Ludum Dare 38 - Small World: Drill Destruction

You are too harsh on yourself. This is a great little game. Very nice twist on the idea. I'd love to see some more work on it, you've got some good talent. Keep it up.

Hey there Bob!

Drill Destruction is surprisingly simple and entertaining. I put more time into it than I'd like to admit. If you're still willing to work on improving this game there are a few suggestions I'd like to put out there if you like. There are just things that I think would help improve it a little bit, as there are some parts of the game that I found pretty damn frustrating (listed in no particular order).

1. First and most important, the game definitely needs some way of saving your progress. Even if all you do is make it so that reaching a certain level will change the function of the "Begin Game" button to loading you directly to that level rather than always going to level one (eg you finally reach level 6, but then die and it totally wasn't your fault, instead of having to play through levels 1-5 again you can dive right back into the torture of level goddamn 6). I really don't care if your progress is lost when you quit the game, something is better than nothing and it would make getting a look at the later levels much, much easier.
2. Making the size of the playable character a bit smaller would help jumping into deep holes to crush the more successful drills easier and less frustrating.
3. Add a short (just half a second or so), fake loading screen between levels so you don't accidentally jump into the void to your doom at the very beginning of the level.
4. When the timer goes down to a few seconds left it should start getting bigger and change color a bit so you can tell when you don't have much time left without having to check it all the time.
5. If blocks also became red or something when they are close to breaking that would probably help avoid some unnecessary deaths.
6. ???
7. Profit

Enough suggestions, now I wanna say what I liked about it, to help boost your self esteem. You said it was shit about twenty times so I think getting a few vibes that you might not actually be very proud with your work.

• Mmm, killing those drills is so damn satisfying when they bloody explode from my square jumping on them and the screen shakes like I'm Zeus striking the ground with his thunder zaps, smiting thy drills to the underworld.
• While the art is literally just squares, it really fits and it's not as shit as you think. I don't think even you can screw up squares.
• While the sounds weren't done by you, they were also very well done. Kudos to the audio dudes.

Yeah that's pretty much it. Good job on the game, great idea, hope you do well in Ludum Dare. Sorry for the long read, too, probably got more words on this than my Cambridge. Is that bad?

- Paintap, patniaP (yeah I'm putting my usernames at the end like an idiot, what're you gonna do about it?)