Lily Pad Drifters by mike09123
Drift and eat flies to win the girl.

| Youtube | https://bernard-bumblebutt.itch.io/lily-pad-drifters |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/lily-pad-drifters |
Ratings
| Overall | 780th | 3.516⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 569th | 3.541⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 604th | 3.5⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 835th | 3.597⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 859th | 3.484⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 241th | 3.852⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 158th | 3.806⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 753th | 3.442⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 32🗨️ |
By the way, am I dying because of lack of nutritious components in my body or because of spinning around so much? :D
Only thing that was a bit confusing was the direction that the frogs goes when I released. Since the lily pad is spinning I expect the frog to go in the direction of the spin, but it goes in the direction the frog was facing. I guess it was done so since you can grab on to any part of the leaf and it would make it difficult to launch in the spin direction. So, it's not that bad, just something that I noticed that was a little confusing. Other than that it was really fun to play.
Second, I know a classic PS1 Frogger death animation and sound when I see/hear one, nice touch. :wink:
Third, I really like this game. It's a classic "simple to learn hard to master" concept, and while it took me a bit to get to grips with the controls, once I was able to understand them I was dartin' across the lily pads and catchin' flies like a pro.
I only got a chance to check out the first two levels, but I'm definitely making a note to come back to this one.
A few things that could really take this over the top:
- This may be happening already, but it'd be nice if the bug spawning patterns varied per level
- Some kind of indicator of how much time you have left without eating (draining colour from the frog, maybe?). I found myself staring at the timer a lot, doing quick math to see how long I had left
- It felt super awkward launching myself when the frog would spin in reverse, but I don't have any helpful suggestions here.
I missed the audio queues though, I think it adds a lot to a game like this. The graphics are solid though.
Two things I didn't really understand:
Why is there sometimes a textbaloon appearing at the frogs in the left top corner?
And what do the hearts mean?
I had fun playing your game, well done!
Edit: I did not read your description properly, sorry for that. the objective is clear now :-) I have to win the girl frog and the hearts are an indicator of how far I've come/
My only real issue was in the first level - it seems your flies spawn pretty much at random, so I had a couple attempts where very few flies came within the reach of the lilypads.
I found the best strategy is just to stay in place and let the flies come to me :sweat_smile:
:grin::thumbsup:
My biggest criticism would probably be what others above have said about adding in more incentive to move. I found that I could beat some levels with like a 50% chance by just not moving
The game is beautiful, with so many cool details like the fishes or lily pads changing color randomly when you restart.
The music is bangers.
The mechanic is smart but has a few issues. The jumping direction felt weird, and it was more than often optimal just to not do anything. I won level 4 by not touching anything and level 5 with one jump.
The level progression with a bit of story is nice.
Small bug : you can touch the kill zone and die while hanging to the rightmost lily pad on level 2.
Thanks for the game 💕
About the game, using hearts for the number of level you cleared is weird (even if I get what they represent): I was wondering why my 5 lives were never used and why I was dying instantly (understood it after finishing level 1 tho) and I agree with comments saying that the intuitive throw of the frog would be to continue from the spinning movement instead of her direction but I got used to it.
Overall, the game is hard but fun once you get used to the throw, I love the humour of the game and the audio (both voice acting and background music)
The implementation of the theme is genius, the gameplay is fun and feels fair, the VO is funny...
I don't want to like this game as much as I do... but I still do. It's just too enjoyable!