FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD39 → The Hall of the Sorcerer King

The Hall of the Sorcerer King

By celia14

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall664.0035
Fun603.9335
Innovation883.7835
Theme1094.0035
Mood863.9735

Comments

lynnaira 2017-08-01 02:39

I really enjoyed this! It was well-made, polished, and unique. It was tricky to beat, but rewarding when I finally did! I love dungeons and dragons, so I appreciated the dungeon-crawl feel to it. :^) Good job Celia!

eliana 2017-08-02 20:38

Glad to see I'm not the only person who made a Twine game for LD39! I enjoyed it, especially the little icons keeping track of which spells I casted where & which way I went. Nice job!

A few small glitches: when I cast a 15 mana spell(Polyglot) while having 10 mana, mana was set to 0 but the green boxes were completely filled up as if I had 40 mana. And, I'm not sure if this was intentional, but when I drank the health potion at full health, my max health increased to 60. I'm not sure if you meant for your max health to be 40 or not?

ALSO would that name happen to be a reference to Grieg's In the Hall of The Mountain King? I love that piece. :)

celia14 2017-08-02 23:20

@eliana Thanks! Good catch on those bugs, I uploaded a fix. Now you can go up to 60 health, but your max stays 40 and the health bar doesn't get wonky.

I really like In the Hall of the Mountain King too! You know, it wasn't a purposeful reference, but maybe it was subconscious? :)

aidanmarkham 2017-08-03 00:53

This felt amazingly Dungeons and Dragons-y! I really liked this concept and the writing was good as well!

branquelo 2017-08-03 00:57

I love this type of game, and i love this game, very well made xD!!

djfariel 2017-08-03 00:59

I have no feedback that hasn't already been said. This was fantastic, and forced me to think outside of "what would the game want me to do." Great work.

rosypenguin 2017-08-03 02:29

This was really well written! I chuckled when I cast "Polyglot" on the river. I'm not familiar with Twine, but I loved how you allowed the player to keep track of what spells they cast and their past activities through the sidebar! I felt encouraged to explore and experiment with different spells. I also liked the puzzle-like aspect of trying to figure out what order of spells to cast to win. Overall, a really fun and well-done experience!

simonhutchinson 2017-08-03 15:17

This was great! I'm a little dubious about Twine, but I've already played a few games this jam that are making me really appreciate what you can do in it like this one. It's like Zork with better controls!

Nice job.

mrerdalural 2017-08-04 13:50

Pretty cool stuff! You actually managed to make me finish a choose your own adventure game. I usually get too bored to read to the end. Great job! Thank you for making this game.

johnnwfs 2017-08-05 02:35

Thank you for making a choose your own adventure. It was a lot of fun dying and trying again :-) I also liked the icons and progress tracker. Were you inspired by the recent posts about CYOA books and those cool paper trackers the authors used back the these kinds of books first became popular? Good job in any case.

earthexe 2017-08-05 02:46

This is really nice, and a unique way of approaching the choose your own adventure format. As others have said, I usually don't read through the text in these kinds of games - but the writing is really nice and engaging. I haven't managed to find the right combination of abilities yet, but I'm sure I could map it out. I'm giving you full marks. Really nice job.

peachtreeoath 2017-08-05 03:18

Not gonna lie, I kept going back and choosing different spells just to see all the effects, guess that's an old habit from old CYOA books. I liked your creativity in some of the routes, you really planned some of the stories/events well.

elmismopancho 2017-08-05 03:23

Very nice writing, loved the theme. What engine did you used to create the game?

earthexe 2017-08-05 03:49

I played through it again; didn't realize that there was a branch in the path. The way it was worded made me think that the library was simply a side path. But I beat the game! I really enjoyed it.

axoona 2017-08-05 20:43

it's a very nice combination of RPG storytelling and puzzle solving which I really liked. it definitely wasn't easy (it's a compliment! :) Also I appreciated greatly the room chosing menu at the left. It improves gamer experience a lot. Overall good job!

celia14 2017-08-05 22:00

Thanks everyone who's played, I really appreciate it. :)

@johnnwfs I hadn't heard of the paper trackers for CYOAs, but it sounds cool! I'm sure my motivation was similar - it just seemed like a useful thing to be able to see.

@elmismopancho I used [Twine](https://twinery.org/), which I definitely recommend checking out.

vulpineblazeyt 2017-08-05 23:14

I haven't had a text based adventure in a while and it was really nice to die a few times lol. Good work!

recursor 2017-08-06 00:55

I like the way you presented breadcrumb graphics for the rooms, the health and mana bars, and how each room icon tells you which if any spell you cast there. I did finish it by the way and appreciated being able to click back and try different things. It reminds me of when I used to read the choose you own adventure books as a child and had used 2 or 3 of my fingers as bookmarks I have fond memories of those books and this brought that back. I've seen a few other text games like this in other LDs but none of this quality.

mgpxl 2017-08-06 01:03

This game is really well written. I loved the detailed descriptions of the locations and monsters of this fantasy world. I'm impressed with the sheer number of options there were, and I'm sure I haven't even tried half of them.

Excellent game!

randomphantom 2017-08-06 08:07

Love the breadcrumb graphics and the writing. Haven't seen Twine before but this choose your adventure concept is really cool! Managed to finish it, and it feels like a puzzle in itself (which still seems somewhat logical, good job on designing that!). I really wanted to touch the orb though :( Great job!

kabalatrance 2017-08-06 13:32

Very different and interesting game. Unfortunately I didn't manage to beat it, but oh well! Its great writing with a lot of options, and I love how you covered all possibilities. Great job!

richard-jedlicka 2017-08-06 14:34

I like this game. It reminds me a game books I read when I was young. The writings are well done. Good job!

theonethatneverwas 2017-08-07 14:46

Amazing game! Reminded me of my childhood playing text RPGs. The mood is very nice too, and the story is well written. Congrats to the team!

pixel-game-wizard 2017-08-08 00:48

Very cool. Brings me back to when I read the choose-your-own-adventure type books.

I also like how you let the player cast any spell... even if the outcome is a bit silly. Well-done! X-D

I don't really have any suggestions to improve or change this. I really enjoyed this as-is. :-D

badly-drawn-rod 2017-08-08 19:50

I enjoyed this far more than I expected to. The writing was very good, and there were some interesting choices to make. It recreated the D&D experience rather well.

schu 2017-08-08 21:06

I really love how you used the theme to add some depth to the choose your own adventure genre. Really fantastic work here. My only complaint is that the WebGL window size isn't formatter properly so the scrollbar appears and I can't see the whole game on one screen.

kr4ft3r 2017-08-11 19:09

*Warning may contain spoilers* Probably the winner of this LD's The Game I Least Expected To Replay As Many Times As I Did Award. Very nicely done, the ability to use each spell in each situation is a really nice feature. I kept going about, trading hitpoints for mana and other way around, sadly I never managed to have enough for more than two blows from that wizard AND have mana to cast anything useful. I'll probably give it another try eventually. Also it is very nice that you successfully managed to incorporate boss fight into interactive story.

klianc09 2017-08-11 20:16

I absolutely love this. It's so well written, and elegantly designed. I just had a really good time.

bombjack 2017-08-11 21:07

Very well written. It reminded me a lot when I played text adventure in my youth. The choice of the colors and the font are great too. I didn't though I'd like this game but it totally got me. This is pure pleasure. Thank you.

ganbaregameskyle 2017-08-13 02:08

I like how all the choices are between trading off your health or your mana. It makes the game slightly more interesting than a standard text adventure. At least until you figure out the gimmick.