Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Turn of the Tide
By polyethyleneglykol, Cameron Paxton and GargleSmargle
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 762 | 3.60 | 37 | |
| Fun | 1118 | 3.21 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 578 | 3.50 | 37 | |
| Theme | 1708 | 2.79 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 1346 | 3.24 | 37 | |
| Audio | 546 | 3.60 | 37 | |
| Mood | 1118 | 3.34 | 37 |
I really like the idea of playing as a small spec-team group in a large battle, that kinda can go on regardless of player's input. I really wish, that you continue developing you game, I could even pledge in some cash for full release :)
this is quite possibly my favourite game of the jam so far, possibly because of my obsession with these kinds of strategy games, and the commando-sort of vibe the music gave it absolutely added to it! i really like it!
it was surprisingly un-janky given the timeframe it was made in! very nice :D
if i out of sheer necessity have to complain about anything, it's that it would have been nice to easily zoom in on where a specific unit is, given the scale of the map (and that the combat within which you'd get absolutely smashed seemed hard to avoid once you got past the first few obstacles)
also figuring out how to use the traps was a bit hm, i think i accidentally placed a few of them, realising afterwards it wasn't buttons to get more units but to spawn the traps, oops :P
but really, those are minor complaints :) very cool
Really good concept, spent the longest time of all other games in this jam. In the end even though I destroyed all the radars I lost all my saboteurs and soft lock myself because the allied forces couldn't really win even though the resources were overwhelmingly on their side With map this big and zoom that big I would even say having foot soldiers is meh, let every unit be a fastest vehicle or make the map smaller. Also you either need to introduce some strong antialiasing or you have to change the textures because they are all look glitchy zoomed out. Nonetheles this is a really great concept!
This is a little gem of a game, and it's a very clever take on the theme! I think it would have been great if the map was a little bit tighter, the idea of driving around in civilian cars and sabotaging the enemies supply lines is fantastic. The tutorial introduction you put in is also a great way to get the gameplay across right away, and the sound effects, audio, and visuals are really great.
I found the map to be a little bit big, and I couldn't find a way to highlight/find my units by clicking on their little boxes, so I had to go manually click & drag near each town to figure out where exactly they were. I also ran into a bug where two or more guys would get into a car and only one would ever get out. Considering the amount of content that's achievable in 72 hours, it may have been a nice idea to focus on 3-4 towns in a smaller cluster and make the gameplay more tactical, rather than having a much bigger world without a whole lot going on in it.
I would also suggest uploading the file as a .zip and not a .7z so more people can play it, it's really nice! :smile:
@kszaku Thanks for the nice words! Yeah I always wanted a game like that, the closest I've got to it so far were games like ArmA were you just make a massive battle in the Editor. Got Inspired from those days.
@profan Zooming in on units actually was in the 1.0 version, but sadly with the unity version I used there is a bug where transforming a orthographic camera in the way I did would soft crash the game, as the mouse Input is out of the camera clipping planes. So I had to just remove the button as a sacrifice! All in all thanks for the great feed back and kind words!
@octopussy Yeah, good point! The only way to earn cash is through destroying objectives, giving a player small amounts of cash per resource point generated would have been smart. But bug squashing was the main priority at the end of the jam, who knew making a big scale AI RTS like that would have alot of edge cases to consider :D! And the Anti aliasing issue you are mentioning is a Unity thing sadly, the Pixel Perfect camera is still in experimental and doesn't support the URP pipeline. I definitely should have checked that before hand! Thank you for the comment its much appreciated!
@loginaut There was a way to highlight and control units from the UI but I had to remove it as mentioned in the reply above, as to regards to the world size it was really a shot in the dark to how big the map should be. Thank you for all the kind words, and as per your suggestion a .zip file version is now available, I always kind of default to .7z because it gives around 10% better compression it seems.
@polyethyleneglykol yeeeah, creating battles in ArmA/Operation Flashpoint's editor was my jam too, lmao. I also liked battlefield's bot matches for that :)
@kszaku Oh how I wish the newer battlefield games had proper bot matches. ArmA definitely took over that role for me after. Maybe one day I can make a game with a in game editor I can loose as many hours in setting up scenarios as I did in the ArmA editor.
@profan I'm really happy you liked the music! I was my first go at making a military/war-style soundtrack :)
@loginaut Thanks for playing and giving feedback. I'm glad you liked the audio!
Couldn't seem to get the controls working. My screen was locked in the same position no matter what I clicked after the initial tutorial. I tried zooming, panning, selecting units, but nothing happened. Im running Windows 10. Let me know if you have any ideas, i'd like to try the game!
This has so much potential! I would love to play this if you keep working on it
This game is fantastic. Game with an outstanding scale and scalability during this 3 days jam. Good work, thank you for the game!
@hansj That's a known bug with the current version of Unity's Orthographic camera, it can't read the mouse position properly when the camera is transformed sometimes causing a exception stopping the whole script. I've tried throwing every guard clause I could at it but its up to unity to fix it sadly. If you're on the 1.1 version the only thing that you can try is not making any inputs with the mouse until the Intro is finished.
@crumblybread Thank you for the nice words, and great username btw :D
@maratg2 Thank you for the comment!
Cool idea! I liked that you were able to put clear-but-not-overbearing tutorial elements in the game, too. Major kudos for that!
Great game. I like it
I won! Good pixelart, great music, and thank you for that speed up button lol.
Even though I completed it, I feel like I missed a big part of the game. I see people talking about AI allied units, but I don't really know how to access those or if I have any input on them. Maybe a dedicated help menu would have been helpful (it was probably my bad anyway).
It's a good game nevertheless, I can appreciate the hard work that went into this. Congrats!
@asdehielo Thanks for the feedback! Really happy you enjoyed the music :D
I'll let @polyethyleneglykol chime on the details, but I'll say that you only have direct control over your subterfuge squad to assist your side (coming from base on the west) in claiming all of the outposts and the base on the east side of the map. Thanks so much for checking it out!
@asdehielo Once the tutorial finishes one AI quad member spawns at the apartment's in the middle of the screen. Once you destroy the antenna you get some cash to but more saboteur squad mates. There is one antenna right where you spawn to get you going. But yeah with those units you try to control the battle from behind enemy lines by destroying supply trucks and getting more antenna side objectives. The AI units you control have a yellow arrow above them, not the clearest indication I know. But thanks for the nice comment and thank you for playing the game!
Really cool atmosphere in this game created by the music and artwork and an interesting AI system. It's lots of work making an RTS, especially in a jam and you had lots of systems well implemented, so well done. Don't know if there was an easier way to find your troops again once you had zoomed out, but apart from that small bit the experience was very inviting to new players. Great job.
@eldogg Thanks for giving it a play!! Really glad you enjoyed the music, it was a lot of fun to work on. :)
Great game. I think the tutorial could have been better: there was info in the screen that wasn't directly related and I didn't read what I had to. The tutorial should be step by step at the rhythm of the player, so maybe a "next" button to press once they have understood what is bein explained.
Great music, sfx and art. The work put on the game shows up. Keep it up!
love the sounds/music, but it was a bit difficult to understand how to play. I spent a while just trying to make any of the instructions in the "how to play" even have interaction with things on the screen. zooming worked easily, but it was unclear what to actually interact with to make gameplay happen. i have managed to destroy a few locations, drive around in cars, get more troops, and make use of highlighting multiple items at the same time, but it came with a lot of guessing and checking
@vetu11 Thanks so much for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed the music :) Looking forward to doing more LDs in the future
@jkoftekian I appreciate you taking the time to play the game and listen to the music! When the game begins, you have direct control over the saboteur unit in the middle of the screen. You can click and drag to select and then right click to direct him where to go. He'll automatically shoot at anything that can be destroyed (towers, enemy vehicles, other enemy troops) or can lay down explosive traps by clicking the button on the left side. Destroying towers reduces the amount of resources that the enemy draws from bases they claim, making it much easier for your side (mostly controlled by AI) to win. I hope that helps!
Very impressive for a jam game. Little confusing to start even with the very nice intro. Menus and time speed up was really great. Music was excellent for the purpose and graphics were varied enough.
Great effort going for this kind of game in a restricted amount of time.
This is a solid game - nice art (I liked the shadows), nice audio, works well. I would definitely play a more fleshed-out version of this. Unfortunately I wasn't able to figure out how to detonate explosives I had placed, so I feel like I missed out on being able to influence the game a bit more there. Nonetheless I enjoyed driving around blowing up the antennae.
@james-gillespie Thanks for taking the time to play and review! I'm really happy you enjoyed the music :)
@bmacintosh Thanks for the kind words! The bombs detonate automatically when an enemy vehicle comes within proximity of them. Just be careful not to have your guy(s) standing too close when it goes off!
Very cool
The concept is really cool, and you implemented so many things in this jam, but I think you overscoped a bit. Everything is there to make a cool RTS, but I think it lacks a bit of clarity. It is really easy to lose track of a unit, as the selection rectangle is really tiny when you zoom out, and the very beginning is a bit confusing, I did not see my unit at first. The gameplay is really interesting, but maybe the map is a bit too big with not much to do, and as you can add units anywhere you want, I just ended spawning people near places where I had something to destroy, and it worked ^^ It does not need a lot of changes to become a real pearl, the work you've done is amazing for a jam, so keep up the good work ! Try to simplify your concept so that it becomes more immediate !
Hey matey, I played your game on stream! I really enjoyed it, you can see my feedback on the twitch vod:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1012941526
@lisichka thanks for playing :)
@jrevel Thanks for your constructive feedback! I agree that it was a huge idea to try in 72 hours. We originally did have a "zoom to unit" button implemented, but it caused a lot of problems so we ended up having to take it out right before release. Similarly with the "units spawning in the middle of the screen"... we had plans to balance that better. Really glad you were able to enjoy it though, and thanks so much for your input!
@justcamh Hi Cameron! Cameron here :) I composed the music and helped brainstorm concepts and stuff, but I can speak to some of the things that came up in your playthrough. Gotta admit I got antsy when you were fixing audio levels while the tutorial was playing, haha! But I was surprised by how much you were able to figure out anyway considering it's fairly esoteric...
One major thing you didn't figure out (and this was a UI issue, not your fault) was that vehicle units with green health bars were on YOUR side. Vehicles (and soldiers) with red health bars were enemy units. Friendly units originate from the base on the left side of the map, and enemies on the right. The "AI Target" buildings are resource centers, and the vehicles from either side go to those to try to claim them. The more resource stations your side has claimed, the more vehicles/troops it can produce to overwhelm the enemy side. Taking out the towers reduces the multiplier applied to resources gathered by the enemies.
Overall, it was really enjoyable and informative to watch your playthrough. Thanks for sharing it with us!
Strangely, on my system, I can select units and give them orders, but zooming and panning do not work at all. I tried avoiding the mouse until after the cutscene plays, still no luck. :(
@honey-pony What OS are you running?
I'm on Windows 10
@honey-pony Interesting... I know we've experienced some issues with the Mac release, but I haven't seen anyone run into issues with the Windows version yet. :\ I'm sorry you weren't able to get it running, that's disappointing! I'll look into it and let you know if we're able to figure anything out..
I really like the concept and it's so ambitious for a jam game. That it works pretty well is an achievement in itself, i was surprised to see all be simulated smoothly. It looks very appealing to me and the music carries it well to keep the mood up and focussed.
You got a lot of feedback already, so i'll just make a suggestion, maybe for next time: A playable tutorial would fit really well here. The game is complex and has many different concepts which have to be taught. So maybe the player would start on a small bit of the map, zoomed in an one commando and control him to do simple things like shoot an antenna. Then maybe get into a car and drive to the next part, where he plants a bomb and sees a truck destroyed. Then the game opens up more and reveals the two teams, although it has to be clear where the player belongs to (strong colors maybe?). Doesn't really matter, but it's always great if the game can teach concept by concept and gradually open up, especially if it is a deep game like yours.
Great job, that's such a cool entry, and really unique.