Reviews

The Ludum Dare 32 rating analysis

| Taro Omiya

So with Ludum Dare 32 judging results released, let’s take a look at our game’s ratings!

First, how did Star Driller Ultra, a project I worked on solo for 48-hours, do?

Screen Shot 2015-05-12 at 2.10.28 AM

2 categories that made it to the top 100, and 1 that made it to top 25? I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t good. Still, to be honest, I was a little disheartened by these ratings for a day or two. I should be a little more careful about my expectations next time.

Given these ratings, it’s clear that I delivered with the overall presentation of the game, with graphics being the main highlight. As I have initially suspected in the post-mortem, the fun factor was weaker than the presentation, a big problem for a space-combat action game. And I did pretty badly with innovation and theme, despite proudly proclaiming to be an experimental indie developer. It seems those need a little help.

As an aside, there were several things Star Driller Ultra achieved, including an IndieGames.com article, and 3 different Let’s Plays. It was pretty cool to see all these opinions and gameplays from different people.

Next, let’s look over how these ratings compares to previous entries. The last Ludum Dare I received ratings was Ludum Dare 31’s Laundry Day. Here’s how my ratings seems to be trending.

Almost universally positive! Although the comparison is pretty unfair: Laundry Day was supposed to be a satire of social games, and wasn’t intended to be rated highly. Additionally, it was the first time our team was learning Construct 2, while for Star Driller Ultra, I already had 5 years of experience with Unity. Regardless, the overall increase in ratings is certainly a positive sign. The only eye-catching exception is innovation dropping, which looks like something I need to improve on (I’m less concerned with humor and theme).

I’ve also calculated how I compared to others, using percentiles (ranking divided by total number of entries).

We see the same trend as ratings, so that indicates that ratings are a pretty good measure of performance.

How about the Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator, another project I worked on solo, but this time within 12 hours?

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The audio and graphics were removed since the music and the character animations were taken from pre-made sources. Still, the ratings doesn’t look good at all. To be honest, I’m not surprised: the game was deliberately designed to be poor, similar to the Goat Simulator it was taking it’s inspiration from. At the time, I only had 12 hours, so the goal was simply to make something working and game-like. Even though I’m proud with what I’ve created within those limits, I fully agree with those polarizing comments: it is a bad game.

So color me surprised when I managed to dig up a couple of Let’s Plays, mostly positive, despite having less promotional effort. There’s one that gave an honorable mention to his top 5 Ludum Dare game list, another who loved it, one that figured out the whole game is intended to be asexual innuendo, and one that didn’t like it at all (and ironically is my favorite Let’s Play of the bunch).

Compared to Laundry Day, it looks like this:

Yikes! It seemed either Laundry Day had some subtlety in its presentation that more people liked, or Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator was just too slapstick. Or I didn’t rate other games using this account, and it simply got polarizing ratings. I can’t say for sure…

Obviously, ranking percentile isn’t any better.

But I had fun making it! That’s what counts the most.

More Praises of The Sentient Cube

| Taro Omiya

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has mentioned my game (among many others) via a Haiku:

The Sentient Cube
Hey, cubes do not roll!
Unless they’re katamaris
Who turned off physics?

On top of that, a little more Googling reveals far more wide-spread references.

For one, IGN Italia mentions the game:

Restando in tema di blocchi colorati voglio poi citarvi il bel The Sentient Cube, di Omiya Games, praticamente una versione ridotta di Katamari Damacy che con un un po’ di sviluppo extra (e controlli meno “svolazzanti”) potrebbe evolversi in un gioco davvero interessante. Lo scopo di ogni livello è semplicissimo: nei panni di un cubo rotolante (e senziente, almeno stando al titolo del gioco) dovremo toccare gli oggetti colorati per attaccarceli addosso, tramutandoci via via in un’ammasso di forme geometriche colorate che rotola. Mano a mano che le dimensioni di tale matassa di oggetti aumentano gli elementi del fondale che possiamo “inglobare” diventano colorati e le nostre abilità di movimento aumenteranno. Rotolando e assimilando bisognerà raggiungere l’uscita di ciascun livello entro il tempo limite. Facile, colorato e abbastanza efficace, senza contare che in ciascun livello c’è nascosta una patata da trovare e raccogliere. Così, come extra…

Another international location I’m apparently having a boom at is Russia. There’s Tiny Games, Small Games, and Игры YuWik.

As usual, thanks a lot for all the support!

Praises for The Sentient Cube!

| Taro Omiya

There’s been several praises for The Sentient Cube!

Indie Statik

Only the length of The Sentient Cube reveals that it is a Ludum Dare game. It’s about ten minutes total, but the developer’s claim that The Sentient Cube combines the gameplay of Katamari Damacy and Crazy Taxi is justified.  In other words: YOU NEED TO PLAY IT RIGHT FREAKING NOW.

Katamari is the biggest point of reference for The Sentient Cube, and the timer and different route choices are the subtle results of the Crazy Taxi influence. Each object that gloms[sic.] onto the original cube affects the overall movement of the Death Ball in different ways. You can actually roll over rockets, which add strong momentum to whatever part of the Death Ball they are attached to, as you might imagine. The physics of the spheres, cubes, cones and rockets that attach themselves to your Death Ball are the defining feature of The Sentient Cube’s gameplay. Eventually, your Ball will end up flying crazily up into space, as you try to wrangle it toward the goal like a cowboy herding a single misshapen blob of a cow.

Blogger Chaser324 on Giant Bomb

The developer of this game describes it as combining “Katamari Damacy and Crazy Taxi” which is a pretty accurate comparison. The Sentient Cube puts you in control of the eponymous polygon and challenges you to roll up other objects in an increasingly larger mound and get your ball of junk into a goal within a time limit. The physics based gameplay and the camera control can at times spiral out of control to a point where it goes from entertaining to hair-pulling frustration, but I still managed to reach the ending without failing a level.

Thanasis on Game Connect

The Sentient Cube…is an action-puzzle game that combines Antichamber-like graphics, and feels like a mix of Katamari Damacy and Crazy Taxi in terms of gameplay. You play as a blue, sticky cube that can roll into other objects smaller than itself to grow bigger. By increasing the cube’s size, the cube can reach to the Goal with more ease. Scattered around the level are various physics-changing items and power-ups.

Thanks for all the compliments!