Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → Dungeon Manager
By bytekeeper
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 3.25 | 8 | ||
| Fun | 3.25 | 8 | ||
| Innovation | 3.91 | 8 | ||
| Theme | 3.50 | 7 | ||
| Humor | 2.91 | 8 | ||
| Mood | 3.28 | 9 |
Yeah, roster management is a lot of fun. I like the idea of micromanaging a team of monsters and choosing optimal quests to pair them with. Like XCom with the fighting automated. And I really like the idea of constructing quests from a "dungeon master's" perspective, as opposed to selecting and completing quests from a hero's perspective. Your approach is a fresh variation on Dungeon Keeper, and the idea could be pushed really far.
I enjoyed the concept, but the crippling weight of the rapidly rising rent and upkeep was just too much. I wasn't able to keep up, and I'm not sure how to overcome it. The interface is also a little confusing at first; some tutorial in the game would be a really neat addition. You have a great concept here; I hope you decide to build upon it in the future! Good job!
It looks great and the music is good, and I do really want to give it a try, but I didn't seem to be able to accept any quests? I bought up an army and built some stuff but i just couldn't click on the green tick. Let me know if I'm doing something wrong or you fix it :)
Hmm, I'm checking on it, might be some bug in the cost calculation.
This is pretty cool, reminds me of good old dungeon keeper before all the nonsense started.
Ah I see, I tried again and realised where I was going wrong, my mistake. I didn't realise you had to select minions to assign to a quest when you accepted it. I think some more in depth instructions would be good.
After realising that, I thought it was a decent stat balancing game. Could do with some more visual feedback and an improved interface, but obviously there were time constraints! I think an improved interface that makes it more clear at a glance what the strengths and weaknesses are could really improve upon the rock-paper-scissors style choices and improve the game. Overall, it is fun, and has a good bit of potential if you wanted to push it further!
The Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup sprites are a good fit. The music on the other hand might not be the best choice. Maybe something moodier would do, taken the subject matter.
All of the interactions are taken though menus so might as well talk about those.
There is a lack of feedback which leads to some confusion at first. Monsters are flashing with no indication on why, firing someone has a delay, hiring a monster when the roster is full banishes them to the abyss by the looks of it. Quick fixes: the monster tooltip should say if the monster is on a quest or moving, you should not be able to hire monsters if full already.
The main dungeon floor is criminally underused. Building altars is a pain as you need to keep clicking back and worth between the dungeon and the *Ye Olde Office Stuff* panel. You could at least put the hired monsters in the dungeon itself, currently they too are relegated to a tiny panel of their own.
Alternatively you could get rid of the whole dungeon. After all the altar placement does not matter, so you might as well represent them as a mere number each. This would also free up more space for the quest panel. It is cramped and has a different layout for strengths and weaknesses already which is weird.
Lastly the real time nature of the affair does reduce its appeal to me at least. Nothing feels like anything. Sure sometimes your monsters die due to bad choices, but I didn't have time to plan or dread the quest or build a any kind of a relationship with the monster so it has no effect. Just hire a new one, eh? It also seems that monsters don't gain levels or increase wages upon completing quests.
I liked the idea, yet the design and implementation leave much to be desired. If you intend to develop something like this in the future there is one major design decision you got to make early on: More like Dungeon Keeper with a *"physical"* dungeon full of buildings and monsters roaming around; or a stat based, menu driven management system (can't think of an example right now, but you get the point).
Overall: *Average (3.0)* Fun: *Average (3.0)* Innovation: *Good (4.0)* Theme: *Above average (3.5)* Humor: *Average (3.0)* Mood: *Below average (2.5)*
@HuvaaKoodia Thank you very much for your review. You pretty much nailed most of my thoughts on my entry. The actual plan was to make monsters roam around and take place before an altar - which was supposed to be an "office desk" replacement. When planning the game I thought I had more time, sadly real life kicked in pretty hard. So I tried to finish the game at least which is why altars are placed instead of just a stat. The real time aspect was actually something I wanted - but it didn't quite work out due to the lack of game mechanic so I just wired it up to the expenses to "pressure" the player a it.
The overall plan was to have the "office" be a bit like in a manager game like "Game Dev Tycoon".