Every month I see to review all of the games that were nominated as the Best of that month, which you can view in the link above!
As a game developer myself, I know how difficult it can be when you are starting out and how tricky it can be to tell how your game will be received by users. After all, you know how your game is meant to be played, and you can't just wipe that from your memory when you're building and testing it!
Therefore, I record myself playing all of the games for the first time for 10-15 minutes and try to voice how I'm feeling when I'm playing it, so that developers can see how a user might experience their game for the first time, especially for things like tutorials. I also try to provide some advice as well, but it might not always be the best: what I'm really hoping is that developers can draw their own conclusions on what might need work from how I stumble through their game.
Game Devs Reviewed: @voidgazerBon @53xy83457 @WilkinGames @JustinWang123 @Cryptor-Studio @AxolStudio @RowanFuture @nulledwine @bluswimmer @amidos2006 @LakenDaCoda @Esperance @Chris @arrogancy @CommanderJersey @StickFigya @soulsTogether @RicardoReyesPaz @Kwongo @Frosty @omgmac @Extar @Octopus9000 @MindTheGrease
While all of these games were the best of the month...
MY PERSONAL ARBITRARILY-RANKED TOP 10 GAMES OF THE MONTH
My Top 10 was (in sort-of ranked order and based on my own criteria which is some weird sense of 'memorability' for me personally and totally subject to genres I like and I don't feature an author twice even if they had two good entries so as to spread the love etc etc):
And here are some Honorable Mentions (games that were close contenders for the top, additional games from an already highlighted dev this month, games that are still demos but promising, games that are clones of existing games but still good, etc):
Thanks to all the portal warriors that sifted through all the games to find the best in the bunch for me to check out in the first place! And as always, even if your game wasn't listed by me personally, hold your head high as I enjoyed playing all of them nonetheless as they are, after all, the best of the month!
OTHER COOL STUFF:
It wasn't actually submitted this month so it wasn't eligible, but this featured game was pretty neat!
bluswimmer
Thanks for playing Looping Larceny!
Do have a few notes regarding a few points you brought up during the video:
- Yes, the chest is simply there to remind players what upgrades they've collected.
- I have no defense for the slippery jump physics. That one's on me. Definitely will pay more attention to that in the next platformer I make.
- Yeah, I agree that the timer itself could've looked better. That said, I was feeling pretty tired by the end of development and genuinely could not bring myself to add more.
- I noticed that you were trying to bounce off the bat to reach that one timer. Frankly, that one is also on me- you're supposed to do a rolling jump across that gap after dropping down from the room where you got the stomp. I think the bat ended up confusing a lot of people.
I do find your remarks about the game feeling aimless to be rather interesting- I think you're the first person to mention that out of the hundred or so comments I've received. The game is designed the way it is largely out of circumstance; before development, I had a vague mental image of how I wanted the map to look in my head, and then I decided to add the escape as a fun way to cap off the game. That said, I do like the idea of having the diamond at the start, and I'd like to try that if I were to make a follow-up.
FutureCopLGF
Cheers! And yeah, I'll admit that the remarks about it being a bit aimless might just be me trying too hard to sound intellectual, haha! As you can see, I have no problem getting started by just following my natural instincts to search and collect (as I'm sure everyone else did as well), similar to how games like Doom don't necessarily need to prompt you either, as you just follow your killer instinct based on the tools given. Still, I just thought it would've been nice if there was just a bit of a stronger sense of a story/prompt/goal at the start instead of stumbling into it, but perhaps that's part of the charm.