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do not go gently
do not go gently
By nsadie
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 919 | 3.61 | 46 | |
| Fun | 1184 | 3.34 | 46 | |
| Innovation | 709 | 3.54 | 44 | |
| Theme | 1119 | 3.70 | 46 | |
| Graphics | 1041 | 3.75 | 45 | |
| Audio | | | 2 | |
| Mood | 207 | 4.05 | 46 | |
Comments
japes
2020-04-21 16:55
Dudes well done :)
Nicely polished, love the little LD46 detail on the plane, the writing is great, everything is clear. Liked the combat system, very simple yet presents you with interesting choices. Minimal graphics for the monsters works great.
Few little nitpicks: - Think I found a bug: the radio parts on your notebook are still scratched out if you restart. - found it a bit easy - my first run didn't have very interesting cards, maybe you could consider fudging the RNG a bit to ensure an interesting run on your first go? or something.
Nice and fitting mood!
fuchsi
2020-04-23 19:05
it's a neat game =) didn't see any bugs and beat it on my second try. my only critique would be relatively small stuff: the bags as icons are strange for stacks of cards and the 360 degree rotation when entering a fight is strange.
weine
2020-04-23 19:06
Good idea and nice polish! The balance felt a bit off, and winning was very easy. I'm sure you would have added more interesting mechanics and fixed the balance if you had only more time.
eugenik
2020-04-23 19:10
Great mood!
Mood is great, and the card art is lovely. The 3d art feels a bit ... off? I also found it very easy to win, both times I played it. Loved the addition of the poem.
This is a nicely done game. It was a bit on the easy side.
Looks really good (especially the text on the notepads) and it's a cool concept! The choices to expend ammo to deal with varying degrees of monster feels great. I agree with @japes that it was a bit easy. I tried restarting and didn't have the radio parts crossed out.
As an aside, the WebGL build had UI issues for me (missing numbers for health, fire, etc.; notepad text for radio parts and final writing missing; numbers on deck bags), but I downloaded the windows build and everything was fine.
nsadie
2020-04-23 19:33
@fuchsi @weine @wilhelmstein @flying-dog-fish @ecmjohnson @japes thanks for playing!
I agree, it is a bit easy, but you can also lose pretty quickly on a unlucky run. We only got to play testing VERY late (like a couple of hours before submission!)
We were thinking of only allowing one radio card in the deck every round, that would stretch it out a bit more and you would burn through the deck much faster, meaning your fire would burn out easier.
@ecmjohnson The web build seems to have issues with some text disappearing, especially when changing resolution, it must be some sort of unity bug.
@wilhelmstein My wife drew the card art for us in between trying to keep our small kids happy during lockdown! And it might be my favourite poem...
zoarfy
2020-04-24 20:18
Loved playing your game! The mood and ambiance was fantastic - and I really like how you play out the results of the cards in the 3D environment. My favorite part by far is the eyes on your beasts, though, its awesome!
Very well done, and congrats on finishing the game jam.
This was probably one of my favorite games I've played so far! The atmosphere was great! Between the music and the eyes constantly staring me down, I felt a sense of urgency to get the radio parts. I will say, I felt like it was a tad easy, something that could be remedied maybe by lengthening the game (something I think you guys should seriously do post-jam, I love the concept!). Overall, I loved this jam game! Fantastic job!
cobear25
2020-04-24 20:41
Really cool game! I think fighting monsters could use some balance maybe, and the UI doesn't quite match the quality of the game art and overall vibe. But those are just minor little things. I think the game is unique and fun, and has a really cool mood.
When switchin to monster fighting, the camera felt like was going somewhere else, leaving the player there. Leaving that aside, the game is great! Had a lot of fun playing it!
This is a great game though it is very easy. Adding something to lengthen the game could make this really tense.
lollls.png
Good instructions, fine graphics and interesting game mechanics! Still (imo) - bit ambitious and/or a too large project to implement on this short Jam-schedule
Edit: the game get 'crashed' on while getting the card "Radio Battery". The notebook spawn but is just nothing but clear, and now can't do anything - even i'm press the Esc-key the whole game crashes while pressing the other buttons - with a report "the browser page has been crashed"
Can't see the 'resource points' (like; how much i got health) either
honey
2020-04-24 21:20
Did I win?
Bez názvu.png
For the whole time I just got bit low on ammo, that was about it. Just when I started to think that maybe I'm in a bit of a pickle. But then the screen came (played web version in Chrome on win7, in case you decide to find a fix). So definitely not challenging enough for me to feel that I cracked the code and outsmarted the game.
As I was writing this I realized that maybe the player hasn't really got a viable option. You either pick a good/bad card or pick whatever is hidden, it's just not really interesting decision making I'd say. You're not making trade offs, you just avoiding what you think would be worse. If you can see monster card, then the other one is probably not worse, most likely better, so what you even should think about? Maybe you just need to give player more viable options, so he can make tough choices and feel under preassure, but also rewarded afterwards?
I don't really think that stretching the game would help much, cause the core loop stays the same. Maybe you should give it one more go to see if you can patch it up somehow? Just for practise's sake? I'm not the best when it comes to designing card games, so I cannot put my finger on it precisely, but there's clearly something important missing in the game core-loop-wise. So take aforesaid with a pinch of salt, maybe the problem is elsewhere, but I'm trying my best to point you in the best direction I can provide.
That being said, you all (your wife included) did a great job on the game, the artstyle is atmospheric and moody, it fits well together, and also the blend of turn based combat, cards and the iso/3D background feels pretty nice. Also I didn't encounter any bugs or problems (except the text one that apparently goes with webGL build), so I'd say everything worked.
You should've totally made some audio though, these kind of settings cannot go without one, even if it's just night ambient insect noises. You need to hear to fear! :)
Still good job, very nice work! Hope you find the right loop and feel soon, I'll be back! :)
Atmosphere is really cool, heightens the tension of the story. Core design and story suits well with the theme. Maybe I'm lucky with the deck but I found the game pretty easy. Also, I have the same UI problems in the web build as said in above comments. Overall, it is a nice execution.
turncoda
2020-04-25 04:27
It was interesting to decide between the sure option and gambling on the question mark card, but it wasn't long before I got bored of that particular decision. If the sure card is good, I pick it, and if the sure card is bad, I don't pick it. Still, I felt tense as I got close to the end, as I got pretty badly bruised when I thought I could take on a tiny monster with my fists in an effort to conserve ammo! I managed to beat the game on my first attempt, but only barely. An interesting part of playing the game for the first time was that I had no idea how much health the monsters could do, or how much damage they could deal to me, so picking whether to use my fists or bullets was a genuine guess. That feeling of mystery is a good thing! Great job utilizing that to create tension :slight_smile:
Thinking about card games and the idea of transparency in games and my mind wanders to the brilliant game Dicey Dungeons. In that game, the enemy's cards are shown to the player, so the player knows what they're capable of, but the game is still tense because the player ultimately doesn't know what cards the enemy will play, and there's some uncertainty in the player's cards as well (just like the question mark card in your game). This also reminds me of that one Game Maker's Toolkit video about the two types of randomness:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwI5b-wRLic
Highly recommend that video if you haven't already seen it.
Having the same deck that gets thinned out the more parts you find is a great way to increase the difficulty! This game was well thought out and as a result it ended up being quite challenging while also pulls off the RNG without feeling unfair. Awesome work!
nsadie
2020-04-25 07:04
@zoarfy @nick-biglin @cobear25 @whatnamegames @noirdrive @andre-fremaux I am glad you enjoyed it!
We are definitely going to polish this up!
First pass is on getting the mechanics a bit more solid, tweaking the difficulty and adding more interesting choices and cards!
@taran-unraveler The original idea was to have multiple locations to visit, so the fight would have been in a clearing or something.
@hiisileiri Isn't the whole point of Ludum to bite off more than you can chew?! :-) Very strange, that is the first time someone has mentioned any crashes. I know the text disappears on the web build when switching resolutions.
@honey Did you have no audio?! That is weird, there is a lot of music and sound in.
Otherwise, thank you for your extensive feedback.
I agree stretching the game is not the solution, but adding more interesting choices. I want to double down on the idea of a narrative solitaire card game and have quite a few ideas for doing this!
@turncoda I agree with the choice comment, the only real reason to pick the ? is that you really want the radio parts. So the main tweak we want to do is to only allow one radio part per turn. This will cause the deck to burn through faster as well, upping the pressure a bit. Thank you for the excellent video reference!
honey
2020-04-25 07:32
@nsadie That is weird, gotta try it again in standalone. What made me play web version was that 7zip archive, that in win7 cannot be natively extracted. I'll dl something and give it another go. Still you opt-out from audio, so it's licensed audio I guess?
Yeah, the narrative card game idea is very interesting to me, so I very much looking forward to your progress! :)
nsadie
2020-04-25 07:41
@honey Correct! We spent quite a bit on audio as the mood of our previous entry suffered because we did not have sound. I used some assets I bought from the asset store.
Next Ludum I am going to get my 3 and 5 year olds to do the sound effects! ;)
amazura
2020-04-25 08:40
take a lot of time to finally win this :laughing: bad luck curse me..
~.jpg
epicular
2020-04-25 17:07
This feels like one of the most "complete" entries I've played so far. There are no serious weaknesses - the UI is great, the animations and the text on the notepad are high quality, the audio is very well implemented, and everything follows a very cohesive theme.
I will echo other commenters and say that the biggest weaknesses here are probably balance and decision-making. I played three times and won each time - the first playthru was interesting as I barely kept the fire alive, but the second one took only seven total turns and no enemy encounters (RNG was really nice to me and gave me all the radio parts, lol). The game overall just didn't feel particularly challenging - to that end there are a number of minor balance adjustments that you could make, and I'd probably start by reducing player ammo capacity as I never found myself needing to dip below three bullets, even while playing aggressively.
I actually found combat - where I had to manage my ammo supply, my health supply, and what amount of risk I was comfortable taking - to be more interesting than the main gameplay loop, decision-making wise. It seemed very hard to lose if you just picked the ? card whenever the flipped card was a monster. So that cycle got dull pretty quick - I'm not sure what sorts of options there are to spice that up, maybe you can make the fire die out at a much faster rate which puts pressure on the player to try and win faster/find more fuel instead of just taking every good card that they're presented with.
Overall a really solid entry, the presentation was one of my favorites in the jam so far.
karreg
2020-04-25 17:23
Nice :) Just a shame that the card choice isn't more cornelian. I succeed with just 1HP, 0 bullet, and 1 fire point ^^
Looks beautiful and smooth, I liked the concept with the survival game with cards. Feels too simplistic though, doesn't require much management to survive I guess having more cards with different odds could add more variety? (Eg Go scavenging 25% find monster 25% find ammo 25% find wood 25% find nothing) Maybe having some random events with narrative or fixed progression points (although such criticism is not fair for LD entries), just some thoughts of mine. Good job!
nsadie
2020-04-28 18:37
@fuchsi @weine @wilhelmstein @flying-dog-fish @ecmjohnson @japes @zoarfy @nick-biglin @cobear25 @whatnamegames @noirdrive @andre-fremaux @honey @turncoda @epicular
Based on all of your feedback I have made some updates to the game!
It was pretty easy to win because you could quite easily get all the radio parts in a few rounds. So I made the change that the deck contains two radio cards that draws from a radio deck. You can therefore only get a maximum of two radio parts until the discard. This gives more incentive to pick the ? card. This also makes you burn through the deck faster, causing the fire to drop faster which adds more pressure.
I tweaked the rewards for beating monsters. You can also sometimes get a radio card by beating a Monster 3. This makes it worth fighting, although risky.
I also added three new cards with some more interesting game play scenarios with positive and negative effects.
I felt inspired so I updated all the card art to fit my original idea better.
i rated it 5/5 because i love the mood, art, polish, sounds and the idea in general. Managed to beat the game : D one thing that could be changed is difficulty (maybe make two difficulty modes, easy and hard?)but overall, I loved it, it;s just a type f a game I like so I decided to rate it high xD
nihushu
2020-04-29 22:05
The mood of the game was awesome, I really like the gameplay tho for some reason on the WebGL version the text on the paper in the corner was missing
techsec
2020-04-29 23:00
This is a really cool game. Alot of polish for a game jam. The dark mood fit real well and didn't really matter that the monsters was just 2 white circles it was really scary. Good Job!
Great idea, and it works pretty well. I would have liked it to go on longer. On my first playthrough I won on the first round, but a lot of the text in the game didn't render (web version). On my second attempt I won on the second round and only had to fight one monster.
I think this is a really solid jam game and I had a good time playing it :)
hwaet
2020-05-01 01:27
Great game. I really liked the mood. Maybe I'm old or I've been staring at a computer too much today, but the font size seems small. For a jam, I like the balance. It gets the point across while letting the player accomplish something.
This feels like something you could really flesh out into a really fun game. You'll need more in the way of player agency in a version 1.0, because making a choice between "known thing" and "unknown thing" is not much of a decision - just a binary guess. But the mood and loop of the game is pretty fun - keep working on this!
Great little card game. Really polished. Especially the graphics look great and it fits the theme well. Not too many mechanics but this feels like it should be explored further after the jam
khud0
2020-05-02 15:16
I love the idea of this game, but it seems to lack interesting decisions. Whenever you get a card you don't need or one that is harmful, you just pick a mystery option.
zenris
2020-05-03 08:36
Really liked the look of this game also like the card game approach.
Some of the UI didn't seem to work, the resource icons, I assumed they would show the resource amount, same for the hearth for the monster. But they didn't seem to show anything, tried clicking and hover over them but nothing.
nsadie
2020-05-03 11:28
@zenris There are some text rendering issues related to Unity's WebGL, especially when changing resolutions. Can you try without going fullscreen, or going fullscreen as soon as possible before the main scene is presented?
zenris
2020-05-03 11:46
@nsadie That helped, look at all that IU text hehe. Thanks :)
imod
2020-05-04 08:47
Cool game! I very like mood of the game and graphics looks nice.
macdoom
2020-05-04 20:22
Got a blank page at the end. The darkness and the crackling fire gives a nice mood as well as the shuffling sound of the cards. The text was a little difficult to read. SImple but yet effective mechanics. Excellent work!
nsadie
2020-05-05 03:49
@macdoom Blank screen? You don't have a screenshot? There are some text rendering issues related to Unity’s WebGL when changing resolutions. Can you try without going fullscreen, or going fullscreen as soon as possible before the main scene is presented?
macdoom
2020-05-05 04:35
@nsadie No, it was the notepad where everything is shown. But with nothing wrote