Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → MACHINA
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 38 | 4.12 | 354 | |
| Fun | 139 | 3.81 | 353 | |
| Innovation | 126 | 3.90 | 352 | |
| Theme | 497 | 3.70 | 350 | |
| Graphics | 23 | 4.44 | 354 | |
| Audio | 37 | 4.02 | 351 | |
| Humor | 218 | 3.42 | 332 | |
| Mood | 91 | 3.91 | 348 |
Holy crap this is impressive. I love the visuals. Those floating black figures in the background that shrink look really nice. Nice font choice too. The gameplay is fun, however I don't like how there is no going back from choosing a move. The white robots should have some sort of indicator for their health.
This is the best game I found here so far. Well done!
@patrickjr Thank you for your kind words! :smile: I wanted to have the actions be cancel-able but that introduced a fair amount of complexity so I threw it in the backlog and never got around to fixing it. Same goes for the bots' health feedback, I was thinking of something visual like small spheres on their head but, again, didn't manage to make it ^^"
Amazing, the visuals are spetacular and the concept is refreshing and fun.
Great visuals. Really like the floaty abstract look and the glytchy text. The gameplay doesn't really work for me. It's pretty slow, and the committing to actions is annoying. A little too random, as well. Still an impressive game. Graphics are an easy 5.
@brunosly Thank you! =] @thedashdude Thanks for the comments and feedback; I have these comments in mind, already fixed the action cancelling (it will be in a post-compo version)
Wow, now this is cool. Solid idea, well executed and pretty polished. Love everything about it. Great work!
Thank you so much @drunkardwolf =)
The idea - really cool. reminds me of hoplite and other light tactics games. Production - absolutely top notch, would not have any problem believing this was something that was ready to ship as a commercial thing. However, the level design itself is your weakest point. Seemed kinda samey and grindy. However, the overall thing is A+.
@simukas Thanks for the kind words =] I get what you mean - I had to invest into simple procedural solutions for content creation to save time, but did not get to polish them as much as I'd want.
aesthetically well done. You did a great job!
Thank you @jajakeim!
Very great submission. RIP my poor laptop trying to run it, it looks amazing! Not just graphics but the style as well. And loved the dialog. Like others have said the game itself could be expanded on to make it a bit more interesting, but for a game jam this is amazing
@njm-games hah, yeah, I went a bit overboard with post-processing, so performance could be an issue ^^" Thanks for your kind comment though!
The best I've seen so far!
Thank you so much @szieberth-adam!
This is great! I love the idea.
Thanks @adjo !
Amazing style. Really, really impressive for 48 hours. Would love a bit more of a slow ramp up into the game rules, as it was quite a lot of text to start. I also hadn't grasped the wave mechanic, and was running around trying to see if a square was an exit.
You should definitely do a full game of this. Now you have more time to polish it and balance and of course add more content.
This is pretty incredible. I love the art style and the music, they fit together perfectly. The mix of offense and defensive capabilities is really interesting, but I'd love it if you had a few more action points at your disposal to make use of them, or maybe if the move was free. I thought the initial dialog was well written, but it went on for a bit too long. Maybe splitting up the offense and defense tutorials into separate levels would be a good approach to take if you decide to continue working on this.
Well done! This is certainly the best looking game I've see yet!
Really impressive stuff! I enjoyed my time with the game and found it to be a nice challenge with buttery smooth graphics and sound to match. Really quality work, best game I've played thus far.
I love the art style! It could use some balance, or maybe RNGesus didn't just didn't smile on me today. In any case, really good job. It's a fun game that looks very polished.
I like the AP System and the mix of turn based strategy card mechanics. Incredible visuals and the sound design matched the atmosphere nicely. Great Job!
Very impressive game, thought the difficulty curve between level 2 and 3 is quite high, especially with the rng cards every turn.
I love how impressive this is. It's a lot more wordy than I'd have expected from a 2 day affair, too, so while all that exposition isn't my cup of tea, kudos for having the time to do it.
I'm puzzle illiterate, so I had to accept death once I noticed that doing a blue card on a tile that was already up put it back down forever.
All in all, amazing. I didn't expect one of the first things I'd see would be such a banger.
Pretty polished everywhere. One of the best I played so far!
Really well done, great effects
Really cool visuals, and super punchy sound effects. I wish the gameplay had some more mechanics.
The visual is soft and really cool. According to the gameplay simple and working as well Really good game
Nice visuals, good idea of gameplay too ! I have just one problem when i click on an attack i can't cancel it
Awesome game!
I love the mood created by viusals audio and gameplay.
Pretty cool game, congratulation. It seems the first level is more complex than the others. Well done.
Good job, mate. Admittedly best option was to bunker self and sometimes the bombs exploded spontaneously, but this did not detract from the quality of the game. Quality humour, great shaders, soft, lively soundtrack and great spawning sound. Definitely a 5-star rating :)
Amazing entry, the screenshots don't do it justice. It's really atmospheric and tense at the same time. There's really not much I would've changed, maybe switch the right click with escape so you can cancel your action and make the game faster, even though you would lose the ability to rotate the pattern. 5 stars game all the way.
Very nice graphics and gameplay! I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/4GNiWeaqklM
Waow, this game is so polished, it feels so smooth! Loved it! Thanks for the experience!
Such an awesome, polished game! I loved the snarky AI and the gameplay was super engaging. I'd have played longer if I hadn't had to work haha.
I also wanted to say I really appreciate all you do for the Unity community :) You got me to learn more about shaders and it's been a wonderful tool in my kit.
@rebecca-harrison Thank you so much for your kind words =] I'm really happy and humbled to hear that my shader stuff helped, especially given how beautiful your art is ^^"
Wow!!! You made it in just 72 hours??!?!?! I think it could be a commercial game: good art, good mechanics, good sound, good lore... It reminds me to Portal in a kind of way. Did you get inspired by Glados and Aperture Science? hahahah.
One of the bests games I played in this LD. Good work!
Thanks @overmolo! It was actually made in 48 hours ^^" Thanks for your kind words though, I really appreciate it!
Awesome graphics, liked the dialogues even if sometimes a bit too long. Definitely a keeper!! GG!! Ambiance and sound design a pretty cool too!
WOOW! Awesome work, really good game, so polished, congratulations! Visual and sounds great :)
Great visuals, well done
Absolutely amazing. Very well polish, just amazingly consistent with the visuals and actually funny! For a compo entry this is jsut twice as impressive o.O
Very cool game with an innovative concept. Nice take on the card-playing video game genre. The graphic design reminds me of Portal and the gameplay, don't know why of Superhot
I would make the tutorial more interactive, the talking is suuuper long.
There is a little abuse also, if you click the human and then click a card the human moves and you can still use the power
Wow ! Pretty cool game. I love the mood, the light and the bloom is very cool ! Well done !
Hey Harry! This is fantastic. Congratulations on putting together such a cohesive experience in such a short time.
Two small things for me: - Front loading the instructions was a bit frustrating. I enjoyed the narrator's 'voice', but there's a bunch to get through and I felt like I had missed bits when I was mid game. Hover overs could be a solution here. - Not being able to cancel my actions felt a bit punishing.
Again, well done!
Great game! Is it possible to beat the final level though? I died immediately after I killed the "enemy".
@add-an-a Thank you so much for the comments and feedback! I'm aware of the issues, but thank you for pointing them out! I got a bit carried away with the text, however, the Post-compo version on the itch page gives you the ability to cancel skills with "escape"! Your suggestion to add hover overs is really good actually, I went for the full exposition thing to save some time but didn't actually see how long the dialogue goes on for ^^"
@daniel-alhadeff glad to hear you reached the "enemy" :D there's nothing else you can do unfortunately, the AI warned you about it :P
A really nice and good-looking game, with very well designed levels, but how painful it is to return to level 1 if they end up with you :(
Beautiful looking game, you wouldn't know it was built in such a short time. Probably a little too much text in the beginning to get into the game.
@fran-gambero Thank you =] Well, the levels are randomly generated, so I guess RNGesus was nice to you ;) And also yeah, perma-death is a tough thing about roguelikes ^^"
@sid-fish-games Thank you so much! :D I know about the text, didn't think to see how long it is in-game ^^"
One of my first thoughts when playing this game was "I'm glad he put up his source code cuz I wanna see how these shaders are done!". I wasn't aware of who you were, but after looking through some of the comments, I now see you have a website and a bunch of tutorials so that's fantastic, you have a new follower :)
The game itself is fun though can be pretty punishing. The very first run I played I actually spawned in the corner surrounded by 2 blocks, so I had no idea what was going on lol. In subsequent runs I more understood the game design because I had more normal levels. I know this game's a bit obscure but it kinda reminded me of Atlas Reactor which is xcom but w more interesting abilities and movement. The game feels REALLY good when you make smart plays like funneling enemies into an area and then AOEing them down.
Like others pointed out, the tutorial was tough for me. I was piling a lot of info into my head and couldn't keep track of it all. I only understood all the mechanics after a second pass. The flavor text is nice but it did add to the difficulty of keeping all that info in my head.
The game and atmosphere it beautiful and there's quite a bit of tension in trying to keep the player alive. It sucks when you get a level that has no blocks near you but like you said, this is a pure roguelike in that sense :)
@peachtreeoath Thank you so much for the kind words and the feedback! About the level generation, if I had given more thought and effort into the generation algorithm these stuff wouldn't happen ^^" right now it's pretty much up to RNGesus :P
I thought it'd be interesting to basically include the tutorial into some exposition and flavor text but I guess that backfired, communication-wise. Nevertheless, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Yall wanna leave some 5star categories for the rest of us pls?
This is some serious polish for a jam game, and was fun to play and learn the strategy to get through each level to boot. Love the random cards for actions as well. Did something similar in my own game.
Great great job
Great game! Nice art and music!
Some comments: - It would be nice if each robot had a health bar or something above it's head. I wasn't sure how many "attacks" I had to use against it and thought maybe there was a bug or something until I realized it was more than one. - The text at the beginning is wayyyy too long. Frankly I sped through it and didn't read half of it. It just seemed like paragraph after paragraph explaining things I would definitely forget. I would recommend making level 1 a tutorial or an optional level 0 tutorial that people can go through that is much more interactive than text-only. - It would be nice if unused action points carried over - It would be nice if the wave count was displayed on the UI somewhere
Otherwise, it was fun and had some nice puzzles. :)
Phenomenal game, I hope the teaser that more is to come was accurate because I want more. I love minimalist games like this, they always looks very sleek and well-made. The shaders for the dialogue were nice, and the background animation was a great touch to keep the background from being wasted. I'd love to see more levels and variety added in the future!
Fun game. A weird thing that happened on the web version is that if you clicked a card it would sometimes place it immediately, whether I wanted to or not. Other than that, a pretty fun game. In the start I feel that I didn't have enough actions, but I perhaps that was to make it to the difficulty you wanted. So yeah, pretty good game.
Loved the art style, great work.
The game is very nice !! I like the mechanic. It's not easy or I am noob x) But I like this kind of difficulties.
I like the game visuals and mechanics a lot, but the game is a little bit difficult and annoying, because when you die you go to the first level. I think it would be cool if the health regenerates after a level completion. I think it would be cool if you release that game for the mobile game market, because the game has potential. Nice job :D
@bobost2 thanks for the comment! The game will (potentially) be a roguelike game, so perma-death is part of it I'm afraid! It's a bit punishing, but with additional elements (like getting some better starting stats after a run) it can be fairly easier and more exciting!
Visuals and mood are absolutely amazing. But need a lot more information and indicators such as hp, movement, sight and how re spawn works. The humor is also not my cup of tea.
Spectacular graphics and a polished feel! Pretty much everything about this game was executed superbly so I can't think of any tips for improvements. I liked its depth and I had a good deal of fun playing it!
Extremely polished game, it looks so good! Only issue i had, was that I was not able to cancel my actions (played in browser).
@nexushub Thanks for the feedback. There wasn't really any re-spawn, it's just that there were multiple waves of enemies and once you finished one, another one would spawn. Some more feedback on enemy HP and other elements is indeed needed and I've noted it for any next iterations.
@emperor-eagle Thank you so much! :D
@bastian-bresson Thank you! Yeah, the WebGL version corresponds to the submitted version, so the cancel-able actions haven't been introduced there. The Post-Compo version has that fixed, along with some other stuff.
@harry-alissavakis Ah, I see. Also, small levels that introduces the mechanics would be great, the starting text introduces way too much to remember.
Wow the graphics are AMAZING ! The game is very juicy and very fun to play !
WTF incredible solid work, dude - you rock :D
Incredible execution. Loved the humor in the dialog. It was easy to learn the mechanics but hard to master, planning is key. I really wish there was a way to cancel my actions. The graphics and music are fantastic, beautiful game overall.
Very cool game man, congrats. It's quite impressive what you was able to achieve within a weekend of solo work.
I really liked the text animation. The text itself was a bit too much in the way, so I skipped most of it. The mood and gameplay were polished, even though I would have liked to rotate the modules.
I can't believe you can make an endless turn based tactics game and I think you just did! It's also very fun and clever! I like the defensive and offensive cards. It's like tetris tactics haha. Good job! I wish I can select the tile where the player is standing to select the player, since the the player is too thin, it's hard to select and move him. I love the character and robot designs, just perfect for what they're made for, blasting lasers! This is a great game not just for a game jam but a full pledged game!
@tic Thanks for the feedback! You could rotate the modules with right-click actually!
@keybol Thank you so much for your kind words! I'll take a note of that, I've gathered a bunch of useful feedback already, cheers!
I guess everyone already said that, but the graphics are amazing, the gameplay is fun and very interesting, the colors really stand out, the game has some 4th wall breaks and I liked that a lot, the music is good, everything fits really nice, one of the best games I saw in LDare 46 and it is a compo. Amazing Job!
It's a really good game ! In terms of gameplay, visuals and polishing. I had a problem when I started the level stuck in a corner, but it's good that you had THIS interaction ready xD. Overall really nice game, the difficulty was just right and the gameplay was solid. Good job !
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Great job on the mood, humor, and simple yet satisfying visuals. Definite potential here. Instructions, while clever, were a bit long-winded. Great job overall!
One of the most polished games i have seen on Ludum Dare period. The mechanics feel great as if i could pull out the blocks myself. I loved how minimalistic it is and how it shows of its creepy and moody theme. I sometimes had problems discerning the exact positions of the robots on the map. They seemed to move off center of the cubes but maybe my vision is just wonky :D. Great Job!
Actually really fun, it took a few tries to grasp how everything worked but then I started to see the strategy.
Probably the most polished entry I've seen so far, this is honestly release quality in most ways - visuals, sound effects, shaders/particles. Only the run animation is a bit janky ;)
Tough game, only made it to level 2. When there are multiple enemies you can't afford to only attack, so you need to wait until you get both attack and defend options that add up to 3 or less.
nice gameplay, original game... saved on itch, keep updating it ! ;)
impressive work! first few rounds a bit challenging to understand what is going on, but then after you definitely want more of it ;)
SO much reading in the beginning. It takes a moment to realize what you're doing even with all of the text, but the game looks and sounds beautiful and you can tell a lot of work was put into it! Love it, good job!
Dude!!!!!! how on earth did you pull that off in 2 days. The Visuals, Audio, Innovation and the Fun factor are just insane. It is really addictive.
Thought this was a jam entry, that's seriously insane how polished you managed to make this game in such a short amount of time all by yourself!
Really decent entry. The game is so nicely polished and looks great, Well done for getting so much done so right!
The graphics and music and sound effects were really good. the gameplay was fun and challenging
WOW, that's a lot for a compo game. Looks more like it took a month. Amazing polish, amazing sfx, amazing gameplay. I am not surprised to see super long text based tutorial at the start after seeing this game was compo. Got bored reading all the tutorial but then figured it out myself after one play. I should say it's just perfect haha. One thing, I was playing this on a mac and as you can guess, it runs really slow. Maybe add an option just for disabling post processing because looks like you use a lot (don't get me wrong it looks amazing!)
Keep up the good work!
To much text at the start, but great game, it was difficult the first time you play it, but you get to it quickly, it was fun tu play and looks very polished. Good work!
Nice.. Love it.. good design, well implemented, not that hard to get into, and a bit of a puzzle element.. Great Work
I encountered some strange behaviors: - The bot seem to fail their path finding in some condition as on one level, they would not move even when there was a clear path to me. - Also putting a defensive card on top of an already existing wall makes it disappear forever at the end of the turn. - The bomber exploded when they arrived on a case diagonal to me, so they didn't hurt me. - Sometimes bots spawn on the same case as the character - I couldn't turn a certain lid :)
Very cool game. One of the best this LD.
The intro was a bit long, so I skipped through the later half. The game wasn't too difficult to pick up. Maybe you can just focus on the gameplay and start the story from the second level. Speaking of the second level. In the second round (on the second level) there was this enemy which I just couldn't attack, so I died (see the picture below). Overall the game was pretty nice, but selecting the fields for an attack doesn't always work the way you want it too. Sometimes it also registers a field selection when I'm clicking the card (quite annoying). There is also no option to cancel out of a card. Schermopname (542)_LI.jpg
Pretty nice entry! Love the humor in the speech. Other than that, it would be nice to have more juice when hitting the robots (more animations, sounds, effects, screenshake... something!). Nice job.
Nice game, simple graphics that can tell every thing you need to know. This game has a lot of potential. Good Job!
Everything is so cool! Only, I wished I was be able to change my mind action after I choose an action before applying, instead of it uses my action points directly.
@tic The defensive card thing was actually something I wasn't aware of :O thank you for pointing that out, that's a fairly weird one. Also, the grid implementation is a bit non-deterministic apparently, and pathfinding issues are more common than I'd hope ^^" Same goes for the boomers and the bot spawning ^^" Nevertheless, it seems that you reached the end despite these issues, so I'm glad that's possible at least =] And yeah, there's no way to turn the lid, there's no such interaction š Thank you so much for playing and for the feedback!
@lerg Thank you very much!! :D
@mika-la-grand The levels are randomly generated(can't say "procedurally"; that would hint that there's a solid logic behind the level generation) so unfortunately stuff like that can happen. If you got out of that nook and hide from the bot's line of sight then it would be forced to move to get closer to you, in which case you could attack it. Sometimes that's ok, but in your case RNGesus wasn't very kind ^^" The level generation is one of my top priorities to fix, should I continue developing this!
@necromic Thanks! There's definitely the VFX, sound (when there's no overlapping) and screenshake, but there's absolutely more I could do, true! I do love me some extra juice :3
@guilb Thank you :D
@srknvrnbskrt thanks for your comment! yeah, that's a very common complaint, so much that it was actually the first fix in the post-compo version. It was quite the oversight on my part ^^"
That's such a nice game (not saying that because i love strategy games).
The minimalist and modern graphics with the very spontaneous jokes just blend in perfectly.
The polishing is real, i like the aesthetics
The mechanics in this were really really good, props to making in such a short time! I loved the game and will try to beat it later on.
This is one of the best games i've played this ludum dare, congrats man.
Challenging but fun, and the visuals make the experience very pleasant. As I said on twitter, I love the rendition of the blocks, they look soft and pillowy... Thank you for your entry. Crazy to think this was done in compo !
Solid entry. You nailed some aspects quite well and with a high quality for the time we were given, well done!
This was really great! The visual style is top-notch, and the sound augments it nicely. It's a personal preference, but the intro was a bit heavy on the words. The gameplay was fun and I appreciate that the difficulty ramps up fast as soon as the player gets a feel for that first stage. I'm honestly a little mind blown this was a compo, there is a lot in here for a very small amount of time! Well done!
So cool!! I like the sound effects and visuals.
enjoyed this, i like the turnbased and simple card system. also, the rotatable terrain and story elements were great!
The gameplay loop was great. The aesthetics and mood was really well done as well. I felt it was a little punishing though, for HP to persist between rounds and sending the player back to the beginning for losing. I got up to the 3rd wave on level 3 and couldn't beat it, I felt there wasn't enough cover.
Wow, this is so, so slick. Iām not much good at turn-based strategy games but the style and polish of this one really pulled me in. Clever writing too. Fantastic work.
This is one of the few complete entries I've seen, and the fact that you did this all on your own is insanely impressive. Just checked out your blog too - I will be going through your articles and hopefully learning how you do some of this stuff!
I enjoyed the game! It is very polished for a 2 day jam! Impressive!
Some feedback in case you're going to expand the game further:
1. IMO, dialogues, despite being fun, are way too long. I'd be nice to introduce player to the game mechanics though limitations and action rather than giving a text-based instruction.
2. I'd be great to be able to cancel the actions. I understand that this might be a part of the design, but I see no clear reason why is that.
3. Enemies don't have HP indicators. If there are many enemies it is hard to keep track which enemy was already hit or not.
4. Levels are not different from each other. Also, the player's HP does not restore between levels. Therefore, the game feels like one long level with dialogues in between.
Visuals were terrific, gameplay was a little stiff. Could use the ability to take back a move.
amazingly polished, level 2 is pretty hard haha.
I sometimes struggle to see enemy position because of the perspective, blob shadow would help a lot.
amazing that you managed to make this
Really well done! the graphics and sound fit perfectly the game. Had some hard time beating those bad robots but it was fun overall.
@dsf100 Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the jokes too :3
@magali-mingo @jvdwijk @minrato2 @pandanym @yxmx-rsx @hwaet @zazito @tweedle Thank you all so much for the kind words an the comments! Means a lot =]
@jusw85 Thanks! Well the main idea is for it to be a roguelike/roguelite, so the the punishing elements of your health staying the same and permadeath are pretty standard. The leves are randomly generated too, so unfortunately cover can be an issue if RNGesus isn't nice to you.
@mahalis Thank you! I'm glad to hear that!
@zesix Thanks! Sure thing, I'll also make a postmortem soon going through some more technical issues as well, but if you get started with the tutorials and have anything you want to ask, feel free to reach out on [my Twitter](https://twitter.com/HarryAlisavakis)!
@mulberg Thanks for the feedback! 1,2 and 3 have been the most common concerns (2 is already fixed on the post-compo version), so I've definitely noted these should development continues! About 4, the only thing that changes (now) on the levels is the placement of walls and holes that can modify the overall strategy. More elements will definitely be added in the future (again, if development continues). And the HP not restoring between levels is due to the desired roguelike nature of the game.
@scalphamission Thanks for the comments! Cancelling moves is already fixed in the post-compo version and I'd definitely like to spice up gameplay later, rn I just wanted to try some different concepts I had in mind :D
@thelemba Thanks for the feedback! Mentioning it here too besides Twitter, the WebGL Build doesn't render dynamic shadows, but I didn't notice that before. Adding a more clear blob shadow would be better either way though!
@taran-unraveler Thank you!!
A georgeus game. Quite hard but very impressive!
What a gorgeous game. I love the aesthetics. It's incredibly polished. Very impressive! You've also managed to create a solid puzzle game under that beautiful exterior. Excellent all around!
I love it! The aesthetics were beautiful, the sound work shockingly clean, and honestly the gameplay was far more fun than I'd expected.
There were a couple things I'd love to see added/changed/improved/whatever, though:
- I feel that just rotating the level wasn't quite enough to get a proper perspective, there were a few time where I would try turning the level in each direction and I still couldn't get a good read of the situation. Any way to improve perspective here would be brilliant, whether that be toggling a top-down view, toggling a 'flat-mode' view, or just letting the player rotate it in more ways; anything in that department would be ideal.
- I didn't really have to move much, I don't think i used it much until one situation with a Boomer, but that seems more like the exception rather than a rule.
Seriously though, I loved my time with this, and would love to buy a full version if you developed it further!
I have learned so much about shaders from your blogs earlier. This game is such a reflection of your excellent shader skills. It was beautiful and the VFX is mind-blowing. Even it is working well in webgl so far. Surely I will wait for the technical blogs of yours about this game.
The game was fun. But the tutorial was a little long may be. I don't know, may be I can't help myself waiting so much for playing the game. haha.
Great Work!!!
Hey, I played a couple of times and I must say that the level of visual and audio polish is huge, congrats on that! I have some comments on how to make the game better, I'm gonna repeat stuff others have said, sorry about that:
- Since robots have a visual field not restricted to cardinal directions and diagonal, some sort of warning "In range" can be good to know where to place.
- I agree that the "tutorial" text is a bit long, there should be an option to skip it. (It was fun, and a very nice touch that once you've played it doesn't appear again).
- The random generation is very unfair, something like be sure to add a minimum of walls can already make a huge difference. I lost because I was in one level with only one wall very close to a corner.
- Sometimes the exploding robot exploded with no reason? Not sure why.
* The turns are a bit slow, and the audio of spawning gets a bit annoying, despite being a super cool sound. I think all the robots could spawn at the same time. * The patterns of attacks should be centered to the mouse, that would make much more intuitive placing them * Sometimes when clicking a card, it was used immediately without me wanting to. * Since the robots where flying it was a bit difficult to see in which precise square they were, some shadow could increase the level readability by a ton. * Since life is a percentage, when I took the +HP MAX, I was unable to see what was the improvement (I was at 100%), also in my first run I started picking an +attack update, and after losing I started again and because I wasn't killing robots with a single shot, I thought there was a bug. This is because of two reasons, not GUI or graphical information of the powerups I've got and no graphical information about robots life. * I think robots should still move when you block the path finding with a defense card. Maybe a simple 360 degree animation can work.
I think that's all that cross through my mind during my time with your game, it was a very good experience, don't let all those comments make you think otherwise, you really did a superb game. Keep the good work!
Wow! Really nice entry! Very polished and a very cool idea with excellent graphics and mood.
The randomness makes it quite difficult, it would be could to have little more control over it to be able to plan slightly better and I think the dialogues are slightly too long.
But enjoyed it quite a bit!
I would have loved maybe some extra UI touches like showing a bot's health (or even use a damage texture) and would be cool to see their intended paths/if you are in LOS.
Very nice. I like this kind of LOS control-- actually our game for this LD uses LOS and wall manipulation so I"m predisposed to like your game!
But I'd like it anyway, spot-on audio and visuals. Interesting but simple card game design. I'd like to be able to play a move card, otherwise it feels like my character should be a mainframe that can use security lasers instead of a person that can't walk for some reason. As others have said, too much text by far. But those are small critiques, overall I loved it.
Really nice game! Graphics is very good and polished. Gameplay itself is too random for me though)
But all the humor and dialogues are great. The only thing I'd change is to separate AI dialog lines and show each part after one enemy wave. Now there are too many text at the beginning of a level (said me who made a game totally based on text and narrative :smile:).
I've played two times to see if there is an alternative ending, but didn't find it. Is it there?)
Very nice, with a few improvements, it would make a very good mobile game.
This game is so polished. Its a little hard for me, so diddn't get too far in but what I played it was great. I'd also have liked a free camera, but it might have damaged the style a bit.
@patricio @jharler @beepyeah Thank you all so much for the nice comments =]
@tom-robson Thanks for the comments and the feedback! I have some ideas for getting a better read of the situation, like viewing the enemies/player behind walls etc. It's definitely an area I want to experiment on!
As far as moving is concerned, it's an issue I came across when playtesting too. The blue upgrade orbs (the spawning of which doesn't really work on the compo version because of a silly bug) are supposed to give the player an incentive to move the human. Other suggestions include the enemies dropping maybe health or something that could also incentivize the player to move the human. That's also some game design problem I'll explore further should development on this continues!
@abu-sabiq-mahdi Thanks for your kind words, and I'm glad to hear you're interested in the blog!
@le-slo Thank you for the thorough review and the precious feedback, I really appreciate it! Some of the stuff you mentioned are obviously bugs (even some I didn't have in mind š) and others are some QoL stuff that I know are definitely needed! Nevertheless, I wrote down your very insightful suggestions, they were really really useful!
@nsadie Thanks for the comments! Yeah, those are some solid suggestions, thank you!
@microchasm Well, technically (and thematically) you play the A.I. not the human, but I get your point :P Thanks for playing and for commenting! =]
@n-feofentov Thanks for the comment and the suggestions! Well, if you made it to the final level with just the one "enemy" then no, there's no alternative ending ^^" That's great if you did get there, though, not many people do š
@selftitled Yeah, the free camera would probably not be too great, especially in different axes. But I'll definitely experiment more with visibility and perspective should I keep working on this!
@harry-alissavakis Yep, I've made it to the end and at my second playthrough tried to interact with that "enemy" in other way instead of killing it :wink:
By the way, I pretty much agree with the lack of movement of the player, so it becomes more of defend the base than planning some cool tricks. Some possible options: there is always one free movement, player have some kind of range for certain attacks (you can experiment with cardinal attacks too), the blue orbs were well thought, but giving them so much power made you that you couldn't add more than one per level, so they could be temporary (only for that turn) or for example new cards. There is a lot to play around with this idea, good luck exploring it!
Portal vibes! :black_heart: Aesthetically pleasing, audio and visuals super tight, pretty innovative concept, and the bit of humor is perfect :smile: My only critique is that the combat system itself, while innovative, was kinda unwieldy, I didn't feel like I could do a lot with the actions given to me, or optimize at all, I just ended up running and hiding, and using the "smallest" offensive actions I could. Great game all around, super impressive to have done for a jam, good job :grin:
This game is quite polished for 48 hours, and for that I give you props. The design is very clean and the music sets the mood of the game nicely. I can imagine a lot of cool things you could do with this and I hope you continue to work on it.
Very well done. It is a clean looking and feeling game with an overall smooth feel to it. I like the way that you can either choose to block an enemy off from getting you or to attack it, each with different consequences. I really enjoyed this game.
Can't believe this was made in a weekend omg, great job!
I love the graphic. It has an amazingly cool effect and look on it. Also the idea is pretty cool. My favorite part was how it feels when you play. One of the best game I have every seen in Ludum dare 46!!
This is a really cool Jam entry and deserves all the attention its getting. Well done!
What ? Is this compo ? I'm amazed, really ! Those aesthetics are so clean, the gameplay is really fun and engaging. I don't have any complain, wonderful work ! You should continue to work on this !
holy heck, incredibly well-done submission for the compo! hard to believe, and anything i could possibly raise an issue about you've gone and fixed in the post-compo version! great work!
Very nice graphics, atmosphere and polish overall! It would be perfect with proper balancing of the difficulty, it happens that there are too many enemies to handle with only 1/2 attacks per turn and little to no cover...
As an aside, I think I may have found a little bug: if you play a defense card on a tile that was raised since the beginning of the round (and not intended to ever be lowered, I guess), then at the end of the turn it is lowered.
kudos! Found you through that twitch stream. I love everything about it, and it's so impressive that this is a compo game. Congrats Harry! Keep it uP!
@joleon Thanks for the comment and for the Portal comparison (means a lot to me :3 )! Your critique is well-based, not a lot of attention was given to the balancing and to proper playtesting, but seeing people play MACHINA and gathering critiques like yours I think I have a solid base on how to iterate on it, so thank you =]
@recursor @coatline @lasagnaandroid @unimaginable-code-studios @xdsilentstorm @pietro-ferrantelli @jjoeyay Thank you all for the nice comments, I'm humbled :')
@tommy Thank you for your comment! Yeah, that was a sneaky bug I figured out through another player! I obviously didn't think to use the defensive module on a risen block so I never found that on my own! Goes to show how important playtesting and QA is!
@christina-antoinette-neofotistou Thank you so much, means a lot coming from you!! :D
This was pretty fun! Took my a while to realize that it took 1 action point per 3 tiles rather than per 1 tile. After I figured that out the balance of the game felt pretty great! I managed to get to the end with only 20% health haha. It was really fun when in sticky situations to make the decision between a bad idea and a worse idea, sometimes intentionally taking laser fire to avoid worse consequences
HAd a good time
@william-derksen Glad to hear that, thank you for playing and for you comment!
Great strategic game! I just thought the initial dialog was a bit too long. The game aesthetics is really cool.
Thanks @lucecyl! Yeah, the dialogue was indeed quite long ^^"
Dang are those UI elements nice and shiny, I'm a sucker for a good fragment shader.
I know other people have mentioned it already, but the intro dialogue dragged a bit, though the humour helped for sure. I ran into some slight control issues, mostly tied to actions not happening where I expected them to (one time in particular, I tried to raise walls to surround me, and ended up raising them in the wrong spot and then being forced to move the player since I had clicked on them).
Aesthetically the game is incredible, though the human's movement took me out of it a bit (nice walk animations are a lot for 48 hours!). I'd have almost preferred if the player were some other floating/rolling robot instead.
The gameplay itself feels like it's got a good amount of depth you could play with, and could definitely warrant expanding out into a full release.
Amazing entry, it bothered me a little because I couldn't predict accurately if the robots had me on their line of sight or not, but other than that this game just blew my mind. It is so polished and well designed, it is incredible to think you did all of this in 48, well done!
This is currently my favorite of all! Love it ! :heart:
OMG, this is amazing! Gorgeous graphics, story and gameplay. Great job!
Great art and idea. I had a few glitches when I attacked myself without getting to choose an are. That may be down to me as I used a trackpad. Well done, great job!!!
Interesting game in the web version lacks the abolition of Skil
Damn! Im too dumb for this game. But it is great. like it !
such a fun turn based puzzle game. took me a while to figure out the action cards and which direction the blocks go relative to the player, but that's probably just me. aspects of the game reminded me of glitch tank -- which I love. Art, graphics, animation, and foreboding intro text all enhanced the tension and engagement level for me. I will def come back to try to finish the game.
Great graphics, music, and idea! I loved the turn base and puzzles! Very creative have not seen any thing like it. I did not like all of that text at the beginning. Great game, and keep it up!
Wow, just wow. This is just like full fledged game! Really like mechanics!
pretty cool concept worth following up on. player animation needs work - much better than i could do it though. escape to cancel skillnot working, which is really annoying. i almost died having to read all the text
Incredible job. The visuals are incredible and the gameplay is really solid and polished. On top of that the music is great. Amazing job.
The only thing I didn't love was the writing. The idea itself was really clever but it was too verbose in my opinion. This might be my favorite entry so far, great work!
It's crazy to see a game of this quality in the compo section, you really made all of this in 48 hours?!
Really good job, one of the best game I played for this Ludum Dare session, all is good from the graphics to the audio, and even the balancing is really great!
Wow, this is a real contender for my favourite game of LD46... I loved basically everything about it. The dialogue was fun, the graphics beautiful, the gameplay engaging... Either I wasn't great at it, or I was just unlucky with the level generation, but it was really difficult to get to the end - I kept at it and played for about an hour. Rare for an entry to keep me engaged that long. I'd love to see this expanded into a full game... more enemies, bigger levels, perhaps some kind of room/door/key mechanics, etc. Also, I _hate_ mayo. So that was fun. ;)
Great game and I would be great as a full game, but it is super difficult. I have no feedback sadly as it was made so well.
Very neat and creative little game, I enjoyed this one a lot, the graphics are great, so is the audio. Only one thing I would do next time, Make a more interactive tutorial rather than giving text at the beginning, but other than that, very good job, keep it up.
Very polished graphics and high completeness. I like the sound effect also. It seems like this is a character stable SLG game and I must said that it is not easy There are a lot of things need to think before make any decision. I suggest that add a setback choice after eace selection because it is really hard to predict which block it would affect after the card selection. Anyway this is a good game and I really enjoy it.
Awesome work, feels very neat, getting some slight Portal vibes from the humour. I have just one note because a lot has been pointed out already - it was not intuitive to me that move for 1 AP can move further than one block and I played first 2 levels like that. Having an extra tooltip could help. This game is definitely worth expanding, great stuff!
Awesome job! Everything feels really polished, the art is coherent and very well done, the visual and audio feedbacks are on point. The not so simple rules are very well explained, and the narration makes you want to go further. Thanks for the game!
@mathemagician Thanks, I'm a sucker for cool shaders too, could not leave the entry without some :3 Yeah, the most exciting thing for me is the potential and depth this could get if I keep working on it. Thank you for the feedback!!
@hcursino Feedback could definitely get some more work done, absolutely! Thanks for playing and for your comment! :D
@carlofalltrades @krakadushka @detkakorben @anystarabove @runuchok @noxalus @g-a-gamestudio Thank you so much for your comments and nice words!
@yeti-kid I've heard there are some clicking issues with the WebGL version, even though I wasn't able to recreate any. Nevertheless, thanks for your comment!
@palvel Yeah, the WebGL version corresponds to the one I finished in the 48 hours, so the skill cancellation fix is not in there. Thank you for playing though! =]
@itsatony I'm afraid I could not give a lot of thought into the animations, even though it was one of the first things I took care of ^^" And yeah, I'm aware of the rest of the issues. Thanks for playing and for your feedback.
@kiguel182 Thanks for the kind words =] Went a bit overboard with the text and the exposition, I know ^^" Definitely noted for the future :3
@garys Thank you so much for your comment, and I'm so glad to hear you made it to the end despite the unfair difficulty curve! :D Your idea's interesting, I'll keep it in mind should I keep working on it, thanks!
@nanoarch Yeah, the tutorial and the whole dialogue system were some of the last things to be added, so I didn't really have time for an interactive tutorial. Thank you for your comment =]
@yangying Thank you, glad to hear you enjoyed it! That's a good suggestion, I'll make a note of it!
@fazy I was thinking that'd make more sense but that would definitely make the game a lot harder too, and it definitely does not need that :P Thanks for your comment!
@doot Thank you for the lovely comment, really appreciated =]
some skill start instant ? i cant place theem.
@dimesto52 this should be a bug with the WebGL version, if you can try out the desktop version that won't happen probably
Wow the graphics are top notch! Audio and mood are really nice too. Especially impressive since it was a compo entry o.O
The gameplay doesn't quite hold up to it though - it's pretty repetitive and depends on luck which cards you get. Also I think the cards with a three tile formation shouldn't cost three times as much as the single tile - otherwise the single tile is just always better than the multiple ones. I think if the bigger formations were cheaper it would help the balancing! Apart from that it's not always clear if you're in sight of a robot or not. Maybe you could make the feedback more obvious.
I think you should definetely continue working on the project and play around with balancing and a bigger variety of cards :)
Thanks @yazara! I totally get your point, both the overall gameplay and balancing could use some work. Right now I just wanted to try out this simplistic version I had in mind, just to see how I'd go about creating it. Definitely got some experience and ideas in the process, so if I keep working on this, I'll explore a bunch of different approaches!
Well, the game is really cool, but makes a lot of design mistakes. First of all, why is there a reset dialogue button at the beginning? When I open the game I don't know what it does and even if I would know, why isn't it automatic? Secondly, there's a wall of text at the beginning that just makes me bored, so if you could introduce mechanics one by one, or add a simple tutorial, it would seem more simple. Actually, Just telling me, press on the human and cards takes care of everything, since I will see easily what it exactly do. The game is simple, use it to your advantage. Also I actually thought that you need to get to the goal, to finish the level and I was surprised to see, that the goal was actually a robot. It looked like an exit. Sound effects are awesome, such as the music. After learning the gameplay it was fun. Good job.
I really like the clean art style. The only graphical issue is the highlight of the blocks could be more obvious. It's a minor issue but it can sometimes be hard to make out the stripes when playing on my laptop in a well light room. The gameplay is very enjoyable.
A refreshing change of pace from all the action games, amazing work.
Thanks for the feedback @franciszek-pyrc ! Well, because the text is plenty and people probably don't want to go through it more than once, I set some keys in PlayerPrefs to check if the player's seen the dialogue of a level before. That way even if the player closes the game and plays again, they won't have to see the dialogue again. I get that the placement is not ideal and people might be confused when they open the game for the first time, but it's literally one of the smallest thing I could devote time to in the jam. Same goes for the tutorial, the dialogue with the tutorial was one of the last things to get implemented and I would also prefer for the tutorial to be more interactive but again, not a lot of time for that. Nevertheless, I got plenty of feedback when it comes to the overall feel and the game design/balancing, so if there'll be any future iterations I'll keep your notes in mind
Great work! The graphics are amazing. The first dialogue is a bit long, but the small hints of comedy definitely make up for it. I found it to be a bit laggy running in the browser, but that is most likely my computer. I can't wait to see if you build more off of this in the future.
@harry-alissavakis still, if I play on webgl, the thing is useless, also you didn't specified what that button does also, the dialogue can be easily skipped by spamming the mouse button and to finish the thing of, there will be maybe 1 person that will play this game more than once. This is just how game jams work. Also, if forgot to write it earlier... the exit button on webgl just gives you a nice warning message and freezes the game entirely.
Great job on this game I really love it! Such a fun and addictive game and I love how stylish it is!
Great job! Had a great time playing and the dialogue is solid.
The text animation really helps with the wall of text, but you could also have some of that dialogue spread throughout the level to provide better pacing. Say, at the end of each turn.
Like others have said, here are some suggestions: - Automatic end of turn at 0 action points - Enemy health indicators - Some form of rubber banding so that there's at least an option to make up for screw ups (e.g. 20% Health each level) - Action Points in a little grid-like bar [ == | == | == ]
I'd love to play an extended version of the game with balancing and more QOL features.
An interesting game. I like well polished 3d games. And this is impressive even more for a compo game.
I've played only the web version and I don't know if that was a bug, but I wasn't really able to position the blue ones the way I wanted. It behaved like skipping certain tiles :shrug: I have no idea what gives.
But, very well done. Keep up the good work.
@amye123 Thank you so much!!
@m-trigo Those are some really great suggestions, thanks! Balancing and QoL stuff will definitely need some looking into ^^"
@kaisean-games Thank you! I feel like I know what you're talking about but I'm not sure if it's because of the WebGL port or some weird grid behavior. Thanks for letting me know though!
The idea if very interesting, the graphics are good (although there's too much white on white, it would be better if the block positioning light on the floor was redISH or blue), but it's sooo unforgiving I gave up on the second level. The tutorial was too long, although I did like most of the jokes. (The one about the theme was unecessary, though)
Overall a very solid entry. Just be more nice to the player and keep up the good work!
Very good graphics and audio. Game get's hard at second level but gives promise for bigger thing :)
Really liking the visuals. The fire animation of the roboty is very cool!
Very impressive visuals and overall feel of the game! Good job! It would have been really nice to have some kind of indicator displaying if the enemies can hit you as it wasn't always very clear to me (especially in the beginning)
This is just awesome, in just 48h by yourself with sush quality is impressive. I just find that the second level was really hard. There was only 3 blocks to cover on the entire map and was cornerd by 6 robots : just impossible to survive :/ But the game is just incredibly polished, incredible. Would totally buy it if you would to make it a full game.
Oh my! This is SO GREAT! Cant stress enough. Congrats, really good job. The pulse in the music tired me a bit. But hey, you did everything alone, and the sound effects are really good. What a masterpiece. Develop and release this game. Im a fan, and I would buy it
Good game. Very challenging. I have on suggestion (don't know if it is a feature :smile: or a bug but) when you select a "card" there should be a way to cancel selection. I chose by mistake and then I was forced to play that card and it blew my strategy.
It's the type of game I like (but less dynamic, haha)!
Very great entry, nice visuals, font, music and mechanics.
Needs some polishment on gameplay thought, for example in cancelling an action and shorting tutorials (although I like the humor on it).
Good work!
Great game overall! I had trouble to establish a strategy to beat the levels as the enemies can see you from almost everywhere and there is not that much defences available. Also, it would be nice if the player's health could recover at least a little bit between levels. Otherwise, I loved the general mood, art and gameplay of this entry. The audio was a nice fit too! Really polished and impressive for a compo game :)
I got mayo'd
i like when people attempt strategy stuff like this, its really good. the only big problem was sometimes you just got bad rng and cant really do anything about it. would have been cool to have some kind of hold mechanic or some deck building mechanics to keep cards you like and mitigate the luck
Okay so to add to this: I think this game should not restart you from the start when you die, and then make the levels slightly harder, but otherwise it's a cool concept and well executed. good job.
Wow, great game. It was very well crafted. Fun, interesting and great controls. A+
Incredibly well crafted experience. Great job!
really like the effects add that make all the diferencies, the concept totaly work with the theme and is really fun to play, the only thing that is missing i think is scoring so i can know how well(or bad)have done and have a comparaison for my next run, but other than that its really cool entry, good job!
insane polish on the art and vfx! nice humor with the dialog. gameplay was very solid for a jam game. i think attacking anywhere on the map is a bit too overpowered tho. maybe make it line of sight only
The polish is awesome! I love the effect on the buttons when you click them and how the levels pop into existence. You've done so much during the jam! Also did I miss something or is there not a way to cancel an action? Like I would select an attack card and then realize I needed something else, but there was no way to cancel an action so I was stuck with it. It took a little getting used to, but once I did I had a lot of fun, also the humor was great!
Wow, great job, love the turn based action, very challenging. The style of the levels and general aesthetic of the game are very modern and cleanly rendered. This could definitely be expanded beyond what you did for the Jam.
Thanks for the game :)
A really well thought game! Loved it alot!! Although I did not like the feature of the health of the human staying the same which makes the game really tough. Could not get past level 2 due to that. Otherwise, the audio, the graphics, the concept of the game, everything was outstanding. Really loved it!!
Very interesting mechanics! Nice graphics, those visuals the shaders are amazing as well. Sounds and Musics are very very suits the game, the futuristic theme I believe. the game is a bit unbalanced, sometimes I got more enemies in early levels, I really appreciate the random generated levels and other values, surprisingly the game is still playable and I'm enjoying it alot! I recommend You should release it, but first you have to balance things up, adding some more contents to the game and that should do it, And the recommended platform could be Mobile/PC Game which is perfect imo. Also this should be on the Top 10 list, or it could be Top 3 tho, good luck!
Great polished game with awesome audio and juice, the comments here say everything else.
Awesome Entry! Loved the Aesthetics!
From my point of view the card mechanics need some balancing, since there's no way of saving cards for later use and you do not have any mechanic for saving unused action points, it's hard to build some sort of strategy and every turn had to mostly play every defensive card until I stumble upon a combination which I could play a defensive card and an offensive card!
And they can hit me from diagonals? seriously? I could never guess when the voxels were really blocking their line of sight from far distance and offering any cover!
Missed some sound effects for the ground voxels being lifted.
There's no initial clue of how I could progress through the dialogue (like a pulsing button or something else).
You could make use of occidental "reading order" from left to right, by putting the card's cost exactly at the same height of the UI Number, and then write "N" action points on the right corner with a thin line trying to reinforcing the reading direction and attracting user's gaze over every card cost succedded by the current amount of Action points.
You could also keep the MAIN UI elements constrained to the bottom of the screen to increase as much as possible space for your Art to be shown without struggling with a non diegetic UI element:
UI.png
And I had some browser Issues:
BrowserError.png
After All, that's a well polished and cool concept, It could mostly be an analogical tabletop game due to the simplicity of the rules and few amount of calculations! Congratulations!
Hey @harry-alissavakis this is a cool entry. I like the look and feel of the game. As far as looks go, the only thing that could use a bit of tweaking is the run animation. I really like the concept, and I'm sure with more time to polish and balance you could have a really entertaining piece in your hands. Good job!
You game looks fantastic and well polished. Congratulations with great entry!
I really like this game. Concept is great, bit of humour and puzzle like challenges and impressive graphics and music for such short time.
Couple comments regarding gameplay: - I'm pretty sure it was said by mighty AI bot but I wasn't sure what is my purpose. Some indication on how many waves of enemies left would be nice - It felt bit static, I wasn't forced too often to move around - mainly camped and shoot at robots and built walls - Very few pickups, I missed 1 in first level and nothing else came later
Rafal from 4Boa Team
Clever game! The game design ideas are great and well implemented! It's fun to understand the AI behaviors and to use it to survived, the random of the cards is sometime a little bit frustrating (but ok otherwise, it forced me to diversify my playstyle and it's cool) The art is cool (and the little jokes funny!), and I really loved the atmosphere (I don't know why but the mood remind me MGS VR Missions ahah)
Super cool game!!
Really nice entry. Simply gameplay but addictive. The art is nice to eye, good work!
I loved the art style and the game play. Great job! :thumbsup:
Occasionally I struggled moving the character. For some reason it could not be clicked. :shrug:
Also maybe the intro could have been a little shorter. :sweat_smile:
The music is amazing!
Woah, such a clever and well executed idea! I doesn't necessarily fit the theme in my eyes, but it was super fun to play!
Very polished game with a stimulating soundtrack! Good job!
Great graphics, impressive for a compo! Nice sound and music too, amazing entry really! :thumbsup:
Very polished game. And fun to play as well. Graphics are amazing well matched with music and sound fx. I loved the text transition. No wonder you have so many good ratings and reviews. I feel like this game is one of the top contenders. If not overall then in a few categories for sure.
Hey, nice entry! :) Sorry but i had to pass the tutorial for the looong texts! xD
Hi, I really love the visuals of this game. The texts seems too long for me and had little value as I managed to learn the controls even without them? Maybe I've missed something, but most of the things could be learnt by simple trial and error, which I like (more than long tutorials). Nice entry!
Very impressive for a compo. There was quite a lot of text (to the point where I ended up skipping most of it). I wish there was a way to cancel moves that I didn't mean to do. Also, I wish the enemies had shadows, as it was a little hard to tell what position they're in. Nice work!
Nice. There's an interesting amount of depth here, though the balance is thrown a bit out of whack by luck, as you've already admitted. After a run or two figuring out the mechanics I made it all the way to level 3 where I had a good thing going until a wave of enemies literally surrounded me as I spawned -- I had no option other than to explode the boomers, taking myself down to 20% health, after which I died shortly. Boooo. I even had the +1 action point upgrade at that point, which seemed pretty important.
With some balance tweaks and quality of life improvements this could easily be a lot of fun to run repeatedly! I loved the tongue-in-cheek narration in the tutorial btw ;)
Wow! This is utterly amazing. Probably the most fun game with the best mechanics I've played this time around. Visuals are exceptional as well, and the writing is hilarious and just as meta as I like it. Oh my, and it's even a Compo game?! How on earth did you do that. :D
Only few nitpicks I could come up with:
- cancelling an action would be nice, but it seems you've already worked on that for future versions? - I wish there was some growth in player capabilities with each level, e.g. more action points, ability to run further, drawing more cards, maybe special cards that allow you to e.g. confuse single enemies or disable them for a turn or two, and maybe ways to have defensive actions be more permanent than they currently are - it's a little intransparent when/how far enemies will move, and how much hp they have left; may be intentional, but I would have preferred to see these things somehow - I think there are a few typos in the story - blue orbs were mentioned, but I didn't encounter them, as far as I know, despite reaching the end of the game - restoring HP (after each level or when picking something up, or with certain cards you randomly draw) would have been nice
But none of these prevent the game from being outstanding as it is. Playing it was super fun. Can't wait for the post jam version!
Had to be away for a while so here's a big message replying to y'all:
@nathalia-hohl The balancing was heavily leaning on the RNG unfortunately, I had to choose between getting a vertical slice of what this project could be and user experience and I chose the former ^^" I'm well aware of how the latter is what matters the most in the end, but getting something solid was somewhat more important to me. Thanks for your comment! =]
@nosfer Thanks! Hopefully there will be a bigger thing, and, if so, it'll definitely have a smoother difficulty curve.
@pythooonuser Thank you! If anything, I couldn't leave the entry without attempting some cool VFX ^^"
@gurbx Thanks! Yeah, I've already noted how much some more feedback is needed, both for LoS and enemy health
@jalik The RNGesus wasn't too kind on you I'm afraid ^^" The level generation doesn't occur with any specific strategy in mind, so unfortunately these things happen in the compo submission. Thank you for you kind words nonetheless!
@lairinlair Haha, I'm really humbled to hear that ^^" Thank you so much for the comment, hopefully it'll end up as something complete at some point!
@trigueiro Thank you! Yeah, the card canceling is the most requested feature (hence why I released the post-compo version where that's already fixed)
@chicomcastro Thank you! Should development continues, there will definitely be some more polishing and a lot more depth to the gameplay. Defintely gonna fix the action canceling and length text too š
@anoushcat Thanks for the kind words! Maybe you got a bad level, but either way the level generation is too random to help ^^"
@besto Those are some good suggestions, thank you! Should I develop this further I'll definitely dive more into the deck-building mechanics to add more layers of strategy :D
@alexrose Thank you Alex! While this version had a very limited number of levels, the overall vision would be for the game to be a roguelite, hence the going back to the beginning. Should the overall gameplay was more balanced and you actually gained something after each run, the perma-death wouldn't be so punishing.
@seabirddigital @samsdevlog Thank you both for the kind words!!
@hugo-kieffer Some overall progression indication is definitely needed, you're right! Maybe not a scoring system, but definitely something that makes you feel that you've actually progressed. Thanks for your comment!
@moritz-jaeger Thank you! The most likely scenario is that this won't be the standard way of attack, but even if it's a bit overpowered, the game is fairly challenging and punishing as it is ^^" If development continues I'll definitely explore the combat system a lot more.
@sharks Thanks! No, in the compo version there's no way to cancel an action, though it's apparently the most popular request ^^" Post-compo version has that fixed, but it wasn't an essential bug for me to fix in the compo version, so the people rating the game should take that mechanics issue into consideration.
@johnnysix @wzqxrys Thank you both very much, really appreciate it =]
@gamescodedogs Thank *you* for playing! :D
@aryanjumani Yeah, balancing was given too much love in this submission ^^" The overall concept is for the game to be a roguelite, hence the health not regenerating + the perma-death. Doesn't make much sense in the compo since there aren't any actual upgrades or gains from when you finish a run, though ^^" Nevertheless, thank you for your kind words =]
@larsspawn Hah, thank you so much!! =) Definitely humoring the idea of further developing it, in which case balancing and content are definitely gonna be explored further š
@ivan-garcia-filho Thank you so much for the insightful feedback and suggestions, definitely took some notes here!
Balancing is absolutely something that needs to be looked into, especially in terms of how the cards affect the overall strategy and enable different play styles. It'd take a lot of trial and error, but it's something that actually gets me excited to think about.
I struggled with the decision of having the enemies shoot you with a LoS that's independent from the grid, so I left it like that, but I did think about having them shoot only if they're in the same row/column as the human. Maybe these could be different enemies in the future š¤·āāļø
I wanted to add SFX for the ground blocks SO BAD but I'm no audio designer/engineer and everything I tried just sounded super annoying since there's like 64 blocks there.
I also thought about prompts for the dialogue but I thought that clicking would what people try first so I left it like that. It was one of the last things to be added so I didn't have time to think a lot about it.
The action points placement idea is SUPER good and useful, definitely noting that!
Never seen that WebGL error before, thanks for pointing that out š
Definitely thinking of making some paper prototypes to help with balancing and numbers, so the tabletop suggestion isn't that far off!
@guipuyol Yeah, the run animation didn't sit too well with the rig ^^" Thanks for your kind words nonetheless!
@morriekken Thank you!! Your comments are super valid actually. The "purpose" of the human is revealed at the very last level (after the last wave of the 3rd level). It's not mentioned at the start to build a little "mystery". I also found out that there was little to no incentive for the human to move, that's why I added the pickups. But, as you mentioned on the 3rd point, there's a bug in the compo version where the pickups don't spawn after the first one in the 1st level. So that's a bummer in a lot of ways :P
@togimaro Thank you for your nice comments! The randomness can be a bit unfavorable and frustrating, definitely gonna work towards fixing that, should I continue the development!
@asfdfdfd @wdebowicz @ziamor @khud0 @eugenik @zondarg @monish-vyas Thank you all for your kind words!!
@danilo-freire @daniel-jenikovsky Thank you both! You're not wrong, the text was a bit excessive indeed ^^"
@picross Thanks =] The text was ineed too much, and the action canceling should definitely be included in the compo submission. There's actually shadows in the PC version, but WebGL decided to strip'em. I made the WebGL build of the project after the submisssion so I couldn't really go and add any blob shadows or sth. The shadows definitely help with recognizing the enemies' position though, that's true!
@ddrkirbyisq Oof, RNGesus did not like you, sad to hear you reached 3rd level just to die like that ^^" Thanks for your kind words though, I promise that if I end up making something complete out of this game you won't have that sort of issues!
@very-dark-lord Thank you so much for your kind words and insightful feedback!!
Yeah, canceling is already added in the post-compo build, should've taken care of that originally ^^"
The first 3 upgrades you mentioned actually exist and can be given to the player thorugh the blue orbs. However, as you mentioned, encountering them in the compo submission is buggy and only one is spawned at some point. It was the very last thing to be implemented 1 hour before the submission, so it was easy to mess up ^^"
I've already thought of other mechanics like the ones you mentioned, should I continue the card mechanics will surely get enhanced ;)
Feedback on enemy HP, intentions and movement is definitely one of the things I'll make sure to give attention to!
Some health restoration is also a good idea, I've been thinking ways to go about implementing it too :3
@harry-alissavakis That's some quite in-depth second degree feedback you're giving. :D Now after a few hours have passed since I played the game, I can say I still crave seeing more of it. Honestly, I'd easily be willing to pay $5 for something like this with more content (and a bit more polishing here and there of course). Gameplay-wise this is the most engaging thing I've played in a while. It just hits this sweet spot of being the *fun* kind of difficult where I constantly feel like enemies are overwhelming me, but then the only thing that's overwhelming is the satisfaction of destroying them all with a few swift moves just before they reach me.
But enough of this. Let's just say I'll keep an eye or two on what you'll be doing with this. :D
Thanks for bringing your game by my stream for us to check out. If you'd like to rewatch, the highlight is at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/617290857
Woah, I love the puzzle elements that each turn has. Do I attack or defend? Neat stuff, and the atmosphere the game has in incredible. I love the background! Great work.
This was nice.
The intro text was reeeeeeeeeeeeally boring...
Other than that the experience was enjoyable. Good job, keep it alive :grin:
Wow nice game...! Really polished, very beautiful and quite fun...! But yeah... the text is waay too long.. :stuck_out_tongue: and that makes the game seem more complex and less fun than it really is..! :sweat_smile: That aside, I really enjoyed the game and would totally replay it~ great entry!
Look! It's a late comment! That's half the fun of LD for me - going back when people tink it is all over! This is indeed great general gaming music, and it works because there's no timer!