Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Troll Castle
By berkano
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 226 | 3.42 | 21 | |
| Fun | 221 | 3.26 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 279 | 3.10 | 21 | |
| Theme | 274 | 3.38 | 20 | |
| Graphics | 482 | 2.47 | 21 | |
| Audio | 238 | 3.00 | 20 | |
| Humor | 51 | 3.68 | 21 | |
| Mood | 201 | 3.27 | 20 |
I thought it looked pretty weird, but it was actually a bit of fun.
The tutorial text on the first screen is a bit much to read at once, but I guess you just didn't have the time for a proper tutorial level. It's somewhat confusing at first, despite having read the tutorial, but in the end it works pretty well and the paint-y artstyle is something I actually like.
Thanks for the great feedback, @zelos :smile:
Not bad for a compo. Programmer art, best art.
I beat the game, it's not too hard, pretty neat concept! I wonder what happens if all your trolls die from monsters in the mines. As previously mentioned, the help screen was abit much at first, but the gameplay is actually really simple to pickup. Good job!
Quite enjoyable!
The wall of text at the start is quite intimidating and could perhaps have been a little simplified, but it does explain the game very well.
The gameplay is pretty cool, although I wasn't sure at all how to get gold at first, is it random from the start or does it kick in once you need to build the golden towers? The quirky music and sound effects complement the games theme a lot, too.
wacky art, I like it though :) sound effects keep it interesting.
When selecting a troll, try to give the mouse a little bit of room to move before interpreting the click as scrolling the map and making the selection impossible. Right now, even if I just move one pixel, I can't select the troll I want to :neutral_face: Alternatively, you could use the middle or right mouse button for movement, then there wouldn't be a problem at all :smile:
Thanks for your feedback, @@nervous-composers! There is a "game over" message if you're unfortunate enough to have all your trolls die in the mines :sob:
@bearishmushroom Thank you. :smile: I was so worried about the game being confusing, I went a bit overboard on the help screen. Could have been broken down into small steps during game play, I reckon. The gold is randomly found in the mines, it's available right from the start. The troll either finds a monster, gold, stone or nothing!
@somethinboutgames Thanks for the feedback on mouse handling. I think the fact it is so sensitive explains a few other glitches in the game. I'll look out for that next time :smile:
Art is... programmer art, completely understandable for a compo. Nice job implementing the theme, I could easily tell what you were going for. Idea had some unique aspects to it, not too too similar to other games. Overall, nice job!
Nice game with some solid mechanics. I am not sure if the trolls are supposed to be still courageous after the mushrooms wear off, because they can still cross water. The controls feels a bit clunky, I think it would have been nice to control everything with just the mouse (maybe use right click or some kind of context menu?). The music is also very nice and contributes to the mood of the game. The art is strange, but fits the weird theme very well. Nice work!
@wheerd thanks for the feedback & kind comments! :smile: Yes, still being able to swim after the mushrooms wear off is intentional, but having it as a temporary effect would also work...
So I went into this thinking I was just gonna try to get through it (just being honest) and I can't believe how much fun I had. Also I can't believe I never considered the idea of an RTS where the objective is just to build one building. If you try to read the tutorial text all at once it's overwhelming so I read a few lines and just jumped into the game. Eventually there is an alert like, "don't forget to click on things to learn" (or something like that) which because I didn't read the tutorial I didn't know I could do so that was a great reminder. As I went I just kept hitting h and reading a few lines and then figuring things out so I actually didn't have a problem with it. The trolls were hilarious. I just really liked this game. Only problem was I had no idea what encountering a monster did but that's fine. Good luck!
@tombishopspg Thanks very much for your feedback, it's great to hear you had fun playing it! :smile: Glad you found that hint helpful, I completely changed how trolls were selected and controlled at the last minute, with the original design, things on the map got clicked and described as a natural part of the gameplay. Yeah, the monster encounters are a bit vague :smile: You'll see (troll) encounters a Monster ... followed shortly after by "and survived" or "and died :-(" ...
Very fun, although trolls moved a little slow for my liking (you'd think a hungry troll would move faster towards food).
Slightly confusing for the first minute, but once I figured out what to do I had almost all materials for the castle lol. I heavily overlooked the top bar at the beginning. It has a really good length for a compo game. I dont think the trolls move too slow (as Ive read here), since you're supposed to control multiple of them at once. I noticed after eating a mushroom trolls can swim permanently even after the effect has worn off. I like that mechanic, because it introduces a passive effect/upgrade after the active effect. Really enjoyed it!
At first I was worried about my trolls dying in the mines but once I started builging the castle I realized that I gathered more than enough resources for the finish up my castle. Its a nice compo entry despite its too short.
@saiodin Thanks for the great feedback, it's very much appreciated! :smile:
Nice! Fun game, I played it until my castle was complete, but the building sound was a little loud. I loved the effects from eating the mushroom!
Easy and short, but a complete expression of an idea. The graphics are charming and I felt like I was in the game world more so than many other entries. And it has non-bfxr music and sound. Good job!
As others said before, game might appear to be little difficult when you stare at this long description, but after a while you get it all. Programmer Art looks nice in a game about trolls, so i can't say anything bad about it. There's small bug, when troll with swim ring dies in a mine, his swim ring stays on top of a mine. Nice game, especially for a compo one. Also props for using something that's not Unity d;
This is pretty adorable, and I like the zany graphics. Only thing is I was never able to find out which trolls were hungry, and so there was... some starvation before I finished the castle.
Thanks guys for all the great feedback that keeps on coming :smile: @cremmy Yes I noticed that too and decided to leave it in as a "feature" (the troll has left his swim tube outside the mine, and sadly not come out to reclaim it) :smile: @zarkonnen The trolls won't die of hunger, just refuse to go mining. If you are losing trolls, it is because they have been killed by a monster (that is not very clear when playing, however!)
I like the style of this game. The controls took a little getting used to, mainly because I wasn't incrementally introduced to them but just had them all presented to me immediately in a large text blurb. It was fine though, given that I could open up the description again whenever I wanted.
The gameplay was pretty alright, just a nice little progression system. Since the game is so short, the gameplay worked just fine. If you were ever to make this a longer game though, it'll need some sort of challenge to it in order to make it engaging for longer amounts of time.
I loved the graphics and the audio, simply because they're consistently programmer-y in nature. It's a clever thing to turn your weakness in the art area into a strength of your game. Well done!
It's a cute and nice game! The art is adorable~
Very Amazing Game. All The Graphics, Audio And Gameplay Were Cool. Keep Up The Great Work
The graphics are crazy :D I had a problem using all of the trolls I think I could work with 1 or 2, I recommend make the jobs for trolls longer, or autorepeated or something like that. Overall solid entry!
Despite the game feeling pretty raw, it was a fun little experience. I think the music and dialog was quite nice and I love the sound effects the trolls make.
For the introduction, a wall of text is a sure-fire way to scare away players, I think it would better to introduce the mechanics bit by bit. You could have shown the key for mining or growing mushrooms whenever the player was on top of a square that allowed action. You had a dialog system already, which could have aided you in showing what the game was about bit by bit.
Although the game could use some more work I think you did very well in the audio and humor department, especially since many games rely on bfxr sounds, so yours stands out in that respect.
@cerno-b Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! Great points about introducing the mechanics slowly using dialogs and hints. I almost always end up with a wall of text added in a panic at the last minute, so think I need to pay attention to this earlier in the process, even if it's at the expense of other tweaks/polish...
One option if you're short on time and can't manage to do a full tutorial: Convert your wall of text into an image. Just take a screenshot of the game or copy/paste some assets into a single picture and just draw some arrows and add a few words like "Press E here". That should only take a little longer than writing long texts and the brain can make the connection much faster than having to parse multiple paragraphs of text.
@cerno-b Great suggestion, thanks again!