FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD44 → Pit King

Pit King

By oultrox, veryeviltomato and Telepinu

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall674.0541
Fun364.0941
Innovation4543.2339
Theme2993.6740
Graphics874.3440
Audio1963.6839
Humor3803.1036
Mood1263.8939

Comments

koni 2019-04-30 13:39

The graphics was really eye catching and set a mood which I find to be rare in jams. Great work! It felt pretty dang polished and I enjoyed the sounds too.

I think the gameplay would have been a bit more tight with a camera not scrolling in X. So that you can have your eyes on the action at all times. And my first reaction to the shooting was that it felt a bit limiting to only be able to shoot up when you can move in all directions. The player probably buys into that shoot mechanic if you can only move from right to left like an Arkenoid game.

And a side note (and it's rather nitpicky cuz I'm an artist lol), a pixel perfect camera would have been really nice for this project. Especially when the art was so well crafted. There's a bit of flickering and stuff. Not sure what this was made in but - Unity has a camera like this now. Might be cool to check out for future games :)

Overall a really nice game. Great job guys!

veryeviltomato 2019-04-30 18:20

@koni Thanks a lot! I'm the artist myself so it's really heartwarming to read such comments like this.

I think most of the flickering was due to problems with Construct 2, but I assure you that we tried to settle up everything as 1:1 as possible with pixel art, as I'm usually the one that makes a deal out of it! lol

The design of the player's shooting was mostly to limit the player from facing the hordes alone, requiring him to build turrets to defend multiple angles, as when you gather too many bones you evolve into a big, strong and slow full skeleton!

oultrox 2019-04-30 20:34

@koni Thanks for all your feedback, here's the game's programmer, wanted to let you know that probably most of the flickering was due to a resolution issue in the itch.io visualizer itself, I've modified it, and altho it's kinda big now, it should visualize much better (it will still have some flickering due to some issues I have with the Camera withing the engine tho.)

ausstein 2019-04-30 21:00

hi does this game have an end? i think i am far enough that i could survive forever now :D generally great mood nice gameplay and quite challanging in the start. As soon as you have a row of walls with canons it is very easy tho. And a small bug i noticed: When you try to upgrade something and the position of the upgrade button is on top of another canon it upgrades the other canon instead. Overall I really enjoyed the experience :)

anstabo 2019-04-30 21:01

Finally you can play the bad guys. It's very interesting when you start the game, having to throw bone and construct at the same time, it gets way too easier once you have a finished line of crossbow.

barbiche 2019-04-30 21:05

Guys, please, next time write somewhere that there are no limit to the waves, I went to wave 20 because of how awesome it was to play :) Art is awesome, animations are great, sounds are sooo satisfying... The entire game itself is just so satisfying indeed. There is an intense feeling of destruction which pops from every destroyed knights, and it is truly captivating! As a simple advice, maybe consider a key shortcut or just a more reliable way to upgrade turrets, it took me time to understand why I was in fact upgrading the tower under the button: :) But frankly that was just awesome, thank you guys for giving this experience!

trozen 2019-04-30 21:08

This was a very polished experience that I really enjoyed- great game feel!

Things that I liked: * It got really hectic after a few rounds, but in a fun way. * The pixel art animations felt very smooth. * The design choice to use grid placement.

Things that I would change: * Convey to the player which lanes enemies are walking down so that they have more time to prepare their defenses (in the early rounds I had to run up to see, and then run back to build) or prevent the player from setting up as far back as I did (once I realized this I was already committed).

Thanks for the fun game!

sn4pi 2019-04-30 21:15

Incredible game! I loved the TD gameplay style, it was such fun with so much content! The graphics and music worked really well, with some neat details. Only thing that is a little disappointing is the connection to the theme. Soo many games just work with "if you use these attacks/upgrades etc. you will lose some hp/mana" as your game does. So I just have to say that is not creative nor disconnected, it's just average.

You made a lovely game! Keep it up!

team-on 2019-04-30 21:26

Good theme, art and code. Looks like PvZ, but better

oultrox 2019-04-30 21:31

Thank you for all the kind comment guys! We surely tried our best within the time we got. :D

chazatron16 2019-04-30 21:49

Really nice looking and playing game, it's impressive the gameplay depth you managed to achieve in 3 days. Only thing I will say is that some of the SFX are a little loud at times compared to the music, but really good job overall :)

wdebowicz 2019-05-01 12:19

I really enjoy playing it! It reminds me a little about last GOT battle.. ;-) It was fun, the graphics is nice, and the audio fits the game.

Possible improvements: After building couple of canon rows, I felt like don't need to do anything, just watch. Possible improvement would be to add some kind of bosses, or more variety of enemies. Good entry!

veryeviltomato 2019-05-01 21:20

@wdebowicz I wish we had a chance to improve the balance of the game, we're currently building a more balanced version for a Kongregate release and boy it is much harder now! But in a very fair way, right now you build 2 rows of cannons and that's it for the game haha

russ-moonbase 2019-05-01 22:34

This game is great. It had me coming back for more. Once I thought of a way to destroy the enemies quickly a new type of enemy would come in and I would have to chuck bones at them.

The bones mechanic fits the theme of the jam as well as making the game fun to play. I will definitely be coming back and playing this game again. This is a great take on a tower defense game.

Awesome job!

red 2019-05-02 00:20

Loved the graphics and the audio even more. Great work.

norris-eldridge 2019-05-02 00:41

Fantastic entry! This game was a lot of fun :) great music and sound effects, great art assets, and the game ran smooth. Well done all around :)

eatatjoes 2019-05-02 00:42

Fantastic graphics and genre blender. I usually hate tower defense and i really enjoy this game

gastricsparrow 2019-05-02 04:08

You made a full-fledged releasable game! I'm on laptop without a mouse at the moment, so I would have appreciated some alternative to right-clicking. Still I had a great time! Fantastic job, I hope you place very high on the rankings!

landosystems 2019-05-02 04:16

Pretty fun game, nice mix between action shooting, tower defense, and lane defense games. Impressive variety in enemies and trap types for a jam game, and great graphics to boot. Excellent work!

peachtreeoath 2019-05-02 04:37

Really great theming and presentation in general. Even though the amount of upgrades were relatively short, there was just an innate pull to the game that made me want to build a fortress. I was a bit surprised you guys squeezed in that amount of polish in that short amount of time so kudos to you. TDs are naturally easy to scale and expand on so I look forward to future version.

hypersquid-studios 2019-05-02 11:36

The game was really nice and well made good use of the theme and good job

derek-volker 2019-05-02 13:44

Very nice entry. The tower defense scheme works very well here (even beign a little unbalanced, which i understand given the timeframe) and its easy to learn, different of many games that i saw which used complicated types of enemies and towers. The result is a easy to learn and fun game.

I appreciated the combination of graphics and sound used in this game, which sets a nice mood for the proposed thematic, and it's interesting to note the progression of the protagonist.

While the combination of towers+walls works really well here and many may complain that is too simple, its actually impressive that are 3 different units avaiable and 3 different enemies, all developed in a tiny timeframe. Also, props for the banner, sold the game to me even before i played it.

Excellent job developing this game!

lesconneriesdered 2019-05-03 09:52

The game I spent the most time on. It's very nice to see his army evolve especially that once we understand all the mechanics of the game it becomes more fun because it explodes everywhere: p I had a great time on this game

eduardo-yukio 2019-05-03 21:29

Things I didn't like: - The click to update popup is not very practical, it fills the screen unnecessarily. It would be better if it were smaller on top of where you clicked. Also the arrow button doesn't work if there's a turret underneath it. - I built a line of exploding potatoes and they bugged: enemies walked on top of them and didn't explode and when I clicked on some of them, the game would select three or four of them. - I can build walls on top of walls and turrets on top of walls. - I couldn't sell turrets that I misplaced or don't use anymore =( - Very easy.

Things I like: - Audio very well made, since the first second I was already into the music. The in-game sound effects were awesome too. - Art and animations are on point, it seems like a finished game sold on steam, the cannons launching, the enemies walking and dying, everything is very good! I'm a programmer but when I learn Art I want to do something like you guys did here. It remembers me of Super Nintendo games. - Satisfying and fun gameplay. Seeing the turrets shooting ememies feels really good xD.

Very well made and polished game, just a few bugs and the balancing problem, but great overall.

veryeviltomato 2019-05-03 22:35

@eduardo-yukio Very fair review! Thanks a lot, we'll be dropping a balanced version on Kongregate and Newgrounds pretty soon, definitely bugs and balancing are the main issue of the game.

@lesconneriesdered Thanks a lot! I think the main fun of the game is watching all these cannon rows obliterate your adversaries haha.

@derek-volker I definitely tried to make the art as consistent as possible, I'm actually using a 16 color palette!

@hypersquid-studios Thanks a lot mate!

Wish I could answer everyone but this system ain't that friendly for developer answers :frowning2:

gerardb 2019-05-03 23:01

Holly shit guys. This looks and plays amazing. Such a brilliant design and gamefeel. In fact I liked it so much that I ended up playing to your previous 2 other jam games. Really cool stuff! Congrats and see you around next jam!

veryeviltomato 2019-05-03 23:11

@gerardb ¡Muchas gracias hermano!

dorblin7z7 2019-05-05 04:44

Absolutely love the artwork and animations, and it was fun to play a tower defense that you could also participate in! Audio was a little loud but otherwise the samples you found all fit in nicely.

Great work for a Game Jam!

argon 2019-05-05 19:50

Very fun and great potential ! I think the balance get you a bit overpowered after a few round and I wasn't really able to upgrade anything, but for a so short amount of time it feels realy amazing !

doomky 2019-05-05 20:05

Graphics, Mood and Audio where good ! The game is really cool !

flashviper 2019-05-05 20:11

Really nice take on the tower defense genre! It took me a while to pick up, but once I did, the game was really fun!

comatomatoes 2019-05-05 20:49

Awesome work! Nice, consistent graphics and audio. I enjoyed becoming a larger skeleton as I collected more gold. Just a couple small nits. I didn't find the landmines very useful and sometimes clicking on the upgrade button didn't upgrade my turrets. Also, I think a small amount of flavor text to give more context would have been good.

nathant 2019-05-05 20:53

Got to wave 17 and then killed myself by running out of bones haha. Great tower defense. Enjoyed being on the battlefield with my units. Art was cohesive and made it easy to distinguish enemies. Wanted to be able to pickup bones from the enemies. Lots of fun.

fusionnist 2019-05-06 19:15

So, I played a bit, formed three full rows of upgraded towers, two rows of barriers, two rows of bombs, went afk and came back to a wave 55, no spawns game. I think I beat it! Edit: no, I just dies here. Makes more sense :D I always love some tower defense type games, this one had a nice polished feel to it. I could wish for hotkeys for placing towers, and maybe an upgrade menu that prioritizes the arrow button, but it was overall just a blast. Congrats!

veryeviltomato 2019-05-10 15:10

Thanks everyone! We put our best effort into the game.