valden 2019-04-30 01:42
A cute and creepy game. The mechanics were kinda confusing, and I think my :hatched_chick: destroyed the world ? Nice graphics, and the music slowly descending into madness was a good touch.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Mahou Shoujo Monster: Promised Fate
By ttftcuts, jadedresearcher, karmicRetribution, manicInsomniac, yearnfulNode, InsufferableOracle, nebulousHarmony, TableGuardian and dilettanteMathematician
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 557 | 3.44 | 54 | |
| Fun | 701 | 3.11 | 52 | |
| Innovation | 453 | 3.23 | 54 | |
| Theme | 132 | 3.90 | 54 | |
| Graphics | 506 | 3.60 | 54 | |
| Audio | 368 | 3.33 | 53 | |
| Humor | 206 | 3.46 | 51 | |
| Mood | 249 | 3.67 | 53 |
A cute and creepy game. The mechanics were kinda confusing, and I think my :hatched_chick: destroyed the world ? Nice graphics, and the music slowly descending into madness was a good touch.
.....well the music genuinely terrified me, good work! The mechanics are confusing but I think we have ourselves a solid start
The Madoka reference is strong in that one, and I loved it !
Just played this and it's so cute and fun! I loved the mixture of really cute stuff with some gore! It was really cool trying to balance being able to defeat the monster without losing later on :)
Great take on Madoka! The chicken friend was a cute touch, and his celebrating even when the magical girls were dying was terrifying and hilarious~ xD The pact system was a tiny bit confusing, and by using multiple pacts in the same turn I was able to reduce the difficulty significantly. Was that intended? Overall had a great theme and humor!
The variety in the graphics and names was quite impressive!
> It was really cool trying to balance being able to defeat the monster without losing later on :)
Wait, is that even possible? I mean, the prices aren't even given, I don't think we're meant to think strategically about this...
"I don’t think we’re meant to think strategically about this…"
Whoops, forgot to mention that there's two endings,and figuring out how to get them is the puzzle.
~~Did you know that not all blood pacts are only for your current Magical Girl? And even the ones that are might not be all that great for the girls who come after...~~
~~Having Magical Girls die is part of the learning experience, after all!~~
~~Kids and Fun (tm)~~
It was a nice game and I pretty much knew quickly I had to not make pact to win the game, but the battles are too random to make it easy. A little bit frustrating but it's okay.
The music was brilliantly creepy... Not sure I really understood how my actions would effect the game - but I _did_ manage to get the 'good' ending.
Great game. Just felt a little short. Sorry, I didn't stick around to find the second ending. I saw "you win" and it felt complete.
I like how the deaths in this are handled so lightly. The music grows darker, you vanish suddenly with a splatting noise, and :hatched_chick: dances on.
I definitely get the M*doka reference here lol
Very nice graphics
Creepy and unique game. I like the references to madoka and the deaths genuinely creeped me out. I do think that the mechanics are a bit confusing. The boosts from the pacts should be visible on screen along with blood pact cost. Otherwise it's kind of hard to know which pact to use.
Silly and fun. Confusing mechanics, but winnable without corruption with some trickery (not going to spoil for others!)
"The boosts from the pacts should be visible on screen along with blood pact cost. Otherwise it’s kind of hard to know which pact to use." Oh dang, I'd hoped it was enough for the damage to have a pact multiplier. I wish we'd had more time to polish play testing! But this is great to know for our post jam polish pass :)
Thanks for the feedback!
I see no link to the game, it this normal ?
Some creepy but fun, good work!
"I see no link to the game, it this normal ?"
Uh. Huh. Where did the link go? Let me check dusterherz...
Cool, looks like Ludum ate the links. Re-added them, thanks for the catch @dusterherz :) :) :)
I couldn't figure out how to progress without making pacts. So I resorted to increasing my magic power so much that I one-shot every enemy :smiley:
The art is very cute, and the music to go along with it as well, at least in the beginning. I will ignore the underlying dark themes.
Love it!
Creeeepy, Blood everywhere, I liked it! One-shoted everyone after power buff as well.
I loved the monster designs! The change in music and the increasingly bloody scenery changes the mood so well. Great job!
LOL
Loved how that cute looking game turned to be so gore. Loved how the music evolve when everything goes wrong, cool idea, had fun !
🐥 is the real enemy! Monsters are just trying to warn us!
Somehow it reminds me of NGE.
How do I keep falling for this? You even literally put it in the screenshots above and I still didn't see it coming. The music flip especially is goddamn hilarious.
I got both endings, and they're both quite good (although obviously B I R D E N D is the superior choice).
I think there's things you can do to improve polish (e.g. animations, cleaning up the UI a little bit), but maybe that would almost detract from the outlandish horror of the world you've blood-pacted into existence.
The mechanics reminded me of old school RPG combat and i also liked how the monsters seemed to be randomly generated (i think) and still look cool.
It confused me so much trying to play this XD I thought the sound effect for throwing the chick at the monster was really funny. I won by spamming throw chick at it until died in two shots OwO
Can't play the game, link doesn't work. Also, website is pretty broken - lots of relative links leading to current folder, need to make those relative to root :P "/news.html" vs. "news.html" ;).
@mza The monsters are in fact (sorta) random! Though you may find some common themes. :)
I didn't play through all the different endings, but the game was super cute and funny. Loved the references to M@doka and the use of the doll engine to generate the different magical girls! The music is really funny, but does get grating at times. Really gave me a feeling of nostalgia for older flash games, great job :)
"Can’t play the game, link doesn’t work. Also, website is pretty broken - lots of relative links leading to current folder, need to make those relative to root :P “/news.html” vs. “news.html” ;)."
I'm not sure what you mean? The link seems to work overall? What website were you even going to that there was a news.html link? @magnanix
It gave me Doki Doki Literature Club and Mahou Shojo Madoka Magica vibes. I really liked it! I'm sad all those magical girls died, but the chick is cute. Very nice, keep it up!
The game is a buggy mess... first off, I was able to somehow click between two of the combat menu options, causing the game to completely lock up and forcing me to restart the game via Task Manager. Secondly, after a character was meant to die, they sometimes just wouldn't, and would simply stay alive until the next fight, and would die from any status changes whatsoever, but would always end up coming back to life shortly after. Third, one of these "dolls" that you used ended up bugging out and simply displayed nothing, if that's a faulty part or the entire generator malfunctioning I can't tell. Fourth, and this is a personal nitpick more than anything else, the "edgy twist" thing has been done far too many times for my liking by this point. Beyond that cavalcade of issues, however, the game itself is barebones and simplistic, and if you know what you're doing you can very easily exploit flaws in the game's design to crush everything that gets in your way with minimal issue, and both endings are practically telegraphed in design and accessibility. This honestly feels more like a mid-2000s flash game from Newgrounds than it does a game from 2019, graphical fidelity included, and while I do find that slightly charming, in summary I unfortunately can't recommend this. There are simply too many issues and not enough reasons to stick with it, especially if you're not already into the Magical Girl genre at all.
You got our aesthetic entirely @knightofowner :) Newgrounds was a magical time.
For your bug report, could you let us know what browser you were running in (and what version)? I know we've gotten some reports about Edge being really weird with it, but we thought we were stable in most other browsers. It'd be great to knock out a few more bugs!
I'm really glad, too, that our endings were telegraphed :) We worked hard to make a core game play loop that was accessible in the five minute suggested time limit. When we do a polish pass post game jam we'll definitely try to calibrate for a harder difficulty, though, which I think will make the game more fun overall? Your feedback seems to agree that a harder difficulty would increase the enjoyment of the game, so I'm glad we're on the same page here!
Browser, @jadedresearcher ? I actually tested it in both of my usual browsers (those being Firefox and Chrome) and both are able to replicate the bug just fine. However, I'm afraid that I would not be much more help beyond that unless you're in the mood for having me verbally thrash something. Trying to work out exactly what causes a flaw in something to appear has a way of frustrating me... That being said, though, it would be a bit of a mistake to say we're on the same page, on multiple fronts, the more immediate one of which being that adding difficulty should be done with caution lest you make the end result inaccessible to others. Beyond that, I can't immediately elaborate.
Hrrm, the graphical glitching happening across browsers is a weird one, I'll keep a look out for it for reproducing. I think you're the first so far to find the zombie girls, but knowing its cross browser will help us track it down. I appreciate you getting back to me!
And I feel you, debugging can be frustrating. I'll keep your advice in mind about making sure we don't push too hard on the difficulty front :)
@jadedresearcher This will likely be the last message for now, as things are becoming quite busy for me, but I will mention this much... We've known each-other before, and I hope one day we will know each-other once more. As I've never given up on my hope and dream, I hope you continue to pursue yours with great esteem. Until then, I wander for my purpose, my defining goal, my ambition surging, this I'll extol. Should you require me once more, you need only look to your past, unimplored yet recast.
Pretty fun little game. Please add a volume control next time! ;)