Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Monastico: LD43 entry
By gafblizzard
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.45 | 12 | ||
| Fun | 2.20 | 12 | ||
| Innovation | 3.15 | 12 | ||
| Theme | 2.90 | 12 | ||
| Graphics | 2.10 | 12 | ||
| Mood | 1.55 | 12 |
Pretty interesting game, but VERY fast paced, and theres little included strategy. The overall concept is good, but a bigger map and longer game would make the game more interesting.
Ps. Phone support is really appreciated.
@caspercaper17 that's exactly the sort of feedback I was interested in! I do want to make a bigger map with the various mechanical and strategic options I mentioned in the description and see if it's fun. I'm interested in whether the idea has any potential to pursue further.
I understand the concept, and I played a full game. I'm not quite sure what the difference would be if there was only 1 power and hp, other than less variety. Maybe some more interesting things to do with the different powers could be a cool experience.
Either way great job!
Doesn't seem like there's too much difference between the choices offered. It seems like the game needs some other strategic layer on top of what's already there, like some effects that are cumulative and more choice over how you affect the game board. You should also pay more attention to the UI layout: have the questions in the center of the screen and the options next to each other. Now it's easy to miss the choice on the right side of the screen.
The core of the idea, where you have a character traversing a card-map and have to make choices/sacrifices, is really promising. I think the most fitting mechanic to add, and the one that gives you the most depth with the fewest additions, is to have each player add or remove a card from the board every turn (or maybe every season?). I could see players luring each other into traps, rescuing themselves from being stranded, and carefully choosing their paths and sacrifices around their draws.
I'm not sure the "interactions" are really that compelling even if you added more, since the math is currently too simplistic (-1 of one kind of point for +2 of another kind of point is still just +1 point in the end). If building up a lot of a certain *kind* of point unlocked additional abilities, then I could see it being cool. Maybe something like the character with more reputation (i.e. higher status in the monastery) can push the other player off their square, or getting your learning over 5 doubles the value of squares in the library/study for your character.
Good luck going forward! Once I wrapped my head around the rules I got kind of into it, so I'd definitely be interested playing a fleshed out version in the future.
@ericm @hectigo @rumor thanks for the very helpful input! I'll check out your pages as well.
You're of course correct that there's not near enough strategic options at present. I think at minimum I would want to force players to sacrifice an entire building (thematically, they would be giving up a particular job in order to focus more on being holy).
Interesting start of a game. I feel like the only interesting choice I ever made was what to sacrifice - beyond that it was purely "move to square that gets me the total most attributes increased", as the attributes didn't seem to make any difference (only cared about the sum, not the makeup of them). Perhaps the victory conditions need to be something more interesting (you're score is your smallest attribute, or to win you must have the most in one attribute, and then the score is the sum of all of the other attributes, one of those kinds of mechanics).
Great that you can play multiplayer and single player. I think making it look like a board was charming as well. The core idea of the gameplay seemed like it could be interesting. But I did not feel like my decisions had much of an impact. The 3 different resources felt a lil samey, for example. Only so much you can do in short time frame, but if you had more time, i think a larger board and more weight on each decision would be fun.
How do players affect one another? I get that you can kind of sort of block one another, but I'm not really seeing how my actions make any impact on my opponent. The strategy seems *really* simple: go first and then always pick the high value options. It seems like you might be able to get more out of the game by blocking your opponent's spaces, but I digress.
I loved the pick up and place mechanic! Brought me right into the board game feel. Also, huge props to you for implementing a two-player turn based game here. As someone who has tried it before, I know that takes a TON of work, so congrats for pulling it off.
Nice idea, but you have to improve on player interaction and maybe more possibilities, as currently the game has too much forced moves.
I think having dynamic tiles to change the board from one playthrough to another would be a nice addition, or having the possibility of changing tiles at the first season change, but not later to avoid changing tiles with sacrifices.
Bonuses with score thresholds might be a good idea for more strategic depth. (ex : a +1 holy becomes a +2 or +3 if you have at least 5 learning, or you get 5 bonus points if you have at least 4 in each stat)
Yet another idea : hidden score objectives like "get 5 holy for bonus points" or "have 1HP at the end of the game for bonus points"