Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Conquer Earth
By lars-dk
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 154 | 3.78 | 25 | |
| Fun | 175 | 3.56 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 130 | 3.69 | 25 | |
| Theme | 598 | 2.91 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 528 | 3.08 | 25 | |
| Audio | 66 | 3.95 | 23 | |
| Humor | 530 | 2.19 | 23 | |
| Mood | 279 | 3.42 | 23 |
Played couple of rounds with ROXIE. Didn't manage to beat the game though :D I was clicking around a lot to mine resources ending up using a lot of turns. It felt like Titanium was quite hard to gather, or maybe I was doing something wrong. Overall a fun game idea.
@jushiip Yeah, especially with Roxie because mining resources and moving about are the only things that cost turns with her XD She's a good choice to start with though, my record with Roxie/Blyrf is 87 turns (something like 200 is more normal though haha). Thanks for playing!
After a while you start to get a sense of where you can find various resources. Nadenudam/Prosadia is probably the closest early source of Titanium, although whichever AI starts in Tromoid may well fight you for it. Of course you want to be moving around every so often too. In my own games I've found about 10 mining turns : 1 trading turn seem a good ratio, although it might be more for more combat-focused players.
Hello LarsDK. First thank you very much for your valuable feedback on our game. I really enjoyed reading it and to be honest, I totally agree on all of your points. (At some point we wanted to finish the game. There was an effect moving the sails and water ripples next to the ship. But we disabled it due to bugs and lacking time fixing them)
So to say thank you, I also tested your game. To be honest, I'm not the kind of person playing such kind of games very often. So take from my feedback what you believe is important ;-) I opened up your game and was impressed of the vector "world / globe" you created with just lines. I like this kind of mesh style and also the color look very good. I was impressed by JS / HTML5 canvas graphics once with I guess Paper.js - I saw that you created it without such a library (not counting J-Query) ... I'm impressed. I did not know that this was possible or it might be a lot of work.
I started your game by clicking the first link. And... ;-) I did not know what to do... so I pressed some buttons and links finding me back on the initial page because somewhere I have clicked on the Quit button.
(As I write these lines of text... I'm a really DAU gamer ;-) Sorry...
Ahhh... one thing which came into my mind was the character graphics. I saw them before... I guess in your blogpost on the LDJam main site? I do not remember 100%... But I think I liked them (with the Heart button). They are nice... I did not remember the other graphics from your game... So the paintings are "staying in my mind" and make your game unique...
I tested with googles chrome and after reading your "how to actually play" I played the second time with dragging and dropping my character from planet to planet. (Which was much more fun) In the meantime my little baby was awake and I opened the window shades. In the daylight it is much harder to read your texts, but I guess you are aware of that.
In my Chrome browser - the bottom of the planets was not visible. (Had to zoom in - but afterwards it was...
...nearly impossible to read the texts of the cards... so I had to zoom in and out...)
[Just as a hint]
So... conclusion... I'm impressed in what you created in 48 hours (I guess without a gameframework - and this is extra cool)
I liked the paintings... And I like the vector line Earth/planet. (I mention both separately since I think they do not match together. They looked to different in the game "flow")
I also liked the "symetric" planets and I was laughing about the first "destroy earth or something like that" sentence on the first screens. (Man this weekend was Earth day ;-) I first thought... Whooo ... very black humor ;-)
I had some problems with the game "controls" but that was my fault not reading your description. (I guess training sessions and in game "rule descriptions" will help people like me - but I know, that this is impossible to create in 48 hours on a Jam)
Congratulation... You created a very nice game... Be proud of it... ;-)
Competently made and a surprisingly ambitious design. The music is great, the map and menu graphics clean an eloquent, but the character and spaceship art is simply amateurish. My condolences to the artist...
The game then (post-compo). I played twice. First time smashed a few AIs, bought a super weapon and nuked Earth. That was easy!
Next time played as the protector of earth. Had a rough start as I concentrated on economy rather than weapons so I got beat by the AI multiple times until I got hold of some proper firepower. Turtled the rest of the time on Mercury mining Titanium, bought the Death Star from Venus and nuked every AI to oblivion, but it didn't end? Apparently I needed to alert the Earthlings to win, oh well. I count that as a success nonetheless.
I find the world to be **not** small enough! It is mostly trivial to stay away from the AIs' path and they don't seem to pursue higher level tactics like trapping players on their home planet. An even smaller world would force the players to deal with each other often resulting in more conflict and drama.
A fine job. :earth_africa: :shield: :rocket: :anger: :rocket:
Hey! That is an awesome game.
I was not brave enough to read all your description and missed the "How to play," but once found the drag-and-drop mechanic the rest of the game was a real pleasure to discover by myself. I'll call that great game design.
@Hackschnitzel Wow, thanks for the comprehensive review! You're very right about there needing to be an in-game tutorial of some sort. It was on my initial feature list but after I realized just how hard it would be to code AI, I let it slide. I noticed the zoom issue too. That was the rationale for having the cards get bigger when you hover over them. I did some tests where the background of "space" was white and the planets etc darker ... this would have probably helped with your contrast issue, but it looked really weird. Oh yeah, and Vanilla JS is my specialty :D
@HuvaaKoodia Thanks for the honest review and for really testing the game out! In all fairness I never really do art outside of these game jams anyway, so I'm ok with my art not being the best, while the "programmer" stuff like a simple 3D sphere comes a bit more naturally. The idea of not having character art at all came to mind too ... I spent many hours on those amateur drawings haha, including a few I didn't get to use ... but that's fine, I figured if it's just all lines and blobs it might be a bit too generic. Like the other commenter said I think characters make games more memorable. Maybe next time I should work with an actual artist!
Yeah ... I've spent ages writing an AI for this and as you say it's still very simplistic. Originally the idea was for a multiplayer game. For some reason I did the single player first though and AI for this depth of gameplay is tough! Interesting comment about the smaller world, I hadn't really considered that. My aim with world design was just to allow players to turtle or attack or whatever, give options ... but I guess with the AI having really just one strategy it makes more sense to make players do the same. Again I wish I'd completed multiplayer.
@sgadrat Awesome, thank you so much! I'm really glad it was intuitive :)
Thank you for your feedback on my game.
After playing few rounds of Conquer Earth I must say I really enjoyed the experience. Combination of board game and card game mechanics worked great. The gameplay was a bit slow however. I found myself repeatedly clicking "Mine" to get resources a lot. The RNG was unfair, sometimes placing all the starting weapons on the other side of the map. More distinctions between weapons wouldn't hurt either, but we all know how precious the time is during LD.
It would be great if it supported multiplayer, as the AI definitely has it flaws and I can see myself playing the game with friends.
The sleek design suits the game, it keeps the screen clear. The character art is... "unique". Music and sounds are very pleasant to listen to.
Hope to see you next time during LD39!
@spacesparkle I never draw the cards I need in regular card games either! :P
It's interesting you say that about it being slow. One part of me thinks maybe I should just double what you can mine in one turn. That sure would make games more decisive. Another thinks it's actually ok to mine more slowly as it makes things more strategic.
Originally I did plan more of a rock-paper-scissors combat system with 3 types of weapons countering each other, plus planet-weapons which were weak against everything else. But then I thought maybe that would be too complicated for people to grasp quickly. So yeah, it's something I'm thinking about. I experimented with a weapon called "David's Rock" which has a special effect allowing it to defeat the "Death Star" but yeah, the AI didn't buy the Death Star much.
I definitely hope to add multiplayer! Thanks for all your great feedback and good luck with your game too!
A surprisingly deep and ambitious design, Lars! Kudos for accomplishing so much during 72 hours. I've spent about 30 minutes playing your game (on SRAMOPT), and haven't managed to beat it yet. Can't tell exactly what I'm doing wrong, but it's fun in any case. This game would benefit from a further playthrough at a later time. I'll be back when judging begins.
The game is fun to explore and figure out, and there was one game where I thought I was doing really well with economy and then got totally trapped by embargos - so your design demands a balanced approach, which is neat!
Graphics are succinct and effective. The non-title music track gives me a slightly "grand market" feel instead of "defending earth," but they're of good enough quality that I will be inclined to rate them highly nonetheless.
Looking forward to what you produce in future LD events!
@cameron-seebach Thanks so much for the review! Sramopt is interesting. Sometimes you can get lucky with them because Earth realizes you exist early, sometimes not. Just have to keep visiting Earth and hope they see you haha.
Composing the music sure was interesting, not least because I was in a hurry. My initial thought was to make it really synthy and dark. But then I tried that and it sounded off, not really fitting with either the board game vibe or the strategy vibe (since it's not really either a scary game nor a game that encourages super-deep thinking in every turn.) So I tried to compromise between space cowboy stuff and space odyssey stuff. And it comes out sounding a bit celtic lol. I do totally hear what you're saying about it perhaps going too far the other way now, sounding full-on "grand market".
Thanks again for the feedback, it's valuable. :)
Really tremendous work for 72 hours. There's a whole lot of depth here.
I really like the in-game graphics too, and the soundtrack is appropriately epic!
Hey man. Nice game. A **ton** more depth than I was expecting. However, I would encounter bugs at around turn 150 - 175 where it would get progressively less responsive and then the screen would just go black and stay that way.
Anyway, about the game: it had a good sense of progression and strategy, but I felt like the polish was lackluster. When it first started up it was impressive with the menu screen and such but the gameplay itself seemed a bit clunky.
@simonhutchinson Thanks! I'm glad you liked it :)
@technonugget that's a really odd error. I haven't seen it myself. I wonder if your system might be running out of memory somehow? What browser are you using? Becoming more clunky and the page eventually crashing sound like they might be side-effects of the webgl used in the menu somehow, since I can't imagine the browser's CSS layout engine doing that. Or maybe the memory used to stream the music is the culprit, or some combo. The actual game part should be fairly memory efficient but 3D graphics/shaders are what they are I guess.
Thanks for the positive feedback about the design though. When I finish these uni assignments I'm planning on building on it more for sure! :grinning:
Bit of an update just now for the extended non-jam version: fixed a number of critical AI bugs, including one nasty bug that would prevent AI players from buying new cards once it had defeated the player in battle! Working on the multiplayer too.
Edit: Ok this new AI is much tougher lol... definitely can concentrate on other stuff now.
I'm using the latest version of Google Chrome, When I try to open the console to see if there's an error it doesn't open up. This usually happens if the webpage has a stack overflow error, or it's stuck in an infinite loop or something like that and it runs out of memory. Anyway it's weird because I've got a pretty beefy computer(8 gigs memory), so I wouldn't think that it could be running out of memory.
Very cool game, i m is impressed that you managed to do it all in 72h. great idea. good art and music. Thank you for fun, Good Job :D (sorry for my bad english)
@technonugget Definitely a graphics memory error. I bet it's the webgl driver. Even on really modern graphics cards, webgl can be touch and go. I'll consider adding an option to launch without webgl - should help you.
@Querk thank you for the feedback! It was a very busy 72h haha. Glad you enjoyed it!
Nicely done Lars!
Took me a while to figure out the drag and drop mechanics but after that, I had really fun! The depth of the interaction possibilities there a lot more than I though on the first sight. The soundtrack is pretty well chosen, for the gameplay. And I love your drawings :grin:
Keep it up :smile:
Nice interface, a little hard to hit the circles sometimes. Impressive that you have managed to code this and filled it with different cards and content! Well done
@samurai-spark thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it :) Yeah, I think a tutorial would have really helped with making some of those mechanics clearer for new players. It's all among the things I'd like to add to the game! It sounds like I'm going to have a hard act to follow next time for sure XD
@dj_pale Thanks, and you're right, it can be tricky, especially with the special effect which causes the piece to change size when you drag it (although I think it looks cool). Bit of a trade-off I suppose. I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway though!
loved the sounds / music and also the settings to increase / decrease the volume of sounds, very nice touch that I really appreciate. I loved the ability to choose character and even a faction. I really loved the theme and the beautifully constructed graph of the system. Very cool game and concept, I am a huge fan of strategy games so this game is one of my favorites so far out of all the ones I've played thus far. The simple art style really is not a turn off in any way and you even designed AI players, very nice! Pretty straight forward and engaging, I really loved that. Overall one of the best entries I've seen so far. Good job!!!
@vkmicro Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was a challenge but I really enjoyed developing it. So glad I'm not the only one here who likes games like this :)
Very fun entry. Played a few rounds with Stok until I won. (mind I played the original Jam version for fair judging. Will try to come around to play the post version later though to see what you've been changing!
Your gameplay is really quite fun and I could see this working out well in multiplayer, too. (not sure if you wanna go that far in your post-jam version, but if you make any major changes like that do keep me up to date!)
The graphics are simple, but I actually like that style. The music is a pretty great fit for the environment, too.
@iak Awesome, thanks for your feedback! I'll be sure to keep people updated with major improvements like that. I already have my multiplayer lobby working, just need to resolve bugs in the gameplay. Oh man it feels so good to not have time pressure with the bugs! Currently the post-jam version fixes a few minor bugs, has a couple of balance changes (for example Cho is buffed) and has MAJOR ai improvements. I have a lot of plans for things to add to this though. I'm glad you had fun!
I gave Roxie a go, and kind of mined around and did stuff. I wasn't 100% how to do everything, but it was really neat to see stuff like this in Ludum Dare.
I'd love to play a paper/PDF version of this with some friends. The characters looked fun, and it'd be neat to apply that sort of narrative to these mechanics.
Nice work, cool audio and great job getting all the mechanics down. Lots of thought and mechanics to get this board game style game to work as it does. I may have rushed it at first and lost, so I went back and found how to actually play and did a lot better, haha. Keep up the great work!
@danbolt wow, thanks! Interesting you say that because I did prototype this on paper first. A PDF version of what I eventually came up with would be interesting indeed!
@simple-blue I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Thanks so much!
This is legitimatly a pretty cool experiance!
It's rare to see a strategy type game in here. And this one works too. people of 5+ appearently can't make the same engaging contend as you :DD I haven't beaten the game once but I still enjoied it regardless.
It's very table top like and takes me back. Very nice work. plus the audio fits and is great.
@rik-thunder Thanks for the very kind comments! Doing LD solo was an interesting first-time experience for me, but I learnt a lot and had heaps of fun making this. I'm pleased to hear so much support for it! :)
Good job!
From the loading screen to the main menu and beyond the art style had me going "OOooo!"
Loved the audio, and the constant art style applied. I love strat games, and this is something that I'd like to revisit and sink my teeth into. Lots of content, and feels very polished and complete. Loved the card mechanic!
Extra points for providing a nice options menu!
I'd defo be interested in seeing where this project goes in time.
Thanks for sharing!
Came back to leave ratings!! :cat:
@binaryferret Thank you for the review! I'll defo keep everyone in the loop. As I said before I think I've got a hard act to follow next time I do a LD jam! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Really complex game especially for Ludum Dare. I would suggest to make some kind of small and quick tutorial in game, and you don't have to show every mechanic in it, just basics so player can navigate in game world and will figure out how to do more complex things. Many players will be discouraged by walls of text and because of that will not know what to do in game, then will be frustrated when they lose.
With that out of way i really enjoyed your game! I like turn based games and this one adds to it card game mechanics and resource managment! AI provides a challenge and depending on what mode you are playing it might be easier / harder to succeed. This game is fun to play and really interesting i actually would like to see this game more developed (more game mechanics and maybe encounters like in Faster Than Light?) i think this game has a chance to interest a lot of players. Art style is minimalistic but elegant and fits this game. In overall really cool game and good job on developing it in so short time.
@zeriver Ha, and to think my initial plans were still more complicated. I agree an in-game tutorial would have been useful - it's one of the several things dropped due to complexity. Still I'm very proud of what I did achieve. Thanks for the feedback!
I am planning on developing this further as soon as I get time again. Watch this space :)
So, wow. There is some depth here. It is a little intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it, it is pretty impressive. Could have used an in game tutorial for sure but I understand having to cut that. Really impressive entry!
This game has surprising depth for something made in a game jam. I really liked the core mechanics behind the game, and it was complex enough that there wasn't an easily identifiable strategy to just win. However, I would say that the game balance seems slightly off: it is noticeably easier to destroy the earth than achieve the other victory conditions, for example. The gathering of resources is also frustratingly slow, compounded by the fact that you lose it all when you are killed. This leads to a particularly annoying pattern I fell into where I'd need a lot of resources, so I'd just mash the end turn button in order to get them faster (just waiting and gathering isn't fun so I want to to happen fast). However, this meant that the enemies would often appear out of nowhere and kill me as you get one turn's notice due to reduced vision and I was mashing the end turn button. This was for sure my fault, but I think it could be avoided by increasing the resource gain rate on the planets (or reducing the costs of the weapons).
@maggardjosh Thanks so much for your kind words, I appreciate it!
@bumblepie Thanks for the detailed review! Game balance is tricky, especially on such limited timeframes. I did make some adjustments in the post-jam version, buffed some things, nerfed others. Gathering rate and vision can of course be addressed with buying cards, which is fairly intentional to encourage players to buy those upgrades.
It's tricky to just boost production or reduce costs because if I did that, the AIs would attack you faster, probably with even better weapons, and all the cards in the deck would run out sooner. This pace allows for more strategic thinking. I've had quite a few "comeback" games myself. AIs have the same basic rules that players have, after all. Especially on the post-jam version, the AIs are actually fairly intelligent in terms of when they make use of trading opportunities to maximise their production. It might be helpful to turn the fog of war off (that's why I provided the option) in the settings to see how the AI plays (this also does make the game a bit easier). Also don't feel like your nearest trading post is the best option - depending on how the cards are shuffled, often you might find the best cards are on the other side of the map!
The only other alternate victory condition I've implemented is Sramopt's, who (using the most obvious strategy lol) have a 1 in 20 chance of forcing a win if they can survive to move 155, and an extra 1 in 20 chance for every second move thereafter. I certainly could increase those odds but then would that be balanced? I'm not sure. It might be worth testing further.
As you can tell I think about this stuff a lot haha, but I'm also aware that nobody knows this game better than I do, and heck, I lose a good third or so of the time (not suggesting my own strategies are perfect though). So I see where you're coming from and why that must be frustrating as a newer player. I'll think about it for sure!
Hi! Ambitious project to do a strategy game for LD and to do it with that little support from libs and game engines. In light of that, I think the experience was really smooth and well done. The music was very nice. With regards to the game itself, I'm sorry to say that I was mostly confused. First, my reaction was to click on the planets rather than dragging the piece. This could be resolved with only swapping cursor on the ship-piece and not the planets. I also found it to require quite a lot of clicking and since you needed to mine a lot to really get anything of worth, I think it would have been nicer if the game ran on time and mining planets automatically mined. That would of course change up the game quite some. Alternatively the economy could be a bit more friendly because I only ever got to buy one attack card and not that many more others. I died once before even noticing the opponent, and this meant re-spawning and that made me quite confused about if loosing ships really mattered. And what indeed was the goal. The very short line of sight/fog of war could probably have been extended to include neighbours neigbours to allow for some planning. I would have liked to be eased into the complexity too but I get that the game was structured kind of like a board-game and perhaps it therefore isn't possible. So sorry for this rather unstructured stream of thoughts... I hope you find them useful
@local-minimum Thanks for those interesting suggestions!
The reason planets light up was that an early design idea was that players could click on planets to see what resources the planets contained. You're right that changing the cursor when you hover over them is a bit of a useless holdover now.
Making the game real time would have saved clicking, but also made the game much more complicated to produce. For example, having to code logic for if you meet an enemy ship in between planets. I also found turn-based much easier to model, although I might try make a real-time game for a future Ludum Dare.
Losing ships isn't the end of the world, but it does mean losing all your orange cards (which can be a significant problem) and accumulated resources. More resources = greater ability to use a planet-killing weapon against Earth (ie the ultimate goal). Additionally, it sends you back to your home planet and forces you to skip a turn. If you lose a battle on your home planet, you lose the game. So if another ship happens to be beside your home, and they have a weapon, it's generally game over.
If you play with Stok, you get +1 line of sight from the start to allow for that "planning." Personally I don't need it but I did consider it would be useful for some players. Cards can also be brought to extend your line of sight, at least one of which is quite cheap. AI doesn't actually make use of extended line of sight information (it only looks at neighbouring tiles on the current turn, which is why pathing can be really stupid around blockades), so it won't buy those cards in the post-jam version. At least one of them is really cheap, too. So I'm going to stick by that this wasn't a bad design decision per say, more a fault of lacking a tutorial.
Great to get so much feedback :) Definitely useful and thought-provoking.
Very complex game, I like it very much. It's amazing how much content you implemented in just 72 hours. Different characters, different factions, an AI.. I'm really amazed! :astonished:
Very good game! However, I think in the future, you should definitely add a tutorial to avoid confusion. Other than that, I can think of no other flaws. Nice music and sound effects, fine graphics, and exciting game play! How did you make the game in 72 hours?
Very interesting game, although it seems like it'll take a lot of time playing it before I get a feel for the larger strategy. It felt like it was a bit too difficult to trap the other races on their home planet, so it felt more like a game of attrition than anything else.
I really like the usage of the theme - showing earth's insignificance compared to the warring factions moving all around them. Great presentation as well, felt somewhat "board game-y" in a way that really worked for me. In face, I think a modified version of this as a board game would be a lot of fun. Obviously line of sight goes out the window at that point, but it feels like there are quite a few other good mechanics that would make up for it.
Good work!
I really enjoyed this game. Alot of content! Took me a while to figure out how to move though.
Congratulations!! Very cool aesthetics. Very nice to play.
That was interesting to play! It was really hard to get the controls - without tutorial its impossible :) I was thinking that maybe it was broken, but then I read the description and understood the concept. I made it to the end and honestly I don't think it was balanced at all :) The concept is good and I will give you 5/5, but the game have really strange rules, like losing everything after battle, losing weapon after winnig the battle and mining resources is really easy. I think that maybe the map needs to be smaller or there should be more enemies, but anyway, it was pleasant to play and the music was pretty good :)
Thanks @skosnowich @d-studios @atmospherium @nekoballs @camilovr and @volkoivan for your feedback and helpful suggestions! I really appreciate all of it!
About the tutorial: as indicated before I completely agree. The tutorial in this game was scrapped as I ran out of time.
How I did it in 72 hours: by destroying my health, mostly. Also, being ignorant of bugs.
Difficulty, odd rules etc: the extended version is significantly more challenging. I do think the core rules are ok, although with a tutorial I might have been able to set the story a bit better so the mechanics make more sense.
Thanks again guys!
This was a pretty interesting game to play. It's not usually my style of game, but I have to say that after spending a little time and slowly figuring out what I was doing, it was quite a bit of fun to play. I can't say I was any good at it, but I enjoyed it. I could definitely see myself spending way too much time playing this game. It felt very polished, and you completed your graphics, music, and sound effects, which is awesome. All in all, very fun. Good work!
Very interesting game. I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQvFJMpbZ5A
@mesa thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it! To me there's no greater compliment than "I could definitely see myself spending way too much time playing this game."
@jupiter-hadley thanks so much, awesome to actually see somebody play the game on video, seeing what sort of things people get confused about and stuff. Helps me when I'm writing a tutorial for the post-compo version. Glad you found it interesting :grinning: Also I had no idea the name "Ludum Dare" was pronounced that way haha!