FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Brubnar the Barbarian in the Deepest Dungeon

Brubnar the Barbarian in the Deepest Dungeon

By quinn-patrick

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3753.5537
Fun2613.6237
Innovation6332.9037
Theme6003.3437
Graphics5633.2237
Audio2763.4537
Humor693.7437
Mood4383.2737

Comments

ciyoulater 2021-04-26 05:09

Really liked this one. Kinda reminds me of Gauntlet. Would actually like to see it expanded upon.

pe7e 2021-04-26 14:25

Find an enemy, hit it! Find a treasure chest? Hit it! Very barbarian.

liam 2021-04-26 14:33

Enjoyed my time playing this game, simple gameplay but fun! Nice little loop for the bg music too. A bit of variety in the look of the level would improve the game loads.

liam 2021-04-26 14:45

I did also enjoy the words of wisdom :laughing:

gorialis 2021-04-26 17:08

I laughed pretty hard at the intro alone. Gameplay is simple but endearing, and I love the little gameplay considerations (picking up gold with your sword, the UI fading as you go behind it). Definitely could play this for a good while.

zondarg 2021-04-26 17:38

These Gauntlet vibes! Straightforward and fun! Made it to level 9, it is very entertaining. Also, the deep words of wisdom.. :grin: Good design choices, ye olde shoppe is a nice twist, so you can continue playing even after life runs out. Maybe a description of the key assignments would be good, I fiddled a bit until I discovered what key does what. Great job, really! :thumbsup:

gimbalock 2021-04-26 17:39

Great game! Funny dialogue! Nice addition that the wizards move away from you. Even though simple, it's funny to play.

oysuta 2021-04-26 20:35

this game sparks joy

I really like the music, the combat is just tricky enough, the feel of the game was somehow very cozy and nostalgic... but my favorite part? running faster diagonally.

teh-thanos 2021-04-27 02:03

Good game could it has an "arcade" feeling to it easily see my self playing it for hours! A better control scheme or a tutorial level would be great thought.

dude-the-hero 2021-04-27 02:06

This is great. I only had one issue. How do I close the quote podium messages? I got stuck every time I read one! XD

diaonic 2021-04-27 02:09

Nice job overall, an audio menu would of been nice. The AI was also very good. Nice job!

quinn-patrick 2021-04-27 02:13

@dude-the-hero you press shift to close the messages.

dude-the-hero 2021-04-27 02:16

@quinn-patrick Thanks!!

quinn-patrick 2021-04-27 02:45

Thank you everyone for playing and leaving such thoughtful feedback!

@liam I agree, more visual variety is something that unfortunately didn't get prioritized. I would have loved more floor layouts, too, the game only has 8 as is, but I prioritized stuff like game feel and bug fixing so that kinda fell through the cracks.

@zondarg Yeah, the key mapping was weird on this. I didn't want to map the sword to enter, but I didn't want to map the shop to shift, and it wound up being a lot of keys in play. I considered using z and x for everything, but I've gotten complaints from people in the past using non-qwerty keyboards.

@teh-thanos For control issues, see my response to @zondarg. As for a tutorial level, that never occurred to me, and I stand by not having one. The game's pretty straightforward, and it would've been a lot of development time for something that most people wouldn't bother with (or need).

@diaonic An audio menu's one of those things that's difficult to prioritize in such a tight situation (but would be a no-brainer for a larger project). But I agree, I wish I had found time to at least add the option to turn off sound effects / music.

@ciyoulater @pe7e @gorialis @gimbalock @oysuta Thank you! My goal is always to make a game where all of the comments are this positive. I get that I can't please everyone, but then I look at the comments on some of the frontrunners, which are nothing but glowing praise, and it makes me feel like that's what I have to do to improve my scores.

goutye 2021-04-27 14:19

Great game! Had some great fun choosing my next upgrades! The wizard were annoying and the blue ones even more! I managed to go through 3 kind of floors before being charged by tooooo many slimes! :smile: My strength was not enough anymore ahah! Congratulations! :v:

genpaku 2021-04-27 21:26

Catchy music, and cool gameplay, i was rushing most of the time for stairs but it was fun :D

moddiefox 2021-04-28 03:09

WOW So Deep!

pierce-brooks 2021-04-28 03:19

Could definitely make good use of procgen! Very solid though, perhaps maybe also layer on some roguelike elements? :)

fatebreak 2021-04-28 14:32

Very funny game! One thing I found is that the character moves faster when he's moving diagonal. I also would have liked WASD controls. Well done on the art and comedy! It was a fun time!

ladybenko 2021-04-28 22:01

The dungeon map is balanced and exploring feels good! Controls could be a bit more accurate, but not a big deal. I couldn't find a way to close the "scroll" with a quote, I think an in-line modal with control info could have been useful in this regard! Anyways, this is a cool entry

quinn-patrick 2021-04-28 22:10

@ladybenko You're the second person to say that. You close the messages with shift, the same key as the sword. I assumed that most people, when faced with something like this, would try pressing all the major keys on their keyboard, starting with the ones used in the game, so they would try shift way before giving up, but maybe not? Which buttons did you try?

ladybenko 2021-04-28 22:28

@quinn-patrick I use the spacebar for the sword. For the scroll, I tried Spacebar, and also Enter and Escape.

quinn-patrick 2021-04-28 22:38

@ladybenko Ah, you must have skipped the intro. In that it explains to use shift for the sword, and space for the spell. If you press space while the spell isn't charged, he swings the sword instead. Maybe that was a bad call, but I think it's nice in a tense situation that if you try to go for the spell when it isn't ready he still does something. I also stand by making the intro skippable, since it plays every time someone starts a new game and would get annoying very quickly on repeated attempts. I guess I'll just make more keys work for advancing the message, which just didn't occur to me at the time. I'm a bit sad seeing so many people get stuck there. Having it tell the player to press shift would also help, although I try to minimize stuff like that.

lmb 2021-04-29 00:22

Gauntlet, but better :slight_smile: (Really, I never enjoyed Gauntlet's quarter-devouring mechanics... Brubnar works better to me).

Cool game, plays well, straightforward, no bugs... I can't really think of any reasonable improvement (considering it's a compo entry). Maybe the weakest point is that it gets repetitive too soon (but again, not bad at all for a compo entry).

Some things I like especially:

* The music and sound gives me arcade vibes. Sound gives good feedback about what is happening around you (hit wall, was hit..) * Funny writing. Intro was very nice! * Enemies are really well implemented. I like how they "jump back" when hit, and how the mages flee from your blows.

Good game, congrats!

tanner-shelton 2021-04-29 03:44

Really fun game. I need to give it another go. I really enjoyed the music and the intro sequence. Music was probably my favorite part. Good job!

hutchings90 2021-04-29 19:08

Excellent pace! The audio, SFX, and graphics all fit together very nicely.

xeke-death 2021-04-30 12:10

Good basis for a gauntlet style game. Nice work for 48 hours. Spell system needs a little more explaining, I didn't know I could only have one at a time and bought everything at once.

Controls are smooth, though being able to walk into the enemies meant I got hit more than I should have.

cogcomp 2021-04-30 14:30

Nice game with an awesome sword swinging barbarian! The spell system could've used the mouse to target the adversaries. I think that might've added another dimension to the game play. Still a very nice addictive game!

psiv 2021-04-30 14:51

It's a very well made dungeon crawler, and I really like the random deep wisdom words generator thing and the music is really good. Adding some visual feedback for the power upgrade would be a nice addition, maybe make the sword a different colour each time, or add some glow effect, or make the characters arms get bigger, something like that.

saintchristopher777 2021-05-01 14:35

Fun game! Definitely reminds me of an 80s-90s arcade!

tengusheath 2021-05-03 05:34

Fun gameplay, reminded me of Gauntlet. The movement was a bit fast for me and I thought the music got repetitive.

olddog 2021-05-03 08:12

nice job! it amazing for doing this game in this short time, move system seem a little bug , I move up left is faster than up or left :smile:

nonumbersgames 2021-05-09 16:37

Nice intro, big, detailed pixelart, funny as well.

Satisfying sound effects and gold spilling felt good. Would be nice if chests didnt block movement after being opened though.

Scrolls of Wisdom were a nice addition, and well drawn. Good idea reusing for HUD.

Shift for attack and space for special was an odd choice, wasted a few spells automatically pressing space to attack before getting used to it :)

Sword swing hitbox was a bit unforgiving, kept running into wizards while trying to attack them, or having to really come close at the right angle to be able to hit. Talking about wizards, really nice that they have that pre-cast indicator. Their aim seemed to be a bit off - should probably cut back on Ye Olde Ale...

Sudden darkness at level 16 really ramped up the difficulty, which was good for variety, but very unexpected - didn't have the opportunity to get used to it and adjust to a more careful playstyle over time, so ended up dying quite fast there. A more gradual decrease of vision a few levels before would have helped, and have been in line with the theme. (or maybe just a reduced music tempo to better signal the need to slow down)

Overall, it was engaging to play, sounds and visual effects were quite satisfying.

P.S. Rare bug seems to be not being able to continue playing after tabbing out in the shop.

0x746564 2021-05-12 18:49

Loved the use of the theme in different aspects of the game. Had a very gauntlet feel to it. As others have mentioned, the controls were a bit odd. Having sword swing / magic so far apart made it a bit difficult.

cg-fred 2021-05-14 15:04

Nice game and very much gauntlet vibes in it. I pretty much agree with what others said about the controls that, they could have been a bit better. But still a good game.

baily 2022-04-25 16:22

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