szabe 2019-05-04 09:57
The weapon feels to useless, and the combat is too frustrating to be enjoyable. I am not even sure about how the various health pools contribute to gameplay, they seem to do the same thing.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD44 → Stick Dungeon
By Dustin Eyers and enovyt
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1096 | 2.68 | 26 | |
| Fun | 905 | 2.85 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 1036 | 2.47 | 26 | |
| Theme | 750 | 3.10 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 1029 | 2.22 | 26 | |
| Audio | 649 | 2.50 | 26 | |
| Humor | 671 | 2.63 | 25 | |
| Mood | 1018 | 2.52 | 26 |
The weapon feels to useless, and the combat is too frustrating to be enjoyable. I am not even sure about how the various health pools contribute to gameplay, they seem to do the same thing.
The fact there was an increase all seemed weird. I would have loved some animation for the stick figures. The hitbox on the magic seemed a little random. Sometimes it seemed way larger and other times smaller.
At first I didn't know what to do xd I mean I maxed everything and I didn't recognized where I should go :/ Fighting was a little frustrating...
Graphic + Audio was quite fun ;)
This isn't a bad game, but it has a few elements that make it feel bad and could use some polish (true of most games made with such a tight time limit).
I think I understand how the basic mechanics work, though I didn't see a huge impact from purchasing the upgrades. It appeared that most enemies died in one hit (making increased damage a bit unnecessary).
A shorter base ability cooldown might make the general gameplay more enjoyable, as would an indicator for readiness on the character (where my eyes are most of the time). I found myself frequently circling the enemies while waiting for an ability to be ready, even after spending most of my various life pools to reduce cooldowns.
I also noticed that I was hit and died a few times while it seemed I was out of enemy range.
Thanks for all of the feedback so far. We spent a lot of time on random dungeon generation and ran out of time for some of the features that we wanted to add. This was also our first game so all of this feedback is greatly appreciated!
I got agree with the others comments, combat is quite frustrating, the coldown for basic attack is too high, you just run and wait till is over, attack, and back to running and waiting. Aside from that i think is a good starting point.
I felt like there was a really solid idea at the core of this, it just needs a bit more time and care on visual polish and player feedback; something which can come outside of the jam if you choose to turn it in to a full release.
I thought the idea of multiple health bars which are impacted by different enemy types was a really clever concept - it feels like there could be quite a rich possibility space within it. I did have good fun playing it too, particularly once I got more of a hang of the rhythm of the cooldowns.
I really liked the procedural generation but I felt like it needed some more improvements in the combat feature, to me it looked not that much responsive.
Combat took some getting used to but from time to time I would slice 4 dudes with a single hit and that felt pretty badass!
Really liked the decision making with the 3 different health pools to choose from. Would have liked to see some variation on the enemies but overall well done guys!
Decent core idea and mechanics. Game functioned well, very playable. Didn't work in Edge, worked in Chrome. Pretty much HAD to go full screen, at default size I kept clicking out of the window which would cause me to lose input; a problem with all of these "mouse aims direction" type of games. I found the "white" part of the health bar confusing; "why is some of my health white, and why am I already dead" lol. Really *really* needs better non-fatal-hit feedback. This is a problem for both the player and the enemies. Am I hitting them? Am I being hit? Also, different enemy types (ranged versus melee) that look identical? C'mon. Finally, game should've started off easier so people can ease into figuring things out without dying constantly. Decent work overall, thanks for sharing!
I really liked the physical, mental and spiritual health concept. The art style is very simple, but I can appreciate a nice stick figure. Combat was nice, good job. Keep it up!
@adrieldf Glad you liked the procedural generation, @enovyt spent a lot of time trying to get that to work correctly. As for the non-responsive combat, it could have been due to the cooldowns for each attack shown at the bottom of the screen. We probably should have lowered the cooldown and attack damage so players could attack more often. Thanks for the feedback!
@luckydaisy This was our first time making a rogue-like game (our only other game that we really worked on was a tower defense so combat was new to us). We wanted to add more enemies but just ran out of time. Thanks for the feedback!
@pyrian The white part of your health was to show how much health has been lost compared to your maximum. You are spending maximum health while at the starting shop which is why the black part of each health bar moves and then when you lose health it is shown by the white part. We had some feedback for enemies and the player when getting hit by knocking the player or enemy backwards but this lead to them getting stuck in walls so we ended up cutting that feature for time reasons (we probably should have had the enemy/player flicker in color thinking about it now oops). We were going to add wizard hats to the ranged enemies but just forgot. Since this was our first game jam we did not leave enough time for testing/balancing, this lead to us rushing to try to get combat to a better state with not a lot of time left. Thanks for the feedback!
@angiekatneko Glad you liked the game!
Thanks for all of the feedback! We plan on doing a few updates to address some of the issues that everyone was having. We really tried to step outside of our comfort zone during this game jam and try concepts like the procedural generation to push ourselves.
For the first couple minutes, I was frustrated at this game. It has so-so art, mediocre controls, and is far from polished, but after a couple of minutes something just clicked. I realized the importance of managing the 3 different health bars and which enemies to down first before fighting others. It took me a bit, but I really found a ton of fun hiding in this unassuming little game. Great job!
Thanks for the kind words everyone! It is humbling to know that our first attempt did not end up so bad :) I will probably take some of your suggestions and do a small update before moving onto the next project. This was a good experience for us and look forward to the next!
Very interesting game, I personally think that the combat could use a bit of polishing.
A rather difficult combat system but in a bad way in my opinion, it was very hard to use the sword and killing enemies wasnt really satisfying. The soundtrack is pretty good though and the game has a Binding of Isaac feel to it so with a little more work it can become something great!
Very confused at first, but an interesting mechanic.