The Hoarder's Curse

ithildin 2017-12-10 01:08

I like the idea and the graphics, well done!

In terms of improvements, it would be nice to give the player a bit more to do instead of roaming around and waiting for the amount of gold to be enough to get another tower. Also, some additional feedback about what's going on (the gold replenish rate, or time between days...stuff like that) could be useful. And last, while I managed to survive all the way up to day 10, in the end as soon as I placed the last tower I didn't have anything to do. It also felt a bit counterintuitive to have an insane swarm of thieves stealing from my chest, but the effective amount of gold was still increasing.

Despite all these things, this looks like a good starting point into something bigger. Congrats! :smiley:

furiouswitch 2017-12-10 01:48

@ithildin Thank you so much for your valuable feedback. For your first two points, I am aware of the problem but unfortunately, the time was not enough for me to add more skills to the player not to implement proper feedback to the player. But that is one of the main things I will be working on soon on the next version of the game.

For the other points you mentioned, I admit there is a lot of imbalance that I need to work on to make the game more challenging and I will get to it as soon as I can in sha' Allah. Thanks again for your encouragement :)

bigbazwa 2017-12-10 04:36

Played through to the end of day 10, after the first little bit I had built towers in all the spaces, and didn't really have anything to do besides wait around until I won. Nice voxel graphics though!

2017-12-12 00:29

It was confusing to build towers at first. It said press space to build, so I just went to a location and spammed space. Turns out, you needed 18 to build and not 8. So you might want to rephrase that hint as it wasn't clear.

Once I figured out that you need 18 coins to build. All you had to do was move to a location and spam space. There was no real gameplay mechanic to it.

And last, the character felt like driving a car around. It turns and moves like a car, quite frustrating behaviour.

Regardless, it was a nice contribution!

remco 2017-12-18 10:03

A decent take on the theme, I think!

Sound effects or some music would really help this one.

I don't have much to say besides that which has already been mentioned (controls, something to-do while you wait for enough cash for a new tower) except perhaps that the _feeling_ that you (the player) should be able to do something else _may_ partially come from being 'present' in the game-world as an avatar. I wonder how many would still want other stuff to do if the perspective was top-down, and you could just click on the foundations to build a tower? (Although that would take away from the charm of the artwork/game, and doubtless the issue would still be present, albeit obscured.)

Keep up the good work!

tex-killer 2017-12-19 01:15

Hi, @furiouswitch! :D

As promised, here is my first review for this Ludum Dare:

Interesting idea, too bad you didn't have time to do all you wanted... As the others have said, the game as it is now is just a race to build towers, and once you build all of them, you've won. The only challenge is moving from platform to platform and waiting until you have enough gold.

By the way, the "ninja thiefs" were getting stuck sometimes towards the end. It happened around the chest area and outside, but only some of them got stuck, and they eventually started moving again. I don't know if that is a bug or if it was intentional.

Maybe with just a bit of balancing you could make the game too hard if you build all your towers too fast, so some strategy would have to be used to maximize the final gold without losing control before that.

The visuals were quite nice, so kudos on that! And congratulations for making yet another Ludum Dare game! Lets keep giving it our best! :D

furiouswitch 2017-12-21 23:30

@remco Thank you for your very constructive feedback :) Yes, the music is critical I know and is on the top of the todos for the next update. Strangely enough, I wasn't aware of the controls as an issue until people started pointing it out so it is on the top of the list as well.

Your, thought out loud, thoughts are extremely valuable to me so thanks for that and I will think about it. Something I'm sure about, though, is that I will keep the avatar and add more tasks (like making traps and upgrading towers) for him to do instead of waiting. That was planned from the beginning but the time didn't allow me to do any of it.

Thanks again :)

furiouswitch 2017-12-21 23:47

@tex-killer Hi, you, it is such an honor to have your first review :)

About the ninjas getting stuck, it is not exactly a bug but it needs some handling and better planning for the arena so it doesn't occur. It happens because I'm using pathfinding for the ninjas and they are not allowed to pass through each other so with greater numbers they simply stop and wait until their path is clear. (How proper :D )

The balancing is the most difficult thing in this game... I spent a lot of time trying to work it out but the problem is that it needs other parts of the game to be finished first for it to be possible.

I'm glad you liked the art. I worked hard on it and it was just my second time trying to create voxel art so I'm very happy you liked it.

Thanks for your great feedback and your encouragement :)

erkberg 2017-12-25 15:18

Hey Sarah, finally got around to playing game :) It's an interesting one. As other comments have stated, the possibilities to interact are quite limited. What you got here is more of a solid foundation that you could take into different directions. Do you want a more classic tower defense game? Add some more tower and enemy types, upgrades, different routes etc. You could also have a focus on the player character and give him more interactions. Like I was wondering about the fireplace, maybe there could be nightfall and then you have to light the fire, or he could have a direct attack or and aura that boosts towers or something. You could even take this into a more narrative direction. While playing I thought of the character as the bad guy. He has all the money and hoards it and the thieves desparately need it to feed their families but get killed...

Anyway, it's a solid game as it is already and I really like the voxel art! Good job, especially considering the small amount of time you had.

furiouswitch 2017-12-25 18:11

@erkberg Hi Erk, thanks a lot for your constructive feedback. This is very weird but almost all of your suggestions are parts of my plan for the game :O Although in my design I want to make it the player's choice whether to be good or bad depending on certain choices in the game. The aura thing didn't occur to me but it's a great idea and could be utilized in different ways.

Thank you for sharing your insights with me and encouraging me :)

querk 2017-12-27 00:06

Nice Game. I like it but in my opinion animation isn't work good xD. Good Job :D

akscan 2017-12-27 07:24

At first, I confused the style of character management. It moves like a car, with all the turns. In the games of such a plan you get used to the fact that the character is shifted along the axis of movement, and does not rotate around its axis) Also confused way of construction. It's not obvious that you need 18 gold to build a tower. And the theme is not quite clear. The more towers, the more ninjas? Or the more gold, the more ninjas?)

furiouswitch 2017-12-27 09:45

@querk Thank you for checking my game. If you mean animation with the traditional meaning then there is no animation in the game at all :D If you the ninjas' movement and how it lags sometimes then yes I'm with you it needs some fixing :) Thanks again.

furiouswitch 2017-12-27 09:58

@akscan Thank you for your time and valuable feedback. Yes, I learned my lesson and will be fixing the characters movement as soon as I can after the voting ends.

I don't know why it is not clear about the 18 coins when I mentioned it clearly in the tooltip at the bottom of the screen :D The tower price is 8, not 18 but you have to keep at least 10 coins in your chest. Otherwise, there won't be anything worth guarding against the thieves :D So you need to have at least 18 coins in your chest to build the tower with 8 of them and keep 10. I don't understand why this confused some people? Is the tooltip not clear? Anyway, on the next version, I will highlight the tooltip with red if you are trying to build and you don't have enough money. This way the player will know something is missing. Do you think this will fix the issue?

Thanks again for your valuable feedback :)

funkyhippo 2017-12-27 13:50

I can definitely see the idea and concept being fleshed out to a larger game, but there's a lot of improvements to be made to be honest.

First of all; the use of having the player increase the games' difficulty himself (in form of buying towers) is used well, as it's tied to the main mechanic. One of the major problems in this game is that there's nothing for the player to do other than buying towers (I had bought all of them on the 3 or 4 day, which is a balance issue I'll talk about in a minute). It would be nice if the player had some way to kill the thieves or if he had to repair the towers etc.

The second issue is the balancing of the game. As I mentioned before; I had all of the towers after day 3 or 4 which resulted in me standing still and watching some television until the game told me I had won. The player needs to be able to buy more/other towers, upgrade the towers or something similar and he shouldn't be able to buy them as quickly.

Fix these two major problems and you're on your way to a fun game which I could imagine being played on sites like Kongregate and Itch. I also like the voxel-based graphics :)

Good luck in the future and well done!

furiouswitch 2017-12-27 14:37

@funkyhippo Thanks a lot for playing my game and for the feedback. I had a lot of ideas that would have fixed all the issues but, unfortunately, I didn't have time to do them in the jam time which made the game too difficult to balance but I intend to work on it later in sha' Allah. Thanks again and good luck to you too :)

themonsterfromthedeep 2017-12-27 17:39

There's some interesting mechanics in this as a tower defense game -- namely, your tower-building resource is the same as the resource you're trying to protect, which, while perhaps not an entirely new idea, is certainly an effective one.

The main problem as it currently stands is that there is very literally no strategy -- all the player has to do is keep building towers and they will win.

Given the game's story, I think one interesting way to go might be to make it so that your towers are run by characters that need payment, and the player can try to undercut their pay at the risk of having them defect.

Overall, this is a solid foundation for future work.

lereveur 2017-12-27 20:14

Everything seems to have been said : at start, the player have to build towers as soon as possible, and then, just wait until the end. I think that improving the gameplay can be done with very few things. f.ex. : * activate new bases to build towers if gold amount reachs a given goal * let the thiefs attacking towers, then destroy, then the player have to rebuild * let the player an ability to build anywhere one-use traps (like jaw trap) for 1 or 2 gold Anyway, the art are nice, and you managed to get a game working at the end, so : congrats ;)

przekop 2017-12-27 20:30

I took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing because the game is so simple. :)

sebbernery 2017-12-27 20:31

The game is very pretty ! Too bad you didn't had time to add more mechanics and choice for player. Congrats and if you continue to work on it, don't forget to add some sounds and musics to enhance the art in the game and enhance the mood :).

aurel 2017-12-27 20:37

The game was fun but could definitely use a bit of balance. The day 4 Mad Rush of Thieves either makes you lose, or gives you enough gold to finish all the towers, at which point you just sit back and there's nothing else you can do in the game other than wait to see if you win or not.

However, good job matching the theme!

ambi 2017-12-28 19:26

Pretty fun mini tower defense game. As aurel said, more balance would improve it.

furiouswitch 2017-12-29 17:51

@ambi Thanks for playing my game. I will hopefully do another post-jam version later to fix all the stuff you and everyone else pointed out. Stay tuned :)