owl-skip 2020-04-19 21:09
What a strange and interesting game, clearly the work of a busy ICT technician who conducts historical re-enactments on the weekend. It's really whimsical and witty (whitty?). Excellent work.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Late Medieval Network Engineer
By misterkeefe
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 251 | 3.72 | 35 | |
| Fun | 210 | 3.69 | 35 | |
| Innovation | 67 | 4.06 | 35 | |
| Theme | 366 | 3.83 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 764 | 3.04 | 35 | |
| Humor | 304 | 3.21 | 33 | |
| Mood | 772 | 2.88 | 33 |
What a strange and interesting game, clearly the work of a busy ICT technician who conducts historical re-enactments on the weekend. It's really whimsical and witty (whitty?). Excellent work.
Your protocol name made me laugh, I like it. The gameplay itself is fun, only missing sounds effects and it would've been a really awesome game.
I appreciate the humor and the gameplay was really cool. Would be nice to know what the cards do beforehand but eventually I figure it out and finished the game.
I liked the concept! The gameplay is fun!
The concept was so out there and I loved it. Would have liked to know what the cards did before I chose them but other than that great game!
Wow well done! Funny concept, interesting gameplay. I had fun! Love the fact that you show the network strength based on how faded the castle connection is.
I'm really a fan of this one! (I must admit to being biased in that I also considered a keep-alive pun for my own game.)
The gameplay was simple but tense, and while I assume it is fairly luck-based (unless you are balancing the cards that show up?) I still was on the edge of my seat running around trying to keep the whole network from falling to pieces. I managed to make it to the end just barely thanks to a good last few days.
I noticed that cards either have yellow or red borders. I think that red = always bad, but yellow seems to include both good and bad cards. Maybe good cards can be separated out into their own border?
Other UI tweaks I could think of would be being able to see link strengths / integrity for anything on the map at a time, not just ones I can click on, so I can plan future moves.
And of course the flavor is top-notch. Would love to see more like this!
@sayumeki thanks! the card borders were originally the same for all the cards, but then I added red for monsters, but that does make it more confusing, you're right. And nice idea on seeing integrity for any link! Once the jam's all over I'll try to make these tweaks :thumbsup:
Wonder if my first comment disappeared... but here goes again ... A really solid entry - enjoyed it very much - don't know exactly what it is - but it just feels nice.
Congratulations on the entry :thumbsup_tone1: :purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
Wahahaha, as a web dev by day, this makes me laugh real hard :laughing: The ramp up of difficulty is just nice. I feel like i could reach a few day higher had i make a better card choice.
UI is clean and clear, no confusion whatsoever. I'm definitely retry this to see if there's a hidden boss somewhere down the end :rofl:
Love the mechanics and the execution. Great entry man.
surprisingly addictive, i kept telling myself i was done, but the card mechanic is fast enough that you get a 'just one more' feel from it.
i can honestly say this is the first game where a 404 error has killed me!
So much to love about this one.
The theme is clever and funny.
There's a ton of strategic depth from such simple mechanics. Should you go to a weak network and repair it or a strong network and heal yourself. Should you take damage now to move to the center and open up more options.
There's a nice balance of information. You know which cards are bad and which networks are failing based on the art, but you have to internalize exactly how bad.
Really great job.
Your game is really nice by its original and intuitive gameplay, I really enjoyed playing it especially when you like strategy games. Unfortunately I lost before the 14 days T-T
Thank you for your entry!
I did really feel like I was in the late medival. It means that the graphic was done well and served it purpose. I personaly liked games where the action have some consequences and this game was full of it.
Thank you!
Great game, I had fun to play it. I lose 2 days before the end :( Great job!
The network was kept alive! Fun HTTP meaning, had fun trying to keep it alive :smile: Well done!
Very innovative concept, I liked the game. I found it very hard though!
Wow this one is a gem! Really liked the game, managed to beat it here are some of my notes:
**Things I liked** - great concept and execution - interesting mechanic and brain teasing
**Things that could be improved** - music and sound effects are really missing in the game so it would add another layer to atmosphere of the game - more "levels" - more types of cards and mechanics with them
Great work, it reminds me EVE Online Exploration data sites :smile:
@saviqq thanks for the detailed feedback! I agree about sound, I just ran out of time - need to learn how to make it more quickly.
Neat game! Bashed through it to the end! Very fun, as soon as you learn all the mechanics!
This was fun! I really liked the card game battle minigame. Really easy to understand and quite satisfying.
Great idea for a game, the concept is really funny! Now I know that the life of a medieval network engineer wasn't easy at all, with all the spiders, monsters and server errors!
@tygrak it was a hard grind. we have it so much easier today :grin:
Very interesting concept and I enjoyed playing! Shame about the sound, some different music tracks for the overworld and the card battles would have really helped set the tone imo. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the card picking mechanism, kudos there and I hope you maybe expand on that in a future game. Fun strategy too with the network weakening and having to make movement decisions. My only serious complaint is the lack of 418 card :wink:
Interesting idea, really fun to play.
Very interesting idea!
Nice idea and fun to play. I won a game too. And yes it'd be nice to see how every path is doing to plan for it, also it would be nice to see what those cards do before I click on them.
This is actually really neat. Looking at it I figured it was going to be one of those jam games where the rules are way to complex and unintuitive to grasp quickly (I've made such a game) But it was actually pretty easy to get a sense for how it works. The traveling mechanic was really interesting. Did you come up with that entirely or is it based on an existing game? The main network screen is a bit lackluster, for a second I was thinking that was the whole game. A little UI brushup would go a long way I think.
@scott-steffes Thanks! The travel was pretty heavily based on ["Forward" by Christopher Coyard](https://twotinydice.itch.io/forward) which I really recommend if you haven't come across it.
I designed the network screen first, which I think was a bit of a mistake -- it might have flowed better the other way around. Thanks for playing!
Fun little game, took a while to figure out how to perform more successfully. Still haven't quite managed to win the game but got within a day or two. It seems pretty well balanced for the difficulty and during you've picked though sometimes even succeeding at a single day seems to be more a matter of luck than to do with any particular choice on your side. Maybe seeing a few more additional cards ahead would go a long way to giving the player a chance of succeeded. That could be restricted to a card type so you don't immediately have that but can choose to get +1 more layer and forgo bonuses to health or network.