halfmule 2019-04-30 09:32
Great art direction and great mood!
I cannot say much more as my laptop appears to be too slow to run it
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Once Upon A Plague
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 74 | 4.02 | 56 | |
| Fun | 172 | 3.72 | 57 | |
| Innovation | 205 | 3.56 | 57 | |
| Theme | 76 | 4.02 | 57 | |
| Graphics | 69 | 4.39 | 56 | |
| Audio | 143 | 3.78 | 57 | |
| Humor | 633 | 2.69 | 55 | |
| Mood | 43 | 4.20 | 57 |
Great art direction and great mood!
I cannot say much more as my laptop appears to be too slow to run it
Very cool design it made me want to keep playing :) Constructive feedback, the most uncomfortable thing about the game was that units deselect themselves after moving and all the times I was clicking unit > click place to go > click the same unit > click place to go farther. It'd be more intuitive if units deselected when you select a different unit or right click on an empty space
Really nice game ! The controls are a bit cumbersome but the gameplay is interesting and challenging. Gatherin the blood at the end of each round is kinda tedious, but it's the only issue I had with the game. The graphics feels well polish and the audio sets the mood perfectly. Well done !
Wow, the art style + atmosphere is great! I really love the painted art for the shopkeeper. One bit of feedback, a wee bit into the wave it starts hogging the gpu and framerate drops hard. Apart from that, cool game :smiley:
It is played on glory. I have not seen yet for so many finished games for jam. Great. Mood music and visual. It all came together.
I agree, this is a great game. Would love to select multiple heroes at once.
Amazing what some people can do in just a few days! Excellent entry!
Loved the atmosphere of the game. You really took the art, sound, and gameplay and forged them into something unique. There was an issue when I tried to give the incinerator to one of my units and the game crashed, but it was really fun up until then! Really, incredible job! I'd love to play more like this.
Some constructive feedback: It would be really nice to select all units at the same time. I would also like to keep a unit selected after I move him (but have the time continue at normal speed); it's a bit annoying to click move click move etc. And finally, I would personally like some music while playing, maybe something that gets more intense the more enemies that are around.
Again, super game, I loved it!
Very good game! The mood is really nice. I love the graphics, the concept. It fits the theme perfectly!
I just agree with what has been said about the way unit selection works. It's a bit annoying to have to select each time instead of keeping a unit selected until you want to change.
Apart from that, again, you did a very good job!
Beautiful game with nice interface.
Nice mood and atmosphere, its a little clunky when moving your guys around, sometimes you can't see them all in the same screen, also got a bit annoying that I would lose my selection every time I moved a guy
I loved the game and the aesthetic of it! At first it was a bit challenging to clcik and move your players because it's not very intuitive, you need to click on them each time for a move, but this little detail gets wiped out with the cool machanics and the shop behind it. I had a good laugh each time I went to the shop screen when I see the priest-doctor making incantation, ahah. Anyway, good game!
The web version is really laggy, so I downloaded the game and tried it out.
The game is AWESOME!! Bug i saw some bugs and issues: - The Kill count doesn't work. - When switching all the time in between the characters, this slowdown in time gets annoying - The Camera movement is too slow when the characters are far away from each other
Great work, bro!
The mood and graphics are amazing, but I think the game lacks of ergonomics and could be more balanced too. Good job anyway!
This game was fun. It looks quite nice. I like the theme, especially the cultists with the plague doctors' masks. What to improve on?
- The controls
I was okay with clicking to move but I hated that on each click my character was deselected. If the character stayed selected it would be perfect. I also liked the slowing of time on character.
- Kiting
I was able to just run around and kite the monsters not caring for the church which took away from the narrative that I should be defending it. I'd recommend adding a poisonous cloud since we have plague doctors. The farther they are from the church the more poison/plague. They can survive in it for a while but not long. This way you could force players to defend the church
- Weapons
I got to the flamethrower and I have to say it was a downgrade from the repeator crossbow since with the crossbow you could shoot while running while with the flames you had to stop, meaning I downgraded instead of upgrading.
Overall this was a fun experience and with nice setting. A project worth polishing up with those little things.
The art is super charming, the only problem for me was that the controls could be a bit more intuitive, but overall it's a great game!
The art and mood were great, they were like chibi plague doctors. I didn't get to play the offline version, but the online version quickly started lagging when there was anything going on. The deselecting of units after you move them made my 1 key tired :) You could have the blood autocollect at the end of the round. Having to sacrifice hitpoints for upgrades is a great idea.
Overall, great concept, decent execution control-wise, great mood-wise.
It was a loooot laggy (more complicated, sometime there were speed-up.....) and maybe controls are not easy to handle (because of the unselect of character after move)
But, I liked graphismes and mood !
I love games like this! The mood was exactly right and it was not easy to make a choice between having more health or more power. I feel the same about the controls as the other commenters, please don't deselect after move and maybe allow multiselect and -move somehow. Also, the camera moved a bit too slow. In any case, good idea and very nicely designed!
I love you artwork. Should have read first the controller instruction xD Like also the particles from the monster and tha banner inside the shop.
Nailed the mood!
Great job on the graphics and music, really sets up the mood. The only audio cue that is missing is some sort of sound to indicate that the round is over. Maybe some sort of deep sound like a bell tolling. That'd work well with the music The artstyle is lovely too. The amount of polish here is staggering.
I like the slowdown effect when a character is selected.
As others have noted, the controls are a bit awkward. When things get hectic, it's hard to select units. Some sort of multi select would be nice, or small portraits for each character so that I don't have to click on the models.Theses are mostly QOL changes. So the fact that I'm mentioning them means that you've got a solid base.
The fixed camera angle is indeed aesthetically pleasing. But I think it gets in the way of gameplay.
Overall, great entry!
Note: I played the web version so some of the problems I faced might have been due to lag.
I just noticed one thing, the priest is hiding in the church and want YOU to pay for the items you use while protecting HIM from dying?? Just let him die and take all the items hahahaa
Cute game, upgrading my weapons felt impactful and cool. The deselect-after-move thing was kinda a deal breaker, especially in terms of wanting to pick up all those health drops. I wanted them, but I just wasn't willing to do the click work. Putting some magnetism on them would be nice, so they'd draw to your character within a radius. The radial health meters below the characters are clever, but could be much brighter.
Love the art overall, and especially in the shop UI. Reminds me a bit of Slay The Spire. VFX of the enemies dying was particularly cool.
Nice work!
Really atmospheric. Love the design of the plague zombie creatures.
Very nice game, one of the best I've seen so far overall and probably the best graphics and moods I've seen so far. Great Job! I also have some feedback - It took me some time to realize that those red things that others drop are health, I was like ok nice I'm spending health but how do I regain it? - It would be very nice if that health could kind of collect itself at the end of the level, I've spent like 20% of the time playing collecting health after the level end - Camera controls would be good (or better automatic camera handling) because sometimes it happent to me that I was focus on one of my guys why I was unable see the other two.. Also sometimes it was hard to see what's coming if camera was in the wrong position.
But that was just constructive feedback, overall one of the best games I've seen so far.
Nice to find you again this Ludum Dare! That was a pretty nice experience! This game is very well put together. The concept is great and fits really nicely into the theme, the artstyle (especially with all the different enemies) is amazing and makes for a unique and great athmosphere. The upgrade system was one of my favorite aspects, because the descicions made there, were very meaningful. I nearly made it through the 5th day, but the amount of enemies was too much to handle for me at this moment. All in all: Great job!
Wow really good looking game. Thoroughly enjoyed the concept, the selling your blood worked with the theme.
This is one of the most fun games I've played from this LD so far, good job! It would be good if the health pick-ups had a bigger hit-box because I sometimes had to walk over the same one three times before I could actually pick it up! The game became a little easy when I realised that I could just kite the enemies around. Maybe consider using a few enemies that are a lot faster than the players to force use of grenades/traps. Also, It'd be good if my units stayed selected even after I'd told them to move, and for me to be able to select several at once (say, via shift-select or box-dragging). As it was it seemed the main challenge in the game was fighting against the control scheme: rapidly pressing 1-right-click-2-right-click-3-right-click-4-right-click...
Great mood and a very nice presentation. Love that you went with a RTS style control that's rather rare for a Jam-game of any kind. You managed to cram so much content in this, several enemies (with some great designs), several weapons etc. The slow-mo function works very well with making me actually use the rts control somewhat effectively, without that it would have been way to fast for that type of control. The theme itself was represented rather strait-forward, which I have no issues with, and while the balance at the moment is a bit iffy (its very easy to out-run the enemies), you can feel the trade-of being there "Do I want to stay more safe? or do I want more firepower?". Would have liked if the blood-orbs did auto-collect at the end, that was a bit irritating to pickup after the later blood-baths :) Great work!
Great game and so much for a jam, nice job. would be great to select both characters at once. the slow down time really helped to make decisions like throwing grenades.
Wow, this game is gooood, well done. Nice "little" tactical RTS - it could be better, if it would have better (more extensive) controls, but we are talking about perfection in a jam right now :dvd:
In web browser it was laggy for me, but I read the description, downloaded it and played - why? Because it seemed to be very polished and beautiful - and in the end - it really was! I'm happy I gave it a chance, because it's one of the best games I've seen here, seems like a completed one, nice job!
Really nice graphics and atmosphere. Music is also not bad, especially it was originally created! I don't know why but while playing your game I've been thinking about something like Cannon Fodder but with this "plague doctors" theme. Great job guys!
Nice one. Good take on the theme.
The "exchange life for upgrade" was obvious but you did it well.
In my first playthrough, I felt really oppressed by these waves of monsters and stressed out by not knowing what to do and what were the mechanics but, eventually, learning little by little I achieved to get a way to bypass any difficulty thanks to the slowmotion.
Indeed, on my second playthrough I basicaly just spammed: "1, click point A, 2, click point A, 3, click point A, 4, click point A ; 1, click point B, 2, click point B, 3, click point B, 4, click point B, etc etc" running like that in circle more or less, on the entire map more or less, never playing with the bombs or any other weapons than the rapid crossbow (I don't remember its name).
So even if the first time it was really satisfactory to enter the game's universe and having fear like the characters and really feel that "dark time" ambiance with the Silent Hill vibes ; I rapidly understood how to beat the game easy.
It is not a matter of not enough ennemies or that they came from the same area.
To resolve this problem, I would suggest one or some of these ideas:
- removing the slowmo ; maybe, then, letting us, while we have selected a unit, clicking and dragging to move the units ; or, maybe, letting us select multiple units at once like in Warcraft3 for instance - having monsters that would do smtg else than run onto you, maybe they would hurt the church, eat the blood cubes or stay at one point for some reason, this would make us more proactive and force us to go to them instead of running from them, shooting from behind - changing by a tiny bit each monster's walking speed: this would make the waves not being like straight lines that just follow our path but maybe some strange forms and behaviours.
I appreciated the ambiance, the music and the sound effects are really good.
I also liked the little tweaks like the fact that the 4th guy can have more than 100 health. The micro-management of each of our units' health was also very cool btw, spending time resting at the end of each round thinking "Ok, who will need the msot this health".
And obviously awesome art and also UI.
Overall excellent job, there are some small improvements to do here and there but that's already more than enough for a LD game ;)
great job ! :hearts:
First of the game is great. The art style and look and feel is perfect. I think this is one of the best looking games I have played in LD44 this time. The control I did not like to much, specifically that when you move a character he gets unselected. Other than that it is a solid entry.
I love the graphics ! Nice game and well done !
Great game! The art style, music and gameplay all line up for a solid experience. The slow-mo effect works well as a micro management helper and keeps it from being too hectic. Played the browser version and didn't notice and lag.
Great game!
Only bad point is the controls, unselecting the character when you tell him to move was counter-intuitive at first, then you get used to it. Selecting a character serves two purposes: to slow time down and to control the character; I guess that's why you chose that behaviour. Maybe keep the character selected but slowly increase time back to normal would be more intuitive tho.
In my opinion, balance was good. First time, I failed after buying the incinerator, which didn't convince me at all, but on my second try, having to manage a squad of 2 canons placed strategically and roaming around with the squad of 2 repeaters in the last level was pretty exciting!
Graphics are both beautiful and impressive! Music is discreet but works perfectly for the mood.
One of the higher tier games I played here this is really well made and I enjoyed it played for about 1 hour that's a long time. Great job, if you have time check out my game too :v:
The game is good overall. i like the idea and the upgrades. But, the controls are horrible and when there are many monsters the game lags or there is an intentional drop in the timescale. I enjoyed it but need some polish. Good Job!
Well polished art style, great music, could have more sound effects, controls and actual gameplay goal is not quite clear. Fantastic work for such a short timeframe!
Didnt expected this kind of game on a jam, so wow. The mechanics are only matched by how nice the graphics and sounds create the ambience of the game. Its also interesting to note that not only you got different enemies but also different abilities equiped by the player units, making possible the use of different strategies in-game and adding replay value.
I do however feel that it should be possible to move the camera with the arrow keys or something, keep the unit selected after right click and an option to select all. It isnt even a complain given the timeframe, just a few things that i noted during gameplay.
Excellent job guys.
1 click 2 click 3 click 4 click 1 click 2 click 3 click 4 click...
I felt like it was a bit odd how you can move and shoot at the same time with the crossbow and repeater but not with the other 3 weapons.
Awesome game entry with an amazing art.
The RTS mechanics are well developed and implemented, but the UX lacks of some visual clues, like the heroes shortcuts maybe shown in their portraits and floating above their heads, and increasing the visibility of the health disc by also making It more redish, constantly glowing and some particle vfx upon taking damage.
The slowmotion sfx is something awesome to plan a strategy and i think that you could also add a "tab" shortcut to cycle thropugh every hero and also add a temporary feedback vfx to show the user where are the units going (like a glowing path from unit current position until the destination it's set to head towards).
The weapons range got a bit blended with the ground and it's almost invisible, you could enhance the visibility by making it a more redish and glowing disc instead of just a circle.
In the beggining i tought that i had to protect the church because it's way too extolled from the user point of view and that's not true, i think that you should try to lower the church attention by maybe putting more buildings around, that would make the path a bit more interesting than an open world without obstacles and also make the church less important than maintain your units alive (otherwise, i would sacrifice them to save the church as I did many times).
The monsters are awesome but their purple beams looks like a buggy glitch, you should try to enhance the presence and the action of the purple beams by adding a glowing purple muzzle flash with a spot light casting shadows and a small trail of floating purple motes after the beam disappears.
The units also don't have any visual clue of taking damage, any damage animation or a vfx of blood spilling.
The enemies silhouettes are awesome and they look like some nightmares made entirely of shadows, darkness and void, but when they get too close of eeach other, they lose the silhouette and becomes a huge and dark black ball with samll purple dots... You coould try to add a contour to their silhouette since the ortographic camera makes the user lose the sensation of depth and their volumetry gets messy.
You could also add some ambience sfx and bring the user more into the scene, like some howling wind or sandstorm, some crows, and ghostly whispers comming from the enemies with a lot of reverberaiton to add space and depth to the scenario. To enhance the presence of the church you could add some localized sfx like people praying and some gregorian chants comming from within muffled by the walls.
The scene is a bit Static and you could add more movement to It, like some thumbleweeds passing by, maybe sandstorm particles and some crows flying around.