FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD38 → My Very Own World

My Very Own World

By spacesparkle

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2093.4628
Fun3762.8828
Innovation2103.3028
Theme1903.6128
Graphics1283.8428
Audio713.6827
Humor3662.1522
Mood1453.4827

Comments

bloodjohn 2017-04-24 20:40

itch.io: We couldn't find your page :(

spacesparkle 2017-04-24 22:06

I forgot to make it public on itch.io :P

lars-dk 2017-04-29 00:15

I played the WebGL version.

The presentation of this game was fantastic. Slick graphics. I liked the theme with the scroll and the fireplace. The models of the units and cities were well-done as well. The music was a touch repetitive but suited the theme well. End turn sound effect was weird but all the others sounded great.

I know the web version is post-jam bugfixed so I can't speak much to the programming or AI quality of your actual submission. However I noticed no significant problems.

I found the battle system impossible to understand. Instructions didn't help much either. Couldn't see any significant difference between units. I always seemed to have plentiful resources because of the "one action at a time" restriction. After a turn, it wasn't always clear what move the AI made, so beneath the slick presentation I couldn't work out some of the core mechanics. Also, after losing the game, it would help to be able to go back to the menu. I lost a LOT. Combat, rather than empire management, seems to be a big part of the game since the AI usually took me out within a few turns.

Design issues aside it was a cool game with a neat concept, awesome visuals and a high quality of presentation. I enjoyed it!

spacesparkle 2017-04-29 12:13

@lars-dk Thank you very much for your thorough review.

I appreciate your positive comments about artistic aspects of the game. I am well aware of the problems regarding the complexity of the combat system. I should have planned it more carefully from the beginning, because the system ended up being unnecessarily over-complicated. When designing the UI I realized there is no way to convey to the player how it really works. A tutorial wouldn't do the job either. Balance is also incorrect, as I found no time to completely playtest the game before the deadline.

You can exit to main menu at any time, just press Esc. Sometimes on web version you need to press it twice, as the site uses the same button to exit fullscreen.

Lessons for me: make the mechanics more clear to the player, invest more time in playtesting and make sure the game explanation actually explains anything.

lacemattley 2017-05-01 17:17

I love your bravery of essentially making Civ for LD!

pfeyffer 2017-05-01 18:50

Very nice graphics and a fitting though slightly repetitive background music. I was a bit lost at first because most game mechanics were unclear. I figured I can build different types of units depending on the kind of tile I am on. But what specific advantages/disadvantages do they have? Also sometimes I didn't know where to click. And I got no immediate feedback for incorrect moves just like "too many moves". Apart from that I was pleasantly surprised at the complexity and overall detail of this game.

daniel-conway 2017-05-01 19:54

Really liked the simplicity and gameplay. The music was amazing too.

zeriver 2017-05-02 11:32

Very engaging game, really fun to play! I like how gameplay is balanced by amount of move you have per turn. AI is pretty decent and provides a lot of challenge. It is impressive that you manage to make this game solo just in 48 hours. Game assets fit with each other and set rigt mood for this kind of game. Well done!

turbo-hermit 2017-05-02 11:33

Art and audio is really nice. The gameplay was fun too, but gets a bit repetitive to my taste.

makenai 2017-05-02 16:22

Not my best genre, but I played it a bit to give it a go. I can see it's well made and the graphics are nice and it looks like it has quite a bit of polish. I like the scrolling mechanic. Quite a bit of work must have gone into the rules engine. Well done!

hadik 2017-05-02 18:08

I like the soundtrack, I dont know how you manage it in compo limit :) But you did it

pandakipu 2017-05-02 22:37

Well done, a civ game in 48h, what a challenge :D

ectucker1 2017-05-02 23:31

I love the presentation of this game, with the 3d and 2d mix, and some great sounds and music. But the gameplay feels kinda off. It took me forever to figure out the controls. And the limit of two unit moves meant that every time I destroyed a city, the enemy would just rebuild it next turn.

Even so, making a strategy game for a jam is a real challenge. Good job!

holgk 2017-05-03 13:04

I love turn based strategy games! So was happy that someone made one. While graphics and sounds are fantastic the fighting rules/system need an overhaul or at least a better explanation. Other than that a nice entry. Good job!

shockeye 2017-05-05 09:02

Very attractive game. A bit hard to get into it in the short time I have, but I like a good turn based strategy so could be great once I've had a chance to play it some more. Extra credit for the volume control on front menu!

frodewin 2017-05-07 21:42

Very nice graphics and presentation, showing the small world on a map is great! The game reminds me of civilization (meant as a compliment!). The players' avatars are a bit too similar, took me some time to understand the user interface. The audio is good, but it probably didn't need to be looped. For example the beginning of a round could have been indicated with a melody piece followed by silence/just UI sounds.

skosnowich 2017-05-13 13:49

Cool game. The graphics are very nice. I like the idea to play on a scroll. The gameplay seems to be very fleshed out and the music sounds good. Nice job!

mango-malarkey 2017-05-16 17:00

Wow this game! As people has already said, the presentation is just fantastic! It lacks polish and balance, specifically in communicating some of the mechanics. But I am impressed for a compo game that has this style, great job!

harry-alissavakis 2017-05-19 12:59

Damn, that's a really well made game! You had so much stuff going on, it's crazy! While I'm not generally into strategy games, this had me engaged for a while and I had lots of fun playing it! The scroll mechanic was also really clever and added a lot to the overall presentation. One thing I have to note is that at first I wasn't really sure what I was doing as the controls were not really intuitive. But I got the hang of it after a while (even if I still sucked, that's my own fault :P). Really great game, well done! :D

dev-ff 2017-05-19 13:06

I really liked the presentation of the game world. Clearly a lot of work went into the game, and the result is pretty good!

gimbalock 2017-05-19 16:05

One of the most complete games I've seen in this LD. Everything fits together. Music, sfx, graphics, gameplay. Impressive you managed to complete this in 48 hours.

poller 2017-05-19 16:41

nice work! had fun trying it.

philomory 2017-05-19 20:07

This is very cool, it's not often you see a game of this sort in Ludum Dare, and I wholeheartedly approve. Unfortunately, games like this take a long time to play, so I wasn't able to finish, but I like the ideas behind it. The music was also very nice

My main complaints are the following:

* The UI isn't always very helpful. I'm not sure I can offer any concrete suggestions for improvement off the top of my head, but I'd definitely iterate on this some more if you wanted to expand the game further. In particular, it's not really clear what the strengths and weaknesses of each unit will be before you build one. * One thing to do would be to make it clearer how much damage your unit will take when making an attack; at the very least, make it clear to the player if they're making an attack that will get their unit killed. * The units aren't differentiated from each other enough. I feel the cavalry units should be able to move more than one square, rather than having a super-high attack power; instead the wizard should have higher attack power. Maybe not every unit should be able to build cities, maybe the shield guy should boost the defense of adjacent allies. * Consider having the "Settle" option count as a city move rather than a unit move, in terms of what you can do during a turn. I'm not saying it'd definitely be an improvement, but you might test it out to see how it plays.

tony-godfrey 2017-05-19 21:11

This brought me back to when I played the original Civilization games. The graphics and UI just had that turn-based strategy feel to them that works really well. Congratulations on getting so much of this working in the short time we had. I had trouble with not having enough resources and my units wouldn't move when that happened for some reason. Other than that bit of trouble, it was all pretty easy to figure out. [Please check out our game](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/microchip) when you get a chance and give it a rate!

csanyk 2017-05-20 01:06

Like a nano Civ! Nice!

Somehow on my third move I got a "too many moves!" error when I tried to end my turn, and couldn't figure out how to undo whatever I did wrong. It's very unclear at first how to enter commands to your units, and I think I could figure it out given enough time, but there doesn't appear to be enough details in the instructions. If you can improve these usability issues, I think it'd be a lot of fun to give this another run.