moonlens 2019-04-29 05:00
Fun platformer, good job.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Curse of Volgax
By wekaj
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 324 | 3.21 | 21 | |
| Fun | 380 | 2.86 | 21 | |
| Innovation | 340 | 2.84 | 21 | |
| Theme | 318 | 3.15 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 144 | 3.68 | 21 | |
| Humor | 278 | 2.52 | 20 | |
| Mood | 131 | 3.47 | 20 |
Fun platformer, good job.
Art kind of make me think of risk of rain, nice job.
really nice. I always love modern retro games and this one is solid especially for a jam entry.
The mood of this was good. The game played solidly and the controls felt nice and responsive.
I did have a couple issues though. There were a couple times that the randomly generated levels left me completely trapped. That was a minor problem though, because the win or loss comes quick. My biggest problem was the utter uselessness of the sword. The range was very small and I would be killed by the large bats every time one appeared on the screen. I don't know how many hits they take, but it is more than 8 (and 2 if you charge up). The issue is if they hit you they juggle you around and into spikes, which are instant death. Eventually I just ran away from them, but since they go through walls and never stop chasing you it was just delaying my inevitable defeat :)
I'm not trying to be overly negative. I really enjoyed the platforming aspects, the use of the theme was cool, and my favorite part of the whole thing was the guy who swooped down and cursed me at the beginning. It was awesome!
Fun. I really like the animation style! So simple yet effective. I felt very driven to do things quickly with the time constraint. Nice sense of urgency.
The level is very difficult xD good work
Nice graphics and nice controls, I really liked the mood. The sword feels way to weak though and as a result you end up just trying to blast through the level while avoiding the enemies instead of fighting them. Other than that, I really enjoyed it.
The art style and sound effects are great! I do agree with other peoples comments on the sword, but overall great job!
Great art style and in general good controls. Felt very responsive and immediate. No problems with hit detection either. A very solid foundation.
But couldn't play it very long because the core gameplay loop wasn't that much fun. The main problem was the fighting system. For me, hitting enemies and killing them didn't feel very satisfying. I didn't like that my initial sword was so weak that it takes several loaded sword swings to kill the first dog enemy. All this, while the dog itself can catch me in a infinite juggle just by touching me and then throwing me into the spikes half of the time. There should be more impact of my hits on the enemies. Even when I hit something, it felt like i was swinging through them.
The themed upgrade system (no coins, you pay with your time) wasn't helping in that regard. Buying upgrades was out of reach because I had barely enough seconds to jump around a bit without even coming close to finding enough pickups to earn some extra seconds. Even when I tried an upgraded sword for 15 seconds, I didn't really feel any stronger. The small bat like enemies did take roughly the same amount of swings.
I think the games needs a lot of balancing and some additional features regarding the fighting system before the main gameplay loop can be considered fun for me.
I hope you can use the feedback, because I really like the first look of your game :)
Thank you for all the feedback so far!
@minibobbo Thanks so much for the detailed feedback, I agree with all of your issues. I wasn't able to balance the game very well before the deadline but making the sword stronger/have a longer reach would have been a simple yet effective change for sure. The ability to get trapped in levels is definitely not intended, just me being silly with the level chunk designs. I'm glad you liked the cursing part!
@duke Thank you too for your detailed feedback. I definitely agree with you on the sword swings not having enough impact, I would have liked to have added knockback to the player's attacks but the dumb way I implemented enemy physics would have made it a bit of a pain. The upgrade system could have done with a lot of balancing improvements too, I found myself skipping upgrades in most of my testing to win the game and I'm its creator!
I've been working on an improved version of the game and this feedback is very helpful. If the improved edition goes anywhere I'll post back on this page.
No problem! I thought that the ideas were really interesting. I don't think that it would take much to make the combat feel really tight. Just reduce all the enemies health by 75% :)
While I'm thinking about it, making the shopkeeper's items pop up automatically without waiting for him to finish his reeeeallly sloooooow speech would be a nice change too. It is like adding 5 to the price of everything because I've got to wait for him to finish talking :)
Didn't manage to finish the jungle, or to kill a single enemy. Even with the lightning sword. Also, I don't know where I am supposed to go. I liked the mood of the game but I felt clueless so I didn't have much fun. Just a few indications or a very short first level would do the trick for me. Other than that, good work!
This was kinda cool but the combat seemed very hard, it took me 6 hits or something to kill a bat and I kept getting stunlocked by the monkeys. Eventually I just ignored the combat entirely and made it farther, but the boss destroyed me.