Pyres

coleslaughter 2018-12-05 08:04

Really like the tone and style of this game! It really nails the medieval war tactics vibe. The music and war sounds just added to the ambiance in a great way too.

In terms of gameplay, I didn't really see any reason why I should just be "Heavy Attacking" the entire time. More often than not, my troop number vastly outnumbered the enemy troop number, and I didn't see any feedback telling me that defending was doing anything significant. Perhaps some more visual feedback would be helpful so the player understands what's going on?

This seems like a pretty neat prototype, though! I like your guys' style, and hope to see more from y'all in the future! :)

flynn 2018-12-05 09:21

@coleslaughter thanks for the feedback! The tuning of the game balance is way overwhelming than we thought. We spent the last five hours tried to create a workable system but failed miserably. Definitely lesson learned! Glad you like the game style!

justcamh 2018-12-08 12:05

Some awesome mood in this game! The gameplay is a bit slow and repetitive and I don't feel like there is a heap of strategy however. I also experienced some bugs, wherein the a/d meter was going way beyond the expected value and I was unable to attack cities after some glitch that allowed me to infinitely place flags (marking where you are going) without the flags disappearing or the command being executed. The game looks lovely, however I think the gameplay mechanics could use some work. I would recommend some more statistics as to what each attack type does and how they differ. Maybe make it so that in some circumstances, it is better to use a different type of attack or some way to regain soldiers / level-up soldiers / learn new attacks / customise battle formations etc. Nice prototype with great atmosphere, however maybe next time spend more dev time on the gameplay features.

hao-tian 2018-12-22 22:35

@justcamh Thank you very much for your feedback! As one of the game mechanics' designers, I was having a hard time coming up with a reasonable and intuitive gameplay feeling, especially the battle. We will try to work on the mathematics aspect of the game in the future and try to generate a more balanced mechanics system.

Again, Thanks for playing!

lyrcaxis 2018-12-25 17:51

You should rate more games, otherwise people wont see it in LD's front page..! (More ratings == More feedback)

- This was a walk in the park difficulty-wise. Got a little impatient waiting for the battles to conclude, so I tried Cheat Engine (which didn't seem to work :P ) - Tried playing around with A/D, lost 90% of my troops, never pressed it again :P - I feel like Attack modes (Heavy/Normal/Defense) was poorly fitting. Your time would be better spent in adding another feature that went well with the gameplay. - Other than that it was pretty interesting. The mood (graphics+audio) and the clear goal kept me interested on finishing.

stan-fan 2018-12-25 18:12

@lyrcaxis Thanks for reminding! We are beginners without much experience in a game jam, so we got kind of ambitious at the beginning. There were some numerical problems that we didn't figure out with limited time, leading to an experience that was not so smooth and pleasant.

But we really learned a lot. Thanks for playing our game!

joshuc 2018-12-26 01:55

The graphics were pretty nice, and so was the audio! I really liked this submission.

ty-victorson 2018-12-26 08:28

Nice graphics and audio, however i was never sure of what the troops health was at so an indicator of how they are doing would have been nice. overall nice job for a first time jam!

doey 2018-12-26 18:39

Interesting vibe, and nice visuals. If I'm honest, it felt more like a template to build an actual game from. Don't get me wrong, I liked what was there, but a bit more time to flesh out the gameplay could make it really great.

brazmogu 2018-12-26 23:49

I like the tactics aspect, and also that deciding the route to getting to the city is quite important (going straight through rivers and cliffs is literally a bad idea XD)

The game itself is pretty boring, though... the battle is basically a matter of defending, waiting and then switching to heavy attack if you're impatient. I think it could work better if the battles were done in big sweeps(like tens of seconds of battle at once) and the player had to decide a strategy while the enemy could do the same (and so the game would have more of a rock-paper-scissor scheme of tactics).

ecmjohnson 2018-12-27 05:10

I really liked the look and feel of your game! The blood spatters during combat was a nice bit of polish and the sounds added to the atmosphere.

The game is missing an element to make the combat sections interesting. Now it's just waiting around with no communicated reason not to just hack away on heavy attack.

erkberg 2018-12-27 11:05

Nice visuals, audio and idea, but the execution lacks somewhat gameplay-wise. The movement across the map seems like it could be interesting when having to take different terrain into account, but at the moment it's just moving fast towards the next city. The combat is not interactive enough, when using something like defence battles take forever, so I just use heavy attack all the time, but still have to watch for some time. If you could manage to parallelize gameplay, i.e. having different armies moving across the map, fighting on different spots at the same time, the game could become much bigger and better. As it is, it's still a nice atmospheric game, with a lot of potential, good job!

joror 2018-12-27 13:59

Cool concept! I like the idea of having to make balanced prioritization decisions. Map looks nice as well. When playing it felt a bit too easy without very clear different choices. I saw no reason to something else than 'heavy attack'. A speed up for the fights would also have been nice :) The events and map statuses were cool, but did not impede me much. Would be nice to have a choice with some of them ('lose X soldiers, or lose X days?') But in the end I liberated Goetilandia, and all was well.

Ideas to tweak: - Give opponents and defender attack positions too, and show them on the map. This would indicate that some might hold off longer than others - Make the enemy more numerous, so you really have to prioritize - Speed up button (for fights)

bificommander 2018-12-27 15:42

This is a good looking, highly atmospheric game. The grim start screen and the bloodsplatters as the battle rages are a nice touch.

My main beef is how long it takes to fight, and that there is no time acceleration option. Even on heavy attack, it takes a long time and on defense (which from what I saw does give a much better k/d ratio, but I'm not sure) it takes forever. In fact, the defense of my third city is being fought as I write this, and it shows no signs of stopping :p I'd add a time-accelrator option (which of course also increases the losses in your other cities), combined with a bit more insight on what the effect of the various settings actually are.

But still a very original concept. A post-jam version with rebalanced combat and insight has good potential.

zxinferno 2018-12-27 18:07

Positives - Great music - Interesting map - Blood effect is interesting - Like the aesthetic background changes and "messages" - Good speed mechanic. Not sure why you'd want to slow down in this game. But the bar is not very intuitive

Improvements - Map overview is very strange way to play. Normally in games you enter places from the map e.g. maybe something akin to fire emblem - Difficult to read all text. Could have different font and also wrap around in black. - Non-engaging battle system. Not much to do other than wait. - Little point in defence and retreat - Too easy

Overall - In terms of sacrifice, it doesn't really seem like this element is here other than it obviously being about war. Overall, a great mix of music, and medieval overtones have really set a great atmosphere to the game and it does feel "bloody". - At the end of the game there is no feeling of winning or wanting to play again. You could have some sample scores to beat or something. - There is a sense of accomplishment when cities are captured. But the battle system within this conquest could be improved. I think that's a major area of focus.

Overall, interesting stuff and keep it up! :)

azayiah 2018-12-27 18:39

Very Good Submission, really enjoyed it, keep it up!!!!!

cdunham 2018-12-27 22:35

Cool idea, very slow game. The music sets the tone pretty well. When a battle starts I set it to heavy attack then wait a 3-10 minutes for the battle to finish. I like the random events that happen when you're moving around the map, but the main exciting points in the game should be the battles. Maybe if the enemy had different tactics or strategies that the player has to find out the best counter for, or if the player had attacks that did noticeably different things it'd be more captivating.

wildcard 2018-12-30 10:08

Cool game! I really like the graphics and the sound quality, great work on those! The events and how you add some graphical effects when you move on the map is also very interesting, you could probably make a very good narrative experience out of this. Battles could perhaps be made a little bit more interesting, now it is just numbers going down. I think the phasing would be improved if the armies were smaller and walking across the map was sped up a bit, then you could make more events on the map where certain events not only decrease or increase your armies quantity but also increases morale to make them fight better next time or increase their defense etc.

Overall you have a great sense of polish and good mechanical promise here, well done!