ragzouken 2012-08-27 10:36
It'd be nice to have some visual feedback that you are attacking a slime (and vice versa)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD24 → Slime Slayer
By mjiig
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Theme | 501 | 2.56 | ||
| Innovation | 512 | 2.53 | ||
| Fun | 635 | 2.16 | ||
| Overall | 637 | 2.42 | ||
| Mood | 658 | 1.86 | ||
| Coolness | 706 | 41 | ||
| Graphics | 708 | 1.89 |
It'd be nice to have some visual feedback that you are attacking a slime (and vice versa)
The premise of being tasked to kill off the slimes and then them waking up and multiplying is cool, I don't think the gameplay matches up to that unfortunately. The core concept works well but there isn't much feedback telling you what's going on
I like the "turn" based system of time. But the game was too boring and the Hydlide-like attacking was awful.
Would have been nice to have flipped sprites depending on which way the object is travelling, and some kind of sounds and music. It also would have been nice to have an attack/block button to add a bit more depth into the combat.
You really needed to include more information for the player to understand what all of the numbers on the screen were, it is simple to remember, but could make it a bit annoying for some.
Good effort all around though.
I like the idea of the game.
The upgrade system is nice (Maybe give the information about the numbers inside the game and not only on this page).
Also the game looks very static, some animations and sounds would be nice.
very good idea, but needs a better combat system and SFX or music
Kind of hard to know what is going on
hard to tell what's going on, as has already been said, even just a few more frames of animation would have really helped.
It was pretty cool once I understood what all the stats did. The easiest solution would be to put a short label between the numbers in the white space. It would definitely improve how easy the game is to understand.
The core mechanics are really interesting! But the graphics are so-so, there aren't any sounds, and the game just keeps getting slower and slower the more slimes are on the screen. It could become a much better game with more flair (graphics/sounds), balancing, and speed improvements.
That being said, the core mechanics are very solid, you just need to go from there; I'm sure you could do a lot with this. I'd love to see a post compo version!
I installed everything libjpeg-related that was available, but this still won't run for me on Ubuntu 12.04. I have the development packages, too.
Josh, I don't know for certain but I don't think this game will work on 64-bit Linux because of the way it's statically compiled. Sorry about that but there's not a lot I can do with the machines available to me.
This is the entry I've played the most time so far! :)
I liked the idea, and the first level really challenged me. It's always fun to decide which upgrade to get!
However, at level two I discovered you can actually farm the slimes - aka letting them grow in numbers and them killing 90% of them, then going away and letting them reproduce again and killing 90% of them again... For the upgrades, after Speed got to about 10, I'd always improve Attack, except when my health was really low, in which I'd pick the health upgrade for healing. At some point, my attack was at least twice the HP of even the strongest slimes, so I started accumulating XP to use as health potions when needed, and would only use them when my HP was below 20. I then rushed until level 12 without problems, and turned off because it was clear to me I had found an exploit. :(
The reason I'm giving this detailed description is because I'd REALLY LIKE to see a post compo version! I love this kind of game, I actually played Desktop Dungeons and other dungeon crawlers quite a lot (hell, our main project, The Journey of Eko, has several dungeon crawler elements!). To avoid the farming exploit, I'd increase A LOT the slimes' evolution rate in a level, in order to make it less worthy to farm them. Another approach would be to add some fog of war so that you can't really know what's going on in all the labyrint (that would make it riskier to let slimes live), and/or make slimes have an increasing chance of spawning slime-bosses, which are unworthy for farming (low XP but difficult to kill). Anyway, just suggestions! ;)
Also, since killing slimes is a major part of the game, I'd work on making that visually interesting. Maybe a few particles will do the trick! Notch said that Minecraft's main action is to destroy blocks, so he made sure that doing that was visually pleasing (with the gradual cracks and particles). I loved that advice and employ it all the time! Our games usually have a lot to do with running and jumping, so there are always particles associated with those actions!. ;)
Another point: it would be great if there was a visual indication of which "type" the slime offspring is becoming (stronger, faster or more resistant), as well as which level they are.
Anyways, congrats, I hope you put the time to finish this! If you do that, I'd love to play - maybe you can let me know in Twitter or something? @pixel_cows
Cheers!