Its fun. Mouse speed was a bit low for some reason. Graphics are good. I dont know why, but i really love games that mix 2d and 3d. The extra features like fps boost and retro mode were great too.

Now i rated your game; Pls rate mine!

Cool concept, the mouse speed was low for me too

Cool game! I love the retro feel this game has
It just needs a little more of mouse speed...

I'm not sure how this game won 2nd place overall.

The 'crosshair' in the center looks like a glitched square graphic. The UX feels horrible as well. Upon starting the game, I am bomboarded with lots of distracting visuals making me confused as to what I should be focusing on. There is a distracting stickman animation in front of me who is actually my character - also why is he on a walking loop animation even when I am not even moving? And why is the camera strangely offset in a weird way from the character.

The start screen is also filled with lots of text taking away my attention from the actual important element - the 'START' button.. or text, whichever it is. The camera control is weird. It feels locked at the center, pivoting around the center, yet it follows my character who is awkwardly always placed on the left side of the screen. It feels like I am controlling an invisible object in the middle of my screen when the camera should instead be focused on my main character or the action, not the strange glitchy cursor. The camera scroll speed is very slow too, and there is no setting to change it. The start location is plagued with interface issues before I even get to the game. About the game...

Shooting is very weird. If you look at third person shooters, the bullets always fire from the same spot, and hit near where my cursor is. In here, it feels totally random and hit-or-miss, causing me to miss my shots and die unfair deaths. The bullets spawn from as randomly as from my front, to from an invisible location beside me. Even shotguns have an element of predictability and consistency to it. I had to die a few times before actually being able to progress. Also at one point I had -1 lives... seems like a bug? Also what is the point of the sword? I cannot shoot it, and there is no description indicating its purpose - does it give a damage boost or what?

I'm also mystified how the game got so high in the graphics category.
The textures and visuals look haphazardly drawn in MS Paint (which doesn't do the software justice as I've seen much better pixel art games). Take a look at 'Eternal Home Floristry', it does the pixel art and retro feel so much better that I don't know how this game was rated better than it.

In terms of UX, there is no feedback for when I get hit, no visual feedback for if I have successfully hit or damaged something. For example, the red cloaked mage couldn't die. I thought he was invincible. Only until I eventually killed him did I realise he actually had a lot of HP. I can't tell if my shots hit or missed.

The lighting looks flat and uninspired - it looks like just a few point lights scattered around the scene. You can see how the dark areas that are in shadow look very flat - there is no ambient occlusion or shadowing to make things pop.

Overall the game feels very amateurish compared to past top winning entries. I also do not understand why this was made into a 3D game when it brought nothing new or innovative other than trying to maybe be 'cool' that it's 3D? It feels very unpolished. The menu also did not have to be 3D. Combine the messy visuals with the slow walk speed and the menu now looks poorly navigatable to have a practical user experience. The title says it is a 3d spelunky but it feels more appropriately titled as 'low quality 3d spelunky'. I wouldn't call this a 3d spelunky.

In terms of gameplay, there is no exploration or depth. While the levels seem to be randomly generated, the content in the levels remain linear - there are no hidden rooms or secret artefacts. After a few floors, the repetition is obvious and uninspired. And I start to feel the character has a really slow walk speed now. Did other players manage to get to the ending? I personally found the game too unforgiving and hard as I didn't manage to get to the end after a few tries. I didn't even meet the dragon. Consider taking a look at what made spelunky fun and good in terms of game design.

Continuing in Part 2 below.

(Review continued from part 1 above)

As for presentation, the GIFs look very horrible. They look like a time lapse of the game, but I cannot get any information on the gameplay because the GIF is so fast. Also, you should get rid of the 'No Cameras Rendering' frame at the end of your first GIF. It looks like you accidentally disabled the camera in Unity during your recording and accidentally captured it. It looks really unprofessional.

Also, I could not find what the gold coins were for. I initially thought the red mage was a shopkeeper as he had text saying 'selling' something, but he turns out to be an enemy and was shooting me? It's very confusing. I could not find where I could spend my coins or what their use was. And the text from the red mage (his speech bubble?) is also overlapping with the 3D environment when he stands close to walls. You need to fix that as it might be better to render the text on top of nearby meshes.

Overall, this feels like a game I would not expect to see in the top winning entries. Perhaps those who rated highly on the game could give some insight and clarity into their experiences as to what made their experience so ground breaking and innovative and fun compared to the other games here.

@yyz I dunno man, something sure seems fishy to me. The game has a total of 3 comments, not counting yours. There is 0 karma for feedback and 1.875 ratings given, how did this game even get enough ratings to get a score? It almost feels like someone was miffed at the results from the last jam and decided to game the system. I hope I'm wrong, and this guy just won the lottery for people who decided to play and rate (without leaving comment) his game, but something seems off to me.

@archimagus I am puzzled too. I am not one to judge as this is merely the first Ludum Dare I have participated in and I am not an expert at how game ratings are determined. However, from the looks of it, if the game's ranking is purely determined by the average of a quantity of ratings then it will be easy for someone to exploit the system simply by getting friends to rate. If so, this is rather disappointing as Ludum Dare, being a very famous competition, seems to be using a rather 'shallow' and biased rating system and if this game can 'cheat', then certainly other games can :(

Alas, I hope I am wrong too, as I had high expectations for the winners of this round compo/jam, having participated in it and was very looking forward to seeing the innovation and quality of the winners of this round. However, the top games from this round of LD don't seem to have the polish that I've seen from previous rounds. :(

Nothing about this game is funny, so the fact this came 2nd in "humour" shows that you have abused the system and taken trophies away from games that truly deserve it. Shame on you.

@yyz it is always been this way, Ludum Dare is basically an honour system. It will be abused some times, but hopefully not enough to ruin the event too much (I've done this 14 times now, many people have cheated).

As for this entry, it does look a little suspicious, and the other top entries have 100+ ratings received somehow, which also seems weird.

cc: @archimagus @radical-dog

Cmon man, the point of Ludum Dare is to receive honest ratings and get feedback which you can improve on until next year. Cheating and getting top scores in everything just defeats the purpose AND is unfair to other competitors.

@fat-cat people like this should be banned.. ruining the fun from everyone else. :(

The honor system breaks in ways that cause lasting damage if things like these slip through. Morale as far as the rules go has already not been stellar to begin with recently, and letting something like this pass through just furthers the impression that LD is an anything-goes free-for-all. However, the ratings are now done, and even if this entry was removed it wouldn't matter all that much.

The way to address this IMO is systemically. Let's introduce voting ring detection, a system to flag abuse, and I'm also quite fond of @Sol_HSA's idea of having two voting rounds in the future: one where all games a ranked, and then a final round where only the top 100 games are voted on. This would prevent stuff like this (and worse) from getting through without anyone caring.

I also think if we re-introduced a proper victory screen like we used to have, people would be more likely to notice. The fact that this ranked #1 and #2 on pretty much everything *and nobody even noticed* should alarm everyone.