lekochen 2014-12-09 08:09
The game mechanic is not very easy to learn, but highly innovative.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD31 → You Gotta Feed the Wizards
By lycrashampoo
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolness | 1 | 100 | ||
| Innovation | 249 | 3.48 | ||
| Humor | 425 | 2.73 | ||
| Theme | 478 | 3.58 | ||
| Overall | 777 | 2.87 | ||
| Fun | 821 | 2.62 | ||
| Graphics | 837 | 2.51 | ||
| Mood | 846 | 2.50 |
The game mechanic is not very easy to learn, but highly innovative.
I liked the concept of manipulating a puzzle board with a character, though I found it difficult to get the right item into the proper slot.
I liked it - audio would have helped and it took me a while to "get it" but quite an interesting idea. With a bit more work on presentation and some sort of satirical narrative I think it'd do well! :P
Innovative concept. I love utilizing old games as bases for new ones. No idea what my spells did/what the goal was, but a cool puzzle once I figured out what to do.
First note: It's annoying to deal with installers while reviewing LD games(too many games, too little time).
There are a lot of bold, interesting ideas here, but they kind of trip over each other. At first I thought it was a match 3 but managed to pick up on the "match the orders in the row or column" idea. But the orders are quite complex for the number of moves I have to make to fulfill them. There isn't always food available to feed all wizards, or it's impossible to move what's there into place. This doesn't improve with time since food gets stuck in clusters. With all these limits, Popcap's "Alchemy" game came to mind, but the movement/placement limitations were what that game was designed around - this one includes all that spellcasting and experience stuff too.
After some play I managed to earn a freeze spell and thought, "ah, now I will have an easier time managing the pieces," only to discover that it freezed the wizards!
All that probably has to be done to clean up the design is to cut some things and iterate some other things until it's all focused in a way that makes sense. There's lots of stuff going on here and you can probably make it great with another weekend of just thinking and tuning things.
Wonderful puzzle game! Need to modify the schedule and release on Android and IOS
Oh, yet another lonely mac:(
Very interesting concept, but too difficult for me. :/ Also the installer is pretty annoying to me.
Highly innovative game with cool graphics and a fun concept.
I'd have enjoyed it more if it had more help info as it is very hard to understand how to play at first. Anyway it's a pretty awesome one screen puzzle game with some awesome 'RPG' elements :)
The game is a great idea, but it's very difficult to play right from the start for a few reasons:
- It's very difficult to get food to the middle guests since all the items move as far as they can go. There needs to be something built into the level to bounce off of to get them in order.
- Often there food the customer wants to eat is not on the board
- It's too easy to push a few items together permanently making them immovable. This greatly reduces mobility on the game board.
Despite this, you have one of the more innovative ideas so far, and I encourage you to explore and improve the game to iron out the issues and make this a really good game from a later release.
oh my gosh! this game is nice example of innovative gameplay. But, it was really annoyong to install this game on my computer. I prefer web versions more. But, anyway, this is a great job!
forget to rate
sry
:)
Interesting puzzle game, very well done.
I managed to get stuck with a spawning food without losing health, you might want to check on that.
Interesting idea, there was a bit of a high learning curve, would be nice to have a decent pace including a tutorial on how to play the game. But after some time the game grows on you. Nicee entry !
It's complicated, but a very clever idea! Main character doesn't really fit the overall graphical style, but besides of that, it's lovely. Also, it takes some time to understand what's going on. :)
This is a difficult game. As soon as you get two snacks next to each other, they're immobile.
I couldn't win :(
Took a while to understand what I was doing.
The premise of the game made me laugh, and is quite unique. I like the idea of a wizard diner, WIZARD RAGE and a waitress with magical powers. :)
That said, there really needs to be a better difficulty curve and a way to make it so that the game is not unbeatable due to the randomization of food on the screen. It was far too difficult the first few turns, and I couldn't articulate the food quickly enough to get to the wizards before it cooled or they raged on me. :(
There should definitely be an option to clear the food from the screen, or scramble the food when it gets stuck or unbeatable. Even games like Bejeweled sense when a screen is unplayable, and it clears/reassembles the screen for further play. :)
Thank you for sharing your game! :)
The title reminds me of Gauntlet (Wizard needs food badly!).
I really liked the concept! It's a bit hard to play for me but even though I like it overall :)
Nice concept! Though it still needs a bit of finishing touches here and there, like putting in some ambient music, it's quite enjoyable. Great work!:D
I don't think i really understood anything :] interesting btw
QWTF?
well done :)
Wow, if I hadn't played this game I would have never believed it was possible to make a real time block pushing puzzle. This game takes a proposition that sounds like a nightmare, and turns it into something really fun! I think part of that is in having constantly changing orders coming from the wizards, so the player can choose whichever puzzle they're closest to solving at any time.
The spritework on the main character is pretty good, and the theme of the game is really fun too. These wizards are indeed quick to anger!
Of course, there are still some issues, particularly the random chance of what ingredients you're provided at any time. When you're stuck waiting for a donut or a taco to fall to complete any of the orders it makes the game feel like it relies on chance rather than skill, which is dissapointing mainly because of how rewarding the game feels when you're actually solving puzzles. Possible solutions here could include making only food the wizards want appear (and making sure the wizards mix up their orders, so it's not too easy), or making a new piece of food fall every time the player uses up the last piece of that type (though that could cause problems if it falls on the only piece of another type).
Also, I found the spells to be more trouble than they were worth. Twice I got a game over from walking straight into my own fire, and once I glitched into a piece of food using the super speed powerup. This is more a quality of life/bugfixing issue though.
After a few games of this, I decided to quit, not because I didn't want to play more, but because I didn't want to be spoiled on the game while those issues still existed. I'm looking foward to seeing how this game develops post-jam, so I can only say that's a good sign!
Very innovative game, and flawlessly designed! But the pacing was a bit off - it was too hard for poor me. :(
Great idea, but it's pretty tough to play especially when you don't know what's going on. I think a bigger screen with a little more information in the interface would be extremely useful for this game.
Really cool idea! I really could have done with a pull spell early on (I only got to the freeze skill before stopping so maybe that was an upcoming spell).
Idea is ace though just want more options to move things around because I found that the gameplay got a bit samey after a while. But really like it :)
Nice gameŃ.
It tooks me 2-3 games to understand what happens but after that it was ok. I think the game could improve with the following :
- decrease/increase spawn chance for food type if they are too much or none in the grid.
- The food + client vanishing when you success is not rewarding enough for the player... Maybe add some animation fo the food flying TO the client then the client dissapear with some nice effect.
The gameplay is very innovative.
Oh it's harder than it looks at first.