ribout-horace 2018-12-08 09:15
I hope you will finish it ! There are some good idea in it !
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Charming's Sacrifices
By Lise Carreel and colletto-gregory
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1012 | 2.55 | 28 | |
| Fun | 1023 | 2.17 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 953 | 2.53 | 28 | |
| Theme | 1039 | 1.80 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 762 | 3.00 | 29 | |
| Audio | 440 | 3.16 | 29 | |
| Humor | 647 | 2.57 | 28 | |
| Mood | 929 | 2.54 | 27 |
I hope you will finish it ! There are some good idea in it !
I liked the music. The game seems alright but i was abit confused what todo. A few things i think could be improved are the scrolling, it looks like the world moves different to everything else in it etc.
This is really a weird, funny and a bit more weird game. I love what is here, and I would like to see more. The best part of this game is the weird humour and the amazing music. Overall a good LD game. Well done.
The story is nice. There is potential in the choice of weapons. You could also add some kind of obstacles for the player to jump over. It would also be a good idea to switch from a "azerty" keyboard to a "qwerty" keyboard :P
Also really liked the graphics ... overall this has potential and good job!
I finished the game, but... there was no hug at the end :cry:
The music is very nice, I could listen to the track for hours.
I had some weird issues where the HUD kept disappearing, first the HP circle along with the portrait and then the 'mana' bar. As others mentioned already the scrolling is a bit off too (yeah I know, stating the obvious...), other than that it could become a very good game if you continue developing!
I liked a lot the taped buttons and the tapped portrait on the boxes, very nice styling idea and choice! ^^
By the way, I'm guessing your are using an AZERTY keyboard? Cause azer was kinda confusing. I think it'd be better to use the numbers above on the next version/game!
Sadly, I didn't really understand what was happening the whole time. I think adding a health bar to the enemies would make the game in general much clearer. I did really like the graphics though; they looked very nice! Good job!
Even if it's not a finished game, it has a lot of charm. The graphics are nice, the concept of the cardboard boxes is pretty funny. The gameplay doesn't have anything very interesting, that's too bad because it could very be a fun and simple game with some RPG elements. Good job anyway.
I think the idea was really good, I'm not sure how it fit into the theme, apart from having the kill the monsters. I was a little confused throughout but the graphics and music made me keep on going, so I really liked that! I think it's very easy to forget that everyone only had a few days to create a game so with that said, well done on coming up with this! I look forward to seeing what you do in the next LD! :-))
Charming game with interesting ideas. I like the graphics ideas. Music was really nice also! It was a bit hard to understand what was going on the first time. And as asked before, what did we sacrifice? Keys were also a bit off for me, but nothing that really bothered a lot. Congrats on your game!
I see that a lot of people couldn't understand where the sacrifice was in our game (@rolle, @sunneyviolette, @deadlyalive, maybe others, can't be sure :) !), so here's the answer : we wanted Charming to sacrifice the GUI. I guess we should have let you choose which part you wanted to sacrifice(life bar, mana bar, keys, etc), but we hadn't enough time for this. We'll change this in the final version :D ! But above all, thank you so much for the kind comments, we'll try to take in count all of your returns :D !
@lise-carreel, wow... That never crossed my mind. Very interesting idea. It's sad this isn't apparent while playing the game. I'm changing Innovation to 5/5. Nice one!
Oh ok, now I understand the sacrifice. Yes, it should be mor apparent what you are sacrificing ...
The artistic elements of the game are simply breathtaking! I loved the toony environments and enemies, and to an almost equal extent loved the music. I found the gameplay elements to be a bit lacking, and here's my opinions.
Firstly, I'm a laptop user. The resolution that you have selected for the game window is way larger than my laptop's resolution, so a lot of the game, including UI is mostly blocked off for me. I believe you can set itch to scale the view according to the player's resolution, so maybe use that?
It felt like there was many instances where I had mana to attack, but the game wouldn't let me. Even the cheapest attack would fail, and I would be condemned to lose a life. Not sure what triggered the glitch, but seemed to repair on death. I also didn't get the mana system initially, as it was a bit discreet (and half cut off by the resolution). Also, an empty mana bar looks a bit too similar to a full one, so maybe increase the contrast a bit to make it more obvious?
What was the point of items from the chests? Does it improve some stat, because by the point I had found any items, the UI had vanished (which is apparently a feature?) Maybe tell us what the item does, or at least what the item is. There also seems to be the possibility for long streaks of chests without enemies, my record whilst testing was three in a row without any enemies, which feels a bit broken.
Also, when UI randomly disappears, it isn't really a sacrifice. Whilst this may be a bit nit-picky, a sacrifice should be something that a player actively chooses to do. If it is involuntary, it is closer to progression than sacrifice. There could be more depth to this vanishing UI thing if the player had control over when and what disappears, and maybe it gave them some sort of buff. This could add some more strategic elements to a game which is otherwise, very simple in its approach to gameplay. The player doesn't really have much to do, and there isn't really a choice. A better application of sacrifice could fill this void.
Could have been some extra polish added. Little details like the text bubbles are nice, but the text is rather repetitive, with some events even having the same message each time. You could have maybe randomised the message each time? Also the text bubbles don't really fit in with the rest of the game. They seem to use pixel art, and look quite bland in comparison to other artistic elements. Also the pause menu was quite glitchy, and I found a considerable number of exploits using it. The game would continue playing if you paused during a death animation, and upon resume, all the enemies would disappear. Also looks strange how stationary objects such as a chest don't sit still on the floor, and move relative to the ground. There also wasn't a lot of important feedback events. One such missing event was when you tried to open a chest without a key. Nothing would happen, and no feedback was given as to why. Could have maybe made the player say something to indicate no keys? I also get the feeling that the font was actually custom made (if so, well done, fonts usually come straight from google fonts), and whilst this is nice, the text doesn't scale well, as seen in the "Encounter's left" text. This text is blurry and slightly pixellated.
Otherwise, the game is quite nice, and the art and music are simply wonderful. My only concern is that this came at the expense of gameplay, and consequently, the game isn't particularly engaging. There isn't a whole heap to do. The music and art alone keep me there for some period of time, but that only lasts so long. This is a very nice, and rather ambitious game, one to certainly be proud of! Keep on developing, and I hope this feedback was useful! :thumbsup:
@justcamh Thank you so much for all of your feedback :D ! Most of your ideas were the same as ours, but we couldn't make it on time. Some features were implemented on the last minute (the bubbles being one example, that's why they aren't exactly fitting to the rest of the game :') ), and we had to make some sacrifices (ha ha). But be sure we'll try to improve this version, and add all of those missing points :D !
Loved the cardboard box people and the music. Was not really sure what I was supposed to be doing seemed pressing r,e, then z was taking out enemies. The losing of the UI seemed more like a bug than a feature and giving the user an option and something in return would have helped. The game lives up to its name, though, since it was quite charming. Also, the screen did not fit too well even on fullscreen. Still this is a good prototype and would be fun to expand.
To be honest it was quite hard to understand what was going on, i guess you sacrifice your HUD or something like that? it was hard to distinguish if that was supposed to happen, i think if you clear up the game a bit more and make stuff clearer you can get a good concept if sacrificing items of your HUD was your main idea :)
@cigsandflowers You got it, we wanted Charming to sacrifice the HUD ! I agree it could have been clearer, we project to modify this on the final version, but we lacked some time ^^". Thank you for trying and for your feedback :D !
I'm not even sure of what's going on, but the quest continues. Onwards!
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Quite a prototype you've got there. A good skeleton, but something that could really do with some balancing down the line, if you do decide to retake this concept. The game has its visual and audio charms, but gameplay wise, it's hard to tell what's going on. I never understood what I got from the chests, nor if I was "killing" enemies correctly. It's hard to tell what's an incomplete feature or a glitch, but nothing that can't be fixed with a day or two of fixes. The humor did get me to chuckle though.
You've got interesting ideas, which should be further explored. [My team](discord.whalesandgames.com) is looking forward to play more games from you in the future. Cheers! :whale:
@moski Yeah, we'll try to retake our concept :D ! We know it needs more clarity, and that's the first thing we'll focus on :) ! Just so you know, chests only give you money on this version, so it's pretty useless :'). I'm happy to see you enjoyed it though :D !
I never really felt I got this game, although I did get to the end. It worked well enough but sort of lacked any tension. I liked the look of it.
Hi just tried your game on stream, too bad ou weren't there to help or explain me the game 'cause I did not really understand wht to do.
Also you user AZER for different spell type which is shuffled up in most countrie's keyboard layouts... better would be 1234 or changeable assignments.
Did only rate a few categories so far...
As it stands, it seems pretty repetitive. While I get the role of the theme in the plot, I would have loved to have more sacrifices in the game to spice up encounters some more.
I did like the music, and found the idea to be nice though!
@firesplash-entertainment Sorry to read that :(. Being two people working on the project, we lacked some time and neglected some basic stuff I guess... We explained most of the game on our page, but here's a resume : you must go through 20 encounters to complete the quest a certain "Bert" gave you. For this, you have a unique spell, with 4 levels of power though, and a strange power : whenever you die, you can sacrifice a piece of your HUD to come back. Hope this help, if not, tell me :) !
@artur-hawkwing A little repetitive for now indeed ! But we plan on adding some features (to choose witch part of the HUD we sacrifice, equipments, different mobs and maybe sacrifice a piece of the HUD anytime we want, to gain some boosts !). But I'm glad you liked it though :) !
I like the style and theme of this game. :) Very charming that even the menus are made out of cardboard, and the tone of the game is very childish (in a good way!).
Would have maybe liked some variety in visuals between the attacks. It took me a while to realize that the main difference between them all was their "mana cost" (and damage, obviously). Also, was there any reason that the attack keys were mapped to z, a, e, and r? Seemed kind of random to me, but maybe I'm out of the loop?
Anyhoo, this was a cute little entry. :) Well done!
@coleslaughter Awww thank you so much :D ! I couldn't find the time to make more visuals for the attacks during the jam, sadly. But I'm working on it :) ! Yes, the key bindings were kind of random, we lacked time once again. That's something else we must change :').