Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Mage in Exile
By nikolay-zapolnov and evgeniya-zapolnova
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 486 | 3.52 | 62 | |
| Fun | 462 | 3.39 | 62 | |
| Innovation | 880 | 2.75 | 60 | |
| Theme | 244 | 3.75 | 62 | |
| Graphics | 492 | 3.63 | 62 | |
| Audio | 2 | |||
| Humor | 362 | 3.10 | 57 | |
| Mood | 627 | 3.26 | 57 |
Great game. Really enjoyed playing through it. Only thing that was slightly annoying was that you had to take your hands off the keyboard to click ok on chat boxes and use the menus. Lots of effort went into this and it shows. Good job!
@ryano Thanks ! Oh, yes, those mouse-keyboard-mouse switch is annoying. The controls were coded on an as-needed basis, so they are not consistent, unfortunately. But I tend to believe that it also simulates the fact that its not effortless to take an elixir out of the pocket during the battle and drink, isn't it :)
Very nicely done! Obviously needs a lot of balancing (it wasn't clear for example that the forest wasn't already 'finished' after the tutorial, but actually level 1). I could pass the forest but the village was already way too much, nevermind any of the other levels. But everything worked really well otherwise!
Suggestions: - Move the "use item" button somewhere else than U! It's impossible to reach while wsad-ing around trying to survive! Having a 'quick action' belt would probably fix this (e.g. place items and then click 1 or 2 to use) - Balancing/grinding. Let the player get somehow better, aside from by gathering more health potions (since they're so hard to use right now). E.g. give them better spells or level ups or somesuch. Right now the difference in difficulty between lvl 1 and 2 is really harsh. - Sounds! Even just some music. - Does "upgrading the tower" actually do anything? Not sure.
Otherwise, really well done!
Nice making all this content in such a short time. Good job. Found one of the most effective strategies to be running for your life haha :)
@Wolfrug Thanks for the great feedback! No, upgrading Tower unfortunately does nothing, we had to feature-cut that to fit into the deadline. We also planned to have different weapons and more recipes, and we wanted to have sounds and music...
@Tannimun Yeah, running for life proves to be useful. I think that's the only way to actually complete the game (Yes, you can beat it if you try hard).
I like the the crafting! Nice game.
Maybe move the inventory button to one next to WASD instead of U. The game is very hard! Lots of potential with a bit of balancing.
kinda looks easy at first but becomes exponentially challenging. Good stuff! :D
Very challenging but that made it all the more satisfying when I was able to win. The art style is great. The story of the game offers a good premise. A bit of balancing could help - it was basically impossible to use up all of your mana - but it was enjoyable. Thanks for sharing it with us on stream last night!
Nice game!Very cool graphic! And it's kinda hard, but i'am really like it!
Great game, as it was said that input switches were annoying :D I loved the art of the game, game was intiuitive and fun to play. Really good job.
There must be a key to just use health/mana potions, using U to open inventory and click the item was pretty annoying :) But it is a good game, I enjoyed playing it
It's a good game! It takes some skill to get used to.
Congratulations for making this game ! I loved the intro, it was very funny and it reminded me of my greatest moments of my childhood when being bullyied so good memories <3 The rest of the game was pretty classic but well executed. Sadly it lacked music and we also lacked another spell to do AoE. Kiss
It feels like a huge game! Fireballs appeared to be really weak against knight or maybe I was misusing them.
@agrdev Yes, the knight is overpowered. We didn't have enough time to balance game properly so its quite tough to play. But it has been discovered by other players that the "run-and-heal-often" strategy can be used to complete the game. Thanks for playing!
I win! That was a fun game. Definitely could use more work though. Some sounds would be a massive improvement. The slight delay in attacking took a bit to get used to, though once you figure out each enemy it is quite easy but still enough of a challenge to keep it interesting. I had way more stuff than I needed. I barely ended up using anything at all. Having to click for the dialogue was annoying.
Pretty solid submission, it has pretty cohesive gameplay and idea. However, it suffers from unfair difficulty curve and spongy enemies.
A classic and nice rpg.
Wow Hit and run +potions is the winning tactic all the way :D The levels were hard at first. But once you figured out how to inch forward to not trigger multiple enemies at once and using hit and run from there, made it nearly too easy. So balancing is needed, but that is expected from an LD game :) Many people had a similar interpretation of the theme as you guys, but I love how you introduced it in the game, makeing this extra intro scene really makes it stand out from those simmilar interpretations. Good job.
Nice work! It was a fun little game. I quickly found that fighting the enemies was pointless and it was better to play like a bullet hell game and just grab the loot while chugging back health potions haha. The art was very well done, I liked the farmer enemies that throw vegetables :smile:
lol @ 'dead mage, steal his robe' This is a great game, the only suggestion I have is that the delay of shooting the fireball makes it a little rough, its hard to shoot the fireball then run out of the way of incoming stuff. Pretty impressive graphics and fleshed out world. Wish there was audio but really enjoyed it regardless! Great work!
Cool game but devilishly hard. A common mistake is to make the LD games too hard (especially since you play it through a hundred times yourself and know all the tricks), but it is normally much more fun for a casual playthrough if the difficulty is relatively low.
This games was kind of fun. Even has a beginning cutscene, which was pretty cool. I was missing some juicier effects when using magic. All in all pretty cool for that timeframe.
The game was a little to hard but I really like the graphics and the game mechanic
@yeomsley haha I like how you played the game the exact oposite way I did, read the comment right before yours. Great that there are multiple viuable strategies. I think it is a good thing your game was on the harder side, or at least you had to figure out a strategy. I enjoy a challenge
Cool game, a lot of content here. Great job on the graphics. The combat would have been good if it had been better balanced, but the earlier parts were fun at least. Lack of sound does hurt a bit, and as others have mentioned 'U' for inventory wasn't very convenient.
The game did crash for me playing the html5 version, just as the lvl restarted after dying:
index.html:104 OOM printErr @ index.html:104 LD45.js:1 Uncaught abort(OOM). Build with -s ASSERTIONS=1 for more info.
@Avon Thanks for playing! Hmm, strange error. Could you please tell what was the OS and the browser you were using?
This game is really cool! It was definitely challenging and I'm impressed with how much content you were able to get in there for the jam. The art style is cool and the game mechanics feel great. I like the story and it was a good use of the theme. I would have loved to hear some music/sound in the game, but great work! :)
Really really hard but quite cool. It's quite obvious but some sounds would improve this game a lot.
Wow, there's a lot here for an LD entry!
Honestly I can't find much to really give feedback on beyond movement speed, which is slow for my taste but probably appropriate for the type of combat you're going for. I also would have liked the fireball to either spawn instantly, or at least spawn in the direction I clicked (It seems to follow my movement, so I can't "look away" during the cast period). Again, this might be an intentional and potentially correct choice for this game though.
The other piece of feedback would be to just get more playtesting data. Something I started doing in recent jams is to wrangle random friends to just play it at various states to get raw feedback on the mechanics and difficulty. It's been a positive force on our entries, and something that doesn't really burn much time.
Overall really solid entry; great work!
I fond the game funny and nice. A little bit too hard though, I found it easier to run through the levels instead of fighting the ennemies. Very nice graphics. well done !
Cool, nice little entry! I got chopped down pretty quick.. wish i could at least punch one of those dudes..
Nice game. I played it several time and will play it again :-)
As others have said, it's pretty difficult - definitely interesting, though. I like how the flowers work as obstacles that bite back, and then people start using them as cover! The guards add some important variety in enemies (since everyone else is stationary) but I found myself either running away from them and trying to set up shots (which was difficult because you can only shoot side-to-side, so the circles have to be wide on that axis to have time to shoot, and that side-the-side movement tends to advance the camera..potentially into more enemies.) I think being able to shoot up would have helped with that, but I'm not sure. Or maybe that's the intended result. ;)
Definitely fun. I wonder, though - is it possible to get stronger fireballs or fireballs that shoot faster? Like, when I stepped into the graveyard, I died immediately and got the impression I'd need to come back stronger. But then after doing the forest and attempting the village several times, it doesn't seem like you do get stronger - you just have more healing items. Is that right?
@kooshy Thanks for such a detailed feedback!
Indeed game has some balance problems. Guards were added to the game pretty close to the end of the jam and they are overpowered. Currently the only reasonable strategy is to run away from them, but that wasn't intended.
We planned to have weapons upgrade but didn't have time to put it in. Still there is some progression: you get a bit stronger after completing each level. But compared to the overpowered enemies this is negligible.
Its good to hear that even unbalanced game was fun to play for you :)
In general, very nice and full-of-content game. Thought I could skip a lot of time and trouble by just running by enemies, but yeah, pretty much not possible like that. Good amount of features built-in, crafting, inventory, health and mana. Sometimes the controls feel a little off, I would LOVE this, if it was faster paced and you could cast your spells backwards as well, since it's sometimes really hard to stay far enough away from the enemy and still be able to attack them. Insane amount of gameplay embedded in this 72 hours game, no weird bugs or anything, just a game that works, like it!
nice game, a bit repetetive but the gameplay is fun. a boss fight at the end would have been nice
that was funny :D good job
Pretty neat start for a game. I just wish I could go through the dialogue by pressing E or some other key on the keyboard. Also I feel like the knights have a bit too much HP, which makes it easier to just be lazy and dodge them and everything else. A bit of knockback from the magic missiles could be nice. A lot of stuff in this game considering the timeframe.
Pretty tough! The problem is that you have to turn around to attack the guards chasing you but you can't kill them all before they reach you. Would've been better if you could aim with the cursor. But it's a rather big game, so good job on that.
Just played the game - As told in stream: You are dieing too quickly, sometimes no chance to use the heal potions. Thanks for submitting and hanging around
I love how much content you placed inside the game. Multiple levels. World map. Wow. But enemies are too healthy and strong.
Solid! I am absolutely baffled at how huge this game is. Amazing of you two to pull that off in a jam, even as a small team. So many areas and enemies and items and the crafting, and, and, and..! Wow. And a funny story to boot. Not usually my time of game, but that's on me, and this was objectively really cool and well done. Very difficult in some of the enemy corridors, but it seems the favoured strategy is to stock up on healing food and run for it, BotW-style. That works too! Really well done!