rancoud 2019-05-02 10:31
What you can improve: * add more interactions, like new towns, news shops, etc... like that you avoid linearity * add a little frame around your game, like that young people will understand it's an old CRT display
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Legend Of the Red Demon
By jimbly
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 212 | 3.41 | 25 | |
| Fun | 174 | 3.39 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 291 | 2.95 | 25 | |
| Theme | 190 | 3.45 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 342 | 3.04 | 25 | |
| Humor | 142 | 3.13 | 25 | |
| Mood | 140 | 3.43 | 25 |
What you can improve: * add more interactions, like new towns, news shops, etc... like that you avoid linearity * add a little frame around your game, like that young people will understand it's an old CRT display
@rancoud Yeah, I wanted to add more, just didn't have enough time to commit to this Ludum Dare. Was planning on adding random special encounters, so when you go out fighting you might run into a little bit of story. Certainly ended up super-linear as it is now, which is not a lot of fun.
Hey, this was really cool. Yes, very much like the old BBS games with ANSI graphics and simple choices, how nice. :grin: Even with the slightly curved old CRT look (a little border would indeed help to convey this better). I like it! :thumbsup:
(btw: you need to rate other peoples games to get ratings yourself during the play+rate period :wink:)
@zondarg Thanks for playing, glad you liked it! I'm well aware I need to rate games, but have been out of the country until yesterday and haven't had the opportunited... time to rate as many as possible before the deadline =).
The style pops so well! I legitimately love your choice of text colors. My only criticism echoes what those above have said: more options. Great stuff!!
@brygpo Thanks for playing. Text colors are from the [VGA Color Palette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array#Color_palette). I considered going with some softer colors, but nostalgia won in the end ;).
As you mentioned in the description, there is not much to do (I just repeatedly fought the weakest possible enemy while upgrading when I had a comfortable amount of health), but I have to admit that it was still pretty fun doing that. I think you did a great job with the time you had, and with some more content I could see this being a really awesome game (especially if there was a wider variety of upgrades you could buy with health, and if e.g. there wasn't an easy repeatable way of replenishing health to force the player to make more difficult decisions).
I also enjoyed the ending (rot13 spoilers: V fnirq hc gb 200/200 urnygu orsber pubbfvat gb fhzzba gur qrzba. Fb lrnu, lbh tbg zr!), and the whole story/flavor tied in well to the theme. The CRT effect was also very effective at providing the "old game" feel and added a lot to the polish. Overall, nice job!
@qzqxq Glad you enjoyed it, and that you made it to the end!
Liked the clean UI. As mentioned it is tempting to go the easy route, you could maybe limit the "spawn" of the easy enemies. Other then that it is very polished, great entry!
@rhewid There is a *little* limiting - after you get 2 upgrades, you're not allowed to hunt the easiest, and after 3 (or maybe 4?) you can only hunt the hard ones, however, at those points the medium/hard are still relatively safe, so there's not much real risk. Maybe I should have also triggered that if you're over 50% health (at the point at which you could upgrade again), so you're forced to have some (slightly) more risky battles.
enjoyed it! and I appreciated the python references, haha! thanks for the game!
I really liked the ASCII style with the monitor-look. Audio wasn't there so I can't comment on that. The actual gameplay consisted of going through tiers of enemies by beating the previous enemy x times and then upgrading weapons to the next level. I would've liked to see some variation to that. Although I took my time to clear the whole game so it definitely had some hooks in! Good job on the game and especially in the compo time frame.
Satisfies that old school text-based role-playing game itch. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit playing games like this.
Sounds like you were a bit low on time to add features to this entry, but I'd say it's a pretty solid foundation for a larger text RPG grinder. The arms dealer should probably say something when there are no further upgrades to purchase. I also think I'd have liked to actually fight a big boss at the end. But I suppose that would have also required a bit more time to dial in the game balance. In general, the experience seemed a bit low risk. Just about the only time one feels a sense of danger is after purchasing an upgrade. Even then, I don't think the player's life points are likely to drop below 20.
I could see this going places though. A little compass based navigation. Quests to find new arms dealers. A trip or two to some dangerous dungeons (bunny dungeons... bungeons?). Some puzzle elements perhaps. Oh yeah, this could go places.
Bottom line though, it's pretty fun. Good sense of humor to it. Would love to see it expanded upon.
Nice ! I haven't played something like this in a very long time!
It was incredibly fun for a short half-day endeavor. I did manage to beat it and get to the thanks screen. Thanks for a fun entry!
Great job for a half day - this really took me back to the BBS days. If the screen was limited to drawing the screen at 2400bps...
@rjhelms It's actually limited to 9600bps (the terminal emulator engine figures out what ANSI encoding is required to make a change to screen, and runs that through a rate limiter). [Here's 2400bps for you](http://pink.thesilentb.com/ld44/2400/). It's a little slow =). Note that your upload speed is not rate limited, so if you hold space for a while, you'll be navigating menus and fighting things for a *long* time... but I sure remember having that happen on BBSes =).
@jimbly Haha, amazing! Now *that's* the BBS experience I remember.
Great entry! I enjoyed playing it, thank you
I enjoyed the old terminal aesthetic! The gameplay does feel a bit linear and I got through by mostly pressing space, but considering this is done in half a day I can't really complain. Hope you'll have better luck with your schedules next time!
This was fun, but wait. I wanted to fight the Red Demon :(
Some nice visual polish with the distortion and colors. Hotkeys were also occasionally convenient. After getting all of the upgrades the arms dealer sold me some " " for 50g, but dope that I am I paid for it. Not a lot of depth to the gameplay, but a cool entry.