pvp 2019-04-29 13:47
Got some old MMO flashback nice job:)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Contract Cleric
By vinay-rao
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 340 | 3.17 | 62 | |
| Fun | 316 | 3.03 | 62 | |
| Innovation | 130 | 3.45 | 61 | |
| Theme | 335 | 3.10 | 60 | |
| Graphics | 290 | 3.23 | 62 | |
| Audio | 349 | 2.45 | 60 | |
| Humor | 249 | 2.63 | 56 | |
| Mood | 354 | 2.83 | 59 |
Got some old MMO flashback nice job:)
Ha! That's fun! Feels just like an mmo, being the under appreciated designated healer. nice job
@notb @pvp That's exactly what I was going for! Thanks!
I liked it. Very challenging, and obviously took me back to the MMO days :)
It's hard to understand how it works. There are a lot of abilities, so some kind of tutorial would be usefull.
@mika-la-grand
That's one of the features I regret not being integrated directly into the game. With the clock running short I was forced to settle for ability text descriptions outside of the game, which is never ideal.
The original plan was to use character banter to gradually introduce the abilities, but I was forced to scrap it for lack of time. The system was nearly ready, but I had no time to actually populate it with dialogue and timing it needed to fit the game.
While I'd prefer to have put in an organic means of learning what each ability does, I'm not sure that it's within the rules to go back and add in a "How to Play" button and page before the game to give a breakdown of the abilities and objective.
I'll see if I can't get a controls diagram to throw on this page with some ability descriptions. For now, I'll have to rely on the written ability breakdown on this page.
Thanks for the feedback!
Love the arte <3 But you need a tutorial in game XD
I had one Job...
Tank and DPS players these days, running in and taking aggro when they shouldn't be!
This was fun, reminds me of some old MMO's I used to play.
Nice job! It's a fun game. And I like pixelart graphics.I think you must make the ground in pixelart style to fit the game. Overall is a nice game with cool mechanics
Don't have any MMORPG experience but now, I guess, I can understand some players more. =)
The idea is great! And the execution of mechanics is pretty. However, the game would really gain a lot from some sort of in-game visual feedback and clues, such as partcle effects when a character is healed.
I love your pixel art, this style reminds me of good old DOS games. :D
@Yngvarr
Oh yeah, totally agree with you on that. In the game files I had quite a few particles ready to go, but just no time to actually rig them up with the skills. I'd hoped to get some generic particles for when the cleric is casting, particles for when the skills complete, and in the case of the third ability, a visible leash between the cleric and the target so it was more obvious when the range was broken.
Thanks for the feedback!
Great game, I loved the idea being a healer in an RPG setting its amazing. I don't think that it is a perfect fit with the theme, but it works well enough in that regard. Aside from visual feedback which is normal not to have enough time to add in a game jam :joy: I do think that the audio is a bit irritating to listen to, but I do understand what yo were going for but still wanted to mention it. Other than that this is probably one of my favorite submissions great work! :thumbsup:
@dooda
Fair point on the audio. One thing I didn't get around to was normalizing the audio so that it isn't so much of an ear bleed. It's still a sight better than when, about halfway through development, I thought it would be a good idea to put in damage audio. Phew, that was a nightmare! :laughing:
I think most games that use audio for casting keep the audio low key because you're usually constantly using them. Since I didn't get a casting animation or effects going, I just generated a few sound effects to try to bridge the gap between pushing a button and seeing results. This was done probably a bit too hastily. The audio gets the point across, but a few of the sounds are too shrill. The charged heal has a nasty audio click at the end that I should probably cut out.
That this is one of your favorite submissions for this round makes me quite happy to hear. :v:
Thanks for the feedback!
Great concept, and pretty well executed! Definitely depicted the RPG genre successfully, at least as a healer! I feel like there was also many opportunities to add elements of humour. The difficulty also felt like it gradually increased throughout the game. Overall, fantastic work!
Neat game! Really liked the graphics and the classic RPG vibe. There's a good mix of abilities, and it was fun thinking on my feet about what to use when.
Nice idea, never played as a healer so what's better for introduction that a little game like that. Gj !
I liked this for what it was. The MMO-style combat was well done and I liked how different all the abilities were. There was definitely a specific use for each one, and you had to manage their cooldowns to last. I wish there was more visual feedback about how an ability worked/landed. I didn't realize I had to hold ability #2 to charge it at first and didn't know why it was doing 0 healing. The art is cute, and the animations work. Nice job!
OMG, hunter pulls mobs, warrior doesn't know how to tank (he doesn't even have a shield), half of party is missing, these guys are unskilled and ungeared and don't know tactics for skeletons... Ah, just like good old World of Warcraft. :cry:
I can't win cause I always sucked as a healer, but this is one of my favourite entries so far.
The general concept is good and could be expanded upon
@kevin-liu @exewin
Good call on injecting humor into the game. There is a little code in there I used for testing to spawn enemies in a set sequence, which was meant to double as a means to have the characters banter with each other. I very much on purpose didn't give Sir Whale a shield, haha. I had a few ideas floating around like Fatstacks the Hunter leaving to get arrows every so often, however I didn't have time to balance the game around these things or write all the dialogue and script the encounters to allow for less activity for the player to read the text. Something to think about for the next version.I'd like to get closer to the original idea which had some story to it, stage transitions, flying enemies, things to dodge to avoid casting interruption, and a couple boss encounters. I got pretty ambitious, and toward the end of the time limit forced myself to scope down.
Oh, and the game is tough as nails exewin, haha. It is winnable though! Sometimes a bad encounter and split damage output can be nigh on impossible to recover from. In theory an encounter can scale to infinity enemies, which is something I'd like to put safeguards in against for a future version.
Thanks for the feedback and kind words!
I agree with @enver-arco I think the concept is there but could use a little work. I like the art though. Good work :)
"the church is indebted to your wonderful healing"
@exewin
Oh snap, you beat it? Shoot, guess I'll need to get working on the enhanced edition.
@vinay-rao I did. Mobs simply stopped spawning. There was only one skeleton which I couldn't kill because of 25 sec cooldown. When my turn undead ability was ready, I realised not a single goblin attacked during this time. So I kept this skeleton "Alive", farmed some gold for 5 minutes and did donations. I guess it was a bug.
You know, your game made me wanna play warcraft again, just few days before important exam. :stuck_out_tongue:
@exewin
Ah, what you ran into wasn't so much a bug, but a situation which isn't handled. There are scripted breakpoints to give the player time to clear the enemies on screen, though the total number of enemies that can spawn are based on uncapped dice rolls. Enemies will spawn until the enemy generator rolls a "break" encounter. The plan for the one skeleton + "clear all enemies" encounter is that using the character banter system that didn't make the final cut, the knight and hunter would refuse to pay the cleric if the last enemy on the board is a skeleton. I didn't have enough time to telegraph that this was happening, so I left it as it is. When I make the enhanced edition I'll be closing this loophole.
Good eye spotting that though! I was hoping that most folks wouldn't notice that exploitable spawning behavior.
Study hard! Good luck with that exam!
The core gameplay of this game is good! I didn't find my attention too divided (using the HUD to monitor HP and cooldowns) but when I did look back at the action it was quite a cluster. Having the characters spaced out or switching to a top-down perspective would help with that.
Its a shame that the spell tooltips weren't in-game, but once I learned the 5 abilities it was easy to remember what they do!
A super fun mmo style game. I replayed is at least a dozen times xd. Super addictive and super fun. Very nice job!
@caleb
Good call on the character spacing. I'll see what I can do about improving visibility in the enhanced edition. A bit of feedback I got outside of the comment section to that end is that it would be nice to see some more visual feedback on who is currently being attacked and by how many enemies. If I play around with layering and perhaps put in a bit of a depth difference to the characters in the scene, I think I can better show the player how many enemies are currently attacking a character.
An in game tutorial and tooltips to show the current state of an ability are absolutely on the expanded feature list. I never leave enough time for that kind of thing in game jams! :laughing:
Thanks for the feedback!
@copper-aardvark-games
Hey, glad you liked it! I'm feeling energized to work on a bigger and better version of the game. I'm not sure if I should wait till after the voting period or start messing with it now and throw out updates in a separate link on this page.
Thanks for the kind words!
I really liked this idea, definitely one of the more unique games I have played!
Good work, super unique! I think what you mentioned in an earlier comment about gradually introducing the abilities in-game would do wonders. It felt a little overwhelming at first, but once I actually started playing it made sense how it all worked together. This may just me being stupid, but after a few games I'm still not quite sure when/why to move my character? I found myself mostly just managing the spells and the damages which was plenty to keep track of and a lot of fun to try to figure out. I liked that I felt like I was constantly performing quick cost/benefit analyses and making decisions, even when spells were cooling down. Great job!
I really liked the graphics and theme implemtation. However, I honestly just feel that it was boring overall.
@scottyseus
Thanks! I just saw the title of your jam game and I've got to admit, I can't not give it a try. You've got quite a hook in the title, haha. Will have a look as soon as I've got a free moment.
@c0d3d
You can't please everyone! No sweat. Plenty of people don't find healing enjoyable in MMORPGs, which is what this game is wholly modeled after. It makes sense that this game wouldn't appeal to everyone. There are a couple ways to exploit the enemy spawns that can make the game a bit stale too, as exewin discovered. If the player bypasses these tricks, the general intensity of the game is on average very high, though still prone to randomness. I'll be making sure to add some spice to the enhanced version to make the game flow much more lively.
All feedback is good feedback!
@tddawson
Glad you had fun with it! I had quite a lot of plans for moving the cleric around, but at least right now the cleric's movement only affects [3] Regenerative Leash. After the cast is finished, the effects lasts 10 seconds or until the affected target is out of range. It's possible for you or your ally to run out of range and break the heal over time effect. I'd have hoped to telegraph this more with some visual feedback (as with all the abilities). In the enhanced version, visual feedback is certainly going to be a thing.
I ran out of time well in advance of getting around to it, but the intention was to add some flying enemies that would drop bombs the cleric had to dodge. The bombs would interrupt casting and cause the cleric to become increasingly dizzy after subsequent hits. Thing is, the pressure of finishing something cohesive in the time limit made me cut the idea. In addition to all the assets and code to rig it up, I'd have to find a way to balance the game around being interrupted, which I felt hurt the overall balance in the game I'd already established.
Thanks for the kind words and feedback! I'll get that skill tutorial into the followup version!
This felt like a very classic game, which was nice. It took a little bit to learn all the abilities, but once I got rolling I was healing and dealing like a madman! Nice job
Really does bring home the feel of tabbing through a group of hopeless heroes and trying to keep them up. The audio was so difficult to endure, I do understand you needed to sell the idea of casting time but the effects were particularly high frequency.
This game is great! I totally felt like a classic healer in an MMO. I like how everybody is walking away from me when there's heals, and then peopel tell me I had one job at the end. Hilarious! I wish the instructions were built into the game, but I eventually remembered what everything was.
Found it hard, but also had to try it again and again ;) Nice work :D
It's really hard to figure out what to do exactly, but after reading the instructions here it became clearer, I wish there was some kind of small manual in the game itself :)
That was really fun! I haven't seen a mini-game about just being a healer in an MMO game, but that's one of my favorite roles to play and this was surprisingly fun! The graphics are cute and fun, the sound effects are fun and work! Really dig this game, could see it really going places with a few mechanic refinements.
I'm a big fan of the classic "cooldown management" games and to be just the healer of the party is a nice concept! After a few tries and after reading the instructions more thoroughly, I managed to survive a bit longer. Two upgrades from the church later, my allies still were overrun by enemies. I dont know if I'm just really bad at this game, or if its difficulty curve is a little bit too steep. Still making such a game in 48 hours, while trying to balance it correctly is really impressive. Nice job!
Healer Please!!! good job hehe. Just to give you some feed back, sometimes the coldowns had a bit of delay.
GJ ! Very fun
Very fun game!
I played, and died, a few times before figuring out how this is properly played. You have a typo, the game is called "Contract Necromancer". I had my pet skeleton corner these cowardly adventurers, sucking their life while I sucked their coffers, until my church had sufficient funding. Your life is MY currency, mwhahahah.
Great game, both as intended, and the, apparently unintentional, darker interpretation of the theme. The cast time animations were pretty hard to see (I think that's the cause of some people's comments, confusion above), could have used something more clear there (darken out other abilities and show a counter or put the green vertical swipe on top of the icon or something).
@jimbly
Haha, thanks! Yeah, the 1 skeleton thing is patched out in a more recent version of the game I'm working on. Your allies will refuse to pay you if only skeletons remain. Since the character banter boxes weren't done in time, I didn't have a way to tell the player that was what was happening, so I left it out. All the same though, the game is tough as nails, so having one exploit in there helped test the win condition! The newer version of the game is going to do away with the old win condition and instead use stage transitions to tell a story from start to finish.
Good call on the cast time animations. The border color difference is difficult to notice. I'll try going from a one pixel dithered color change to something like a hot orange 3 pixels wide. On top of that, I'll be getting a proper casting animation in with some visual feedback. Some of the new stuff I'm adding requires more attention to player movement, so I think it will be important to try to draw the player's attention away from the skill bar once they're used to it.
If the theme is good for it, maybe I'll do a "Contract Necromancer" game next time. A skeleton in every home, and soon you will rule the world! :skull:
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the feedback! :v:
Neat little game for a compo submission!
I read through the spell descriptions on the page, but it's still a lot to think about while it's going on. Some kind of visual indicator or animation to differentiate the spells might make it more intuitive.
I liked the pixel characters! The audio got a bit repetitive after a while.
I couldn't win, but I liked the different heal types and managing it between the two characters. I wasn't sure as much what the second one did, the other abilities worked pretty well. Keep up the good work!