How a game with such gorgeous art didn't have a comment until now is beyond my comprehension. The game is really aesthetically appealing! The graphics are definitely the game's forte, the modelling from snowman to the spiders is really well done and cutely animated and the tittle screen illustration and logo are also nicely looking! :smile:

As for the gameplay, it's simple, but it gets the job done. The spiders shadows crawling through the inner-sphere of the globe helped create some tension as to when to exactly expect for them to come down and attack the ginger-man. On both of my playthroughs, my time-span was about of 160. :snowman:

Some things we're a bit disorienting regarding the gameplay though. I've noticed there was a small cool-down to when you could fire carrots at the spiders and I think a small indicator of when you could fire again could have helped establish when I could fire again instead of guessing if I had or not passed the cool-down yet when I pressed the fire button again. I also found the camera slightly disorienting at times, but I would guess me having two monitors plugged in was also a bit at fault here. I wouldn't say it's really that much of a big deal.

I don't know if it your team was the one composing the music or not (since you opted-out of that category), but I did feel the loop became somewhat repetitive after a while, and the music suddenly cuts off near the end when you're almost defeated. I think having just a little more to the loop would be enough to the looping less noticeable.

On another small and minor note, the _Main Menu_ button on the _Pause Menu_ quits the game instead of going back to the _Main Menu_. Just a small issue really. I also liked you had some sounds options for the players. ​:wink:​

Overall, again, I really have to praise the graphical aesthetics of the game. Hope you get more comments with feedback soon, as the game really deserves it!

@JorgeGameDev
WOw. Thank you man! :D
Yeah. the Game definitely isn't perfect. We had more design ideas and all- but pathing the damn Spiders in 3D really gave our team a difficult time! :o :D

And man. Thank you so much for the encouraging words and everything! I was starting to feel like "Oh no. 2.9k Games. OUrs is gonna get burried!" Hahaha.

But this gives me some cool motivation to maybe promote the game more a bit! :D

Quick Edit!
I canceled the Opt-out for Audio- since @Kendro made all the audio for this game. (Which he joined in like- only on the last day! since we had so much issues with the pathing. xD)

This game proves that being good is not helping to get more comments. Even graphics deserves a download and take a look. There are some flaws, but for Jam, this is nicely looking and an extendable game. Good luck with your entry. I won't uninstall this one for a while.

- Wow Wow Wow Wow Wow !!!! amazing graphics Best graphics that i have seen till know on this jam
- gameplay is good
- nice audio

I'm not gonna write as long comment as JorgeGameDev but I'll say that this was a nice entry. It was fun and unique on its own way. It's kinda hard to play without full screen though. Anyways, well done.

I wasn't able to to figure out how to turn my camera which is something I imagine was possible based on the gifs on the game page. The snowman also isn't able to shoot faster than than the spawn rate of the spiders so it is immediately a losing battle.

I liked the graphics and it has a very polished menu.

I think the gameplay needed a bit more to it, mainly the ability to fend off the spiders with faster shooting and more precise shots as where I clicked and where it landed was often different since there was a delay when shooting.

This game is absolutely gorgeous! The 2D art for the UI, menu and intros is fantastic and the models all look great too. The fun little animations like the snowman bobbing up and down really add to the atmosphere and go with the music. Speaking of the music, I'm not sure if you guys did that or whether you got it online but while the music was very fitting the loop got repetitive and noticeable very quickly.

The gameplay was short and sweet (well shorter in my case at least, couldn't get past the 200~ mark). Good fun, but there were a couple of things I noticed that made the game a little harder. The camera is a little disorientating. I'm afraid I can't really explain how, but it's something to do with how you turn and then the firing angle in relation to that. There was also a little window between clicking and firing, which meant if you moved the mouse too early the carrot would be shot and miss the spider. I also noticed a small cooldown between when you could fire shots which could maybe be made clearer with a UI element of some kind. The last thing would be to do with the gingerbread men. The HUD gingerbread at the top at possibly a bit small as they're quite hard to notice. Also I didn't even realise there was more than 3 gingerbread men in the game scene until my second playthrough (already lost one in the first playthrough by the time I noticed the HUD lol!). The didn't realise there was actual gingerbread men in the game scene protecting the village either. Initially I saw 3 gingerbread men on the HUD and thought they were just a lives system. When they went red, I assumed that meant I had lost a life. Then I noticed they disappeared entirely if you lost one but that didn't occur to me until playthrough 2.

Hope this feedback helps somewhat. Honestly it's a great game with a lot of potential!

... and I hate to be that guy, but they can't technically be arachnids if they only have 6 legs ;)

This is a fun game and it looks so nice well done! great entry.

@max-carter
Yes! Just to answer that- with the Gingerbread Man- we only added that during the last 3-4 hours of our Jam. Man. We stayed up all night- and worked from 10 AM+ all the way to 9 AM+ (on our time's submission.) SO we weren't able to polish that side of the game.

Regarldess. Thank you so much for the feedback. Some of the stuff we were sort of aware of- but I guess I didn't think they'd be an issue in Gameplay. I would DEFINITELY DEFINITELY make sure our game is more receptive next time.

I actually pretty much can't wait for the next LDJAM. :D

Music was a bit repetitive. The camera was a bit unwieldy as well. Fun concept really nice art, the title screen and all the UI looks great. Really nice game guys. If you get a chance check out ours https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/down-the-rabbit-hole

Nice! I love the graphics and the splash screen. I like the idea. I had a problems rotating the camera though.

Nice game! :thumbsup:

GORGEOUS one! Congrats

Hey there! I saw my :whale: buddy comment on your game, so I thought to also give it a shot.

The presentation of your game is among the best I've seen so far this time around. I'm the artist of our team, so I always like to look up at what others do, so give the artist person a high five in my behalf. The menus, the spiders, and even the models. It's impresive what got done in so little time.

The use of the themes was fantastic. Snow globes are, after all, designed to be small worlds, so implementing not only that, but treating it as both a snow globe and an actual world was a touch of genius. Watching the spiders crawl on the wall actually gave me tiny goosebumps (not because of arachnophobia). Probably thinking about it too much, but I thought that it was a perfect blend of the world that it's supposed to be and the world that it actually is.

As for the game itself, I must admit, it's not too engaging as it is. The functionality is there, and everything is set up for a fun tower defense experience, but the controller, at least for me, wasn't that good:

- I first tried to play it while working on a dual display set up. The mouse isn't locked to the game, so, even when in full screen, the mouse would leave it.

- I turned off the second display, and then found out that the mouse controls both the aim and the rotation of the character, so aiming becomes a bit finnnicky when enemies are on the borders.

- A hiccup here and there, where there were a bunch of spiders clustered and my shots were not doing anything to them. I think it was an odd glitch or something though, so it's no biggie.

Overall, all things considered, I'm happy to see how such a thing got done in so little time. There's space for improvement and balance. If you retake the project, separating aiming and rotating, adding variety to shots and/or enemies, and finding a longer track could take the project to a new level. If you have a twitter, share it around. I'd like to see what your team can come up with next :D!

As mentioned before by, since I don't know whether or not (or how?) you can actually rotate the camera around it would be great to include a tutorial screen for that. For the gameplay part of things, it's getting hard quite fast with the long cooldown you have on your carrots - maybe a secondary + primary attack would help smoothen things out?

With that out of the way, the game looks impressive. It's a nice, solid idea with a very pretty art style. Although a bit short because of the increase in challenge very early on, it doesn't punish you and encourages to retry again and again. Bonus for adding an option screen as well :)

Thanks for the feedback guys! :D

I'll reply to the ones with specific input. :D

@Moski Yes. Haha. We knew we wanted a game with spider shooting- and we definitely had a lot of more plans to add- but we ran out of time because getting the Spiders to work properly in the first place was a nightamre for our programmer! :D

And yeah- in the end. We only got the "Base" game out.
Here was the original design spec- and as you can see- we were only to implement 1 out of the 3 plans. :(


@spaceemotion
Camera's rotatable with dragging it off screen. I had no idea it would have been an issue until people start mentioning it. We originally made the Snowman rotate with A and D to left and right respectively- but it caused some weird bug for the carrots to rotate along the Snowman while in Mid-air. xD xD xD

Prety nice game. It is hard to aim sometimes.

Really nice models and animation. I like the spider shadows on the globe, very ominous. It's a shame you didn't get all your ideas implemented in time.

Wow, the first Ludum Dare game I played so far with a real option menu. :smile:
First off, props to Clint for this amazing art! I just fell in love with that right away!

In a post jam version some sfx to have a bit more feedback on shooting and hitting would be nice.
And I am not sure if a visual indicator from where the enemys are coming would help or get annoying, you'd have to try that out. Also you should balance the difficulty a bit and scale it more gradually.

Those are just some suggestions, I know how hard the time pressure is on LD and what you guys were able to pull of in three days is amazing!

Really nice those snowman animations!!

But I'd some problems with rotating arround.. I could rotate the snowman 360 degrees but just around 180..
This was caused because I'd played in windowed mode but this could be fixed by having key input as well.

But after all it was real fun! I had a life span of 192!!

Great job!

Hey guys I tried your game! I LOVE the visuals/graphics/art, and the menus are really fluid and well-made. Nice splash screens too!

Here are the key things I personally think would be worth improving:
- I think the controls and camera could be improved upon - rotating seems inconsistent and its hard to see where you're aiming with the crosshairs (mainly due to the low camera angle), especially when the enemies are right next to you
- The music kinda got annoying because it was the same 4-second melody looping continuously. It had the right elements but it really should be at least a minute long before repeating (otherwise just use a royalty-free Christmas track) :)
- I reckon reduce the delay on the attacks so it feels more responsive. I really wanted to shoot instantly and shoot more often, but there was a delay that made it feel a bit slow.

Hope you found this feedback helpful (definitely not trying to be mean or anything haha), and overall a good effort! I commend the personality and vibe of the game, and I think it could be something really fun with a bit more tweaking :smile:

@Spinaljack
Yesss! :( We really wish we had more time to do this! xD

@samurai-spark
WE weren't able to polish any of the SFX because we finished the pathing for the damn spiders on the 3rd day itself! xD We literally finished 20 minutes after submission hour! WE barely had any sleep as well. Man. @badscotsman was super tough coding this game! 16 hours with a few breaks in between. tsk. Juggernaut.

@JScotty
I think this is because you played in windowmode! xD
We actually intended this to be playable on web- but ofcourse, the cursor wouldn't rotate properly- so we had to make it downloadable so people can play full screen.

@xavier-indie-gamedev
IT's totally fine man. Haha. Camera. Music Loop. And the delay on animation. This was a mistake on my part (Animation.) I initially intended a very strong anticipation for the shoot so the carrots would feel more impactful. In the end- it wasn't as fun as it could have been.

And Thank you all so much for the feedback guys. I'm very happy with this Jam because it's making me think on how we as Game Designers really have to Nail "smoothness" down. Haha. xD

Such an excellent game! Really love the art (especially the poster logo and game over page). If you guys can finish all features on your plan, it would be fantastic!~ Looking forward to the next version!

Oh nouu! They are munching my gingerbread fortress!! Cool game guys! It's just perfect. Easy to play, satisfying and funny. When there were no monsters around (when? :D) I loved to just make my snowman dance to the beautiful music:D Well crafted, great art.

Wow, that is a great entry! The art was fantastic. The music gave an unnerving feeling, which matched perfectly with the stress of spiders attacking, especially when you only see their shadows at first. Everything is well crafted down to the smallest details.

While I liked the feeling I got from the music, it did feel a little repetitive.

Great job!

Good job on the game! As other's have said, the art is excellent, though the music is repetitive and gets annoying after a while. The controls are a little weird, but the idea of the game taking place in a snow globe is unique.
Good job!

I really enjoyed this game. I'm not a fan of the camera though. At first I thought it was awesome because it looked super cool, but when I started playing I got lost preety fast.

Having a slightly bigger crosshair would'nt hurt either.

But I really like it over all! Good job guys.

Really great presentation here, right down to the menu. Your menu has more polish than some entire games I've played.

The gameplay was pretty straightforward, but the effect of the spiders shadows appearing at the beginning was a great touch and it turned your pleasant atmosphere into a nightmare (I hate spiders).

The only issue I had was trying to turn all the way around 180 degrees, I'd lose my mouse and have some trouble re-aligning things.

Other than that minor thing, no complaints!

It is definitely one of the best games ever... But one thing we really need some BOOM...BOOM...PAW!!!! and rapid shooting to kill those creepy spidies and can you make the gingerbread man "run and shout (aaaahhhhhhh)" just saying ^_- hahahahahaha.....

Congratulations guys job well done!!!

I love the art and the music, they fit the game very well. The camera controls felt some kind of fishy and that sadly destroyed the fun for me.

The shooting mechanics feel strange, when you click to shoot there is some sort of random delay before you really shoot. Sometimes you can fire three successive carrots and sometimes you don't shoot a carrot at all even though it plays the animation for it.

Altogether the game is good, but I think it needs some polishing on the gameplay-side. The fantastic graphics add a lot to the game. :)

@Skosnowich
Thanks for the comments. Yes. We understand. Haha. We had the idea intact- but it we sort of "made up how things go" as time went by- so stuff like the camera, the shooting, and all that weren't as "locked on" design wise. :) Thank you so much for playing our game. :D

Tonematrix music is always nice :) The art style is very cute and the gameplay is very good.

The only problem I have with it is the camera controls. It's hard to aim at spiders *(I just realized that other people have already said this)* when the snowman is between the spider and the camera. It's also hard to know if a spider will pop up behind the camera.

Other than that, this is a beautiful entry. You guys should keep working on it!

Thank you very much to all the people who played, rated, and especially left comments for our little game. It was really a lot of fun participating in this game jam; and, of course, plenty of lessons were learned. As a result of this experience, I truly believe that participating in game jams makes you a better game designer. Special thanks to my teammates for all their hard work and for making this such a good time. Cheers

Lovely graphics, fun game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3lV-lDD06U

You have undoubtedly the prettiest main menu out there, and the graphics in the game along with the animations are also amazingly done! The game itself was really interesting and fun as a concept, however the shooting mechanic did not really work for me. I wouldn't care if I had just a fixed fire rate or a cooldown or something, but I felt that this was not consistent. And either when I mashed the button or kept it pressed down, I didn't know what worked which was kind of frustrating. Also aiming was not very straightforward for me, but maybe that was just me. Other than that it's a solid and well polished game, and the music and sound effects were really good. Great job! :D