Interesting concept here!

Really love the twist on the theme! Didn't see it coming from the start.

Great concept, extremely clever. I noticed the audio changes too, very cool.

Really loved the concept!

Ok, this is ace! Subtle color & audio change are really nice touches, 'Maestro' :D

What can I say. Just lovely.

Great game, took me a while to figure out how it fitted in with the theme, but I love the concept, great job.

Great visual effects. But sometimes it is going to end so unexpected.

Really enjoyed this. Great concept. Glad you got it out of there :)

Living forever is really hard apparently. Well, "living". Nice take on the theme!

I feel kind of sad :(

I really like the mechanics, the sound, the graphics, and the mood. The way the pallet changes is very cool. Unfortunately, I didn't find it fun to play. Having to keep returning to the fountain is frustrating, especially in a game that makes the player want to explore.

wonderful experience, really nice execution. I love how you represented the theme :)

Well executed, really neat idea ! I love the concept and how it relates to the theme.

Brillant! Reminded me of Passage, but still very different. Best entry played so far.

3deep5me! Awesome work, Terry.

Great Concept

Interesting mechanic. It made you want to explore but it limited you which was a cool thing to battle with. Nice idea and great mood.

Disturbing mood. The audio experience is kinda like X-COM. I like.

I got the concept immediately, and what a great concept it is. But my goals were not very clear. While the tantalizing glimpses of other areas kept me coming back after dying, it eventually became too cumbersome to start over.

So then: mission accomplished. =)

Nice idea and great atmosphere. The music really adds to the mood. It was very frustrating trying to explore while worrying about making it back, but I'm guessing that was intended. Good job!

Really nice concept, I love it!

I'm not so sure I've understood the game. There's no way to collect all items, right? And for some reason I have the ability to die just a few squares away from the fountain.

I love the way things change when she starts to get older. I kept exploring a little, then running back to the fountain to 'replenish'. After a few times of doing that, it felt like she started aging more rapidly. Nice touch! I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to be doing, but it was still quite fun exploring.

Incredibly concise idea that turns out to be a sophisticated take on the age old question of "is immortality worth it?" The subtle audio and visual changes that come with age, and the desperate struggle for that one last tile to get to the fountain before death really stick with me. Fantastic job.

Quite an interesting game.

Wow, I didn't know you would making a game for this Ludum Dare.

I liked the concept and the ideas you wanted to express in "Fountain", but gameplay is way too much frustrating. Nobody likes backtracking, it's like:

"Sure, I'm getting old, I could return to the fountain or keep exploring. Exploring is exciting because you discover great stuff and going back to the fountain and here again is boring, is not a challenge, I've done it and I could do it again"

I get that backtracking is part of expressing the idea, but I think it adds too little to the game(gameplay wise) compared to how frustrating makes it.

SuperHexagon was one of the hardest things I've played in my life, I loved it because it was a challenge and you designed it so it wouldn't be frustrating. Maybe that's what happens with "Fountain"'s design, it needs to challenge the player with something else that's not time management, it's hard to know.

Anyways, sometimes you just want to make a game about a thought you had and you just want to create it without caring about other details.

Hoping to see more games from you soon!

My world was littered with corpses before I realized the title. Good game. Made me think/sad.

Loved the aesthetic and a great use of the theme. Very oppressive mood.

This would have been great, but you die so quickly -- You barely have enough time to get back to the fountain after collecting each thing, meaning you pretty much need to know exactly how to get back each time. The concept you have is pretty awesome, and I love exploration games, but I think this would work a whole lot better if it was slower paced. Great job.

Don't know why but this scared the shit out of me :|
Great game, loved the little details.

Haha pretty funny when you get old and slow. Interesting concept. Not sure what the goal was though. I did find some treasure or something and a key.

One time I got 2.
Another time I was chilling near the fountain with 1.

Awesome. Reminds me of my life, except for the whole Fountain of Youth part. :)

Nice!

Very nice game, graphics are great, music is pretty good. Very nice mood. Clever take on the theme. This is actually one of only a few LD games that I vote N/A for humor on.
Good luck and keep at it!
p.s. I'll beat hyper hexagonest one of these days

Great atmosphere and nice way of "showing things" just through gameplay.

As small and simple as it seems to be, I always like games with a focus on looking around.

terry (:

Pretty cool ambiance. The world's so interesting to explore that I never make it back to the fountain Good stuff!

Great game with a great mood.

Love it!

Ggreat exploration of the theme, and nice touch with the fountain gimmick.

A sophisticated game, full of possibilities. Of which I got 3 ^o^// Nice how succinctly you were able to express the concept, and you nailed the theme without needing to name your game "You Only Get One Fountain" or something.

The fountain itself kind of looks like Marvin the Martian. Is that just me?

An extremely melancholic use of the theme. I enjoyed it, and those Spectrum-ass graphics were really refreshing :)

The sound does it for me in this. Very... ominous. Nice one

Nice, wasn't sure on how to play, but the concept is cool, I never once found my way back to the fountain though. :(

I can only echo what others have said. It was an awesome idea which had great audio, great visuals and a very cool take on the theme. BUT... sadly I didn't find it fun. I really wanted too, but I felt like I was being punished for exploring. If I went too far I wouldn't be able to make it back to the fountain in time and I would die... yet if I stayed near the fountain there really wasn't much to do. Definitely makes you think. But like they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too ;)

Great idea! I like the sound and the graphics most. And this special mood. AND how you formed the theme :)

Beautiful!!! simple, immersive and unique.

Great Game. I like the way the world changes when you get older.

Who cares about how fun or frustrating it gets?
Eventually everybody leaves the garden unexplored, get over it! Thank you for this game.

Excelent mood.

Beautiful. I wonder what are those treasure-like things?

Very intense game, especially the first time i stumbled over my own remains. Very nice!

Really well done and really difficult. Love the twist of adding your past lives where you died.

Clever use of the theme. It took me a few plays to understand what was going on.

This was a fun game to struggle with.

Strega:
Nice use of subtle graphic changes to indicate the passage of time and aging. I liked that you conveyed the message of the game the gameplay itself.

(This is a team account)

Charming but too much minimalist to justify investing time to finish it :)

thought-provoking and touching. your game connects to the theme on so many layers.

spoilers:
in the end i just stood there next to the fountain, wanting to collect all the things, but knowing that if i stepped away from the fountain i would soon die. forever young, but with no purpose.

Interesting and atmospheric game. Could have more interaction.

Sublime... as usual.

I'm getting strong Passage vibes from this one, Mr. Cavanagh. I do love it, though, when small game worlds feel massive.

Very good, especially the sound. But I only got two.. :(

It feels so sad.
And was it just me, or did the fountain get weaker and weaker every time I used it?

Great take on the theme. I wish there was a bit more clarity as to what those objects were that I picked up, but it could just be that I didn't get far enough. The audio and visuals really worked well together on this to build up the mood. The color changes in the world were really effective.

Interesting. I was able to find about 11 unique items, I think, though I only managed to get 4 simultaneously. I tended to just do long suicide runs to explore the map rather than make multiple trips back to the fountain.

The concept is great, however (and maybe it was a bug or me not finding the right way to go) you get to lose pretty fast if you don't do frequent round-trips to the fountain.
This limits the exploration time a bit too drastically, removing somehow the fun of the game.
The game itself is very polished: change in aspect, music and therefore global atmosphere as long as we age... great mood!

Congratz Terry =)

Quite challenging :)

Moody and atmospheric, cracking graphics and real charm. Actually quite haunting, especially with that soundtrack and the gradually draining colours. I found it a little difficult to empathise with the player character, but perhaps the mysterious aspect was the point...

Fantastic, with a ton to explore and see. The little things like the audio and visual changes as the character ages add a lot to the experience.

I like the idea and what the concept expresses (if my interpretation is correct). Not necessarily a "fun" game, but certainly an interest experience for what concerns me.

Incredibly well fitting with "You only get one".

I loved this. It was beautiful, really interesting take on the theme too. Reminds me a little bit of Passage by Jason Rohrer. Rated highly.

Played it for far longer than I expected, touched and horrified at the same time. Excellent little game.

I liked the concept and the atmosphere (credits to the music and visual effects) but something in the gameplay didn't work for me - maybe the difficulty in knowing if you have time to come back - and it couldn't keep me hooked for long.

Nice color changes

The way the world desaturates as you age is powerful. It also makes the glitchy maze impossible! Brutally hard and very poignant.

Hm. Don't know how I feel about this one. Pretty brutal punishing of the player.

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The nights of wonder

Wow, Terry. You have a unique gift for realizing an idea in all aspects of execution. That said, it is of course a bit frustrating to play a game that is designed to thwart completion. I do realize that is part of the point. :) Gameplay is a little unclear though - there is no indication of anything to collect and I didn't realize there was anything out there until I read the comments. Then again it could be argued that there is purposefully no goal.

The mood is well set by the gameplay and music.
With the title as it is, the aging process was easily understood.
The game got pretty hard when aging because not only would the path become unclear but quite suddenly your movement would slow down to a crawl. I've played VVVVV, so I can imagine that you meant the game to be hard.
But the purpose, goal, mechanics and other was not so clear and in this game I got a bit too little in return for my exploration to keep me curious. When I did find something it disappeared and I didn't have a clue if it did anything, changed anything.
I can imagine that with a bit more work it can really be journey of discovery and wonder.

Great idea, liked the interpretation of the theme. Reminiscent of Passage. Nice job here!

I saw this in a recommendation, and, what can I say? Every word is true. Great graphics (remind me of early Zelda), beautiful music. I like how you've shown the character's aging: not only in the character sprite, but also in landscape colour washing out and the music going away. The speeded-up aging makes a lot of sense and is a nice challenge. I can't really say much about it, it would dilute the experience.

I have no idea whether it's winnable, but I'll be coming back to this one after voting has ended.

I think I'll wrap up my voting here and end this LD on a high note.

Wow, great use of the theme. The audio and visual cues add a really nice touch! Reminds me of a slowing heartbeat, which may have been the intention? Overall a really good game, it accomplishes a lot with very little.

i love the concept of fading the environment over time as you lose health, great idea!