danman113 2017-12-05 07:17
Juice
Man the gameplay was fast, frantic, and frankly really satisfying. It is pretty hard though, but never enough to stop playing
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Mistral - Wave-based Survival Retro Game
By syndelis, Tapir, Lowres, Muijf and Christian Royle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 449 | 3.55 | 29 | |
| Fun | 319 | 3.59 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 749 | 2.98 | 29 | |
| Theme | 559 | 3.46 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 429 | 3.72 | 29 | |
| Audio | 287 | 3.51 | 29 | |
| Humor | 664 | 2.73 | 23 | |
| Mood | 419 | 3.48 | 29 |
Man the gameplay was fast, frantic, and frankly really satisfying. It is pretty hard though, but never enough to stop playing
Oh man, first of all.. PICO-8! LOVE IT. It's quite hard haha but really nicely put together. This is a fun game, for sure. Good job on the art, too!
Very nice game! I had a blast playing it, but there were some things that made this game very hard right from beginning. So the first thing is: the bats move super fast and are tiny, which makes it really hard to hit them, resulting in them hitting you straight out of the map. That's actually the second thing: maybe tone down the knockback a bit for the first few levels, because it's supersmash on 300% right now ^^. I think when these things are adjust a bit it would feel very very good. The arrows feel awesome and the screenshake is really nice and crisp. Good job!
Fun little game. I would echo most of @virtual-turtle-studio comments: the bats are hard to hit (which is cool - but perhaps not as an early enemy). Just a suggestion. :D
@danman113 Thank you very much! I aimed for that specific feeling :)
@lance-krasniqi PICO-8 is the best, man! Thanks for the compliments as well haha <3
@virtual-turtle-studio Although the bats somewhat hard to hit with the sword from below, you can still shoot them with arrows while you jump. With that being said, I may adjust the knockback, because it's really smash 300% haha. Ty for the suggestions!
@liquidream Yeah, the bats are a pain haha, which was kinda the way I wanted them, but they might need a slight nerf. Thanks for playing the game!
A very fast paced game. My only problem is that i am not good enough ;)
@potti Considering how hard it is, I don't think anyone is good at it haha. Ty for playing it!
Short, hard, but very nice. The controls are fluid despite the difficulty. Good job!
Damn, I've been seeing a lot of pico-8 games this jam and they are consistently beautiful, yours is no exception. An incredibly charming game and veeeery challenging! This is a game worthy of post-LD continuation for sure. I agree with some of the previous comments that bats are difficult, but that makes them that much more satisfying to kill. My one suggestion (aside from adding more enemies etc if you do decide to expand it), would be to give the jump a bit more oomph, right now it feels more like a normal jump than an attack - maybe a chunkier sound effect or some kind of attack trail or something would work? Just a thought. Overall a very nicely done game, which has actually inspired me to look into pico-8 myself.
Loved the art, and the unique choice in programming. Gameplay is fun, only issue is how tight the hitboxes on the birds are, makes them tough to hit.
@mikomikisomi Very short and very hard, that's how I like it.
Nah, puns aside, thanks for the compliments, hope you had a good time with it ;)
@hertz14 Oh wow, I'm really grateful for your comment, thanks for all the compliments! I do also share of your opinion about the bats, their difficulty is what makes them unique.
I will be looking into expanding this game post-LD, and one of the first things I want to do is add a cut enemy from the game; Slimes.
With that being said, I hope you end up loving Pico-8 as much as I do, it's a really cool piece of software for coding enthusiasts and you call pull uncredible results with it, given the right skills.
@aj-jones Thanks, although the choice might not seem like the best for game jams, I love the idea of doing *almost* everything by yourself. And yes, the hitbox of dagger X bat is a bit off, and I will be fixing it on later updates, if I do end up continuing the game after the Jam is done.
Game with a good feeling and I liked the permanence of the elements, like the arrows. Congratulations!
Jogo com uma boa sensação e gostei da permanência dos elementos, como as flechas. Parabéns! :flag_br:
@gruhh Opa! Muito bom ver mais um brasileiro abordo :)
Valeu por dar uma olhada no jogo!
Art and sound are pretty nice, but I found the game kinda hard to get into. The controls are kind too fast and floaty and the the screen is too small. Or maybe, I just suck at it. haha Solid entry, guys.
@hbocao Welcome to Pico-8, you're limited to a 128x128 screen, there is **no** way to get a bigger screen. If you actually mean scailing the screen, you can toggle the **Fullscreen** button on the [itch.io page](https://syndelis.itch.io/mistral).
Controls feel floaty because of how limited of a screen you have.
The difficulty has a reason behind it; As our choice of engine was a fantasy retro console, we really wanted it to feel like an 80s/90s game, as you can tell by the cover art. Games made in this era were short in content, but had extremely high difficulty levels, in order to keep people playing it for longer, compensating the lack of content.
With that being said, I hope you had a good time with it and didn't rate it low on all categories solely because of your own difficulties with the game, as this is a recurrent thing I've faced during other Ludum Dare's.
Pretty interesting concept, I really like "PICO-8" games and this is is really well done, the lowrez art is amazing, the mechanics and gameplay are very different and they are really fun to play, and the music set the perfect mood for the game, I also loved the retro cover you guys made it, amazing, the only thing I missed was a walking animation, besides that, the game is awesome, great team work, congratulations.
Feliz por saber q tem Br nesse time ai haha, mt bom, o game é bem diferente eu achei mt criativo, e o mais importante é mt divertido. Bom trabalho. Parabens !
Wow, the game is incredibly fast paced and hard. Has that "easy to learn, hard to master" vibe to it, since actually felt like I was doing more progress on every new run. The controls were very responsive, and most of the shortcomings on the game had more to do with the limitations of the system rather than the game itself.
The game itself very loosely tackles the theme though, as coins felt more like an "end the level and start another" gate rather than something that really had any meaningful impact to the game. Regardless, that can be brushed aside.
Good submission right there. In behalf of my team, we congratulate you on submitting a very fun game. Cheers! :whale:
I love the graphics and the audio, really catchy and impresive results using the PICO-8 limitations, congratulations. Speaking of gameplay, it's really fun and challenging, I've been 10 minutes playing without being aware of it. The only thing I've seen is that sometimes the coins respawn points are weird, like on the fences of the laterals or inside the character (provoking an instant wave without even "pause"). Except that little thing, everything is really cool.
the principle is good but the music is too aggressive, great !!
@svr-audio Os Brs estão por toda parte :) haha. Thank you for all the compliments, and sorry for the walking animation hehe, we were about to miss the deadline. Abraços e obrigado mais uma vez !!
@moski Yeah, the system did limit some aspects of the game, but in the end I think that's its charm.
Abraços direto do Brasil :)
@elendow Thank you for enjoying it, and thank you for thinking the results were so impressive haha.
About the coins, I made them spawn 50 pixels away from the player, but that is not much considering the movement speed, so I'll need to patch it on a later update. Thank you again!
@jiayjo The agressiveness you're referring to might be the fact that the notes are basically square waves, due to Pico-8 limitations.
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Finally got around to playing your entry! And whew, what an entry. My first impressions were feelings of overwhelming-ness. When I first started the game and collected the first coin, I immediately felt like there was a lot happening at the same time before I was able to grasp everything that was going on, and it felt over-the-top fast-paced. Overall, it felt like the gameplay was really harsh on me.
Hitting skeletons with the arrows wasn't a problem at all, and it felt really responsive with the whole juice with the screen-shake giving a real feel of accomplishment. It was hitting the birds that really felt out of my control and very luck based. Most of the time that I'd try to hit them, they'd move and I would end up falling on top of them, hitting another enemy on the way, and being pushed out of the screen into an instant game-over.
That being said, with a _small slowdown_ I can see this being a very neat experience, especially with the screenshake and all the other juice involved. Like my colleague, @moski, mentioned above the coins could have had a more significative impact in the game, although that's probably more a fault of mine for already having the concept of coins being used as a currency hard-coded into my mind. :moneybag:
The graphics and audio were also really nice and it was overall very nicely packaged, it just felt like an experience that, sadly, I couldn't keep up with.
Obrigado pela a experiência, e espero ver mais de vocês no futuro! :smiley:
Really fun game here, I think everything moves too fast though, but maybe that's just me :P
Congrats on the entry!
Fun and good arcade gameplay, a feel a bit too fast, but only a bit. I like the graphics (the day cycle its awesome!) and music. with a few improvements it can be a great retro-game :D