FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD42 → Polterplot

Polterplot

By posho

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1023.8233
Fun543.9132
Innovation993.7532
Theme4563.3332
Graphics863.9833
Audio843.6532
Humor453.6531
Mood863.6030

Comments

ludum1118 2018-08-13 14:15

your game doesn't have a game

posho 2018-08-16 01:49

@ludum1118 It's all there now. Sorry about that.

sarah 2018-08-16 02:44

I need access to try it? Can you make it public?

posho 2018-08-16 02:46

@sarah Weird. I received the notification for access. Try again, and sorry for the inconvenience.

sarah 2018-08-16 02:59

The art is super cute, and overall the game is really polished. I also really liked the music haha, it was great. Although near the end, I had all the yellow things on my side, except 2 weren't in place and the enemy couldn't get them back, so I reached a bit of a stalemate. But I really like this game, its really fun to play! Good job (:

nicksmaddog 2018-08-16 03:09

Pretty fun game, and quite addicting. It takes a while to figure out what each of the seeds do, but once you figure it out it's easier. I could see it being fun as multiplayer.

darkguardsman 2018-08-16 03:32

Great game, did really feel like it fit the theme. However, it was very enjoyable to play. If found myself playing it longer than expected. As well the stand in audio got a few laughs out of me. Good job :)

martintristan 2018-08-16 05:59

I losted! This was fun. The graphics are top notch and funny. I really dig the beat box sound effects. It has a nice challenge to it and is quite addicting. Could be great for multiplayer.

triplefox 2018-08-16 06:35

On my first go I went in without reading directions just like a real player and losted because it was very hard to figure out how the different characters worked, what the seed bags corresponded to, etc. That's a thing where tutorials *might* help but I think that also, the scenario isn't supporting the mechanics well enough just yet. "they are all ghosts, it'd be a pain to reverse engineer how they work, guess I will just spam things and see if I win" is how I read it on that first try. I had f.lux running and making everything orange-tinted, so the colors weren't distinct and I couldn't use that either.

I think this problem is an easy fix in the visuals though. Give the attackers big swords. Give the defenders big shields. The other two, maybe they could have additional symbols. Then make sure the animations and effects really convey the thing that each character does best. Maybe have a few levels where you can only use one type at a time and see what it does.

On my second play I read everything, turned off f.lux, and had a much easier time. I was doing well, but then hit a crash - I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary triggering it:

___________________________________________ ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Step Event0 for object obj_seed_reloader: Variable obj_seed_reloader.slot(100042, -2147483648) not set before reading it. at gml_Object_obj_seed_reloader_Step_0 ############################################################################################ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stack frame is gml_Object_obj_seed_reloader_Step_0 (line -1)

Regarding the design, overall: There are many mobile games following this style of gameplay. I'm not familiar enough with the genre to know how this one holds up or what it does differently. I think it works reasonably well, but would benefit from having the scenario built up some more with some backstory and characters(why I am fighting over furballs, what kind of place is this that witches fight each other with ghosts etc.) so that I have that hook more firmly in mind. Its long term play value would depend mostly on whether it's a good competitive game, and that means you need really skilled players to push its limits.

anna-petrova 2018-08-16 14:29

Graphics funny:)

noxalus 2018-08-16 19:08

Great entry! I really like your graphic style, and I'm still impress by the number of assets you can produce in so little time :astonished: My technique to win is to take the seed bag targetted by the AI, it's not really fair but who care? :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

stefan-jovanovic 2018-08-16 22:01

Best game I have played on the Compo category so far! Great graphics, fun and challenging gameplay, great audio. Only bad thing is that sometimes game crashed with fatal error message, but I understand that because of short amount of time we had! Keep up the great work! :smiley:

posho 2018-08-18 05:17

Hey everyone, thank you so much for leaving your opinions!

@sarah

Thank you so much, that means so much. I'm sorry you had this inconvenience, I'll have to check on it.

@nicksmaddog

Hello Nick. You're right, I tried making the characters as representative to their abilities as possible but it seems like it's not enough. From what I've seen most people skip the instructions listed on the page, which is not their fault. I need to think of better ways of explaining the specters IN-GAME. Glad you found the game promising as a multiplayer.

@darkguardsman

I'm happy you liked the soundtrack, my dude. You can buy it on Bandcamp. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

@martintristan

Hey Martin. Glad you think it's promising as a multiplayer. I was afraid the game was not balanced enough.

@triplefox

Yeah, I think I should've included instructions in-game but I ran out of time, I might do that later though. I tried to make the specters as representative of their abilities as possible (attackers have sharp teeth, catchers are a hand, bombers are literally a bomb, etc.), but it seems it was not enough. The symbols are a great idea and could go on the seed bags, some text as well but I don't know if that would be too much.

As for your f.lux issue I don't know what to make of it as it is something that was on you. Color planning and contrasting is something more complicated than it seems (at least for me lol) and I assume that a lot of other competitors were not able to do their art as optimized as possible due to the time constraints as well. I would suggest you to not use f.lux or any other filter while you review LD entries.

That being said, I believe that specters may be hard to recognize when clustered together so I tried swapping colors a bit in order to make them stand out a lot more. What do you think of these possible changes?

Changes.png

As for the bug, that's the second time someone complains about it and I have no idea what it is. I'll have to look on it. Thanks a lot for posting the error message.

Thank you so much for the long comments. I'm not really sure if you liked the game or not but I'm glad I got all this feedback. Thanks!

@noxalus

Haha thank you. My artstyle makes it really easy to mass produce assets so I take advantage of that.

I made that feature on purpose but I don't know if it's too powerful, haha. But if it works then help yourself. :shrug: :laughing:

@stefan-jovanovic

Best game so far? Woah, that's quite something, thank you so much!

Also thank you for being comprehensive about the crashes... You wouldn't know what caused it, do you?

acekugen 2018-08-18 05:38

I like the simple and cute graphics

triplefox 2018-08-18 08:25

@posho just FYI, I'm not mentioning my difficulty playing the game with f.lux because of my preferences, but because it revealed an accessibility issue that will harm colorblind players as well.

chicodelosmates 2018-08-18 19:51

The assets are very cute and funny. The resolution looks a little weird but I guess I won? The ending screen should be shown a bit longer but i love the art. Nice game

c0nst4ntin 2018-08-18 22:21

Realy nice game! Nice graphics!

doey 2018-08-19 02:01

Fun graphics and an interesting game. Apart from the "ugly placeholder menu", this could easily beat a majority of mobile games. A really great job.

squirmonkey 2018-08-28 21:19

Well this was cute :D. Fun graphics and sounds. I didn't really feel like the strategy of which types of spectres beat which other types was really relevant because we both had so much space and seeds were so constrained that you just grabbed and planted whatever was spawning near you, I won the game with sheer numbers by just grabbing up all the seeds. I feel like maybe the bomb guys are supposed to destroy the plots and make there be less space or something, but that didn't really happen for me, so the theme didn't come through so much as I always had more room to plant than there were seeds available.

anlaxix 2018-08-28 22:52

Really fun to play, great graphics and loved sound design ;) Great job !

thepattybeast 2018-08-28 23:04

Really nice game. I ran into a bug where if the AI has all plot filled and is holding something it will do nothing. but it only happen once and otherwise it was flawless

amras0000 2018-08-29 12:02

I can't give this game a complete rating because of a consistent crash so I'll refrain from some of the categories until the issue is resolved.

I tried to move the window to the side of my screen, but whenever I clicked during the instructions the window would snap back to the center. I'd like this not to happen, but it's not the end of the world.

The main game music is fine; it's not the greatest but it's cute enough. I do have an issue with the title music because it's very repetitive and distracting and makes reading the instructions difficult the first time through.

The game itself seems fun; the AI seems to be making reasonable choices. The red ghosts will sometimes chase the enemy's yellow ghosts but this only seems to speed the yellow ghosts up; I've never had a red ghost destroy a yellow ghost or recover the ball it was carrying.

I could probably comment a lot more on the strategy of the game, but it crashes very consistently after a few minutes of play, and I'm not sure what causes the crash. It's usually when I try to plant something.

``` ############################################################################################ FATAL ERROR in action number 1 of Step Event0 for object obj_witch:

Unable to find any instance for object index '100233' at gml_Object_obj_witch_Step_0 ############################################################################################ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- stack frame is gml_Object_obj_witch_Step_0 (line -1) ``` other indices: ``` 100103 100061 100070 ```

cristihkj 2018-08-30 16:43

Great game! Very cool and interesting! :D

cristihkj 2018-08-31 07:22

I like the art! :)