Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Shadow Seekers
By caveman54, big-chalupa and Nu_Knight
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1152 | 2.31 | 24 | |
| Fun | 1161 | 1.79 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 1138 | 2.11 | 24 | |
| Theme | 822 | 3.00 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 926 | 2.79 | 24 | |
| Audio | 680 | 2.15 | 22 | |
| Humor | 760 | 2.45 | 23 | |
| Mood | 1058 | 2.31 | 23 |
I love the animation of the knight and it look like the generation system works perfectly ! I had trouble fighting enemies with weapon because they are as quick as the main character so I can't escape and they killed me ! Anyway it was fun :) !
That was the my artists first ever animation. He is such a god! It did take him most of Sunday to make though. The feathers improve speed by a lot that is why they are worth 2 you can also increase visibility with the eye and then you can use the throw to shoot enemies. To throw you use the right click. Just thought I would clear that up to other users.
Overall, it was okay. The character is incredibly slow! I would have liked a little bit more base speed so that I could actually enjoy the good generation. Nice job getting it submitted, though.
I agree that the knight moved incredibly slowly. I wasn't sure why I would ever use the sword when the ranged attack seemed to do the same damage and can go through walls.
It definitely could have used some additional sounds and extra things generated around the dungeon, which right now is pretty featureless. I would also liked to have some sort of direction as to where generally to look for treasures or something because I walked around for about 5 minutes and never found anything. One troll dropped a purple thing which I think refilled one health (that's what the number in the upper right was, right?)
Good job releasing something with procedurally generated content! That takes some effort!
Great animation on the knight! The shadow throwing projectiles was an interesting idea. The number of lives/currency in the corner is so small! A price on the items would help the initial shop. Very good job!
Like the shadow mechanic and the use of voice in the merchant, this is a minor detail frequently forgot in a Game JAM's (but you should put some text or legends, some people are deaf). You should increase the speed movement, exploration can become boring. Great job guys!
@minibobbo The counter is health and the purple thing was suppose to be a soul thank you for playing! We ran out of time to do sounds ): besides my friends voice acting. Yah I spent so much time working on the generation. We were gonna add a bow but that got scrapped after a major glitch and 3 hours of work (yes I know that was way too much time to work on a bow) so instead added the throw quickly and it worked and a lot easier to animate.
@jayometric @nathaniel-jensen The feathers speed considerably and I must have forgot to increase the normal speed but might add a bug fix with faster speed. Also the prices are mentioned by the shopkeeper 1 for everything but 2 for feathers (he never specifically says 2 though whoops).
@lugo42 We were going to do add a dialog system but ran out of time. Look above for the speed thing!
Thank you all for playing and feedback!
My favorite part of this was the intro. Notes:
- The intro's dialogue seemed... sort of stilted, and I heard some background noise. It's kinda charming and I don't know why. It's a plus though! - The knight moves so slowly! Really, really slowly! - The shadow animation doesn't look connected to the player.
Overall though... I really like the character behind this game.
I just increased the player speed so that should fix a lot of complaints.
@mdwade Thank you for the comment!
I'm impressed that you created random dungeon generation over a weekend. I also like the eclectic mix of art styles, with the realistically-proportioned knight contrasting the cartoony merchant.
I noticed some areas for improvement:
Some of the dialogue is quiet and difficult to understand. When you're recording, check the wave form to make sure it's loud enough where it needs to be (without clipping).
I think the trap door in the starting room should be more obvious; it took me a moment to find.
My intuition was to click in the direction of the enemies to swing at them, rather than face with with the keyboard first.
It looks like I should have been able to go behind them, from the perspective, but the walls were actually flat and impassible. This means there were some paths that I couldn't go down, because the opening was just too narrow.
Overall, it felt sluggish to control. The knight is slow, and both the sword and shadow movements stop your movement. Cranking up the speed would really help the fluidity.
Keep it up.
Well done! I liked the fact that you implemented random dungeon generation, and when I finally realized that wonky shadow under me was some sort of demon that could shoot projectiles! I would have liked if the knight moved a little faster, and if it could tell you what the items did.
Thank you all so much for the encouraging comments. We are aware that it needs a lot if improvement, sadly that was just all we had by the time we had to submit. This of course is a learning experience, and we will take all of your suggestions into consideration. Once again, thank you.
I don't have much to add outside of what's already been said here. I appreciated the added voice since that's not often used, though the lack of sounds or music during gameplay pulled me out of it a bit. Graphically, I like the design of the characters but the shadow feels completely disconnected both in appearance and movement, and the world feels empty. I would have liked to see the theme more directly tied to the player character's life as opposed to the enemies but this works. Aside from a few adjustments, though, this is pretty good. Nice job!
Yes thank you, there is definently a lot to improve on. And we will do our best.
Thank you for submitting your game to be played on my stream!
Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp
Nice voice acting.
My favorite part of the game was being in the shop listening to the shopkeeper speak to me XD Art design-wise, the trap door is a little difficult to see. Gameplay-wise, the character still walks too slow ;-; How slowly he walked made me not want to play anymore. And the dungeon looked the same and it was like a labyrinth so I didn't know where to go and I didn't feel like exploring anymore because I walk so slow. I didn't end up finding any treasure after trudging through the dungeon for a few minutes, and I didn't feel like playing til I found one because my character walked so slow. D:
The dialog was charming and all, but I was very frustrated by the ranged projectile throw (really cool idea!) because it was on Right Click, which in the WebGL build, pulls up the context menu...
Other than that, the lack of audio was a bit disappointing.
I wandered around the dungeon, killed the enemies I saw, and picked up two chests, but was stuck there and couldn't see how to proceed from there. I saw that there were some areas that seemed inaccessible, so maybe I got unlucky with the procedural generation and it gave me a dungeon that wasn't connected?
There was an impressive amount of content in this game and I also enjoyed the artwork and animations! Probably my biggest immediate suggestion would be to add sound effects, as they are very easy to make with something like bfxr and improve the "game feel" by a lot.
I also agree with many of the things other people have already said (movement is slow, not sure what the number in the upper-right corner meant). A couple additional notes: - I liked the voice acting, but it would also have been nice to specify the controls and prices somewhere since there is a lot to listen to and it's easy to miss a line or two of dialogue. - I was able to shoot bullets through walls, which made it pretty easy to kill enemies without getting hurt.
Overall, I think this was a very ambitious idea (procedurally-generated games are really difficult to balance and make fun in one weekend) and while it had some issues, I am impressed with how much you put in the game. Keep it up!
the shadow was realy menacing, realy liked that, but the attack controlls sometimes just dont work, or play in a loop without throwing.
Thank you guys for the comments and especially getting us over 20 ratings! I am glad all of you have liked the game for the most part. @pusheeneiro @kimily @aurel @qzqxq @thestartlestare
Good Job! I really liked the voice acting and the art. It's really well made, but the player is a bit too slow and the shadow rotates with the player. Overall, I really enjoyed it. :D
@muchoswaffles The shadow was done this way as it is actually supposed to be a monster that "shadows" you. You can see that nothing else has a shadow which we hope would imply this to be not a real shadow. Also the feathers are mentioned in the dialogue to hint at them being really useful and they increase speed immensely. We probably could have displayed that better. Thank you for playing!
I confess that I was too confused with what I was supposed to do with the game to even finish it. I liked the graphics a lot, but the initial time I walked into the dungeon, there were literally no way out of the first room. It wasn't until the second playthrough that I realized the level was supposed to be procedurally generated. I did get lost in the maze, too: there didn't seem to be an obvious objective and items to guide me to a specific direction. I know this is more difficult to implement in a procedural game, but something to keep in mind next time.
Other concerns include the attack animation, which I thought didn't do a good job at conveying the range of the attack. This made the combat difficult often. A couple of times, the attack button didn't seem to register, and nothing would happen; at other times, the down-attack seems to play two different animations, with one visually having poor range. I also couldn't figure out how to throw things in the game.
https://youtu.be/299GvZrjyZk