The Mother of All Games by sorceress
The title pretty much says it all. :D
Controls: Arrow keys, and Space-Bar as action key.
WINDOWS : https://app.box.com/s/c2nkyrnfmsrtxm28bif9giqu6dy30etj
If you download/try this, please leave a comment, if only to say Hi. I like comments :)
Have fun!
Post mortem : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-mother-of-all-games/the-mother-of-all-games-post-mortem

Ratings
| Overall | 29th | 4.143⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 94th | 3.821⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 247th | 3.393⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 278th | 3.643⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 237th | 3.893⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 127th | 3.714⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 221th | 3.08⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 64th | 4.038⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
The puzzles seem pretty well thought out, though.
I like the music and the simplicity. Allthough I don't quite get the overworld - there seems to be nothing but a cat to be found. I really dig the puzzles in the first few (songs?). I didn't like the asteroids very much and the last level of snake just broke me. So that's pretty much how far I got.
Nice entry, the only thing I'd wish for would be a restart level button. Especially in the second stage of the keys puzzle I had to restart from the overworld a couple of times because there was no place to kill myself for a quick restart.
cheers~
I was debating if I should give overall five stars or not. But just thinking of a sheer amount of work put into these games, I thought it deserves it. Great work!
The lack of a restart button was unpleasant for me as I basically had to complete the same levels over and over again to reach the one where I had failed during the previous attempt. Hope you'll add it in a postjam version.
I read your post mortem and I don't agree that the levels are too easy now. That game with the shooting guys (it was the first one I played, don't know if they are randomized) seemed impossible to beat after the first level.
Maybe I missed something important but I couldn't figure out a way to shoot at them without being hit.
The mini-golf game was by far my favorite!
I also liked the mood you set on the planet surface a lot. Music choice :thumbsup:
Overall, well done :)
Very cool games although some are quite difficult to master. Nice simple graphics and cool background music.
Congrats for actually making 10 (more like 11) games in a week-end. All of them turned out to be polished enough to be enjoyable by themselves. They all have a cohesive art-style, and the overworld bind them together in an interesting way. While I was a bit confused at first like @elzach, after understanding the ocarina & playing a couple games I ended up considering the overworld as just a hub gathering all the companions I got from my adventures. The animals AIs were a nice touch!
Here's the game order I got:
* Sokoban - Nooo I'm bad at this! It eventually turned out less frustrating than expected. I looked for a restart button at some point, pressed Escape, got the lesson, then started killing myself when I needed to ;)
* Key rooms - I never played that kind of game, but it was intuitive & level 3 was interesting.
* Frogger - Easy & fun, maybe the best art. I would have loved if it lasted a bit longer!
* Snake - Level 3 was a bit too long, I think it might scare away a few players. Thankfully I didn't get it as the first game! The immediate feedback when rotating confused me a bit - this plus the music of a different tempo made it a bit hard to follow the rhythm. After 3 attempts I removed my headphones to finish that one :P
* "Helicopter rescue" - Nice find! Thanks for the permissive hitbox. The gameplay I'm used to doesn't clamp the speed, making it more challenging but also more fun I think.
* Shooter: At first I thought I just had to avoid the enemies until I could touch them. Then I remembered the Space key was a thing. Great idea! I wondered whether it was based on a classic I didn't know. At first the fact that the controls weren't twin-stick felt a bit frustrating, but I quickly got the hang of it. The level design was good, making me want to come back for more. Level 3 in particular is complete mayhem, loved it!
* Asteroids: It played well, but it felt like a little something was missing. And sure, the original game had a little difference in that asteroids "looped back" into the level from the other side: I realized this clever detail really made a huge difference in terms of difficulty, maybe in terms of immersion too (not sure why but having asteroids loop makes things feel more like "space"...?).
* "Ice sliding": I know that kind of game in & out (used the mechanic for LD35), and passed through it like an expert.
* Mini-Golf: Totally unexpected! Plus the game turned out to be well implemented (in particular letting the player "climb on walls" prevented gameplay issues, clever).
* Platformer: I was hyped for a Tetris given the game icon, like a final message saying "Yes, I made 9 games plus Tetris". Classic platforming, but it worked well.
Apart maybe from the Snake & Helicopter mini-games, all of them have been IMO implemented perfectly and were comfortable to play. All of them but the Shooter were 100% intuitive to pick up.
If the mini-games were less balanced, making them randomly appear would be a bold move! But here unless you start with Snake I think it works well. Oh and the music/sounds were great, I never grew bored despite needing a good 15/20mn to finish the game.
Some great things:
- Monkey birds are so adorable.
- I love the music. For some reason, I'm getting Aztec-esque vibes from the puzzle track.
- The puzzles are pretty well designed. They were easy enough for me to pick up without a tutorial, even when I'm not familiar with the game they are based off of (if so).
- I love the cat.
- I love how the cat gets scared when you summon another puzzle piece.
- The puzzles are consistent in their design, but different enough that you can tell them apart from each other.
Some issues and such:
- In the snake game, perhaps the player should not start moving until they press the arrow keys. I also agree that the immediate feedback of the game is confusing and
- In the platformer with the keys, I'm not really a fan of the player bouncing when they land on a platform. Not to mention the jump sound effect seems to go overboard as I am walking through a passage that is exactly one block high.
- There was an option to Continue on the menu, but the game doesn't seem to save. I completed 8 of the 10 mini games before quitting.
- An option to restart within a level would have been helpful.
- It appears that you can summon a different puzzle in the same spot once you beat the previous one. Essentially, I could summon a bunch of puzzles within a short distance of each other and not have to move. This is really a minor nitpick, but I would have liked to have the different puzzle games spaced out around the world so that there is a reason to actually move around the world instead of staying in one spot. But I suppose it does make it more convenient to start playing the next game with your current mechanic. Imo it just defeats the purpose of the theme.
Other than that, this is certainly one of the more polished games I've played in this LD. The art, audio and variety of gameplay stand out for me here. Awesome work!
Snake controls a bit frustrating, especially on level 3. I hope you'll add a restart button for a certain level, not the whole minigame.
The Mother of All Games - this is true.
Also, nice cat :slight_smile:
Lovely planet, nice birds and cat. Took me a while until I understand I have to use the ocarina to get the games... Perhaps easier to just spread them out on tha planet.
The helicopter game was quite hard but I finished it. The snake pacman level was so hard I stopped at that one. I've finished all the others so it's really fine.
1 cat
9 monky birds
0 snakes
The amount of content is staggering. Levels mostly made sense (except snake, which is insane).
I liked the top down keys puzzle because it required thinking. It was a bit annoying that you could move in small steps even though the important resolution was whole squares. It led to accidental opening of some doors which required restart (was there a restart button? I didn't find one, so had to do levels 1&2 over again a few times I think)
The guns puzzle was the right mix of twitch and thought.
On the overworld everything is pretty, and the cat is amusing.
Anyway, one of the more impressive entries I've seen this LD!
Nice minigame collection! I couldn't get some of the references, but overall I enjoyed it.
The background of the minigames was quite cool! Characters and the hub world were... "less good", in comparison. :slight_frown: Unfortunately, that created an expectation of the game could had been if you had more time for enhance all assets...
The songs also quite good, and the hub world theme seemed fitting!
The level of polish in all areas is no short of impressive either. At times I felt the reaction times on the snake minigame were a bit oversensitive, but other than that and some minor issues (in minigames with no way to die a restart button would have been nice, for instance), you've nailed it. I managed to get all the monky birds plus the cat :smiley:. Sound effects were nice, especially on the overworld, and the music was subtle enough so it didn't get to feel particularly repetitive even if I spent quite a while playing.
This is an incredible entry, congratulations!
The transitions and general mood of the game is really good. I don't know how you had time to add animation to Sara cat when she's scared in addition to implementing 10 (!) games. If I had a hat I'd take it off. Good work!
Let's see what I remember of the individual games. Most were working perfectly, some had some small bugs. A key to restart a level would have really helped me in the game where you had to collect the keys in the top-down view. In this game, I also accidentally hit the wrong doors unintentionally a few times, which meant I had to restart from level 1. I think the same turn based movement as in the Sokoban clone would have solved that problem.
The third level in the snake game was a bit too long for me. I cannot quite say why, but I had some problems with the movement in this game, sometimes turning too early, sometimes too late. I remember the controls on my old Nokia Snake to work a bit tighter. Sorry, I cannot really say why that is. In the third level then, it was excruciating to finish almost the whole level but then crash into a wall shortly before finishing.
The top-down bullet hell was a bit hard to play even once I figured out the right order in which to kill the enemies. It sometimes needed some very fast move-turn-shoot-move sequences, that I failed to do repeatedly. Maybe a tiny bit lower firing rate for the enemies would have been better.
The platformer worked well, just the movement felt a bit detached from the input, but in the end I had no problem with it (also, when jumping into a one tile high opening, the jump sound was played repeatedly and rapidly).
The rest of the games worked perfectly for me, I think. Especially Sokoban and the one where you can only move in a straight line and always move as far as possible were great. Nice puzzles, not too hard to solve, but not too easy either.
There's a small graphical glitch when sprites move or the screen shakes. In that case, there was sometimes a small, one pixel high line below the sprite or tile. I've seen that problem in many games, including many of my own. The solution was usually to floor() the tile and sprite positions and camera translations. This way texels line up with pixels again.
A few words about the graphics: The sprites look gorgeous! Especially Monky Bird and Sara Cat are super cute and the animations are beautiful! The overworld's design did not fit the graphics style of the minigames perfectly (bigger pixels, polar coordinates), but the difference was small enough to only notice when you really want to nitpick ;-)
The music was not annoying, even after listening to it for about an hour, which is an achievement in itself.
Also, despite my small annotations, I am *really* impressed. Each of your minigames is better and has more polish than 90% of LD games, and you made 10, not 1. Very good job!