Curious Dinos by RafaSKB

[raw]
made by RafaSKB for LD36 (JAM)
Your spaceship crashed on Earth during the Jurassic Era. You need the dinosaurs help to get your ship fixed. Use basic ship functions such as alert lights to interact with their emotions and return home.

--- Credits ---
Pixeler: Brian Shepard - @starlightzone_
Sound Engineer: Stephen D. Gibson - @r9cast
Coffee Coder: Rafa Skoberg - @rafaskoberg

--- Instructions ---
Download the appropriate file according to your operating system, decompress the zip and execute the main file (e.g. Curious Dinos.exe and Curious Dinos.app).

Use the mouse to play.

--- Updates ---
Version 1.1 - August 30th, 2016:
- Fixed a couple of game breaking bugs.
- Fixed some serious performance issues.

Version 1.2 - September 15th, 2016:
- Added new dinosaur types.
- Added a new ship action.
- Rebalanced the effect of ship actions.
- Added an intro cutscene explaining the story.
- Added an ending cutscene.
- Added more music and sound effects.
- Added beautiful visual effects.
- Implemented day and night cycle.
- Fixed many glitches with sounds and particles.
- Greatly reduced the application size.
- Other minor changes and fixes.

Feedback

Steven Miller
30. Aug 2016 · 20:10 UTC
I really liked the sound and the art and overall presentation was incredible, though I was a bit confused on what to do. I understood that I could influence the dinosaurs with my abilities, and I did make it to end, but I found myself using the first ability almost exclusively, as it seemed like the ship parts activated when a certain amount of dinosaurs were happy. Good game, though I'd like to see a little more explanation about the mechanics.
jeremyfa
30. Aug 2016 · 21:00 UTC
I love the illustrations. Game mechanics could be improved to be less confusing. It seems like I'm just doing the same thing continuously, hoping something happens with the dinosaurs. Interesting still!
MrErdalUral
31. Aug 2016 · 00:48 UTC
Good graphics! Well done.
Wasn't that much fun though.
Culturebosh_games
31. Aug 2016 · 22:01 UTC
So, I had no idea what was going on, I gathered eventually that the idea was to bring the dinos in, but I also found that the first ability was the most useful. Other parts just seemed to scare the critters :(

Great art and sound though, and the mystery is quite nice. You see it as the dinos do perhaps? The art style is almost hyper light drifter esque. I enjoyed my time playing.
skreeb
31. Aug 2016 · 22:03 UTC
I didn't know what I was doing but I played it through anyway because it was gorgeous and the dinosaurs were cute.
monkeybit29
01. Sep 2016 · 18:21 UTC
awwwwwww i left my dino buddies, i miss them already :^C
Nice short experience!
xesenix
02. Sep 2016 · 00:25 UTC
No idea what im doing but it pretty.
9.ar7k
02. Sep 2016 · 00:32 UTC
no idea what was happening but it was a very beautiful game. i tried to play it to the end but i still had no idea what was happeneing, but i feel like this could be a cool mobile game kinda neko atsume ^^
ikroth
02. Sep 2016 · 02:00 UTC
The art and graphics for this are really great. I didn't understand what I was doing until about the fourth item. Overall, it was a nice experience, but didn't have a lot of depth.
mooncalf
02. Sep 2016 · 02:04 UTC
Beautiful art and soundscape.

I beat it but I just randomly clicked the buttons a lot =D.

I would have liked it more if I had some feedback loop helping me understand what to do as well as a potential failure condition. I never felt like my choices were affecting the outcome.
TerraCottaFrog
02. Sep 2016 · 03:37 UTC
Not a game, an experience :)

The atmosphere created through the music and sound design, coupled with the beautifully stylized visuals made the game almost mesmerizing.

The black box of the mechanics simply added to this. It truly created a sense of mystery, progress, and almost instilled a sense of awe.

The one major missing piece is fullscreen. That would have just made the immersion of it much better, especially with the small window size.

Other than that, fantastic work.
HellBlazer
02. Sep 2016 · 03:41 UTC
Cool idea, and nice visuals... but like everyone has said, it's rather confusing. :) It seems like you can mess around to attract some dinos, then just spam the first ability. Though I made it to the end, I was never quite clear what each ability did exactly.

In any case though, a spaceship powered by dino-love is pretty amazing technology.
standardcombo
02. Sep 2016 · 13:26 UTC
Excellent game that fits the theme. The objective, while not explicit, is clearly communicated through the design of the characters. The gameplay is intuitive and scoped correctly for a game jam of this kind.
Diptoman
03. Sep 2016 · 21:59 UTC
Nice, short, aesthetically pleasing experience. Could complete the thing by just spamming random buttons and not knowing how each affected the dinosaurs or the world - so it probably needs some degree of explanation (preferably visually) and challenge. Good work nevertheless!
DDRKirby(ISQ)
05. Sep 2016 · 05:23 UTC
Innovation: Definitely a novel concept! It's too bad it was a little short and barebones, I was curious to see what this would be like if pushed further.
Fun: It was kind of cool and interesting to try and woo over the cute dinosaurs, but in the end I think mechanics needed to be a little more straightforward/obvious for me to have more fun.
Theme: Haha, this one is a stretch but I can kind of see it!
Graphics: Very well done! Nothing mindblowing, but all of the art was very clean and fit the style of the game very well. Great job!
Audio: The audio all fit just fine, but I'm curious as to what it might be like if you added additional layers of instrumentation to the background music for each ship part that you collect, as a sort of build-up.
Humor: N/A
Mood: Altogether this was a very quiet and pleasing experience, which I liked.
Overall: Pretty awesome, but I feel like the gameplay itself had some issues which I would have liked to see addressed. Nevertheless I think the presentation and concept are pretty excellent, so this was still enjoyable. :)

Congratulations on another successful LD! I'd really appreciate it if you could leave me some feedback for my game as well. You can find it at: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=7285.
Jupiter_Hadley
06. Sep 2016 · 19:26 UTC
Lovely graphics, interesting game! I included it in my compilation video series of Ludum Dare 36, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/lT_5Gj1NQIo
dreamlogician
14. Sep 2016 · 01:45 UTC
Fun concept, and gorgeous art! ^_^
Frederika and Patrick
14. Sep 2016 · 01:50 UTC
I liked it. The visuals were fantastic. The art was very reminiscent of Samurai Jack, and well executed. The sound effects were great too. The music was a little repetitive. Overall, I enjoyed the game so much, I played it twice.