FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD43 → A Sworded Tale

A Sworded Tale

By snowdrama, DanielJMus, rot_god, arc1llusion and SunneyViolette

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall9022.9141
Fun8692.7340
Innovation8522.7240
Theme4763.5240
Graphics8152.8640
Audio4253.1940
Humor6522.5736
Mood6333.1739

Comments

tadpolily 2018-12-04 14:30

Using blood magic to attack? That's a cool idea!

yopox 2018-12-04 14:48

It's really ambitious to crete a 3D rpg with a city and a forest (and maybe more haha), with dialogues and a battle system ! Congrats for finishing everything. I liked the music a lot :musical_note: !

imaship 2018-12-04 19:36

Very lovely graphics for a jam ! The mood is also :)

metalfox-dioxymore 2018-12-04 23:14

There is a huge amount of work here ! The graphics are simple, but there are some good ideas. You respected the theme and gave us a nice little RPG. However, the character is a bit slow and the maps are a bit large in comparison, so it can be a bit boring sometimes unfortunaly.

I can really feel the passion you put in that game. Keep up the good work !

arc1llusion 2018-12-04 23:25

@tadpolily @yopox @imaship Thanks for the kind words guys!

@metalfox-dioxymore Thanks for the tip, I actually agree with you. We wanted more NPCs for example but unfortunately just ran out of time. It would've helped make the maps feel a little more lively.

metalfox-dioxymore 2018-12-04 23:29

@arc1llusion Don't get me wrong, I'm actually amazed by what you have done in only 3 days. So far, it's probably the most ambitious project I've tested !

guilhermesouza 2018-12-04 23:59

WOW a 3D RPG in only 3 days?? :O really ambitious and impressed me, however i had some problems with the camera, i don't know why, but the camera just stops with a big zoom out O.O. Great Job!

dizzy 2018-12-05 00:00

3D graphics, good sounds and great world! I really like your game, great work guys!

niborious 2018-12-05 00:05

Woah this is really cool! I love the way the game looks, the 3d camera and world just feel really good to me. Battle scene background doesn't quite match the perspective tho haha. Amazing Game!

bendev-games 2018-12-05 00:20

I'm in shock by how much you guys made in so little time (and made it well!). And a great take on the theme on top of that. I agree with @metalfox-dioxymore in making the character a bit faster to better explore the map. But overrall an incredible game. Great work!

snowdrama 2018-12-05 01:20

@guilhermesouza Thanks! Ahh yeah I have it zoom out based on how far it is from the player. you can use D and C to zoom the camera in and out.

@dizzy Thank you!

@niborious Thanks! The plan was to have a 3D battle scene, but it was cut for time. I wanted to do camera pans and such as well and unfortunately that just never ended up happening.

@bendev-games Thank you! Yeah that was something I considered fixing It was originally SUPER fast so fast that you were almost twice as fast as enemies, If I speed the enemies up a bit, I think I can also make the player move a bit faster(I might sneak this into a 0.6 build in a few hours. Small buff to speed counts as fixing a bug to make the game playable right? Haha)

heyycap 2018-12-05 02:13

I wanted to move faster so I could explore the world more! Interesting though.

miltonsilva 2018-12-05 02:25

A MUSICA DO JOGO É MUITO FOFA EM PARTES DO JOGO DEMOREI PRA ENTENDRER O INICIO DO JOGO DE QUANDO TEM QUE APERTAR O BOTAO PARA SELECIONAR O ATAQUE MAS ESTA LEGAL.

wheatleyscience 2018-12-05 02:31

good rpg, especially when i think you developed this gamen in a jam, good effort

snowdrama 2018-12-05 05:15

@heyycap 0.6 has some speed buffs coming. Sadly I don't honestly recommend it until we get a post jam version up *Spoilers* There's nothing really there. Since we don't have any items in the game, there's nothing hidden in the forest or dungeon to find, and since we don't currently have exp in the game, fighting the monsters is just a distraction.

@miltonsilva Google translate did a pretty bad job with this one :/

@wheatleyscience Thanks! Yeah the project was super ambitious, so we didn't realize we wouldn't have enough time for all the content and such. There was so much more planned but it got cut to make sure we'd finish.

gebowunjo 2018-12-05 09:31

The idea is good ! Creating this kind of game in just a JAM is a big challenge =O Well done ! I love the music =D

popdaddygames 2018-12-05 10:29

Very ambitious idea and awesome execution! Hope you learned lots and can make the next iteration EVEN BETTER!! :)

joramwolters 2018-12-05 19:03

I'll give props for the ambition here, quite courageous to for an RPG in a gamejam.

okuar 2018-12-05 19:05

A lot of work! You guys are cool and I hope that you had a good sleep after this work. Congrats!

johara-dutton 2018-12-05 22:02

This was a large scope for such a short period of time, so great job on implementing what you have here! I like the mood that is set by the music and the visuals you currently have. I also like your use of the theme; sacrificing blood is a cool idea!

I would love to see some more cohesive art assets, making sure the style of the characters fits well within the environment. There is a lot of potential here so I hope you keep working on it!

tacohej 2018-12-05 22:27

Like other people have mentioned, the scope was very ambitious. Would love to hear what you would have done differently next time.

I managed to find the dungeon, but died to a pesky monster. Some more variation would have been nice, but I understand that it was a challange with the time constraints. I especially liked the transitions between scenes, that was cool.

Keep it up!

jlv 2018-12-06 01:36

Great game ! Managing to build a RPG in so little time is definitely impressive, and a 3D one at that !

Pros : - "High" production values, with a true 3D JRPG feel - Nice low poly graphics and character sprites - Great soundtrack - Blood-based mechanic totally fits the theme

Cons : - Keyboard controls scheme id a little confusing... Players should take your controller advice at heart :) - Slow text during dialogues

All in all, great work !

eddie-li 2018-12-06 01:42

What a courageous attempt! This huge undertaking must have taken so much time. Very well done! Unfortunately I was on a keyboard so that was a bit annoying but besides that I don't have too much to complain about.

snowdrama 2018-12-06 02:22

@gebowunjo Thanks! Yeah we didn't know how huge it was until we

@popdaddygames Yeah we learned a ton! I only recently learned the tricks I used for the cutscene system. And this was my first time implementing them so there were some pitfalls I learned there.

@joramwolters Yeah haha super ambitious, thanks for playing!

@okuar Yeah I took the night after to sleep haha, I streamed for 13 hours that day so when I passed out at 5 am tuesday morning I was done for a bit haha

@johara-dutton that's an issue we definitely struggeled with, It was a challenge as we had a new artist on the team, and I did the 3D models this time(usually I only dabble in 2D and UI stuff) So there was lots of issues. I also struggled with texturing otherwise I could have had the models done and we could have gotten the battle scenes done in 3D which would have definitely helped with that. The enemies and characters were also done by different people so there's an even bigger disconnect. So I totally agree. Thanks for playing!

@tacohej Yeah same I wish there was more variation in enemies. I also wish there was more to the combat like experience or unlock-able skills but we definitely ran out of time for any of that.

I don't think I'd have done anything different per-se but I would put more focus on content and less on the environment, as good as the environment is, the hours I spent working on all the non essential models in the game could have been time working on scripting more dialogue, more NPCs, there was even supposed to be a second town between the dungeon and forest.

@jlv Thanks! We tried to give a psuedo-retro-modern hybrid feel, for example the music was inspired by Final Fantasy and Golden Sun. As for the controls I think personally I struggled finding one that works well. I mapped it to the default GBA emulator controls(at least VBA) ZX being the GBA AB buttons, and AS being the GBA left and right triggers. But yeah controller is definitely better haha. I also agree the text is super slow, I appreciate you pointing it out. I'll add that to the next patch to increase it a bunch.

@eddie-li Thanks! Yeah sorry the keyboard controls were kinda tough to figure out since we needed essentially 6 buttons and a d-pad. Apprecate the feedback though. We'll see if we can make it more bearable.

aortega 2018-12-06 22:08

Wow, super ambitious for a game jam. The control keys were mixed up, so a bit buggy. The visuals are not bad, the music is very good. The combat was confusing at first, but got it after a minute. Perhaps a little slow paced, I'm impatient. Congratulations on finishing this on time!!

ninnec 2018-12-06 22:17

I really liked the view of the world. I liked how open it felt but I could understand how others got bored with the traveling. You seem to have a good sense of humor as well :-)

coleslaughter 2018-12-07 06:50

OOoohhhhh, a classic turn-based RPG for a LD game? :) Nice!!

I like the visuals going on in this game. The 2D sprites in the 3D world actually fit in surprisingly nicely, and I like the transitions from roaming states to walking states.

I think this game could have benefited from a bit of tuning, though. The maps you roamed around it were way to big and sprawling, in my opinion. You probably could have just scaled everything down to half and it would have been much more digestible. Enemy spawns also seemed out of control and impossible to avoid, which is frustrating since, from what I could tell, there was no EXP or level up system, which meant that every battle only served to be a drain on my resources (namely my health). So unfortunately the combat mechanics and the roaming encounter mechanics were kind of at odds with each other, rather than working together to create a cohesive experience.

Despite all of that, though, this is very ambitious for what it is, and I'm impressed with what y'all have been able to accomplish in a short amount of time. I'm a big fan of the genre you decided to go with, so it was a pleasant surprise to see. :)

arc1llusion 2018-12-07 13:57

@aortega @ninnec @coleslaughter Thanks for the kind words and tips guys.

We definitely agree with the pacing. Movement could've sped up. We wanted to add an exp system, but as they say time got in the way. Maybe next time we decide to do a turn based rpg ;)

fzillo 2018-12-08 10:15

I think the game has a very good mood, with the world building, the characters and the happy music. Doing a 3D RPG is very ambitious, but I think you did a good job with it. :)

mirsakka 2018-12-09 00:52

I got nostalgic feeling when playing this. Controls with keyboard were a bit tricky to take over, especially the camera movement. Nice atmosphere and music!

snowdrama 2018-12-10 06:23

@aortega Yeah it was super ambitious, I couldn't settle on a good control scheme so I used the default-ish GBA Emulator VBA default controls(ZX for AB, AS for LR etc). The combat I can definitely understand being confusing, cause the vague hint at the beginning doesn't really help too much, I didn't want to outright explain it because I wanted some of that "Aha! I figured it out!" going on but yeah. I think pacing could have been helped as well but with a lack of content, there's not much we could do there. Thanks for playing!

@ninnec Thank you! Yeah I totally get where people are coming from with it being kinda boring, the open world is cool and all but there's nothing there, so it becomes hard to want to explore anything. Hahaha I'm glad someone got a laugh from it!

@coleslaughter Thanks! We had a lot of stuff going on with the graphics there. For sure, the original plan was to hide skill stones, items and other things that gave the sprawling levels more purpose, unfortunately that ambition came with a cost, there just wasn't enough time for more content. I gave the enemies a speed buff in 0.6 because it was possible previously to just walk past everything skipping all combat entirely you walked twice as fast as the enemies so it was a cakewalk to avoid everything. We also buffed the healing on 0.6 and fixed a bug where you weren't actually healing but apparently that wasn't enough to make the combat easy enough. I also realized we didn't explain the health recovery well especially due to the tutorial being vague. I appreciate the feedback and thanks for playing!

@fzillo Thanks! I wish I had more time to create more NPCs and flesh out the world a bunch more. It was a struggle for sure, that ambition came at the cost of content sadly haha. Thanks for playing!

@mirsakka Yeah the keyboard controls definitely were a bit of a challenge because of the camera and such, Honestly, I totally understand why so many RPGs have fixed cameras or cameras that you can't directly influence. We worked super hard on the graphics and music so thank you!

aim 2018-12-12 09:27

"top percentage ratatta"

I salute you for making an rpg in a game jam.

It really reminds me of early 3d rpgs and some of the adorable stuff they did. I like that the town is a painted picture of a town on a plain xD

arron-fowler 2018-12-13 11:19

My camera is constantly spinning and I cant work out how to stop it. Web version. Is there anything I can press to stop it? I tried for as long as I could but I actually got dizzy in real life. I would love to give it a propper go and a rating.

snowdrama 2018-12-13 16:23

@aim Thanks! We tried hard to do a modern retro feel, the top percentage rattata thing is actually a whole story in itself involving the cutscene system.

@arron-fowler Where were you standing? The Camera system has some whisker raycasts that go from the camera to slightly left and right of the player that cause the camera to turn to prevent the player from being obstructed by buildings, trees etc. If you were standing in a corner somewhere that at no angle these raycasts weren't hit, it will spin until it finds a location where the raycasts aren't hit. Also did you have a controller hooked up. Some controllers cause issues as their analog mapping is different than the configured axis. It's possible that due to another input that isn't the keyboard, the other input method was constantly pressing the camera turn axis.

arron-fowler 2018-12-13 16:47

I will try again this evening but it was a constant effect no matter where I moved to. I had a second keyboard plugged in but that was all.

snowdrama 2018-12-13 22:44

@arron-fowler appreciated, I just am trying to figure out how to replicate it.

arron-fowler 2018-12-13 23:12

I will try again. My computer is updating atm but I will try again ASAP.

snowdrama 2018-12-14 01:11

@arron-fowler appreciated, I am trying to figure out how to replicate it.

arron-fowler 2018-12-14 09:01

OK it is still spinning. I filmed a little clip with my phone. Nothing plugged in this time. https://youtu.be/Ci-udkldsHA I hope this helps.