Can I Haz Monsters? Rating Analysis

Hey guys. Seeing that this is my (Taro’s) fourth Ludum Dare (and first for John), I figured it might be a good idea to look into how I’ve been doing for the past few entries. First with the latest: how did Can I Haz Monsters? do?

canIHazMonsters

canIHazMonstersRatings

Not bad at all! Certainly got my innovation groove back, which I’m really proud of. As mentioned to some Let’s Players, John Ceceri III was the one who pitched the game idea about adopting in an alien world, so kudos to him. I simply helped out simplifying that idea to something that can be implemented into the game.

In comparison, this is how I did in the previous Compos & Jams:

The Sentient Cube (Ludum Dare 26)

theSentientCube

Tragically, the first Ludum Dare I participated in was the first game I had to put down due to legal reasons. So no ratings, here. Even then, I was well-practiced with Unity and game jams in general, so it was pretty clear from the comments I was doing pretty well for a first-timer.

Laundry Day (Ludum Dare 31)

laundryDay

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Laundry Day was our first attempt at organizing a real-world meeting at Tech Valley Game Space. As a consequence, nearly the entire group participated in this jam, including dreamlogician and Brightstar. It was also our first time learning Construct 2! Ultimately, a lot of raters figured out our game was making fun of the free-to-play style games with pointlessly addictive gameplay, leading to high marks on humor.

Star Driller Ultra (Ludum Dare 32)

starDrillerUltra

StarDrillerUltraRatings

Star Driller Ultra was well-praised for its graphics and overall presentation. It didn’t do nearly as well on fun, which I extensively wrote a post-mortem about. Either way, it definitely was an improvement from the last two projects I’ve worked on. It certainly showed my talent on creating well-polished games.

Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator (Ludum Dare 32)

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And of course, the curveball: the joke entry, Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator! This was just a fun exercise of getting a game done in 12 hours, so I figured I’d get low rankings here. And I was not disappointed!


Plotting everything together, here’s how I did (Audio and Graphics are assumed to be 0s if opted out):

RatingsProgression

PrecentileProgression

Overall and Innovation categories looks like a slow but progressive improvements, and I couldn’t be happier with that. Fun and Mood, on the other hand, are rocky. It looks like I might need to focus on these two categories a little more. Other than that, looks like things are improving smoothly!

Laundry Day’s Voting Results

So Ludum Dare 31 voting period finally comes to a close. How did Laundry Day do? Pretty darn well, actually:

ratingsRevised

First off, I might as well leak this “secret:” yes, the game is a satire of freemium and social games. It was designed like that from the beginning, from the mundane, boring activity of putting clothes into a dryer, to the comically juicy process of collecting coins and trinkets from the lint trap. This isn’t the first time we’ve posted a satire to Ludum Dare — Not a Clone was also a satire — but seeing that this time around, the game was deliberately uninteresting, this developer had very low expectations.

Not so, it turns out. A lot of people, both within and outside of Ludum Dare have found the game to be oddly addicting. Many commented how hilariously boring the game was, and still managed to find something fun about it. And a few people even managed to figure out what the game was satirizing about.

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(That last comment is there because the user clearly figured out our nefarious plan to create a sequel. See, dreamlogician? I told you the volcano was an awfully obvious place to have an evil office!)

Anyways, I’ve got to give my thanks to all of you who played and voted for our game. We had a lot of fun this time, and hope to make more games in the future!

P.S. Our favorite comment may have to be this golden gem from Newgrounds:

commentsNewgrounds