dunin 2018-08-13 11:15
Simple but fun.
It needs more feedback and a restart button would be great (runs are short).
DON'T TAKE BONES LITTLE DOG, DON'T TAKE BONES!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD42 → Over-encumbered
By Sarah Goldgar, Pace and brundolf
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 598 | 3.38 | 32 | |
| Fun | 410 | 3.41 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 596 | 3.16 | 32 | |
| Theme | 364 | 3.76 | 32 | |
| Humor | 276 | 3.22 | 31 | |
| Mood | 493 | 3.23 | 32 |
Simple but fun.
It needs more feedback and a restart button would be great (runs are short).
DON'T TAKE BONES LITTLE DOG, DON'T TAKE BONES!
Deceptively simple yet pretty fun, the graphics and music is pretty cute. I would love a bit more variety in terms of crafting and less RNG for the runs.
Overall a very relaxing and enjoyable game to play. Well done!
Short but very fun game. I am missing the restart button because one run is not enough to fully enjoy this game.
Music and graphics are good and the mechanics are solid. I wish the games would last a bit longer, perhaps with more item diversity.
All in all quite the enjoyable game, played it multiple times!
We added a restart button, we fixed the bug where gold was not spawning from chests, and we tweaked the difficulty curve so that it starts out easier and ramps up. Runs are a little longer now, and I think/hope a lot more fun!
More item variety and less RNG are great ideas, but they will have to wait until after the jam due to time constraints.
Thanks for the feedback, you three - you helped make Overencumbered better!
"You are a sentient backpack..." - made me laugh, already on to a winner. Protip: save making those blue potions until you see one of those horned lizards!
Couple of points worth mentioning: - as others have mentioned, would request the addition of a 'replay' button or equivalent, especially since each run is rather quick (at least for me!); - the Game Over typeface doesn't match the pixel graphics; is also rather compacted.
I'd also rework the RNG to favour certain values, for example: - ended up with four green potions but only one red and blue mushroom each on one playthrough; - two horned lizards spawning before any pickups made for a particularly short playthrough!
Would be a good little game to port to mobile / tablet if you could implement touch input.
Super fun and frantic! If I had one suggestion, it took me a second to realise the bones + stuff = trash meant those items were trash and not that you could eventually craft some sort of mystical trash container (or can you??). But all in all, well done!
Thanks, toad! No mystical trash container, sorry! (:
Incredibly fun, well-executed for jam constraints, and a super solid concept with immense scope for further improvement. Well done team!
The gameplay is really interesting! What if i can control a bigger backpack, and I have much more choice, for example maybe more variety in terms of crafting.Now the only way to use red mushroom is merge two red mushroom.So players don't need to think about it just merge, but if red mushroom can be merged with blue mushroom, maybe there will be something interesting!
I like your idea, @wxzuir. For the jam, we decided to go with a more straightforward and frantic gameplay style, but it would be interesting to add more recipes and a bigger backpack, thereby adding more strategy.
It's not always better to craft red mushrooms into a health potion, though - slimes only do 1 damage, so if you have two red mushrooms, getting hit by a slime will only consume one of them.
I got 925 is that good? hah didnt got it at first thought i had to throw the stuff at the monsters or use it on the dog. It is funny! ive seen others like this one and ive liked em all :D <3
925 is good! My personal best is 1238 so far. Thanks!
I really dig the music and graphics. Could have used a way to drink the potions to get them out of your bag or something because the game seemed like rully hard.
my doggy kept getting reket until i figured it out..... fun and simple i like it alot
Brillant game, loved it! :smile:
This is a really nice take on the theme, I've spent several minutes playing this. Fun and simple. Good game.
Interesting game !
I like the idea of limit the controls to the character's backpack, this adding a constant tension all through the game.
The graphic's are neat, each item's are recognizable from the others and the cheat sheet help to immediately understand the combinaisons.
It's a shame that we have to read the utility of colored bars outside of the game, even if you use the standard color scheme Life / green, Mana / blue, Stamina / green. It take me two or three run to fully understand when these are consumated. If I'm not the only one to feel this, maybe you can add some icons to the left of each bar and instantiating floating item greyed out around the character when it's used ?
Also, it would be interesting to have some indirect control of the random, like a "melting station" along the road, to turn a potion into another one for example. Maybe it can add some depth when the random doesn't provide us the expected item.
Unfortunately, I encountered a bug when restarting the first time : i was unable to drag the items out of their boxes. However, it disappear after a refresh.
Lastly, the score is not easily readable.
It seems that a only find bad point, but I've really enjoyed playing it ! Anyway, congrats for your entry and keep doing games !
Thanks, @zblah! I like the icon idea for the meters. Our plan for using items was to make them fly out of you and into the pug's mouth when they're used, we just didn't have time to implement that.
And yes, you're in good company in suggesting ways to mitigate the very random RNG.
Thanks for your feedback, suggestions, and encouragement!
I really enjoyed this game, the music was really fun, and I liked the quick matching mechanic. I would like to see you take this further, perhaps by having more advanced combinations with more powerful effects (being able to combine matching potions for example) perhaps in a similar manner to 2048/threes? This was an unexpected gem to find, thank you for sharing it with me and well done.
Thanks, @historymaker118! We actually discussed 2048 as a mechanic during our brainstorming phase, and we decided that 2048 stands on its own as a game, and trying to embed it into Overencumbered would overcomplicate things. I do like the idea of more combinations, though - thanks for your feedback and encouragement! <3
nice one. i'd like to play it with more combinations of items and with some additional animations and art stuff
overencumbered.png Lots of fun, a very unique and creative take on the theme. I don't know if it was a bug, but sometimes random items from my inventory would disappear- mushrooms and trash and gold, not just potions. I enjoyed that there's some randomness but also skill in how the faster you manage your inventory the better your chances. And the frantic pacing at the end was excellent, fun all around!
@lloyd 1431, that's the current highest score I've seen - higher than my personal best! Congratulations!
The pug will eat mushrooms, but as for trash disappearing, that sounds like a bug - I'll look into it.
Thanks for your feedback and kind words!
Cute pug! No constructive criticisms from me; I had a lot of fun playing this!
A good game with an unbalanced random generation system. It feels unfair and frustrating (mainly because of the red lizards). I liked the concept, the graphics and the music (which made me thought in Beneath a Steel Sky). Good use of the theme. As a suggestion, apart from improving the generation of items, you should use another font and color for the restart message.
You already played our game: The legend of the looter and the incredible backpack that never runs out of space, so we can't do anything but thank you.
This is a really creative use of the theme. I'm not sure if it's doing so, but an increase in health and mana spawn rates would help the game rely on user reaction times rather than hoping for specific items. So if your team decides to make a post-jam build I would hope it helps.
@mapedorr Yes, the red lizards are very difficult to defeat without a mana potion. Thanks for your comment!
@johan-vischer Yes, if we are going to make a post-jam build, making spawn rates less random and more fair is high on the list! Thank you!
Cute game, I really liked the pace of the game. If it was less frantic it would've been a bit of a drag. The gameplay is nice and simple, though it would be nice to have more of a choice in the run. The current one is whether or not to hold onto gold, which is an interesting one, but the rest are more of a reaction game. I really did like the protagonist though. There are way too many of these RPG runners that just have a knight. Good job shaking up the status quo!
Thanks, @peachtreeoath! There's actually a bit more strategy than is obvious, we just need to do a better job of communicating that to the player. For example, if you keep red mushrooms against gelatinous cubes instead of crafting them into health potions, the pug'll only consume 1 mushroom when it gets hit. If it's a potion, it'll drink the whole thing.
p.s. I have not yet begun to shake up the status quo (:
Oh wow, good to know! Yea that's exactly the kind of stuff that make the player sit and think a bit about what is optimal.