Don't Send Me a Puddle by eieio

[raw]
made by eieio for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

Deliver the bucket of ice to the bottom of the mountain before it melts!

Built from scratch solo in 72 hours for my first jam :)

I'm a month into game dev! I blog about my learning process at eieio.games

2023-05-01 16<em>52</em>30-ldjam53 (DEBUG).png

Ratings

Overall 323th 3.823⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Fun 220th 3.839⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 56th 4.145⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Theme 317th 4.161⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 857th 3.226⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Audio 475th 3.383⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Humor 850th 2.66⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 707th 3.397⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 37🗨️

Feedback

flanne
01. May 2023 · 21:12 UTC
Neat idea! Not sure if there's bug in the second level or I'm missing something but I can't place towers near the end of that level.
aschab
01. May 2023 · 21:12 UTC
interesting puzzle
fusionnist
01. May 2023 · 21:13 UTC
Solid entry! Very impressive going by your description, too! I like the cozy feel the game has, it's reminiscent of classic web/mobile puzzle games.
Cheers!
Alex Chertilin
01. May 2023 · 21:16 UTC
Pretty fun and not easy. Thank you
🎤 eieio
01. May 2023 · 21:16 UTC
@flanne are you clicking above flat ground that doesn't have a tower? If you send me a little screenshot i will poke around, might be a bug (but I can't reproduce your problem)
LDJam user 336851
01. May 2023 · 21:17 UTC
really good the ice mechanic creates a good tension
orbitaldot
01. May 2023 · 21:19 UTC
Nice mechanic! Could easily see this extended post-jam, good work.
Emily-TTG
01. May 2023 · 21:20 UTC
Quite a fun experience! I went back quite a few times to try seeing how I could optimize each level layout. I will say a bit of diversity could help - maybe another kind of tower or some environmental obstacle like an air column etc. Great job!
gamebuilder
01. May 2023 · 21:27 UTC
Very unusual! A solid entry for a first game. The tutorial was very helpful and the gameplay itself is intriguing. I haven't seen anything like it.

One way to improve the game is to decrease the difficulty in the first few levels. It was hard to make progress. Even so, a fun, imaginative game. Nice work.
🎤 eieio
01. May 2023 · 21:28 UTC
@emily-ttg totally agree that it could use at least one more real mechanic - I cut a bunch of half baked ideas and if I’d had a little more time I would have wanted to play with a mechanic for adding a bunch of momentum - an air pillar would have been a cool version of that.

And thanks @larsievl @alex-chertilin @orbitaldot @gamebuilder !!! I am still not over the joy of strangers playing my games :)
Brandon Campbell
01. May 2023 · 21:54 UTC
I really enjoy this one. What a unique idea! And very impressive for being only a month into game dev.
WeirdBitGames
02. May 2023 · 03:48 UTC
This is really clever and I love the pixel art style too! The physics feel solid and the music is very chill. An amazing job, thumbs up!
leking
02. May 2023 · 04:29 UTC
Great creativity,If only there could be more types of towers
jaroslav2324
02. May 2023 · 06:13 UTC
Nice game, i enjoyed rope mechanic, good sound. Melting of ice is cool idea, you need to haste to compete as much levels as you can. A little confusing thing is the same colour of towers and ground, firstly i didnt understand how box pass through towers.
cortexdeveloper
02. May 2023 · 09:31 UTC
Perfect match of theme and gameplay.
Never seen something like this, good idea!
Luxiffre
02. May 2023 · 09:59 UTC
Really innovative idea (especially considering that this was you very first game jam)! Don't have much to criticise here, this is definitely among the good games I've played today.

The only two (really minor) things that I noticed were that the hitbox of the flames was a bit hard to judge sometimes and that I've noticed that some flames looked like they're too far into the ground (texture-wise). Nothing huge though, it didn't detract from the fun.

Oh, also it would've been even more hilarious if the text on the box said "KEEP COOL" :laughing:
🎤 eieio
02. May 2023 · 17:11 UTC
@luxiffre lol you're absolutely right it shoulda said "KEEP COOL" - wish I'd thought of that!!

@jaroslav2324 i was worried about the tower confusion - I played with some ways to make them look a little different but everything I made looked...bad stylistically. Definitely something I'd do if I put more time into the game (and if I was a little better at making art I woulda done it for the event!)
LDJam user 245646
02. May 2023 · 17:14 UTC
Fun little puzzle game you got there! This idea can easily be expanded upon, hope you do!
Wouter52
02. May 2023 · 20:15 UTC
Very clever! The title is intriguing and the puzzle-like gameplay is very polisched and solid. The backgroundmusic is a banger! I loved it! It reminded me a lot of this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy37XdAwH_A (don't know if you like metal, in case you do: enjoy ^^")

This game scores high in innovation-land! Not yet played a game as innovative as this one this Ludum Dare.
🎤 eieio
03. May 2023 · 06:26 UTC
@wouter52 thank you!! It's my first time putting music on the internet for folks (and it's some of my first electronic music - I mostly just play a physical piano) so it's really really fun for me that some folks are liking it - great encouragement for me :)

And I totally see the resemblance to that song! The chord progression is very similar and they are arpeggiating the chords in the same way that I am.
caeonosphere
04. May 2023 · 04:11 UTC
Mandatory victory screen:
![ss.png](///raw/8d0/41/z/5b343.png)

I love the idea of this zipline-design puzzle game, all it needs is a couple more mechanics to flesh it out. I was frustrated by the quantized tower height at first, but it gets rid of a problem that other physics puzzle games have where you end up just trying slightly different configurations over and over to brute force a win. Ended up appreciating that choice in the end (if it was a choice... :P). Good luck on your game dev journey!
🎤 eieio
04. May 2023 · 15:49 UTC
@caeonosphere thanks for playing and I agree it needs a few more mechanics!

The quantized tower height was intentional, although it wasn't primarily to avoid the "tweak this configuration slightly" problem. It was for a combination of simplicity / consistency (I think it makes it much easier to replicate a setup that you've had in the past) and to make it easier for me to think about where towers should be allowed to be placed - snapping to a grid the size of my tileset _horizontally_ meant it was unambiguous when designing a level whether a tower could go over a given square or not.

But to your point I think it also would have been much harder to design these levels if the tower height was more flexible - there would surely be lots of ways to slip towers around corners that I didn't intend.

Something to think about if I expand the game!
JamieOK
05. May 2023 · 12:20 UTC
Really unique idea and great execution. The weightiness of the ice means you can set up some cool jumps to solve the puzzles. The tutorial jumps you straight into the game too which works great for a jam project. The 'Disable Tutorials' checkbox is a nice touch too, as I immediately reset for another go and was pleasantly surprised to see I went straight into proper levels. Great work!
DenKa
05. May 2023 · 23:45 UTC
This is an interesting puzzle game. I found it slightly inconvenient to arrange the columns due to the controls, but overall, I enjoyed the game.
🎤 eieio
06. May 2023 · 06:31 UTC
Thanks @denka! Did anything specific stand out about the controls? I know it can be frustrating to delete towers if you're on a trackpad for example.
DenKa
06. May 2023 · 17:15 UTC
@eieio I don't think the controls in the game are very intuitive. For example, it's not always clear where exactly the tower will be placed, and at first, I thought that the tower's height could only be changed one block at a time. Sometimes, I accidentally clicked on adjacent blocks, but nothing changed. I would like to see a grid that shows exactly where the tower will be placed or a preview that helps understand how it will look. It seems like I needed a bit more feedback from the building process.
🎤 eieio
06. May 2023 · 21:00 UTC
@denka that's great feedback, thanks!
garlic
12. May 2023 · 18:36 UTC
The game is innovative. However it's a bit janky. I'm not sure why I can't place towers in certain places. Kind of ruins the flow of the game for me.
🎤 eieio
15. May 2023 · 03:33 UTC
@garlic you're only able to place the towers on flat ground that isn't occupied by a torch - sorry that that was confusing, I tried to make it clear in the tutorial!
garlic
15. May 2023 · 07:53 UTC
@eieio ah, apologies, I'm a bit ADHD so I must've skipped that part
🎤 eieio
16. May 2023 · 20:01 UTC
@garlic no it's good feedback! The game could clearly do a better job of telling you what's going on! Thanks :)