Forgery Frenzy by Katelyn Trout

made by Katelyn Trout for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

😱 You’re trying your absolute hardest to make new friends… …but you’ve accidentally told everyone that you’re an extravagant art collector! Now they all want to come over TONIGHT to see your “collection”!

🖌️ Your mission: Forge some of the world’s most famous paintings before your guests arrive! Time to fake it ‘til you paint it.

🎨 How to Play: Use the mouse to select paints from the left side of the screen, then click and drag across pixels to bring your masterpiece to life.

Three Game Modes!

🕐 Classic Mode – See how close you can get to the original in just 60 seconds!

🧘 Zen Mode – Chill out and take all the time in the world to perfect every brushstroke.

🎆 Freedraw Mode – Feeling creative? Draw to your heart’s content and see it displayed in a frame once you're done. Don’t forget to screenshot and share your creation with friends! 📸

:rat: :rat: :rat:

And now some shameless plugs for our studio while you're here....

Follow us! We're Tavern Rat Studios! (Our first major title, Mischief, is out now on steam so check it out!)

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Itch.io page	https://tavernratstudios.itch.io/forgery-frenzy
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/forgery-frenzy

Ratings

Overall	104^th	3.957⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Fun	153^th	3.761⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	75^th	3.913⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Theme	499^th	3.522⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	333^th	3.804⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Humor	72^th	3.957⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Mood	156^th	3.955⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Given		16🗳️	27🗨️

Feedback

dullai

Oct 06th · 19:20 UTC

The VFX are really cool but I wish the paintings were higher contrast, it's a bit frustrating to have so many similar colors when you only have a minute to get it done.

Adam Konig

Oct 06th · 23:41 UTC

@dullai Totally fair feedback that we also felt upon playtesting at the end but didn't have enough time to rectify for all the paintings. Thanks for playing! <3

megalukes

Oct 07th · 20:11 UTC

I enjoyed the game, but I have the same complaint as @dullai. If the colors had better contrast, it would be a bit easier. In my experience, I spent most of the time trying to differentiate the colors, especially in the second painting and the Van Gogh one (it was hard to distinguish the blue tones for me). Overall, I loved the atmosphere and the graphics, and the music really contributed to the game's mood. Great job!

Dominic Graziano

Oct 10th · 21:09 UTC

really enjoyed it, and definitely felt that "Frenzy" in the later challenges. It is especially fun for people who enjoy pixel art :)

Pandalk

Oct 10th · 21:47 UTC

Very funny, I really enjoyed the gameplay overall, now I'm ready to make friends by lying to them!

If I had to try to think about how to improve it, I think I would start with a bigger brush (4 tiles perhaps, maybe a 3/3 with corner cuts) and a bigger canvas as a result (you don't even need to make the resolution better, just going 2*2 of the same color for each 1 you currently have would be enough), it would make it easier for you to handle the size increase over levels and its effect on the difficulty spike you can feel between the first and 2nd painting, while keeping the "messy" nature of trying to speed paint :p

Nomelu

Oct 11th · 01:14 UTC

It's a fun concept for a game. When the canvasses got larger it was quite difficult to finish anything in time, even an accurate picture. Would be nice if you could click on the "goal" picture to grab a color, because it was really hard to tell the difference between colors sometimes. Or perhaps if colors that were similar to each other counted towards the percentage, instead of just the "exact match" color. The audio responses to finishing a painting were a nice touch. Fun game!

tenshi42

Oct 11th · 02:26 UTC

As a color blind, it's pretty weird, but enjoyable !

prisma

Oct 11th · 05:06 UTC

guys color by number is actually too hard...

Chaol

Oct 11th · 05:06 UTC

Color by numbers is aaactually too hard

HexStart

Oct 11th · 07:35 UTC

I like it, I think it's a really clever idea and it feels good to play, due to audio and visual feedback. I assumed that it's not really possible to perfect the paintings beyond the first ones, but only to make them "somehow" resemble the original. So in that context, the similar colors mostly contributed to how funny the game was, in this setup of "I gotta fake my art collection quickly". It works :thumbsup:

Zen mode was definitely more relaxing, as the name implies. Although I've also given up on searching for the rogue pixel :smile:

![forgery.png](///raw/aed/44/z/6f3e8.png)

Adam Konig

Oct 11th · 17:26 UTC

@hexstart you quite literally decided it was "good enough!" :laughing:

The default team

Oct 11th · 18:05 UTC

This is a very fun game. I found the difficulty well balanced, and the time constraint was just low enough to force me to rush the painting, without being frustrating. I especially liked the sound effects, it's a shame I couldn't give a rating for the audio.

Pimeko

Oct 11th · 20:16 UTC

Loved the idea, it was a bit tedious to differentiate the color tints and made it rather difficult for me being bad at colors haha
Super smooth sound effects and funny story!

LDJam user 261037

Oct 12th · 19:20 UTC

Really fun concept! Played classic mode, but am going to try again in zen mode so I can actually finish more of them XD

It was a pretty big skill jump between the first and second painting with the new pallet having so many similar shades of gray, though the simple style of the first one did a good job helping me figure out the ropes with low pressure.

floata3

Oct 14th · 02:22 UTC

very good game entry , enjoyed the music very relaxing nice puzzles

SergS Workshop

Oct 14th · 14:59 UTC

Nice opening scene! The gameplay is simple and pleasant, though the color palette can be pretty tricky to work with — I had to brute force it a many times😅. The sound design is really nice, too.

binroot

Oct 16th · 18:58 UTC

I've never played a game like this before, so thank you for making something so refreshingly new :smiley:

Rol

Oct 17th · 17:49 UTC

The gameplay is easy to understand and fun to play! Great job. It kinds of similar to building Legos, when there are so many similar colors that you start to lose your sense of distinguishing between colors(It happened to me when I built The Starry Night Lego set). And it's also interesting to guess what this painting is before you see it!

Zshandi Krahn

Oct 20th · 07:43 UTC

Awesome game, love the aesthetic and concept, very relatable! I found the first few really easy but the difficulty really ramped up at the end. I know some have criticized the difficulty, which I kind of agree with, though I also feel like it made it more fun and frantic at the end to be rushing and getting things only kind of sort of matching. So long as the match scoring takes similar colors into account (which it seemed to), I don't think it's too big a deal for it to not have super high contrast :)

Ciphereo

Oct 23rd · 11:16 UTC

Like this idea! I've never played such a game before. It was a very unique experience and the music was really pleasant.

tetrapteryx

Oct 23rd · 23:09 UTC

I'm pretty confident I can forge my way to social success now, thanks!

This is a great concept, and well executed. I appreciate that you included a zen mode, I liked being able to try all the levels panic-free.

One minor quality of life suggestion: it's hard to remember which color I used previously when there are several similar ones on the palette. Being able to color pick from my own canvas would be awesome.

Adam Konig

Oct 24th · 18:07 UTC

@tetrapteryx ooh a little dropper tool would be very helpful! Some of this feedback is a slippery slope into us just building a full version of photoshop if we go deep enough :laughing: