Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → SERVUS BONUS
By gurkenlabs and Steffen Wilke
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 460 | 3.53 | 34 | |
| Fun | 735 | 3.07 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 821 | 2.84 | 34 | |
| Theme | 607 | 3.28 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 248 | 4.04 | 35 | |
| Audio | 343 | 3.39 | 35 | |
| Humor | 528 | 2.85 | 34 | |
| Mood | 592 | 3.26 | 34 |
Good graphics and sounds, it was a bit hard, couldn't beat third level. I didn't understand the E key to interact, it was always the same result for the enemies, they say something and then I have to attack them. I expected using the slaves to cover me in some way in order to fight higher level enemies but they just die and I lose :(
@arielsan Thank you for your feedback. The **"interact (E)"** key is there to trigger the enemies when you are ready to fight and to turn in the slaves once you've collected enough. There is nothing more to it. **It's possible to block the enemies with your slaves** and the enemies cannot harm them but you cannot abuse that by just smashing into the slaves and also hit the enemy while the enemy cannot reach you. This is why **your hits can damage the slaves**. Also, the idea is that you need to treat the slaves like a valuable currency and hitting them is obviously contradictory to this.
> it was a bit hard, couldn’t beat third level
Did you use your jump mechanic? Maybe we need to make this more obvious for level 3.
Mmmm, the truth is I didn't remember about the jump mechanics xD, I completed more levels now.
Good job on the colors, art, aesthetic, and design. I don't think I've seen this setting used in very many Jam games, but I think it works great here. This is an interesting take on the them, and obviously has some great work put into it!
Nice Entry, the graphics and the sound is good, I don't really like the combat system, because even if I dodge an attack, as soon as I get back to the enemy, it instantly strikes me again. Maybe I am just terrible at it.😅
That was a really fun game. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the mood of the game, and it was actually a bit challenging. I spent quite some time in Paestum before I realized there was a second health vial!
I never actually got the mechanic of using the slaves for cover, I mostly found them to be very frustrating and had to take long walks around especially in Neapolis to lose them so I could fight the soldiers well.
Either way, that was very challenging and well balanced, and the music was delightful.
Looked very promising at first and on the audiovisual department, everything looks fine. The art is crips, but a little rough around the edges. Sound an music are working great.
My real problem was the core fighting mechanic, which incidentally is the core gameplay. There werrn't really many strategic possibilies when fighting the romans. No block or a real i-frame dodge. Fighting head on might work in the first 2 levels, but then you get two much damage to survive. My only way to beat the later levels was running away from them, hitting them as they got into reach (they run a little faster then the pc) and then jump away before they get in attack reach. This might sound fine, but it's really not fun. Very unsatisfying. Also, the rescued slaves always get in the way and die by accident, which annoyed me several times. I think you need to overhaul the core fighting system, before I could consider the system fun to play. In it's current state, it resembles unsatisfying work.
I hope you can use the feedback to enhance your game! Keep up the work
Interesting idea, but surviving combat is only possible if I get them stuck at a corner so that I can hit them, without the enemies hitting me. I got really far until suddenly the game would no longer update any graphics, but keep running in the background (I was able to hear the audio). Played on Linux if that matters.
Impressive level of polish, nice presentation, and delivery. It's a good concept and fits the theme nicely too. Well done.
Any chance of a web build?
The game is super pretty for the eyes, sound is cool too. It gets super repetitive after a few levels, I made it to Neapolis and I left. You could've gone with a shorter game for the jam and it would've been super fun. For such a long game, I think new mechanics are needed. Combat needs some polish and new abilities and it can become a great thing. I loved your art big time, wonderful pixel art!! Overal a great job!!
Nice, i loved the graphics and the combat mechanics!
Cool story-n-fight game! The fighting mechanics feel a bit hard, dodging attacks seems almost impossible - and most fights are just a direct slugfest. And extra mechanic there (stun?) would have been nice. :) The visuals & mood are pretty good, and I like the snarky story intros.
Well done!
The game looks cool, but I couldn't get it to work correctly on Linux. When I launch it, I get the main menu, but when I start the game, it fades to black, music start, and then it never fades to the actual game.
@webox Neapolis was actually the last level ... :smile:
Might be a pit to hard, but I love the visuals.
Real pretty and fun. I'm quite bad at it, though ^^. It kind of reminds me of that game where you're a greek philosopher and you recruit people to go kill the gods, Okhlos. A pretty good submission in my book :)
Nice game! Graphics are great! I wish there were some more abilities/attacks you could do or strategies to kill the enemies (i feel that getting them stuck and then killing them was the best way as fighting them head on is too dangerous)
All in all quite a great experience! Keep up the good work!
At first, I got a pikmin vibe and thought the free slaves that kinda follow you around would come into play a bit more. Many have mentioned the issue with the core gameplay mechanic, being that you dont have a dodge or block. I thin its not as critical as some may have made it down and perhapes simply having the slaves add some kind of buff to resist damage, add speed, add health ect could improve this further. Regardless, its a jam and for a jam this game is simply quality, chin up! you did a great job and the fact we are debating gameplay mechanics should tell you the potential this has overall, and how good it is as a jam entry, congrats!
The art is amazing! The music is professional. Only the fighting and moving are a bit stiff, which makes the game hard for me.
@zoltancoccyx I hadn't heard about that game before, but it looks tremendously fun! @dreamingdice We also had some sort of buff mechanics in mind, but time passed a little too quickly on us ;) I gotta ask: what do you mean by "not having a dodge" - Is the mechanic not implemented well enough or did you actually not use it?
@everyone: Thank you so much for the valuable feedback!
Difficult gameplay, even when jumping and moving around, but it doesn't detract from the game too much. There's a nice polish to this game, the visuals are nice as well, and the theme is pretty interestingly used in this game. 3.5 overall!
Nice game, I liked the graphics. Overall a very polished entry. The fighting system could have some improvements, but it's not that bad.
Could you port it to Mac? or WebGL? I would love to play it!
Hm, this game is getting quite monotonic after a while I have to say. Every level is basically the same and it slowly gets harder over time. The real annoyance for me right now is that I was trying to get away from a guy, pressing DOWN, and attacking. Then I died while doing that which let to me getting to the menu, jumping to Quit because I still held DOWN and then the game closed without further notice. I will not start over now, even though I wonder what the end would have looked like.
There are some graphics glitches on the right side of the screen, typically when the level starts. There is a jittery white stripe at the right edge of the screen.
The graphics are cute, I like pixel art and you did a very good job on that.
The sounds fit the game, I especially liked your voice-overs for the romans :-)
I would like to be able to skip ALL texts, not just those in the beginning of the game.
The controls are strange, I cannot avoid getting hit no matter what I do. Maybe I am missing something, I don't know.
You get bonus points for delivering the Java stuff with your game. I have in the past declined to play Java games because I do not want to install Java on my machine. Thus people who only deliver .jar files only get a comment about deployment. Very nice that you just deliver the whole thing, the only problem is that you now have a 77 MB download and 175 MB unpacked files for a game that could easily be a 5 MB stand-alone .exe file (which would be considered small today) just by switching to another technology.
Overall a very cool game, keep up the good work!
EDIT I got back to that level and beat it, finding out that you can somehow, if you are lucky, get away from the guys while punching them. The next level I quit, however, I think the mechanics could have been more refined to be more fun.
@exevalon @majadroid Thank you for your feedback on the game.
@blaze in fact you could launch the linux distribution on a Mac. You can execute the .jar file. We just didn't want to distribute it since we didn't test it on Mac.
@gonutz Thank you very much for the valuable and extensive feedback.
The amount of polish in this game is astounding. Assuming you also did the music and the sfx yourself, this result is quite an accomplishment. There was a little bit too little depth for the duration of the game, but considering that this was made during a game jam, that's really not of much consequence. Excellently done!
The art style in particular is quite nice! I really like how the colors work together to give the game a certain feeling.
Stream feedback: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/491244549