Little Lady
A Little Ladybug in a Big World
You are a young ladybug, learning your way in the world.
Hint: Play with sound on
What was made for the Jam, and what was prior?
All 3d models were already built either prior to the compo, or used other CC-BY models from online. Some of their associated textures are their own. See licenses for those.
The rest of the content was made during the competition timeframe
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Levels
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Story (ha)
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Music
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Colors
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Menu
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Code itself
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Collision Box data
The following mods are considered third party for the compeition:
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moreblocks
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autobox
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rocks
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markdown2formspec
A different interesting approach to minetest's cubic nature
I think this game takes the cake with having the most interesting visuals I have seen so far. At its core, it is a simple parkour puzzle game, but the visuals definitely make it stand out, the music is nice as well.
My only issue is, perhaps due to limitations by minetest itself, the inconsistent collision boxes of the "platforms", while I suppose the idea is to let the player figure it out, attempting to traverse these inconsistent collision boxes reminds me more of "Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy" than a fun relaxing parkour platformer that the music has tricked me into believing.
That being said, I do appreciate the attempt to break the cubic nature, and the effort into it as well, i'm sure making those collision boxes weren't fun either. However, figuring out those collision boxes as gameplay isn't really my cup of tea, but I'm sure it's someone else.
At the end of the day however, the homemade music and graphics are beautiful enough for me to provide a thumbs up.
A challenging game with simple rules
The rules are simple. A ladybug has to collect all stars only using horizontal movements. It is a special kind of maze, in which the player has to figure out which paths are traversable first. It may seem as an annoyance that the collisionboxes do not match the meshes perfectly but I think that it is a good challenge, making it a game with partial information. It may also cause that the player wrongly declares a path untraversable only because the player did not manage to pass it. I enjoyed all the levels.
Something special
Impressive! This unique game is something totally different compared to other Minetest games I've seen so far. This does not only apply to the concept and idea behind it but also to the huge work being put into detail. Different piano tracks played for every level make them feel special and unique by themselves too. To sum it up: I've never before felt so much like a little ladybug :D
Truly amazing!
This game is a very unique one. It has a very interesting texture style, and the models look nothing like the ones in other games, they're very detailed and have a high number of polygons (compared to other models in Minetest mods and games, at least). When I showed it to my friend with node outlining set to none, he couldn't believe it was Minetest!
Challenging
This game is very challenging. It requires patience and attention to detail to complete. The difficulty suddenly increases with the midterm level, and the last couple of levels took me about 45 minutes each, spread over multiple tries. The visuals of the game put me in awe that this was accomplished in Minetest and the music was quite immersive. One frustrating bug, that I noticed was already fixed, is that clicking any node causes a crash with no level progress saved. Some models occasionally became invisible, like the stump on the Garden level. Additionally, the hud overlay for the stars overlapped the first number over "of" in 2 digit star numbers (Ex: 17 of 19). I liked that the time for each level was recorded, giving the player something to do after a first pass through all the levels, since the player definitely picks up some skill in climbing as a ladybug. Adding some kind of animation to the ladybug model would be nice to have. Also, it would be very helpful to make it clear which grass you can/can't walk through. Lastly, I occasionally got stuck in between plants, but there is a non-punishing restart function for that.
Immersive journey, through stunning audiovisuals
I don't think poor Minetest has ever seen such quality of texturing before. It even features mostly correct collisions for the stems and flowers! The creator really poured all their creativity in the making of this beautiful exploration minigame, and it shows; its simple, yet well layed out parkour gameplay allows you to look at all the nooks and crannies of the luscious landscape around you. Lets not forget about the soothing ragtime soundtrack, completely composed from scratch and even improvised, just for this Jam: the icing on the cake! If you can't figure out the obstacle in front of you, you are encouraged to attack it from another angle (or flower petal), an experience many exploration games fail to provide; if you are totally lost, just take a deep breath to calm yourself, use the neat level selection menu and go back to earlier levels. In fact, it managed to make me lust for those stars looming over the petals, just mocking the inability of the persevering, young ladybug to fly... Whatever you do, DON'T give up! The experience is totally worth the effort.
The biggest sin of this game was making me spawn in the air to fall in the void sometimes. A formspec was blank in one level. Like many of the other minigames, it showed some minor issues that I think don't hinder gameplay much, for example a few stems in some levels are shown floating above the ground or vases; but it's a game jam, what can you do? :|
Its calming vibe balances your frustration very well. Bravo!
Very Unique
This is a very unique game in which you navigate the world as an insect.
It is sort of a 3D platformer, except you can't jump.
You crawl on objects and "glide" to other objects
This experience somehow actually makes it feel like you are controlling an insect.
The geometry appears much different than Minetest Game, especially with node outlining turned off.
The formspecs are well done and do a great job of guiding you throughout the experience.
This game is a perfect game jam entry. Just the right amount of content and presents itself very well.
Frustrating but interesting game
The difficulty curve is wack. The first 4 levels are really easy. The Mid-term level that comes after is quite a bit harder than those levels. The real issue lies in all the levels that come after the mid-term one; they are frustaintly difficult out of nowhere and it feels like the player is not prepared for it at all. It doesn't help that what has parts have collision and which don't is arbritrary, which causes situations where you climbed all the way up, only to fall all the way back to the ground through part of the model that you had no real way of knowing had no collision. This causes lot of this difficulty feels really unfair.
Putting that aside, I love the music, the artstyle, and the visuals of the levels. Though I wish at least a bit more effort was put into making the levels feel like real places, for example, the area outside the fence being just the void limits the immersion. Even like a basic background scene would have helped. Also, I had visual issues with culling where really big objects would stop rendering a bit before they went off-screen, which thankfully did not happen enough to be super annoying.
Overall, I think it's worth to play to completion as is, as an interesting challenge because the game is fairly unique and decently fun. I wouldn't go much further then that though.
Trying Hard
This game is having a lot of humor like acting as if a error when i created a world. (A coincidence i seriously named the world bug and i got a bug error eventhough it is th first time i played it.) Also the game is challenging like getting over it where you climb up. This needs much more precision and i didn't manage to complete field trip. I just deleted it right now it is like once only playable game. This appears so out of place in shape. (Not cubic) as if its its own game.
A great game! Very funny and interesting
This game was played and rated in the Minetest GAME JAM LIVE (ep2): https://rumble.com/vrgaco-minetest-game-jam-live-ep2.html Congrats on getting the best score of the stream! Note: rating system was changed a bit from ep1
OVERVIEW
OVERALL: 26/30 (Love it!)
CONCLUSION
A very funny and interesting game, I enjoyed playing this on the stream, and even though I mainly program in Minetest, I will probably continue to play this game! Maybe add sounds when you colllect stars? Great job! This has been my favorite game!
-StarNinjas
Muy inestable aun
El juego y la idea es buena, pero como el propio autor dice, es una version inacabada
epic modles
i love the modles in this game, they are very detailed. maybe after they jam, could you add aminations? that would make the game alot nicer. needing to fix your bug is annoying and so is falling in the sky for flower level...
bugged but playable
Cute little game, but having an error message the first time you open the world is confusing. Also the new level dont load without having to go back to menu.
Beautiful game
I tested 10 games from JAM2021 until now (Build'N'Buy, littlelady, lucky dude, modular_portals, subway_miner, snake_3d, grand_theft_box, pacman, buildacity and balloonair) and for me this is the 2º best of then. (1º place to me was Build'N'Buy)
But only work in single player mode, i can't create a local server, the players must be aware.
Several bugs and basically no cubes
The author paid attention to graphical details, but as I've already said with Stella (another Jam entry), why exactly feature a game with basically no voxels in a voxel engine? Why not on Godot, to name one?
Graphics aside, punching things makes the game crash, time doesn't work and I think that it was used too much text to explain some basic concepts that could have been indirectly narrated
Screenshots are deceptive
PLEASE NOTE: This review is written for the 2021 Minetest Game Jam version of this game, by a PARTICIPANT. I used Minetest version 5.4.1 to playtest.
Right off the bat, the game does not really look like the screenshot. The early levels look very empty and much less impressive. Also, the map ends in open air, rather than a constant grassland. For this deceptive/bad use of screenshots, this game immediately gets a thumbs down.
The cool models seem to appear in the later levels only? But why only in the later levels? Meh. Not enough for a thumbs up anyway. A little bit more consistency would have been nice. The screenshots sure look nice, but the actual game much less so (esp. early levels).
Also, I'm stuck in the level in which I'm supposed to climb up the vine. No matter what I do, I can't get up. I read the instructions, but they didn't help at all. Confusing and frustrating. Difficult is okay, but if I have no idea what I am supposed to do to do basic tasks like "climbing", then the game has failed.
If this game would have been a little bit more stable and playable, I might have given a thumbs up.