2019-10-09 14:02
unusual idea) worth of proceeding)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → King of Nothing
By notapixelstudio, azambie and Gaarco_
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 173 | 3.88 | 89 | |
| Fun | 115 | 3.90 | 89 | |
| Innovation | 22 | 4.30 | 89 | |
| Theme | 452 | 3.43 | 88 | |
| Graphics | 512 | 3.59 | 89 | |
| Humor | 532 | 2.77 | 79 | |
| Mood | 546 | 3.34 | 83 |
unusual idea) worth of proceeding)
Fun little game. Very weird how you have the beats like it's a rhythm game though. Good take on the theme. Thanks for sharing. It's very unique and kinda cool how you used chess pieces. Nice animation and art too. Looks polished
Thank you @akusan. What do you mean "weird how you have the beats"? Didn't they feel smooth and synchronized? Or..?
Graphics are actually rough not really polished :) chess pieces are maybe easy to do it :) Thank you for finding the time to try it :)
The way you handled the synchronized movement of the player with the metronome is absolutely brilliant! Simple game but very well executed!
cool use of the chess rule set. Very easy to tell what to do, as many people already know the rules to chess, and the metronome is obvious enough for anyone who has played rhythm games as well. The generated positions are a nice challenge, though I could easily see this concept extended with custom-designed positions, or blockades / room layouts. One Issue I had was that the audio cue didn't seem to quite align with the moment I actually had to click for me. From what I gather from other rhythm games though, that is often caused by differences in hardware. (crypt of the necrodancer here has a huge tolerance window to make up for this, osu! instead lets the user customise the timing to make it match). It wasn't so big an issue to make it unplayable, just a bit unintuitive, so something that could be optimised.
@iak thanks for your thoughtful feedback. We did struggle a lot with the alignment with visual and sound feedback. It was hard . Needs improvement for sure and maybe some calibration as you mentioned. Thank you for playing :)
Well, this is brilliant. Really liked the game. The graphics are neat, the mechanics work really well and it even follow the rules of chess regarding the movement of the pieces.
If you want, i can produce a track for your game (free of charge), but i can only work on this tonight (in 9 hours or so). In my soundcloud you can check my work (i usually produce classical, metal, electronic and 16-bit songs):
https://soundcloud.com/derek-volker-413758721/
Congratulations on your game!
@nickzangus thank you. With the short time and the block of creativity in come up with an idea to start. We keep the scope super small and simple. Not without difficulty in a sec and design prospective :) Thanks for playing
nice game but a bit lag
Basic but innovative theme, fun graphics, I really loved this game. Movement system is really coercive but in this way game has become more catchy. Also nice to see another godot game. Good job.
Brilliant idea, perfect execution! A bit of a shame that there is no music, but despite that this is one of my favourite entries so far! Congrats!
Amazing game!
Loved it, sad that the web version dosen't have music. It would be way better to play it with music!
@derek-volker thank you very much. A song from you? that would be great!! If you have the time, it would be amazing and very much appreciated. The only requirements are: 120bpm a simple loop (not too short since it might get used immediately and result boring). Then you can do whatever you want :) chess-like, rhythmic. Whatever :)
As soon as i arrive home i'll write and produce it @notapixelstudio
Nice Game! I really like the juice that you added, great job!
Really cool Idea. I have two sugggestions. 1. Endless mode: your score is counted in pawns (pawn1 bishop/knight3 rook5 queen9) so you can go for a highscore. 2. Hard mode: you loose if you make an illegal chess move. You'd have to find a way to deal with the queen tho. like making her move on her own next to you sometimes, or having hardmode only for endless and simply accept that you can never capture the queen. (In that case hard mode might actually be decent training for ultra bullet chess)
Also please play and rate some games yourself. This comunity relies on everyone doing their part :)
Very cool idea! I like the rhythm game element as it forces you to make quick decisions and make mistakes. I think that's a really important aspect. Nice work :thumbsup:
Really unique base idea that somehow just works too well! The graphics may be simple per se, but the animation works so well, that you don't notice at all. The game looks and feels really polished! Great job!
Great idea for the game, its a bit hard to follow the beat for me though
Really cool and creative game, liked it a lot
Cool idea, but i struggled a lot with the rythms ( i played the html 5 version)
Hey @notapixelstudio, i made your song. You can download it here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jLBGal2RoNSaBH9ObqXCCAtFNP3Y9I3m/view?usp=sharing
Its a 120bpm piece, looped and with heavy emphasys on the beat. I hope you like it and it fulfill your expectations regarding a song for the game.
Fun, short and sweet game.
Timing was a bit off for me on the HTML version, with the correct timing feeling closer to the offbeats than the on-beats. Wasn't really a problem once I adjusted to it, though.
Felt like it was unlikely you'd lose assuming you stayed on the beat, but I'm not sure what could be done to fix that within the theme - maybe just a hard mode with significantly faster scrolling, or an endless mode that speeds up?
@empty-set Thank you! Yes, making the game go faster would be an option. We believe that another solution could also be spawning patterns of pieces that cover each other or block movement, forcing you to choose the right direction to move to in addition to stay on the beat.
Thank you for your feedback! :)
Loved this game! Super cute bounce on the chess pieces, reminds me of a chill, yet more logical version of Guitar Hero. Only critism would be to add some indication that the player managed to get in time to the beat, other than moving, love me some good player feedback :) Great job!
@coldsanwdich189 Thank you. Yes we will work on improving the lag. In the last update v0.2.2 The lag has been reduced. Give it another try :)
@nordicebear : Godot Rulez! We went for simple rules and rhythm that pushes to make immediate moves, pushing you into making mistakes :) Thank you man.
@nordicebear: Thanks to @Derek we put the music on. And improved the sync with audio/visual feedback. Thank you for your kind words :)
@lunardust: Thank you! :)
@konomizure: We made an update in which we put the music made by @derek-volker. Give it another go. Audio/visual feedback is improved as well.
@jolett: Thank you !
@ausstein: These are really good advice. We were thinking on level design to make the black pieces appear in a always more difficult way. The movement of the queen is what made us realize the actual rhythm movement, and it gives us some headache. It might be a good thing the fact that you CANNOT take the queen in the *hard-mode* :) Thank you very much for your advice.
@kazatan: Exactly what we wanted to achieve in this small game! :)
@purrseus: Thank you, too kind :)
@kuviman: Thank you. Give it another try. We updated with a better feeling. :) we will keep improving a little by little.
@susumu-asaga: THank you man!
@ancient-pixel: Yeah, there was a bit of lag with the audio/visual feedback. Now with the v.0.2.2 we added mobile support and better audio/visual feedback handling. Give it another go and let us know if you can :)
@humphreysmedia: There is some feedback when you hit the movement at the right time. Isn't enough? Maybe something like: "Great!" "Bravo" "Amazing" ? Well since you tried it, it is my pleasure to tell you that "YOU ARE AMAZING!" - true story :)
Thank you guys. A big shout out to @derek-volker that provided a song for this short silly game we made for this jam. And Thank you guys for trying
It was fun, but kind of hard. I just kept seeming to miss the beat. It felt like the time to move was actually a bit after the beat in the song. Cool idea and well implemented. I am glad you found a soundtrack to use. It added a lot in my opinion.
Im getting an 'Unable to get property 'getParameter' of undefined or null reference' on edge.
Ha, I knew there should be another chess on this jam:) Interesting idea, but as it is, trivial except for the following the rhythm. I'd drop rhythm part and try to make core gameplay more complex. But that's me:) Also, was surprised that king does not walk diagonally.
Im getting "Cannot read property 'getParameter' of undefined" too : (
@baturinsky i NEED to play yours now :) I guess you're a fun of classic chess puzzle :) we want to put some novelty into this classic genre. We could make more complicated the spawning of new pieces maybe with pattern. The rhythm-base pushes you to act quickly. Of course the king moves diagonally. The beat might be too unforgiven, but you need to get used to the beat. Thank you very much :)
@nick-parry which system is that? Web? What browser? Try chrome. Or download the build. Or try Android build. Let me know. And thanks for trying it out :)
@mccarlp thank you. Yeah it's hard to find the right tuning for the beat. Not an easy task. It might need a calibration step, but this goes too far out of the scope of the jam. We keep trying to improve gameplay feeling though. Stay tuned :) and thank you so much :)
@baturinsky can you link the game you're referring to (the other chess-based game)
Nice concept, a proper soundtrack would have made it great to play! Some rewarding/punishing sound effects when you eat or get eaten could be great as well! I really like graphics and animations are so cute! Sometimes it feels like you really follow the music but it can't move... Played the HTML5 version
Nice idea! I really like how you used the available movements of each piece to create the "attacs" of each of them. And the rythm mechanics gives a really good flow and smooth gameplay. Really good job!
Excellent game! Really loved this as a big chess fan. I only wish that you could hold down a direction instead of having to press down exactly on the beat. Would make this fun with a controller as well!
@notapixelstudio you can see one's game in his/her profile, but here is the direct link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/white-starts-with-nothing
Really nice, out of the box idea :) The experience overall was complete and qualitative. I the rythm is good, pretty easy to get (but I'm playing music as a hobby so maybe I'm not the good client to stress that part).
Slick design, solid execution. Nice entry, well done!
@notapixelstudio Also, I can't say I'm a really big fan of chess. Game was just a result of thinking how to make jam theme work. For true feel of "nothingness" you need to remove something that player is used to have at the start. For example, in survival games you usually start with (next to) nothing, so there is no novelty here.
So, I took probably the most familiar game of all where you start with a lot and end with much less, and though about how you can change the rules so you really start with nothing.
Awesome concept! Chess is such a hard sealed game, I'm in favor of any modification of it that works! I liked it how you put the pieces in a way that when you eat one piece, you get attacked by the next one. Made the concept very clear! (Though it was already clear from the gifs). The game itself was not very challenging, but that's ok for a jam game which is dedicated to experimentation with new things. Maybe you could put a lot more pieces together, and make their attack logic more fuzzy, so you will need to be aware which pieces actually attack you and avoid them.
Nice work!
This was a really cool idea, mixing Chess with Crypt of the Necrodancer! The best part is, everyone knows how to play chess already, so it was very intuitive to pick up!
Unfortunately I struggled with the rhythm a bit, and spent my first few playthroughs playing like a Wazir because I didn't consider that I could move diagonally- thanks I think to using orthagonally laid out controls (which is really just a quirk of keyboards) and my ingrained instinct from playing Necrodancer. That's all on me, though, ahah.
The graphics look polished with the nice rhythm bounces, too. Really nice work!
Very fun game! Great job, everything looks in place!
There were some bugs, that were frustrating to me. For example sometimes there is no one beat gap between enemy noticing me and me moving away, so the enemy hits me even I reacted properly. Also, sometimes I am killed before the enemy even touches me.
But for me your idea is brilliant.
really nice idea this mix of concept and as said everyone know the chess rule Very innovative
And same as above a lot of diff with the rythm maybe i have no skill in necrodancer like ;) But i suggest to extend the windows for check the tempo and increase diffculty with more enemies i had a bug : no gameover after losing (on last html5 version)
anyway its a solid entry ;)
So this is amazing, i love beat games especially like those, i won after like 10 tries but its kind of weird how the king can just kill you when he is off screen, i died because of the king being off screen and me not seeing where he was, but i won anyways and its kind of weird that when you win you can still move, and i found a glitch where when you win and then lose - the "Game Over" and "You Win" screen will overlap, nonetheless its a solid game, i love it! Keep up the good work!
Hey @notapixelstudio, im glad you liked the song! Keep up the good work!
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Wow, this has got to be one of the best ideas that I have come across this LD. What a novel concept, and the best part is that it just works... Really well!
I would really love an infinite version where it becomes harder and harder, with a highscore (and maybe release on mobile). If you decide to develop this further please @me, I would love to check it out! :smiley:
Nice game, Queen is OP though! Nerf Queen
Very cool game and graphics, very nice idea for the theme too!
Very good concept, but IMHO toooo slow screen scrolling speed and too angry enemies. Kinda boring wait every time. I think be better when there is no scrolling and camera follow to the player.
@simon-rahnasto There is a mobile version, you can download it from the link in itch.io give it a try and let us know (it seems a bit harder in mobile).
Thank you all guys for your kind words.
Wow, this is one of the best games I've played so far in this jam. Great concept and execution! Awesome job guys!
Very good, would download this if it came to iOs :smile:
A good idea out of a mix of ideas. I liked it so much! Congratulations!
This is our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/soundscapes
@euler-moises Thanks so much :D we'll check out yours!!
Fantastic idea, executed really well! Not much more to say, other than I hope you somehow expand on this. I would love to play more levels.
Great concept. As someone who plays chess somewhat regularly, it took me a minute to get used to the idea that I could dodge pieces after moving, but once I got that rhythm down (no pun intended) it was quite a fun game. Thanks for sharing it with us on stream!
@youngblade thanks so much!! :D We're glad you enjoyed the game!
@jam373 thanks a lot!! :D We'll definitely think about it!!
Just finished couple of tries. It was pretty fun! After some times it is required from player to be very careful in steps planning. Good work!
@asfdfdfd thanks!! We're happy you enjoyed it! :D
Hey, just to let you know I’ve been making Ludum Dare 45 gameplay videos and I’ve put your game in my video! You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuH6eYQ45lg
Wow great modification of chess, I love such "modes" of existing classic games.
@humphreysmedia thanks so much!!! :D I'll definitely watch it!!
@wdebowicz thanks :D!! We're happy you liked it!
I'd say this is the first LD45 game I've seen so far that deserves to be made into a full game. You could make money on this as an iPhone game, for example. HOWEVER, the rhythm aspect of the game isn't working. Partly it's not working because the timing doesn't feel right—it feels buggy, inaccurate. Partly it's not working because even if it felt right, I think it's the wrong mechanic for the context. The rhythm mechanic basically limits the player's ability to move—it makes movement a skill test. But the player already has a much more interesting skill test: that of avoiding getting pounced by pieces by seeing where they'll strike, the essential chess skill. The annoyance of having to press the keys in rhythm (especially since this often doesn't sync properly) is a distraction from this much more interesting gameplay. Better if you let the player move as fast as they want (up to a point), but use the _scrolling speed_ instead to drive the pace of the game.
In a word, consider Tetris. What forces the pace of that game is the speed with which pieces drop. Now, imagine if in Tetris, in order to move a piece, you _also_ had to press the arrow keys in rhythm. This wouldn't make Tetris better; it would make it a lot worse. That's your situation. The idea of rhythm-based chess is really cool, but it's not helping your game. Your game has something even cooler than rhythm based chess, which is pace-driven board "reading" in what feels like an adventure context. Truly, this could be brilliant. I'd buy it.
I'd like to humbly disagree with the comment above as I believe the rhythm aspect of this game is core to the feeling and play it is trying to achieve. The rhythm implementation could certainly be "snappier" for lack of a better word, but honestly it was good enough for a jam game -- not everything can be Samurai Shaver [/shameless plug]. A proper calibration screen is kind of like an input configuration screen -- it's always desired and convenient, but somehow never makes it into the jam timeframe...
I was doing pretty well in this game! Until a rook came into camera view and immediately defeated me. Whoops! ;P
That aside this is pretty small but still kinda clever and fun. As noted the scrolling design seemed a little unnecessary, I wonder how this would work with that aspect nixed entirely, instead having fixed board configurations that you'd try to defeat with just your king. I believe this would also let you scale the difficulty over time as well as provide checkpoints since you'd have different levels. I'd imagine things might (?) get pretty tricky later on with dense piece configurations.
My brain is also curious what this might feel like with movement sets other than just the King's -- for example maybe a character that can only move by two squares at a time. Totally pulling this out of my butt though, that might be a horrible design in practice!
Nice job!
Wow very cool idea! I love this, no need to mention what this reminds of! Very neat job guys!
This was a super neat crypt of the necrodancer x chess crossover. Definitely a lot of room for extention.
My only issue was the music wasn't quite syncing up with the gameplay. I expect that was because I was playing it in a browser but I eventual got used to it.
I really enjoyed it! Clean design, juicy gameplay, great job!
I love the concept of this. There's never enough rhythm games, and combining it with chess is clever! This was really fun
Took a million tries, but I finally got them all! This was actually quite good.