FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD31 → The Lonely Realm of Tom Thaum, the Space Wizard

The Lonely Realm of Tom Thaum, the Space Wizard

By jjevil

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CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness1100
Innovation1933.60
Audio3053.20
Humor3662.85
Fun4163.17
Mood4303.14
Theme4323.62
Overall4583.25
Graphics5843.10

Comments

liamtwose 2014-12-08 11:07

great work, highest score 844, took a short while to get used to at first, but stick with it, its a neat little game!

plauk 2014-12-08 11:10

Nice and weird. Unfortunately I had a bit of trouble with the controls. Cool concept though.

dekart 2014-12-08 11:20

It's kinda hard, but I like it. The music is good. Nice game!

jjevil 2014-12-08 13:16

You can pause the game (Keyboard p or gamepad start) and view the full controls.

ainokaisa 2014-12-08 13:40

Not sure what the attack did. High score a bit on the positive side :)

colludium 2014-12-08 16:43

I enjoyed. Good job!

sputnik 2014-12-08 18:13

Love the "you shall not pass" wizard! Kinda weird (that's a good thing) but maybe too hard.

jarry 2014-12-08 18:16

Nice game, love it

ali312 2014-12-08 18:17

Did not get is first, but then it was fun
Nice :)

gins 2014-12-08 18:23

That was pretty cool! Unfortunately I wasn't able to build the tower all the way up, but it was cool while it lasted :)

daviosmash 2014-12-08 18:40

Fun game! The controls could be a bit more fluid and the orientation did cause me to have some issues, but once I got used to it, I played it more than almost any other I've went through so far. Really nice concept!

olive 2014-12-08 18:49

I love the art and visual style of the game. It has a simple, crafty, mixed media, papery feel to it. I like the story concept a lot. Reminds me of the Little Prince 50 years into his future. I found it hard to read the controls due to the low contrast in font and background color. Also I was bit confused, maybe because I have poor memory and I can only remember three controls at a time but it was difficult for me to intuitively know how to prevent the asteroids from the destroying the planet. Seems like a really cool idea, wish I knew how to play!

jjevil 2014-12-08 22:15

Liam, my highest score is 640 now. I'm going to catch you.

rabbit 2014-12-08 22:40

It is impossible to read the controls. I died a lot trying to figure out what to do.

hypnoticbytes 2014-12-08 22:41

Great work. I had fun playing! Grats!

nbilyk 2014-12-08 22:44

Well done. Rather tricky, but entertaining.

pancakecity 2014-12-09 00:01

I really like the ending screen. "Just another corpse in space now" hehehe
Unique idea!

catchthefloaty 2014-12-09 00:06

well done. love the gamepad support. played for some time.

spacedoubt 2014-12-09 03:44

Took me a minute to get the hang of it, but once I did, I couldn't stop! Nice job!

jjevil 2014-12-09 04:06

Thanks everyone for the feedback and comments. Sarah & I wanted to make something that felt like a full game. It's got quite a lot of replay. I still haven't beaten Liam's high score yet.

shivur 2014-12-09 04:09

Very funny game and interesting gameplay. I wish the planet was more centered so when it is upside down I can see my tower.

pixzleone 2014-12-09 14:13

Very cool!

limeniusteam 2014-12-09 14:18

Lovely graphics, a bit difficult to understand what you have to do. Nice work overall.

flickta 2014-12-09 14:23

Had serious problems with controls.
Music/sounds are great.
Game looks nice, but text is unreadable.

jjevil 2014-12-09 14:41

@Tangible Games. I added a full screen browser toggle. It should help with reading the text. If you press "p" on the keyboard, it'll pause the game and display the controls.

boxedmeatrevolution 2014-12-09 16:20

Fun and humorous little game. Controls were confusing at first and I lost when my tower went off screen, but overall this is a solid entry!

jonah1nine 2014-12-09 16:31

Awesome game! Really enjoyed it. Scored 126, couldn't keep up with those meteors!

Controls is a bit tricky but overall it's a very interesting game.

jjevil 2014-12-09 16:33

You have to be careful. The tower will turn as you walk. If you're careful & jump a lot, it'll stay upright but it's tricky. Glad you enjoyed the game!

jjevil 2014-12-09 16:39

I'm finding that playing with a keyboard and mouse is actually a bit easier than using the gamepad. Might beat Liam's score yet.

rougerogue 2014-12-09 17:02

As you hoped, I really enjoyed this game. In fact, I enjoyed it far more than I'd expected! I love the whole system with the building and defending! I didn't use the attract function much because... I don't know I just felt uncomfortable with doing it XD. Anyway, great game and thanks for sending me the link!

jjevil 2014-12-09 17:30

@RougeRogue The attract really drains you will a lot. I put it in there to reach the high orbit pieces, but you have to do it sparingly and time it right. Sometimes you'll get a big cluster and draw them all in at once. That's when you can get a good score at the end.

jjevil 2014-12-09 17:31

*your

nobuyoshi 2014-12-09 18:28

I really enjoyed. Nice game!

twick 2014-12-09 20:59

Fun Game. Took a little while to get used to. The Gui is hard to see on the left.

boracho 2014-12-09 21:45

I like the idea, but the controls on my end are a little wonky. I got stuck in an infinite walk loop more than once. It seems like a cool game, but I can't seem to play more than a few times without something going crazy. Might be my connection or something.

jjevil 2014-12-09 21:53

@Boracho. I was having problems playing it on the page window earlier. Mostly because I was using the middle mouse button to build and losing window focus. Try it full screen, and if you're still having trouble it's available for full download which will solve connectivity issues. Thanks for playing it. I had a lot of fun making it.

savethejets1 2014-12-10 01:39

The art is epic.

I had a tough time reading the controls on the side there.

barryrowe 2014-12-10 02:25

This is fun, challenging, looks good, and the controls are pretty smooth. Well done. I'm bad at this game, and could never protect the tower, but it's a lot of fun. Great job.

kiwiboi 2014-12-10 17:05

Great entry, solid fun gameplay and cool concept :)

sanchitgulati 2014-12-10 18:01

took me a while to understand the game and then some more to read the controls layout, then some more to see how it works.

sanchitgulati 2014-12-10 18:03

soundtrack is nice :D
doesn't sound like my planet is facing apocalypse but still there is no bad time to dance, is there ?

ltyrosine 2014-12-10 23:53

Really cool game. I loved the idea. The bad is that totally unbalanced. Wizard loose power too fast to be possible to do anything... I'm still playing it and trying to perform better. Great job!

snicklodocus 2014-12-10 23:53

I liked this one! The art is really charming and the sounds are nice. The interface could use some polish and it took me many tries to actually understand. Overall though, great job.

Also, I couldn't get the web version to work in my browser, Firefox, but the Windows version worked fine.

rantt 2014-12-11 00:33

Fun game, I enjoyed it. Great job :)

warboys 2014-12-11 01:51

Probably the most frustrating game I've ever played lol. The concept itself is really neat, I love the idea behind it... but the balancing had me pulling my hair out. Extract costs way too much Will and I have no idea when it will even work (if noticed some indication as to when it would actually grab something, maybe it would be ok). The tower itself I got to like stage 5 or something but then there were no tower parts or Will spawning so I had to just stand there and watch it all die.

Maybe I'm completely missing something though. If it was balanced it would be amazing, I think.

cabezotta 2014-12-11 16:15

Great entry! but pretty weird and difficult to understand, at least for me! good job anyway! :D

seconddimension 2014-12-11 17:11

Very odd, I liked it. Was cool running around the planet and I got into a rhythm with the meteors after a while, perhaps felt a little frustrating when your building kept being destroy, but then again maybe that was the idea

jjevil 2014-12-11 17:20

There's a stretch in the middle, right before the last 120-90 seconds where's it's helpful to have the tower destroyed. You gain will from collecting the pieces, and you can fill up, rebuild and heal the planet before the onslaught.

taro 2014-12-11 21:34

Not exactly clear what the objective is. Is it to survive as long as possible? Is it to construct the tower to it's best condition? And I think the audio is a little broken, because I still hear the construction sound effect after the timer ran out, and the game ended.

alabebop 2014-12-12 10:55

Really fun to play! The graphics remind me of the little prince and the audio is really nice!

domicuc 2014-12-12 13:15

Nice! Love 2D defense game ! Check my defense game too ! x)

gre 2014-12-12 13:46

very original gameplay and graphics.

demy 2014-12-12 18:52

Controls are too strange and game is too hard, or may be it's just me - I'm not very into this type of games. I liked your music choice though.

indieindio 2014-12-12 21:30

great music , nice!

erkberg 2014-12-12 23:51

Pretty fun little game. I liked the mechanics with your wizard being able to jump higher und thus collect more shards when upgrading your tower. However, it got really hard and a little frustrating with higher tower levels, because one can't see the meteors below and to the right of the planet and with the tower rising higher I found it almost impossible to defend it and also upgrade it more. That I did try for quite some time means the game is really fun.
Graphics and audio are cute and fitting, good job overall!

orangeez 2014-12-13 07:32

Hm, very nice concept! Well done!

paperweight 2014-12-13 10:18

pretty good!

germanunkol 2014-12-13 10:42

Wow, this is not easy!

Well done.
I would have liked a more obvious animation when he can't build, I always tried to build without noticing I didn't have the material. He seems to play the same animation wether he's building or not, and the build count down is too hard to ready or notice in the heat of the battle.

Other than that, great work!

tsabanski 2014-12-13 10:46

I'd love to play a full version of this with a good tutorial level, storyline mode and more content. This is a really solid little game here -- I'd probably pinpoint this as more of a prototype for central game mechanics and testing play than anything else. This game really should get some post-LD attention. :)

resty 2014-12-13 11:22

pretty good, I love the art style in the game.

bcsgame 2014-12-13 18:34

I liked it, had no clue what to do with the keyboard, but the controller made it winnable. Only thing was, when the tower rotated to the bottom right, I couldn't see things hitting it.

tifu 2014-12-13 21:21

I get its for the theme and all, but I feel too much information is off screen - maybe tower planet should have been smaller? At times the top of my tower was off screen at the bottom, so my ability to protect it from meteors was incredibly hampered, made the whole process of trying to build and protect the tower seem a pretty futile effort. I think if I could see what I'm doing this would be a pretty fun game.

mrbadivan 2014-12-14 18:35

Interesting concept, little bit hard to manage defence against meteors and build in same time, but I like the one screen planet =)

rd127p77 2014-12-15 00:13

Interesting game, love how there is defense, the music is great it differs. Definitely an interesting game. Good Job!

solifuge 2014-12-15 00:29

Oh man! I lost just 11 seconds from the end. I never quite understood the spell mapped to E, but otherwise I really enjoyed myself, and agree with Olive that this does seem like a sort of time-shifted Little Prince story. Very nice game. Thank you!

jjevil 2014-12-15 00:51

The red spell is an attract spell for pulling in the higher up tower shards.

zatyka 2014-12-15 02:33

It took a little while to understand what was going on, but once I did, it was pretty fun. Nice audio, and cute visuals. My main complaint was the length of the game. If you continue working on this, I'd suggest making the game a bit shorter, or adding some more content. For a while, it did seem to get a little repetitive as the clock counted away.

A nice LD entry :)

franklins-ghost 2014-12-15 10:07

Fun game that reminded me of the little prince which is always a nice thing. Liked the defending your planet aspect and the different magic you had to use.

lemmily 2014-12-15 15:35

Too hard for that enjoyable feeling. Hard to understand how to actually protect the planet because the character feels very sluggish.

tuism 2014-12-15 16:00

Hmmmmmm, the premise really drew me, but it wasn't very "fun". I think it can be attributed to it being too hard and there not being enough emergence in the play - none of the systems affected each other. So if you're building you have to stop and go stop a meteor, if you're jumping you can't shield. Nothing felt particularly smart and a lot of the decisions are kinda made for you.

Not being able to see meteors half the time is discouraging.

The premise is great though, I believe there's something great in there :)

2014-12-15 17:52

its aight
stupid wizard keeps hitting himself in da face and won't block dem meteorites and the planet keeps blowing up
if i was the wizard i would probably make sure i had unlimited shields that were bigger
also why does he care about this backwater piece of crap planet in the middle of nowhere?
overall eh

theunderminor 2014-12-15 17:56

I love the fact that this is a complete game (of course you can always improve what already exists and implement new content), so well done on that! I also think that this game kept a consistent quality level across all categories. (This is the first entry where all categories have received the same amount of stars.) If you were to continue working on this game I'd recommend letting the player learn the controls though playing the game instead of having a list of instructions in the game screen. Well done!

depp 2014-12-15 20:07

Lots of fun! It's kind of hard to decipher the instructions for the controls while you're playing, though.

mrshoestore 2014-12-15 20:58

I found it pretty difficult to get to the meteors before they hit the planet, just seemed like there wasn't much time before they showed up on screen and hit. I could only reach a few of them to block with the shield. well done for 48 hours

integershift 2014-12-15 23:48

Difficult game to try to figure out but good idea pretty innovative game.

thopis 2014-12-16 00:35

Very nice atmosphere and the character is great!Keep up the good work!

lynx 2014-12-16 02:40

Interesting concept with an epic purpose. It's beard-tastic!

mekuri 2014-12-16 06:59

Took me a short while to figure out - but after that - I had fun! I loved the idea. A mixed sense of progression and a sense of impending doom! Great work - I loved it!

papygaragos 2014-12-16 11:31

There are some asteroid that you just cannot possibly intercept... Better controls and difficulty curve would make that game much more enjoyable.

The concept is pretty cool, don't get me wrong, but some hand-holding for new players would be nice.

nesis 2014-12-16 14:33

I like the game - it's like a new take on the tower defense genre. Fun pace to the game. I would consider rubberbanding the pacing of meteors to fit the amount of power the wizard currently has, so the player doesn't end up inexorably overwhelmed. Though if that's your intention, no worries! :)

xanjos 2014-12-16 23:24

Pretty fun game once you get used to the controls. My only problem is that the text on the left hand side is very ineligible at the start of the game.

cliffracerx 2014-12-17 17:14

Very fun and innovative, I sucked at the controls a bit though. Made it to about 90 seconds left on the timer before my planet exploded. :P

Good use of the theme, and the audio is freakin' awesome.
Very nice job!

jjevil 2014-12-17 17:27

@CliffracerX - I've learned one valuable lesson from the feedback. Let Sarah make the big decisions. Everyone loves her contributions (music, art, soundfx) and find mine frustrating (controls, gameplay). Or perhaps it's the combination that keeps people playing it, lol.

monos 2014-12-17 19:18

I didn't like the game so much.
The sfx are a bit annoying adn the rhythm is supper slow and made me boring.
I also lost a few times before understanding what to do

tonasz 2014-12-20 12:07

Nice twist about "tower defense" mechanics! It's something worth working on! There are also few "polish tweaks" to be done like tower got rotated the way its peak went off the screen or the fact i didn't know what to do at the beginning.
PS: Little prince reference :)

pht59x 2014-12-26 07:25

Visually appealing. Nice sound and music to begin with. But I got left wondering what to do...