FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD48 → Gold Mountains

Gold Mountains

By likirus

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3043.6226
Fun1473.8326
Innovation6382.8926
Theme8802.2026
Graphics3373.6026
Audio4503.1226
Humor4992.3124
Mood4423.2623

Comments

sinusquell 2021-04-26 10:56

Wow, I can't believe you created all this so quickly!

bigbadbison 2021-04-26 11:02

Cool game, Mining Camp is OP though;)

xpycm 2021-04-26 11:04

Game looks just amazing. I love strategy games. However it is a bit unbalanced right now. If you upgrade your gold mine several times, then income will be really HUGE.

likirus 2021-04-26 11:15

@sinusquell Thanks! I just added a timelapse of the complete development process ;)

@bigbadbison @xpycm Thanks! Yeah, balancing is always tricky ( and the AI even cheats a little bit ^^ ), I might try to tweak some numbers for a post jam version.

jefvel 2021-04-26 14:30

This was super fun, and very impressive for being a compo game! As mentioned above, it's a bit unbalanced. It's quite easy to overwhelm the enemy quickly. I tried to play less aggressively, just to build up gold and see how far you can get. I had so many buildings the game froze :smile:

One fix could be to increase the price of upgrades per upgrade, and limit the amount of upgrade levels. Currently you can build one gold mine and one archer building, then just spam upgrade them and win.

A very good start for a game, and fantastic for being done in such a short amount of time!

likirus 2021-04-26 18:39

@jefvel Thanks! I like the idea of limiting the number of upgrades and increasing the price. Upgrades were a late addition in the development, they could have been more polished. Maybe in a post jam version. I also noticed the game gets laggy when there are a lot of enemies. It's the first time I used Babylon.js in a game jam and maybe there are some better optimization strategies so it can handle more assets.

bruno-bombardi 2021-04-28 15:29

Really liked it! Specially because it reminded me a lot of the first game I ever tried to make, which also consisted on digging gold and sending units to the opponent's base! So extra points for giving me nostalgia! Congrats for a great entry :D

iovorobiev 2021-04-28 15:38

It is very impressive that you built it all in just 48 hours. I can't even say anything about a balance! You did so huge amount of work that I would complain you used time machine if it was also perfectly balanced :) Definitely awesome entry, great job!

lorwon 2021-04-28 15:40

Wow your game have a big potential ! The only bad thing is that when the player have a little advantage over the other he will win. I lost my 3 first games because the AI is way to fast ! But the game is still really fun to play, I will love to see this game with more content it will be awesome :) Nice graphics BTW. Good job you have made a really good entry :D

loginaut 2021-04-28 15:42

This is very cool! I'm very impressed with what you were able to put together. I wasn't a fan of the audio, although I loved the victory effect :smile: I ended up having to play twice after I almost lost to the AI, and then I was able to beat it pretty quickly -- AI for this kind of game can be super tricky to get right. Originally I was actually expecting to gain income by having my workers mine the other side's base and return with the gold, and it turns out that was not the case.

I think one big QOL update would be showing a second colored bar under the building's health that shows how close the next unit was to being produced. It also might be worthwhile to have a little number or star next to each building to show the upgrade level -- I discovered them by accident after I clicked on a damaged building to see if I could repair it, and I found myself just clicking on them without really thinking about or seeing their effect.

metalfox-dioxymore 2021-04-28 15:46

I wasn't expecting a strategy game here, and I was astonished by the quality. ... Then, I realised that this was a compo, and I was blown away.

This game was just pure fun, the concept is really good and that little mouth-voiced victory fanfare killed me xD. Yeah, ok, I agree with the others, the game is easy, needs balance, etc... But this has a LOT of potential, and I really enjoyed playing it !

Keep up the good work, and can you ping me if you update it of add some feature after the jam =) ?

glcoder 2021-05-02 16:04

SFX is top notch :D

tanis 2021-05-02 16:12

First game I lost without even understanding what I was supposed to do. Then I started getting the hand of it. It's quite hard and a bit unbalanced as others already pointed out. When one of the two players starts to gain advantage it's almost impossible for the other one to get back on par and win. Nonetheless nicely done in such a short time.

ayced 2021-05-02 16:19

Got very laggy after a while and ultimately froze completely but it was fun up until that point xD

I really like these types of games

kpded 2021-05-04 14:29

Very good job! But gameplay seems to be unforgiving - the opponent's strategy seems to be close to ideal. Very hard to beat

leggy 2021-05-04 14:53

Very nice job! that was neatly crafted to be fully functional. Dinamycs were okey and playing it was fun. I made severl games but were not able to overcome ai :( Thanks for submitting, that was fun!

likirus 2021-05-04 15:40

@kpded @leggy Thanks for the feedback. The AI follows a good strategy for the first few buildings, because I have hardcoded its first steps so it doesn't do utter nonsense at the start. After a while, I let randomness take over and then it becomes quite beatable. A good starting strategy is to start with 2 mines, then 2 mining camps, then another mine ( because at that point the AI always builds a turret so you have some time ), and then more spawners and mines depending on what the AI mostly spawns. You can also abuse the upgrades because they don't have any limits in the compo version.

ardorugus 2021-05-05 03:43

The opponent is hard, aye. But i'm a sucker for tower defence. Maybe this game could be turned into some PVP? Didn't get the "deep" here. Still, ran a few matches, nice one!

udo 2021-05-12 10:18

It is seriously impressive that you made this for the Compo!

Things I would improve: - This game is subject to escalating income. After you (or the AI) get the initial upper hand, there is no coming back for the other party. Maybe the costs should ramp up, too, as a catch-up mechanism? - I didn't really need to upgrade anything, just spamming miners was enough. They're too strong :laughing: - The no-man's-land in between doesn't seem to do much besides providing a delay for units to pass through. It would be cool if parties could place obstacles there (I tried but always got the red square)

I had fun playing this, and I wouldn't have minded a second or third mission!

fluffygamedev 2021-05-12 17:06

The game itself is a bit easy so I would have enjoyed a bit more challenge. But still, great job making this game, especially considering it was done for the compo!