daydream by Mathstr0fficial
let your mind wander on a park bench

| Link | https://benjaminfalkenberg.com/daydream/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/daydream |
Ratings
| Overall | 159th | 3.55⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 163th | 3.45⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 324th | 2.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 330th | 2.525⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 146th | 3.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 171th | 3.2⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 53th | 3.9⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 7🗳️ | 7🗨️ |
I really like the first boss.
In the end, the zelda part wasn't keeping my interest enough to keep going for another level, even though I want to know what the memories are about.
Everything feels good, it just got repetitive, and I ended up backtracking most of level 1, because I was missing a key.
I really liked that the keys were showing me where to go, to find the locks, though.
Everything looks great, and the sound is great. Very cool entry
Let's begin with the critical feedback.
- The enemies that can turn invisible act as invisible walls, which was more confusing than anything, leading me to assume there was jank wall collision.
- The spinning eyeball laser felt "cheap". It didn't defeat me, but it brought me down from full health to half a heart, which was... stressful to say the least. I don't believe there was any way to dodge that? There could definitely be some better indication of what's going on there.
- The second boss had a very large hitbox, which makes sense as it has a large sprite, but In top down games like this, I usually make the hitbox only extend to where the shadow is. Being hurt by the tall graphics when I assumed the game had some depth, allowing me to run around or behind it... that caught me by surprise.
- The sword arc is a bit interesting. Perhaps making it swap from your left to your right with each swing could help? I found myself needing to rotate the character to hit guys on my right, while I could hit guys on my left while looking directly forwards. It's easy to follow how the sword arc works, but it's weirdly lopsided by only hitting things on your left/ahead of you. Either that, or what NES Zelda does where the sword is only directly ahead of you.
Now for the good stuff.
- The mood. Ohhh wow the feels. You said in the discord that this game was very personal, and it shows. I'm glad you were able to make this story.
- The art outside the dungeon is very cute and relaxing.
- The art inside the dungeon is very readable. (though I did mistake the walls for a carpet in one of the first rooms. It doesn't help that the ghosts can go through them)
- I don't know if it was intentional, but hitting a jar twice before it despawns can yield an extra heart, which was very helpful at times.
- The bosses were unique and made the end of the dungeons very interesting.
All around, great work! Here's my recorded gameplay for further feedback. Cheers!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4WxvOHmemY
An interesting idea and quite a well fleshed out experience for a game jam game - nice work! I had a few bits of feedback:
- I'm a relatively fast reader generally find it uncomfortable reading dialogue that progressively "types in". Most games let you hit the "skip" button (c here?) once to skip the typing in and just show the text, then again to progress. I think this is better UX than just skipping the entire section of dialogue
- Some enemies seemed to hit and damage me after they had despawned. I think this happened with both the initial "tadpoles" and the invisible black cat enemies.
- Often the black cat enemies would disappear for (what seemed like) 5 or 6 seconds. As I could generally only hit one at a time this meant some rooms took 30 seconds to clear where for the majority of the time I was just sitting there waiting for the enemies to respawn.
- I got stuck underneath one of the eyeball bosses, (it looked like I could get through between it and the wall while was avoiding the beam, but couldn't). I took 6 sudden hits of damage and was booted back to the start. I think I would have preferred to be respawned outside the boss room rather than having to walk through the entire level again so I gave up at this point.
I kinda felt an eerie vibe it being so silent, and I thought the main character has a lot of personality

really want to see more of her
the black cats are a bit annoying particularly because they offer no real risk and just make the pace slower
I like that the sword is long enough so that if you hit space real fast you kinda become invincible
I enjoyed the gameplay in the memories, and the mechanics and art
was great.
All round ,great work!
I did stall out early in the second memory dungeon, because it was the same enemies as the first, and it's mandatory to track them down and slaughter them. The disappearing guy who makes you stop and wait for him is a bit grindy to exterminate, and while at first this part was great, it did overstay its welcome given that there was no skipping it.
It's a shame because I was curious to push further and learn how the story unfolded and what the next boss was going to be like!
This is a nice, well-rounded entry! Just a small smoothing of grind and I think I would have spent a lot more time with it.
Here are some things you should consider, that I realized during playing:
- The attack cone for L/R needs to be balanced, it stops at a weird position and I would love to have both sides full covered with the cone - otherwise the intercardinal positioned enemies are hard to target
- The deactivation of colliders needs to be optimized a bit. U can still walk into enemies and get damaged even though they are dead. I would recommend upon killing the enemy - destroy it and instantiate a new gameobject for the cool particle filter effect :)
Thank you so much, I hope I could help with my feedback!
Sound was nice. Great effects and pleasant BG music.
Some confusing hit/damage boxes, but given the time constraints that's not surprising.
Fun little entry. Good job!