Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Into Conflict
By c4scar
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 784 | 2.92 | 60 | |
| Fun | 704 | 2.87 | 60 | |
| Innovation | 504 | 3.11 | 59 | |
| Theme | 847 | 2.50 | 61 | |
| Graphics | 843 | 2.39 | 61 | |
| Audio | 701 | 1.61 | 42 | |
| Humor | 564 | 2.09 | 50 | |
| Mood | 789 | 2.49 | 56 |
Can't say it was super strategic – staying above reputation until 500 pop and just spamming everything afterwards seemed to work nicely for me – but, hey, painting the map is always satisfying. Cool to see a strategy game in LD!
@pdotjpg haha yeah, the AI needed way more work unfortunately. The idea was for everyone to go after the neutral territory first before escalating to funding rebels in each others territory and in proxy wars to all out sending troops.
Nice, cool idea!
great job this is really fun and interesting!
Strategy is quite simple but I liked it.
It took me a long time to understand the interface. I spent the first part of the game wondering... Which color am I? What do the checkerboard patterns represent? (rebels, invasion, or both?) Are the numbers I see on the board my own stats or the stats of a territory I have selected? How come sometimes when I click on a territory the rebels win at some point and in other cases it goes away after a while? Are 3-way-or-more conflicts possible? (I think the answer is yes but only the top two contenders are shown on the bar??)
I think I kind of figured it out eventually but by then I was quite far behind. Some other things, I still don't get.
I applaud you for taking a different approach to the theme, and I agree with @pdotjpg that "painting a map is always satisfying". The graphics, for as simple as they are, are a good part of that; once you get past the UI there's certainly a rewarding feeling to the little population meeples, and the way the water level cycles up and down is a nice touch.
definitely a neat concept, I liked it
Ah such a test of patience. It seems like its pretty much game over if your reputation gets ruined. I thought that funding rebels on neutral ground wouldn't deduct from my reputation but it seems like sporadically it did, making it hard to predict if I could advance my land grabs or if I had to wait some more for my rep to increase.
Quite enjoyed the gameplay, I think with afew small balance tweeks it will be really fun. Tense gameplay!
also had some dificulty with the interface at the start, specially finding out which color I was lol! Took me a while to find out that I didn`t need to keep clicking in order to win the balltes, the counters would just rise a little if I waited for the game clock lol! But definatly an awesome game!!! Really liked the ideia and the presentation! A really simple art style but worked great!!!!
@mduo13 Thanks for the in depth analysis of your experience, I really appreciate it! I regret that I did not have more time to make the UI make more sense. I knew that when I barely understood what was going on it would be trouble for others lol. Basically you commit troops to a territory and every 'tick' you lose troops based on abstract 'fighting' going on. The checkers are supposed to represent the top attacker and the top defender with the bar representing the same except the defenders are mixed with all the other troops, this would have been better as a multicolored bar or a pie chart but i did not have enough time to figure it out. For the fighting, if you are the only one attacking then you take out the population eventually if you have enough troops but if there are other troops there then you have to fight them instead.
@iuunno glad you enjoyed it! Funding rebels should not deduct from reputation. It could have been that you were using troops by accident? (left clicking does rebels, right clicking does troops).
@angrysandwich Ah yeah, neglected to specify :) I always think of blue as player 1 which is usually the default player. Glad you liked it.
@c4scar yeah maybe I just misclicked. but it happened after I knew the controls and was slowly expanding and planning around it.
@iuunno hmm, well I'll have to playtest more then to see if it's a bug :)
Nice game, could do with some balancing with the mechanics, however it was pretty neat!
I have no idea what was happening! Which country was I? Blue I assume? Sometimes the population read something like 65/19 - what did that mean? I could click on things but what was I clicking on? Territories? Countries? Cities? I liked the minimalist style and the overall idea, but I think some more explanation / instruction would have gone a long way. Keep up the good work!
@tim77 Thanks for the feedback! The player is blue. The squares are meant to be territory. The population reading 65/19 is due to the attacker taking over the territory with way more troops than population. I decided to just add the arrmy to the population after capturing it rather than capping it to the population. Definately needs improvement haha.
This was interesting. Thanks for you work
I needed a little time to know which color I am but after getting that it was fun to play!
Very interesting game, good idea.
it's very fun to play after understand the logic, the whole world become a mess when every one try to take others down!
I think as it was said before, the interface is a bit difficult to understand at first. Which counter am I is the biggest issue at first. The battle system is also a bit opaque.
But I like the idea of a integer strategy game in the style of rymdkapsel. World domination with low number to make is more digestible. It seems the gameplay is skewed toward stealth attack at first and go ballistic as soon as the focus is on you.
I spent a good time with the game. Congrats :)
First advice: don't put "sorry for a wall of text" into your wall of text, you're only making it bigger :) Interesting concept, I always love a global strategy when I see one. The interface needs a ton of improvements: what exactly happens on the screen feels confusing, half of the map is covered by the UI, and it isn't even clear what color the player is at first. Apart from that, with some tutorial that explains all mechanics in detail I believe this could be made into an interesting game!
Nice idia
but then the fire nation attacked... nice little game. the ui blocked the view on some parts of the maps and the endgame is a bit click heavy. maybe im to stuiped also possible.
@nicmagnier Ah interesting comparison to rymdkapsel. Good to know about the integer part. Glad you like it.
@lisyarus haha I'll leave it out next time. I do need to really overhaul the UI and make it easier to get into. Thanks for playing! I thought you might like it.
Neat game! Reminds me of those games where you send ships to conquer planets and grow resources there.
I made a few incorrect assumptions when playing the game: - I didn't know what color I was - I thought the bigger countries would have a higher income. I guess they generate more population so they are more valuable that way? - I didn't consider attacking gray countries - Some things were off-screen, and I didn't think of using WASD until I had already won. (oops, I read the instructions but forgot about this part)
But that's it. Besides those mistakes, it was fun! I think the core gameplay is solid. I like the reputation idea.
It took me a while to figure out but I had a lot of fun once I did! I love strategy games like this one. Good job simulating a system that complex. At times it maybe seemed to be too much of a "clicker" - I would have liked different buttons to put down different numbers of troops. It didn't matter in the end because I still won :) great job!
@madbarron Thanks for the feedback! Its great to hear what you assumed. At first I did have the bigger territories give more income. It was based off a percentage of the population, but it made income get out of control pretty quickly so I just made them all just give 1. I think if I am able to playtest and balance more I would revert back to that.
@conrad123 Thanks for playing, glad you figured it out! Yeah it does turn into a clicker especially at the end haha. It was sortof by accident but ends up helping to cover up how ineffective the AI is. I would definately like to have the game be more precise with interaction but ran out of time.
The concept is very unique, it kind of reminds me of a combination between Rebel Inc and Worldbox. I always love to see grand overview/god games. I don't mind simple graphics for a LD entry but I would have loved to see a bit more player feedback in what is happening.
I really loved it, looking at the comment I feel like I over-enjoyed the game but to me at least (a really bad player) the experience felt balanced and I was immersed in the gameplay
@sam-minh Interesting comparison I like those games :) I agree on better player feedback.
@tomtomgome I'm happy you could enjoy it and get immersed! Over-enjoy is better than the opposite haha.
That was so much fun! Loved how the situation slowly derailed over time and I just gave up on reputation and invaded everyone, very much fits the theme. Would've been nice to have some end screen or something on a win. Overall, really well done!
@halberd Thanks! Its the simplest thing, but I did not have time to implement a game over/win screen haha. Glad it was fun for you.
Very interesting game! The first playthrough I struggled with understanding the colors, as others have. I assumed I was some sort of god-like entity for some reason (not a nation) so I just plopped down units right into various enemy home bases, thinking I was successfully causing unrest in territories.
After coming back to the comments section, I learned a bit more about how I should be playing. I then started to really understand what the game was all about. Big ol land grabs in the beginning while trying to keep a low profile. I really like how this game is divided into 3 phases:
1. "stealth phase" where you build your economy under wraps 2. A conquering phase where you take enemy territories while stomping out enemies in your own countries 3. All out war where you don't care about reputation anymore and go for the win. At some point you're left AND right clicking furiously on a zone to deploy everything you got.
I really enjoyed the territory battles. It was especially fun when there were 6 nations all battling for the same chunk of land. That's something you don't really see in a strategy game and it has a great fantasy to it.
I'm not sure if adding a tech system would add too much complexity or if the game's elegance is good enough. Really great base game concept here and I'm curious how you could expand it. Either way, very cool game. I had a bad first impression but I'm glad I stuck with it :)
Lovely idea! A strategy game in LD is something I'd like to see way more off! Although the strategy idea could've been a bit more balanced to make it more interesting and challenging, I feel the base was pretty good. Some obvious polishing would help make it a bit more easier to understand which land you are and how the fights are progressing. But it was fun!
@peachtreeoath Thanks for the in depth feedback! Im glad you stuck it through and got to experience it. It sounds like you understand what I was trying to go for. I hope to polish it up at some point in the future since I think it falls pretty short of its potential at the moment lol. The elegance is a tough balance. To me that's the harder part of polishing the game, what do you add or improve to make it actually better rather than a cluttered mess.
@bjeaurn Thanks for playing! Can't argue with more polish and balance, it definitely needs it.
This is pretty cool! I bounced off of this after 5 minutes of trying to figure it out, but I didn't want to just let it be; reading your explanation in the comments here of how the game works helped me out a lot, and I was able to take over the map armed with a bit of knowledge. At least I think I won - the game doesn't seem to have recognized my victory. =)
With a bit more of a tutorial experience in the game and bit of balancing (maybe mostly AI work as you mention), this would be a pretty solid and novel strategy game. Nice work!
@justinmullin Thanks for giving it another chance lol. Yeah the ending screen is not set up. Thanks for the feedbacl and for playing!
Interesting concept, we like the balance between reputation, rebels and invasion/expansion. We were a little confused in the beginning as to which color we were and what was generally going on, but we eventually caught on. The main "issue" was we didn't understand you had to click multiple times to invade. It could help to have the camera be centered on your nation when you start the game and add some more labels/tooltips.
It would make a fun online io game with some more polish. :)
@anaxie-studio Thanks for the feedback and for playing!
The biggest *constructive* criticism is probably it would help if you could scroll by moving the cursor to the edge of the screen
@blubberquark Thanks for playing! Easy thing to add :)
I liked the fact that I had to find the balance between my population growing too much and sending too many people to fight and losing reputation, I kept finding myself balancing my reputation exactly on the edge of legitimate :smile:
Also it was fun that once I gained too much power and the enemies started attacking then I could easily rush and crush them.
In general I felt this game has a lot of hidden depth behind it (heh, theme), and it reminded me fondly of all my CIV and RISK days.
Great job!