Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Something Of Legend
By ave and blaster391
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 407 | 3.56 | 24 | |
| Fun | 447 | 3.40 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 56 | 3.90 | 22 | |
| Theme | 458 | 3.47 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 321 | 3.92 | 23 | |
| Audio | 217 | 3.65 | 22 | |
| Humor | 71 | 3.88 | 23 | |
| Mood | 434 | 3.42 | 22 |
I like the art of this and it seems like a nice idea, a rhythm based fighting game... its hard to create rhythm games ... it seems the fullscreen is kinda buggy in my pc btw ... the text in the top part is cut so I can't read it, also the gameplay idea is good, but could not get it to work in here, the power bar does not seem to go down
@velvetlobster Thank you for playing our game! I'm glad you enjoyed the art. Your feedback is appreciated
Just to understand the UI issues you were having, was the text at the top that was cut off the enemy speech bubble? Maybe I set the scaling mode wrongly in Unity
Also to try to understand the difficulties you had playing the game, were you pressing space after typing your combo to actually use the attack?
Great job on the art! Pretty interesting concept for a game, I liked the blend of rhythm and combat.
Productive tutorial, though it would be easier to understand as a separate screen with this amount of data to process :) It's hard to justify why should I buy the next upgrade sometimes, as well as to why do I need more than 2 at the time. The vibe of the game is pleasant and engaging, however. Overall a solid entry.
@firellon thankyou for taking the time! From having played to friends, we anticipated that people might have trouble understanding the mechanics straight away - is there a particular aspect you found to be too-much-data - for example, the time beat mechanic, or the blocking? Once you did get to grips with it, did you have fun? Lastly, how far did you make it? :)
I feel good playing this game, building the great combo! And thanks for the linux build. Great game.
Really like the game! The concept is original (when assimilated) and the graphics are nice and clean. Great game, guys!
i was expecting quite a lot and like the graphics but i wasn't able to get through the entrance
@blaster391 it seems the screen is being cut, like when you have to adjust scale and something like that ... oh so I am supposed to use space, I was only pressing the arrows
just noticed it was written there in one of the first images here ... I always miss those things
It looks really cool and I wish I could play it but I keep getting an error about the resolution. I've tried it windowed, fullscreen, both at different resolutions but no matter what I do it won't let me play. Is it something on my end?
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Like the game, though even after reading the tutorial it took me awhile to figure out how to do anything. Would be helpful to have the tutorial be in the 1st battle rather than a blob of text up front.
@prideling what aspect ratio are you trying to run? The game should be limited to 16:9 or 16:10 (otherwise the UI falls apart, something I am working on for next jam)
I assumed that the Unity intro screen would just limit you to those options... Maybe I had too much faith in unity xD
@maou we anticipated some difficulty learning the controls (which is why the first enemy does not attack).
I think for next game I will try to bring the tutorial in a little bit at a time (e.g, first battle tell you about attacking, second about blocking, etc)
@belug23 glad you liked it! Does the linux build run okay? I don't have any way of testing it, but I always like to build one just in case someone wants to try it.
@fadex by entrance, do to mean the shop? I wasn't happy about the clarity of the shop UI, but hey, limited time.
I'm guessing your issue probably was buying your first combos, you have to press the numbered buttons by the side of the combo you want
(and for the first shop you have to buy both the combos, don't want players getting into trouble because they don't have an attack or block!)
@blaster391 The linux build works really well thank you.
Good times!! :D
Pretty cool concept! At first I was really confused about blocking because my guy always looked hit no matter what I did so I thought the block always failed. But I eventually figured out it was because my block power was lower than the attack power. I know there is a shield icon on a successful block but I really think it needs some kind of audio cue as well just to make it clearer.
I played this and then came back. I think your level design makes it really replayable. You have to try and save up health for the end game. So next time around, you have to learn the enemy's beat patterns even just to save a little bit of health.
It interesting that if you have two actions with the same pattern, you can do more with fewer keystrokes but sometimes it isn't what you want.
I managed to get to robots with 94 health left. I don't know if spending 50 there was a good idea. Though at that point it would have been nice to see what the attack is without having to start over.
Such a well-rounded entry! I love the premise of a kaiju-like monster living through the ages, and the rhtythm-based gameplay is fun and well-executed for a jam. I liked the creature design, the little bits of humor, and everything looks great.
It took me a little bit to fully understand how the battle system works, but that's to be expected in a jam. Really nice work, congrats!
@silkworm-sweatshop Yeaahhh, I think it might have been a mistake to have purple shields over the top of a purple monster as the only indication of successful blocking. The blocking mechanics were especially difficult to design in a way that made them skillful, balanced and intuitive. I feel like our implementation of it was balanced, but not always intuitive to new players.
@bar I'm glad you enjoyed our game! Having two actions at once was a last minute decision, I wasn't sure whether anyone would notice it, so it's good to see you liked it. 94 health at the end game is way more than I've managed, that's impressive.
@tiagorrech Thank youuuu <3 The next jam I do I am definitely going to focus on how to better tutorialise the game so that players don't have to take in so much information at once
I don't normally like rhythm games but this is a nice take on it. After I figured out how to play, it was pretty fun and really well polished. Great work guys!
I felt like I was playing Sabin all over again :)
Took a little to figure out the gameplay even after reading the infograph, but once I got going I enjoyed punching in the combos super fast. I realllllly loved how every piece of the game was a piece of art, including the UI. It made it feel very cohesive and intentional, it looks amazing. One thing that kept pulling me forward was in fact, the enemy types you chose and me wanting to see what was next. I loved the ambition in this game as you guys tried a ton of ideas I've never seen in LD before, fantastic job!
@player2point0 I'm glad you managed to figure it out. Thankyou for the kind comment, we'd prioritised polish above anything else :)
@peachtreeoath Confusion over the controls seems to be a recurring piece of feedback, but I'm glad you managed to figure it out, and more importantly had fun! I wasn't sure if the characters we were making were actually funny, and it was quick a quick process writing them, so I'm happy that the intrigue for what was coming next as content spurred you on!
Neat! The mighty Flurplepede brought a lot of terror to the world, but in the end fell victim to climate change. :) Really like these sketchy visuals and the variety of enemies in the game.
Interesting and creative take on a round-based (more like beat-based) fighting system with a lot of player investment regarding the attacks and blocks. The core concept sounds pretty intriguing and even for a round based battle muffle like me somewhat new.
The art seems rushed (game jam and all) but still has a lot of detail and obvious talent behind it. Everything could've been a little clearer and less chaotic which would lead to a more clear ui overall. But thats just a minor issue. Music and Sound wasn't anything to remeber the game for, but did it's part.
The core gameplay wasn't very clear to me at first. I always try the games out before I read the game page descriptions etc to see if the game is good at explaining itself. The fights felt pretty strange at first, since I didn't really get how the beat mechanic worked. To be honest, I didn't even notice, that the fighting system was beat based and the enemy pattern was tied to the looping beat. So I randomly spammed my attacks and defense moves as soon as they were available without really considering any strategies. After that I read the instructions (and ingame tips) to understand the mechanics a little better. And I really liked how the game should be played in theory. But even after knowing how the game should work, it felt way to hard and unintuitive to catch all the enemies' moves and remeber at what beat they did what so I just continued spamming my attacks, because that just felt like it worked just as well.
I think the fighting system could benefit from some foreshadowing of enemy actions before they happen so that the player can react to it, even in the first round. The animations looked very choppy so it was hard to really see what the enemies were doing when also focusing on you own attack patterns (and not messing them up) I think the beat was a little to fast as well to really consider it for you own advantage. I always felt back to just spamming everything as fast as possible to not miss any beats and cooldowns. So I guess it might be pretty challenging to find a way to balance everything out.
Maybe I'm also just too bad at games like these in general ;)
Nontheless, great job bringing this huge project on the road. The mechanics seem pretty intricate and theres also a lot of upgrades and different attacks, which is nice. The mechanics could've been a little more transparend and better transported to the player, what was happening, how long the attacks are still in cooldown or how long my shield is still up etc.
@Duke Hey, thanks for stopping by! I also appreciate your honesty, and I think it's spot on. I also ended up just spamming, and the music and sound was a little bit of an afterthought. We'll probably aim for simpler mechanics next game jam just to polish it up. RE the art, [I did a write up you might find interesting](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/something-of-legend/art-sound-retrospective-by-a-programmer-who-does-neither) - definitely sketchy, I think we wanted to make sure we had _enough_ content, which meant making more characters than I could "clean" up. Lessons learned for next time ^_^
@very-dark-lord Glad you enjoyed! That's a better name than "The Squib" haha
I went with 'Kraken', quite generic :stuck_out_tongue: I was thwarted by the paper :sob:
Incredibly impressed with what the two of you achieved over the weekend! I definitely need to focus on simpler core mechanics like you guys have done as it goes to show how much of a fully fleshed out game you can make when you do so. The UI is a little confusing at first, but due to the low cost of attacks in the first round it doesn't hinder the gameplay at all. Same goes for attacking the enemies, it was fairly confusing but as the difficulty ramp is very forgiving it doesn't cause issues at all. The only other thing I'd say about the difficulty is it was a little too easy, but that's far better than being too hard!
Graphics and audio are incredibly cute and consistent although certain images are a little too sketchy and seemed rushed - I suppose that's to be expected given that it's a game jam though :laughing: Still very impressive from someone who is usually a programmer though! I'm sort of the opposite myself so I can understand the challenge.
Overall a fantastic finished piece, 4-5 stars all around! Great job :grin:
Beautiful man! haha I loved fighting the natural disasters haha. Great job!! Really beautiful art!
EDIT:
Okay so I'm going to write a better review since I played for like 40 minutes!. Combat system is really cool, I'm not 100% sure if the way is a fixed amount of health for your entire playthrough. It may be a bit better to have some skills to have lifesteal, gain some life at the end of a stage or something like that and lower the amount of total health. Once you get the squid shield it's pretty hard to los since you can permablock, maybe adding one less tick of duration can help. Humor on this game is top notch, dialogs are super funny and characters have personalities! hell even the natural disaster has a personality. I'm super glad you made it to 20 rates!
I like the concept but I couldn't figure out how to get past the first enemy. It looks really good and other that I sucked at it I can't really fault it. Nice job
@simplepotential we definitely could have been clearer on the controls - the actions you see in the middle are key combos - when you've typed one in, press space to send it off. They all have cooldowns, represented by the ticking timer to their right.
To beat the first enemy, press the right arrow key, then your space bar. Wait one second, then repeat.
Please consider giving it another go! I'd hate for you to miss out :)
Ooooohhh, a rhythm jam game...How ambitious! :) I love it when people take chances like this.
I will say, it did take me QUITE a while to figure out how the whole game worked. And even by the end, I wasn't 100% sure I knew what to do. But at least I had figured out that my actions have cooldowns. ^.^" Would have been nice to have a tutorial. Dropping a player right into a menu where they have to make decisions before they even see the mechanics of the game can be pretty rough...
The art and audio in this game are great, and have a lot of personality. I especially liked the "rabbling" crowd. Sounds like you guys had a lot of fun making this. :)
As a side note, great idea adding a name input, I always have fun with this. ;P
lustyTog.png
@coleslaughter thankyou for taking the time - you've commented on some things that others hadn't yet! A common theme with our feedback has been confusion over controls, but I hadn't considered it would be because we went straight into a menu. It was a quick-win programatically, as each _era_ was a scriptable object starting with a store listing.
We did have fun! I'm glad you liked the art. We felt the inclusion of a custom name was easy to implement but would help you embed yourself into the character and help make it your own "legend". :D