Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Long Live The King!
By player-2 and RenegadePunisher
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 264 | 3.71 | 44 | |
| Fun | 382 | 3.42 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 8 | 4.35 | 44 | |
| Theme | 471 | 3.53 | 44 | |
| Graphics | 562 | 3.44 | 44 | |
| Audio | 467 | 3.10 | 39 | |
| Humor | 339 | 3.20 | 41 | |
| Mood | 487 | 3.34 | 41 |
That's a cool lemming like game with a twist ! I find the idea very original, but for some reason, the windows were a bit hard to move sometimes, and it seem that holding down the left button of the mouse pause the game. I don't know if it's a bug or not.
Graphism and sounds are good. So it's a cool innovative little game !
Very cool usage of multiple windows.
Very innovative use of windows! Seems to slow down while moving them, though. Pretty cool music and art.
I'm a bit lost with how to play the game, sometimes clicking on the grunts didn't do anything, or I couldn't move the windows. Great idea, even though I didn't manage to do anything.
I lose immediately as soon as I click anything. It looks like the bottom-middle and bottom-left guys are falling, but I'm not sure.
I really like the concept! Frustrating when you mess up and the one lemming you need dies XD. Would have loved a speed-up button for multiple playthroughs. I'd *love* to see additional levels for this too, maybe some easier ones to start!
Thanks for the feedback everyone.
The game should pass when you move the windows. It was a little unplayable when we kept it playing.
The issue described with clicking the mouse not doing anything is concerning. Obviously clicking a grunt should activate their ability. I'll take a look and see what's going on.
@speakertone Do the grunts fall through the window or are they spawning outside of a window? I've never had this issue so could do with some repro steps.
Okay, so it looks like we overlooked something. The individual windows are a set size of 200x300 pixels. If you screen resolution is small it will mean the windows get spawned partly off screen, which could result in the king being killed and instantly ending the game.
If any of the window down are spawned overlapping they will not be able to move. The intent was that you can't move windows over each other, but never considered that they could potentially be spawned already colliding.
So lots of lessons learned there for the next jam, but for this game I think we need to add a minimum screen resolution to the description.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the resolution issue you described.
Quick question to all who have played it: who has actually gotten the king to the exit. Just so I can judge how difficult the game is.
I almost got all the grunts in the basket. Nice little game and very original! The usage of the windows was very inovative. The game is very hard. This makes it a nice challenge, but it can be frustrating sometimes if you die when you almost have all grunts in the basket. Fun game
This game is really cool! I never got the king to the exit, I'd say this is a pretty difficult game. I love the little animations of the small people, and the concept as a whole is really innovative. Good job!
I really liked what you did with the Windows. It's very inovative!
This is a very cool puzzle concept that fits the theme very well. I found it extremely difficult though and never was able to complete it. I think having some smaller puzzles with less windows to start with would have made for a more satisfying experience. But hey! This is ludem dare right? Congrats on completing a very unique, solid and bug free game.
Thanks @relictooth I totally agree. We could easily set up multiple levels which build the learning curve, but ultimately we ran out of time for that. Thanks for the feedback.
This game is way too complicated for me!!
> From the feedback we have got it doesn’t appear that anyone has managed to complete this tricky puzzler yet. It is definitely possible. Will you be first?
:eyes::eyes::eyes:
This was a really interesting puzzle! I really enjoyed figuring out in what order things needed to happen. Though, alot of that came from behind and over the shoulder of my little sister, as she heard me ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the coolness and quickly took over my computer. I mean, I still technically beat it... Right? Either way, here's my win screen. (I re-did it after she finished up)
Screenshot (112).png
It was honestly really fun, but I did come across an issue or two. Like every other playthrough, I'd have a guy in a box against the left side of my screen, and have it just... Walk into the left wall and die? And he didn't leave his box, either. There was a white barrier there. Those were a bit frustrating :sweat_smile:
Another small issue would be that sometimes when I clicked on a guy, it'd act like I clicked on hit a few more times. Like, swapping from skill to walk again and again till I left him alone.
Amazing game format. Loved it! :D
@mrpiedpiper Thanks for the feedback. I'm really glad to see someone complete it :)
The death's should definitely not happen. I'll take a look at that. And the mouse click issue. I've seen that too. Couldn't see an issue in our code for it, but now someone else has spotted that issue I'll take another look.
Thanks a lot.
omg the best game i've played this ld! I know this "multiple window" mechanic is overused but you guys took it to another level! Only thing that bothered me was the window dragging.. It bugged a bit but after all it didnt' matter.. great job!
@tulipekoni Wow. Thanks. I appreciate that. I'll also take a look at the movement issue. I'm compiling a list of issues to fix after the voting has finished. As you know, 3 days goes really quickly.
Nice pixel art!
I played this for a long, long time. It was very engaging. This was an awesome entry, I hope more people get to see it!
@skettynmeebs Thanks for that. When we finished making it we weren't sure if anyone would give it the time, so it's really good to see so many people enjoying playing it.
really innovative one ! enjoyed that ! :D
animations and game flow are quite slow though, we need few minutes to make one grunt to dig hiw way out on another window, a little bit frustrating in my opinion, errors are not allowed ^^' Good job !
Really cool game! The pixel art is amazing and the gameplay is innovative.
It's a very cool, interesting game idea! It took me a while to figure it out but I really like how the windows worked. Great work!
@raitozan I totally get that. It's a balancing act between too fast and new players don't get time to react and too slow for those people who get the hang of it really quickly.
Maybe a speed up option like someone suggested earlier is the way to go.
Thanks for giving it a go.
@kobeb Thanks for playing bud. I'm pleased you enjoyed it. If we had more time I think we would have had multiple puzzles, but it is what it is.
@pixel-greg Thanks for playing. One of our major concerns were that people wouldn't immediately understand how to play and would just close it and play something else. I really pleased that you stuck with it.
I really enjoyed this game! The multiple windows are a cool concept and the music was nice as well. Really great lemming style game, well done!
I relly like your game alot of Windows i never expected that. Cool man And funny game
Really interesting concept, I liked the movement of windows for gameplay. I was always a fan of the old lemmings games so this brought that back. Great game!
I was never really a big fan of these kinds of puzzle games, so take my opinion for what it's worth. That being said, there were a few issues I had; notably, one of the grunts would fall off the screen within seconds of the game starting, meaning if I didn't immediately start with him, I'd automatically lose. I also had a couple of technical problems (Windows 7 on an old laptop), with the background being a generic blue screen instead of my desktop, and having to hold my mouse down to activate a grunt instead of just clicking once (though it seems like I'm the only one with this problem.) Beyond that, I could tell it was a well-made game with some technical depth and an interesting twist to it.
@niterich Thanks for the feedback. One of the things we hadn't considered was the issues with screens with smaller resolutions. The window sizes cannot be scaled. This is a consequence of the way it was made. It is definitely something we will consider in future jams. Thanks again.
Good game for your first LD!
Wow, this is a very unique game. I dig it (though I'm also very bad at it). I have very few suggestions, it's a pretty perfect expression of your idea as-is. I wish the miner dug a bit faster. The intro is easy to accidentally click past, and I got stuck not knowing how to quit. Umm, that's pretty much it. Awesome graphics for what you're doing, good personality, good theme. Are you planning on doing more with it? I'd keep an eye on it for sure!
@rumor Thanks for the feedback. A couple of people have mentioned the speed of digging. It's not a big change, so it's definitely something we are considering. We just don't want to make them too quick that it frustrates players who didn't get back to the grunt quick enough.
We hadn't considered doing anything else with it, but considering all the positive feedback we have received it might be worth putting a few different levels in.
Thanks for taking the time to play.
I saw the Technic that you used. The game makes a screenshot of your screen and sets it as the background. Nice
Wow, great game! 5/5 Innovation for sure. I've never seen a puzzle game like that before! Lots of fun.
The learning curve for the game was steep because all of your grunts look the same. Maybe if they were bigger and looked a little different it would be easier for the user to know which is which.
One of the things that really frustrated me (and led to me quitting, after I missed getting the last grunt in the basket) was the size of the basket. It was too small! Make it bigger so that there is more room for error. Or at least make some sort of visual cue so that it is easier for the user to screw up.
Cool take on the theme and I hope you keep developing this! Looking forward to seeing this go places. Perhaps the most solid entry I've seen so far.
@conrad123 Thanks for the feedback.
I like the idea of making the grunts bigger. It'll really help the player see which grunt it is. Obviously that's when we have made the grunts look more like their skill type when walking.
I agree on the point about the basket. For a 1 level game jam game I think how it currently is is ok, but for a game you want people to play more than once it's a little harsh.
We do plan on continuing development of the game, so we will be incorporating your suggestions.
Thanks again for playing.
Totally awesome entry, did you actually recreate all the lemmings mechanics/sprites or was there some sort of library to help out? I've always wondered how to do the pixel by pixel destruction w/o it being computationally expensive. I'm always impressed with these kinds of entries but this was the first one where I had to multitask a bit and think about how to transfer abilities from one window to the next. I agree with some other comments, I'm super impressed you did this all bug free, did you already have experience with this type of tech?
@peachtreeoath Hey bud, thanks for playing the game and the kind feedback.
The destructible landscape is done by reading in a bitmap image. Anywhere a particular colour becomes the area to walk, anywhere white is indestructible and everywhere else is destructible. Internally you keep track of the current state of each pixel. When an explosion happens, you update the internal structure and manipulate the bitmap to incorporate this new data. You then refresh the background so that it redraws a modified background. As you are using the internal state for collision checks, the character will fall into any gaps.
I worked on Worms Revolution a couple of years back, but I didn't do any landscape coding. I was responsible for all the weapons code :) This game was written from scratch in C++, but we used SDL for the basics.
We did implement all the Lemmings, but then changed the functionality slightly to fit our game and removed the abilities we didn't need.
In our post-jam version we will be adding some different. Haracger abilities to switch things up a bit. We will also changing a few other things to make it less like Lemmings, even though the influence will still be obvious.
Thanks again for playing.
Oh man that's super awesome you worked on Worms. Yea we tried this back in LD38 https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/meteor-jam and we ended up just using big tiles for the landscape since we couldn't figure that out. I'll have to give your alg a shot in a test project sometime.
I apologize, the footage I tried to capture of your game was lost. Your game, unfortunately made my computer crash, I still tried to rate my experience and talk about it though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTCOdtDt_o
There are time-stamps(or should be in the description)
@alext-design Thank you for playing and reviewing our game, i am not too sure why it crashed your pc. I am unsure if you mean the game crashed the pc down to rebooting, or if you were just unable to open any other programs. The game does use a technique which covers your desktop, making you unable to open any other icons on your desktop, if this was the problem. If the game fully crashed your pc then i don't know what the issue could be.
Thank you for including our game in the video, and for reviewing.
Yea, it fully crashed and took a few tries to get it to start again. That's why I'm sorry I couldn't show any gameplay footage.
My pc is pretty terrible I think, though. It will crash if it's trying to process too much and I often need to save after every single action I take when video editing from fear of the program suddenly crashing.
I can't move the windows well, either, on a 1280x720 screen resolution.
@omiya-games Thanks for the info. Can you provide us with some details, which we can use to try and fix the problem you are having. Thanks
I'm on a Macbook Pro 2017 running Windows 10, October update release. I was duplicate-screening with a projector on 1280x720 screen resolution. Here are the rest of the specs:
ApplicationFrameHost 2018-12-16 (18865).png
You can see us attempting to play the game here:
https://youtu.be/4bmEUhG37uY?t=3613
Really creative game! I included it in my compilation video series of games from the Ludum Dare, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/UvsNqUUFv6I
@omiya-games Thanks for the feedback. It seems the problem is the screen resolution. The king dies instantly when he falls instantly off the screen. If this didn't happen I don't think you would have had any of the other issues.
I'll take another look at the recommendation for screen size. Thanks for the detailed feedback.
Nice, a game written with good ol SDL! I didn't manage to finish as it seemed way too tricky to figure out; I'm sure I could do it given enough time though! I wish there were some easier levels to ease into things instead of starting with the full 9 windows which was quite overwhelming. I'm at less than 1920x1080 on both of my computers so that may have made things a bit more difficult. The game didn't seem to properly capture my desktop wallpaper but I'm running Server 2012/2016 so I won't really blame you for that.
Anyhow, a pretty creative idea! I think what I mentioned about having some easier levels would be my main wishlist item, along with the other things already on your bucketlist like lower resolution support, bugfixes, etc.
Also! It seems that **you've used 3rd party audio assets (music) in your game that you did not create yourself.**
This is perfectly fine, but **as stated in [the official Ludum Dare rules](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules), you need to OPT-OUT of the Audio category due to this usage:**
> "You’re free to use 3rd party Artwork/Music/Audio assets, or assets you previously created, but we ask that you OPT-OUT of the respected voting categories (Graphics, Audio). You can opt-out of a voting category when you submit your game."
You can still modify this setting post-submission, so go ahead and do it now. I will be downvoting you in audio as an enforcement of this rule. If I'm mistaken, please reply to me so I can change my vote!