craters, but I could not find anything unique about the mapgen. The strangest thing about the map is the HUGE amounts of moon ice.
(review continues in the comments)
Overall rating
No recommendation, this game is just a prototype, the gameplay doesn't really work yet.
Game Jam comment
This game was created for a game jam, but it has clearly missed the point of it, because there is a HUGE number of pre-existing mods, but the goal was to create game from scratch. Using some existing code is OK, but this one apparently includes half of Minetest Game and the Technic mod and even more; that's way too much for a game jam IMHO. For that reason alone I cannot give a good rating for this game jam submission. The README lists the pre-existing mods. The only mod that is not listed is
weld_all. I looked at this and apparently it is responsible for the checmicals sampler and supply rocket and missions. This is a bit too little effort IMHO. The bulk of this game is this clearly carried by the other mods.But I am going to pretend I'm not aware of that …
Gameplay
This is very clearly an alpha stage game. Not even the moon gravity is working! And everything about this game I have to get from the README. At first, the README told me I had to install an inventory mod myself. :( Then I tried to start with farming. This part worked, but growth is slow and boring. Unfortunately, I quickly got stuck as I have been unable to produce power for the technic machines. The game doesn't even tell me how the basic Technic stuff works, but I still remembered the basics. Sadly, the solar panels don't work, and that's apparently the only way to operate a working furnace, so I can't even cook glass, apparently, so I came to a screeching halt. And then I lost interest.
Graphics, sounds, controls, etc.
No comment, most content is just copied from other games/mods.
Overall rating
No recommendation. This game just offers way too little in terms of gameplay to be interesting, and it's a grind.
Gameplay
Frankly, it's a boring grind. There are only 3 things to do: Fly to astroids, mine and craft stuff to advance the story. Later you get to search for blackboxes, and then the game ends. Meh. I appreciate the innovation of flying in a spaceship, but movement still feels a little bit laggy sometimes. You can safely crash into asteroids without taking damage.
The universe is made out of asteroids, but they are very repetitive. The map generation appears to be procedurally generated, but it looks the same everywhere. The astroids don't look "natural" to me either, they look more like blobs than asteroids.
Graphics
The graphics are a werid mishmash of high-res and low-res textures, it's not a good overall. The menus all use the boring default graphical style. :-( The health indicator also uses the default texture.
UX/UI
It's all pretty confusing. For some reason, you must combine a stick and a broken drill to even get started (???). Later, I was flying in slow-mo for a long time until I realized I must release the handbrake. XD. The game doesn't have any HUD indicators. Also, the various ship's crafting features are kinda confusing as well, and I had to try out various combinations. The crafting system is pretty weird, so you collect every asteroid to craft "gravel mix" and this in turn gives you ... fuel?!
Music / sound
I really like the music, it gives the game a good "space explorer" vibe. Quite a contrast to the graphics. But there are no sounds.
Story
The story isn't really noteworthy. It a generic "lost in space" story that we all heard hundreds of times. Other game jam entries had more memorable stories.
Stability / performance.
The game is mostly stable, but I found a funny bug: You can drop items and they … fall down in space?! I had no performance issues.
A few final words (not part of the review)
I want to stress that I take ZERO offense by the game's theme of death, destruction and brutality. I was purely commenting on quality. I personally think it's OK if Minetest games sometimes go the "dark" or "brutal" way as well, but that doesn't excuse low quality. There are many brutal games out there, and they always were a core part of gaming, so it was only a question of time that they will come to Minetest eventually. Which isn't a bad thing, actually. :-)
I think it is actually a bit brave you posted this here, you might be the first one ever to actually post a very openly brutal game. That alone deserves a bit of respect (even if the quality is bad). It's stuff like this why I like the game jam, you never know what to expect!
Map design
The map looks very incomplete. The buildings have the beginnings of an interior design, but most rooms are empty. The outside design is very incomplete. It's a few buildings, with a few simple decorations like a traffic lights and a gate, but that's mostly it. There are huge empty areas. There aren't any cars, nor is there a lot of stuff that burns. But there are many people, some peaceful, some hostile. It's pretty chaotic.
Your spawn point is really bad. You spawn in one of the houses, and you have to run down the stairs, but you're too fast for the stairs and will take fall damage.
Stability / performance
The game is unstable, although playable if you know the bugs. The game crashes when rightclicking elevators or mailboxes. I also fell out of the map twice somehow. I had no performance problems. The bombs are also not very reliable, they sometimes randomly go through solid blocks without hitting them.
Graphics
The graphics are a mix of Minetest Game, X-Decor and some (apparently) simple hand drawings. It doesn't look great. Fire creates HUGE smoke clouds, so I give a plus for that gimmick. :D
Sounds / music
The music is minimal and cheesy, and I don't like it. It doesn't fit the game's mood of "death and destruction". The sound effects feel a bit minimalist either, pretty boring.
Story
Frankly, the story feels kind of forced into the game. In the game it isn't even clear who your enemies are. Okay, there are the cops. But the game told me I was drafted but where are the soldiers?
Overall rating
No recommendation. The core gameplay just doesn't work out, as the only thing that you can reliably attack are windows, and even then your ammo is limited and there is no way to refill. And everything else about this game is not good either.
Gameplay
It's very simple. You run around a town and firebomb everything on sight. And that's basically it. There is a destruct-o-meter but pretty much the only thing that raises is are glass windows. A few other things can be destroyed as well, but they are too rare in the world to be relevant. My record was to get the destruct-o-meter to 100, then I ran out of ammo. The town itself looks very incomplete, there are a lot of empty areas. There are cops that try to kill you on sight, so you have to be on the run.There are 3 weapons: Fire bomb, pipe bomb and your fist. The fire bomb makes a lot of fire, but it doesn't seem to be very useful with destroying things. The pipe bomb is your main weapon, but it seems to be only useful to destroy windows and the occasional furniture. Most things appear to be immune to damage.
Once your run out of ammo, you only have your fist left and the game is basically over. There are no ammo pickups or anything like that, which is a huge bummer. When you die, you just respawn with your entire inventory and score. The game doesn't even restart properly when you die.
The game isn't fun at all, the core gameplay mechanic just doesn't work out, especially since you apparently can't actually attack a lot of things to increase the destruct-o-meter and you have to deal with a SINGLE ammo supply for the entire game, and the game doesn't even restart properly.
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Stability / Performance
The game is stable. It greeted me with various console warnings. Movement felt a bit jerky, but this was not game-breaking at all. I didn't find any real bugs. I had no performance issues.
Sounds / Ambience
The node sounds are OK. The klots sounds fit perfectly, the sounds of other blocks are a bit ... wrong? When you bump into metal, you hear a glass sound. The ambience is still great. Very calm and fitting, good "thinking music". Good attention for detail: The "boom" when you get sucked into the wormhole, or the special ambience sound when you did something right in the puzzle. Overall clever use of ambience. It's very good ambience. This game has IMHO the second-best ambience of the game jam. (The best ambience IMHO is SSP (Secrets of the Space Parable)).
Controls / UI / UX
The biggest UX issue is the reliance on color, so colorblind people are screwed, I guess. Just a reminder, ca. 10% of men are colorblind! The controls are very easy to understand, but my 2nd-biggest criticism is the movement. The movement controls are fine, but the movement itself feels a bit ... laggy? So the movement just doesn't feel right, which was pretty irritating. I guess doing zero-G movement in Minetest right is hard.
Theme / Story
The game has no text (except in the end) but still manages to tell a mini-story. I even found a little secret, a block of bones in a sliding door. :D The space theme works very well for this game, it fits perfectly with the puzzles.
Graphics
The graphics are (mostly) copied from MTG and Sci-Fi nodes. My initial thought when I started was "Oh no, not another MTG ripoff!" because of the MTG textures. But the space station was well-designed. I've never seen Sci-Fi nodes being actively used anywhere, so that was a pleasant surprised (even if the textures are not new work). My biggest criticism of the textures is resolution. The klots have hi-res textures, while everything else is 16×16. This is an obvious inconsistency for no real good reason. The game makes a good use of the particle use, both for broken glass in space and the wormhole.
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Overall rating
A BIG recommendation from me, EXCEPT when you're colorblind, then not (hopefully this gets fixed). Overall, I was pretty impressed by that one, but please figure out the accessiblity thing. Apart from that, the game still can use a bit of polishing and especially content, but hey, it's a game jam! :D
Gameplay
This is where the game shines. You have to figure out everything on your own, but the game is never unfair to you. Every concept is introduced one after another. It seems a lot of time was put into level design, even with a lot of attention for detail, which I appreciate a lot. The core feature of the game, the pushing and pulling of klots, works perfectly. The movement of the klots is completely smooth, both visually and physically; even a player collision was considered to prevent awkward overlaps. That alone is quite an achievement, WOW! There aren't a lot of levels, and the game sadly ended before it really began, but this is a fake complaint, as it is WAY outweighed by quality. Thinking of good levels for such a game isn't easy, I guess.
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Graphics
The graphics look mostly like MS Paint drawings by an absolute beginner, especially in the story part. The blocks are simple but fine tho. The formspec / GUI has an awful choice of colors.
Music / sounds
The soundtrack is a bit cheezy, but OK. The sound effects are OK, but nothing too exciting. The robots don't make any sounds.
Controls
Good. The game uses standard Minetest controls so there are no surprises. It is a bit weird at first that you poo by the "place" key apparently but you get used to it instantly-
Stability / performance
The game is unstable. The game doesn't crash, but there are some "missing image" errors and numerous console warnings. The biggest problem is performance. Robots spawn at an alarming rate and eventually there are so many robots the game slows down to a crawl and Minetest reacts very slowly after placing blocks, up to a point where the game is almost unplayable and I have to restart.
Summary
Absolutely no recommendation. Both the game itself as the gameplay design are too broken.
Gameplay
It's really bad and doesn't make any sense. A seemingly infinite amount of robots starts to chase you. You have two abilities: You poo, which places a poo block where you look (???). With the plunger you turn a poo block into a package (??????). The robot army becomes huge very quickly so unless you stack yourself up or don't immediately wall yourself in poo, you will die very easily. The goal is to place 200 poo blocks and then "package" those 200 poo blocks (??????). Oddly, it doesn't matter if you die, because your poo counter doesn't reset, so you will win eventually, even if you die like 100 times lol. The robots are really fast and you have to be constantly on the run; if you stay for even one second, you will die. I found two winning strategies: Stacking yourself up (nerdpoling), or walling yourself, both of them bypass the robots completely and you can easily complete the goal without dying. That's another minus from me, that the game can be essentially be exploited that easily.
Story
Well, the story is essentially just an excuse plot. It's kindergarden-level humuor. I want to be clear this whole "poo" theme does NOT offend me, this doesn't give the game a penalty. My issue is the game just does a really poor job at it. I think it IS possible to do piss/poo humour right; South Park is a famous example.
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Controls/UI/UX
Very simple. It's the standard Minetest controls. You have an inventory, but this time, you have a HUGE hotbar so you never have to open the inventory menu. I like this, makes gameplay much more convenient. But there is a downside: The inventory menu is empty, so I could not sort my inventory like in many other games for Minetest (except for dropping my stuff on the ground and picking them up by hand). Also, the game doesn't display the names of any item anywhere. There is a catch: If you're colorblind, you're screwed because the game heavily relies on color. :-(
Overall rating
It PAINS me to say this, but no recommendation from me. The reason is the high number of crashes, game-breaking bugs and numerous ways to reach an unwinnable state. The game would be pretty good if it were more stable, and this is the reason for my "no recommendation". PLEASE fix the bugs post-jam, I want to see a shiny polished version of this; it would make a GREAT addition to the collection of Minetest games, this game, it's something very special. Oh, and please make the game colorblind-accessible.
Stability
This is where the game sadly falls flat in my opinion. This game is seriously broken. First, there is a LOT of console warnings. On the first start, I spawned in mid air and fell into the infinite void of despair. I deleted the world and tried again, then it worked. The worst part is that the game crashes frequently when I move from room to room. Also, there are numerous other bugs. In the graveyard, when I dig up some of the graves, there is just endless air! Also, when I fall out the world, the game does not react in any way. I have to cheat and fly back to where I came from. :( In the forest with the "gearbox", I can use items on these nodes, but they get destroyed. Fire can destroy the floor of rooms, another way to fall out of the world. If I leave an item in a room, it's gone forever (even for key items). And the list goes on and on and on ... (Don't worry, I will post it all on the bugtracker). A few small bugs are fine, but in this case, it's just too many, and game-breakers. This is too much even for the Game Jam. Please fix your game. :P
Performance
No issues. 60 FPS constantly on a >10y old computer.
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Graphics
It re-uses a lot of graphics from Minetest Game and other mods. :( The textures aren't bad, but I've seen them soooo often, it doesn't give a special feel anymore. But I'm obviously very biased as a Minetest old-timer. :D But that doesn't mean the room design is bad, quite the opposite.
Sounds / Music
The sounds are the standard Minetest Game node sounds. The MTG sounds are OK, and I can live with them, but a lot of actions are without sounds: Using a key, reading a book, etc. There are no music nor are there ambience sounds as well, which is disappointing, this game could have really benefit from an ambience, even a simple one. Many other Game Jam entries had an ambience and/or music. But this wasn't really an issue for me, I still had fun.
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Gameplay (contd.)
A big general downside of the gameplay right now is that is seems there is a LOT of ways to leave you in an unwinnable state (like when you toss away an important item), this needs to be addressed in future versions. I think the game should always guarantee you're never in an unwinnable state and can always continue, this is just fair given that some puzzles are really tricky.
Enough complaints! I LOVE that there is healthy amount of rooms to explore, and the room designs are really cool. A lot of effort was put into this, and I appreciate it a lot, this is what carries the game, this is where the game shines the most. The nodes still need polishing tho, as some nodes do unexpected/annoying things or have annoying collision boxes (like the candle), but overall, it's OK. Even if I didn't solve most puzzles, I did made progress and had a lot of fun doing so.
Story
The story is apparently kept quite vague. You aren't told much, just little pieces of information. Which isn't bad actually. The pieces you get do form a story eventually, and I actually liked that one. There is an explanation about what happened in the past. I think this submission has the best story of all game jam submissions. Good job!
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Gameplay
The idea of a "cursed house" isn't new. "The Shining" written by Stephen King is a famous example. But that's not a bad thing at all! I like when something like that is turned into a game, and yes, I WAS surprised when I first entered the house. I like the game just throws you into this cursed house and you must figure things out. The gameplay is simple, yet hard: You run around from room to room, try to figure out what is happening and slowly piece things together. The puzzles are not easy, but I made some progress. I found different special rooms, and 2/3 crowns. I also managed to get the axe and get access to the ice in the smelter room, then failed to move on.
From that point on, I had to cheat my way through the rest by looking at the code (sorry ...) and I was BAFFLED by the solution (and found more crash bugs, lol), something I would not have found out in AGES. What tripped me over are the furnaces. I tried to smelt the crown, and not all the other metal things, lol. Also, putting the colored liquids in the cauldrons in a certain order???? At least I now know where the color combination comes from, but still! I think a few puzzles would be fairer if the game gave you more feedback. I thought the cauldrons are useless since nothing happens if you put a bottle in it. Yes, there are star particles but I thought it was a bug, I still had the liquid, there was no splash sound, etc. With more feedback, the player would know that you can ACTUALLY interact with the cauldrons (even if they don't know what use they have yet). I have NO idea how on earth I should have known that I must put the purple/fake purple liquid in those "bowl" nodes. Is this part of the game still incomplete, maybe? Probably I hacked myself through too much. :D The gear mold is also a bit nasty. You can cool down the gear at ice, but not at water???? Pfff ...
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Summary
Before you read ahead, be warned of SPOILERS! My summary is that I really like the game, but I don't recommend it YET because of critical bugs that ruin the experience. But I also recommend to players to just wait and check this game out later, when the bugs have been fixed. That way, you will have a more pleasant experience. Keep this game on your watchlist, folks! The game is also not accessible to colorblind people (yet).
If you want to read my REAL review (with MEGA spoilers), go in the comments.
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Sound/Music
There is a simple space ambience track which is very calm but I think it fits the game perfectly. There are no sound effects. :(
Controls
Easy: You just look where you want to go and hit Jump to move. There is also a level reset feature. A particle stream clearly shows the direction of where you would go. There are some caveats: If the node you target is far away, it is sometimes hard to guess whether you hit it. There is no crosshair. The particle stream is a nice effect, and is a clever way to show the player the direction, but it's someimtes tricky to see your true destination until you hit Jump. Oddly, the game allows you to use the minimap (useless).
Stability / Performance
The game is stable. Launching the game greeted me with a few warnings (undeclared globals), but I didn't find any real bugs. There are no performance issues. 60 FPS constantly on a >10y old computer.
Theme
It's set in space, so it fits the Space theme. And the game idea completely makes sense to take part in space as well. It even has "Space" in its title.
Summary
I recommend it! The game is very short and could use some polishing as well, but overall I can still recommend it. I did have fun figuring out the puzzles and the game is stable. Just because it's short doesn't make it bad.
Gameplay
The concept is simple: You just move until you bump, or into one of these "grid nodes". I'm glad there is another node type added, and not just the solid one.
The puzzles are fun and and interesting. This is one of the game in which you have to think first, and then do something, or else you fly off into space and regret your decision. :D But this isn't annoying, you can always insta-reset.
It's a bit surprising that all levels are mushed together, in one big map. Normally, in games like these, levels are clearly separated. But I think this is fine. When you fail, you get teleported the the start of the level, not of the entire game. There is no level selection but that doesn't really matter as it's only 7 levels. That's really the only real downside of the game: It's over before it has really begun. :(
Graphics
Graphics-wise, I feel this is a bit TOO simple. There's just 3 nodes with no variation. There was also no decoration besides the skybox. This isn't really a problem tho, but graphics-wise, it had more porential. What annoyed me a bit were the grid nodes. It is not easy to distinguish between a grid node, and empty space between two grid nodes. The empty node looks like a grid node as well. These grid nodes definitely could've seen a graphical improvement because currently, it's kinda confusing. If you fly off into space (and fail), you just insta-teleport back to the level start, with no graphical effect at all. :( Overall, the minimalist graphics are pretty OK tho, although not great. Exception: Level 7. Here the flat color 100% makes sense and is pretty clever.
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I have officially retracted this review because of this: https://github.com/Minetest-j45/build-n-buy/pull/8
By the way, these bugs are already officially fixed by you now, which I hereby acknowledge:
The repetitions have become less bad, but IMO the best solution is put all levels in a pool. When a new level is chosen, draw from that pool randomly, removing the level from the pool. Repeat until the pool becomes empty. When the pool is empty, reset the pool. This method guarantees that repetitions only happen once you completed every level once. It does't make sense to allow ANY repetitions until they're impossible to avoid. I might submit another PR for that if you're OK with this.
converted review into a thread
OK, this is a good point. Minetest really needs to treat
time_speedas a per-world setting rather than a global one. :-(