tricky-fat-cat 2021-10-05 08:30
The game looks gorgeous. I really like the animations as well as art. The main idea is olso decent and fun to play. Great work!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Karawan
By rongo-matane
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 4 | 4.53 | 150 | |
| Fun | 46 | 4.19 | 150 | |
| Innovation | 54 | 4.16 | 150 | |
| Theme | 187 | 4.14 | 150 | |
| Graphics | 12 | 4.72 | 150 | |
| Audio | ||||
| Humor | ||||
| Mood | 13 | 4.54 | 150 |
The game looks gorgeous. I really like the animations as well as art. The main idea is olso decent and fun to play. Great work!
Interesting game. Love the graphics and the desolate music playing, really upped the mood on this. Well done!
I love it! its super polished and fun to play, great job team huge congrats!
Agree with the game looking gorgeous and music not being half bad either. Got loop hero vibes now thinking about it. It was really hard for me as well.
The main gameplay loop wasn't as fun as expected to me, I think it lies with my impression that the game was stuck between two worlds. Either it is a puzzle game where every step matters and you restart often, on much smaller scale (Into the breach). In that case I would like to see the path forward or at least much larger radius. Or it is a strategy game where it's more about bigger picture (HoMAM). In which case I would like the world to falls apart much more slowly and caravan require less more food. But those are just my impressions, I hope it doesn't come across too demanding.
Still one of the cooler games I have rated.
Hey, thank you all for the feedback :)
@listonos not too demanding at all, this is the feedback i'm really looking for. I know/feared it doesn't play as fun for a new player as it could. If you know the mechanics and the world, it gets interesting - but that's not given for a new player. I agree that it does sit between the concepts you described, though i feel like it could work there, not needing to go into the "extremes". Can you please tell if you saw and used the view range upgrades, and the magus spells?
@rongo-matane I did see the view range upgrade and used it both my longer tries. For spells, I have used replenish bush once but wasn't too impressed. I haven't made it much further than soon after unlocking those but I am not sure it would made that big of a difference for a new player like me.
I usually just died of starvation if I tried to go faster in general direction of south east or died to tiles falling part if I took my time and collected food. I think not knowing the way and blundering around being too costly was the killer for me. I ended up dying after similar travel distance. There was one forest tile surrounded by mountains that I thought might be the way but by that point I had snake-caravan problem.
@listonos thank you for the clarification. I'm wondering how this could be improved. Showing the full map revealed initially could help, or giving the player a purchasable analogue map. My impression is that the basic proble is, that you can't plan as a player because you don't know the map. For the tile destruction speed, my intention is that you have to use the magus to slow that down, or otherwise be pretty swift about everything. Yes, the forest tile is one possible path to beat the game (and you could even "spell" it away with land raise and flatten). You'd basically need to stock up on food, and then go into the pass. You could take shortcuts with the magus again, or basically just eat your caravan :D
Beautiful game. Soothing and curiosity building. Was really nice to wander the land. Well done!! Some here seem to have found it hard. I felt on the contrary, that I had all the time in the world. I saw some terrain disappearing, but very gently and it never really caught up to me. Didn't really need to make any upgrades either. If you were to continue development, it could be nice to have some tougher decisions to make. But that's my opinion. :) Great job.
Thank you @fishtaod i'm really glad to hear that :) I am sure there is a big difference between players - some engage a lot with the strategy part, optimizing routes and such, some rather just move around and explore.
Great game! Graphics and audio were great. It felt like the days of playing oregon trail! UI was great, I loved learning little bits as the game progresses, rather than being slapped with all the rules at the beginning. The choices were fun. I did get stuck in the canyons though, I thought it will eventually end but I lost everything!
This is so amazing! I love the aesthetic, the game looks beautiful and the narrative is really well told. I really liked the introduction of the different kinds of followers and the music perfectly suited the atmosphere. Superb!
@digital-bacon @fishtaod @bernard-bumblebutt I appreciate your feedback, and I'm really happy you enjoyed the music :D
I released the soundtrack on Bandcamp (for free) if you're interested: https://cameronpaxton.bandcamp.com/album/karawan-ost
Is there a reverse command somewhere?
Hi :) Finally by working through my list I got here.
First of all. Great job! The quality is out of the roof!
Pros: - the whole concept is very interesting, - the art style is simply amazing, - the music is beautiful and fit nicely to the end of the word scenario, - the game mechanic are easy to understand, and you can play pretty much from second run, instead of spending additional time to understand what games expect from you.
Cons: - it was not obvious to me that you can make bridges with wood, and I lost two times trying to find a way around water, - since you do not know map, at least not until you try few time, you are pretty mach destine to loose - I find crystal not really useful, the best strategy I found was: farmers - wood cutters - farmers. It takes too much time, in my feeling, to get both miner and magnus and them worry about gathering crystals, for which most of the time you need to take additional moves, since they are not in your way. I couldn't find a way to win with miners and magus on board, - with mentioned strategy, of 2 farmers and 1 wood cutters, I found second word to be extremely easy, and win it on my first try (compared to first word that I tried, I believe, 10 times or more). - in one part of first map and most of the second map (I'm guessing that was the idea behind second map, to prepare for long travel, where there is nothing for long time), on long section with nothing around, it is quite "boring" (I couldn't fine better word for it, sorry :( ) to just fallow the path and have nothing else to do.
All issues aside. It was a lot of fun! One more time great job! :)
Excellent game, I'm really impressed that you all managed to make something with this much depth in 3 days! I really enjoyed the background music too. Great job! :smile:
@ic-rainbow not a user-controlled one, no, but if you encounter a situation where you cannot move forward, a context menu will appear that will allow you to reverse the caravan.
This game is actually awesome, I'm super impressed. Great job!
Best entry I've played so far. Everything was top notch. I would enjoy this as a full release. The music and mood was excellent.
I don't like strategy and survival genres at all, but this game catches me. Awesome game mechanic with snake+craft!
One of the most innovative game of the JAM IMHO, Great Art and the music give it a very particular mood I love it.
Congratz.
Innovative take on the theme! Game looks beautifull and the mood is brilliant. However is there a reason that you choosed not to get rated in audio? It is simple but works out!
The game is really polished visually ! The GD is ruthless and our little expedition will very quickly starve even with gathering every berry in sight ! Congratulations !
Wow, this is simply great. We aimed for something like this but did not get very far. Beautiful and polished!
A really big congratulation to your team. I really enjoyed the mood and the gameplay. I am a boardgame lover and I really felt these vibes playing this game. The concept is simple but the difficulty curve is slowly getting harder. There's so much potential to this. I am glad I played it. Super inspirational to me to see what some teams have been able to make in just 72 hours. Would love to see this developed further.
The game touched me really. Very beautiful graphics and reasonable gameplay. Great music, escape and cannibalism in a broken world all give a very powerful strong mood. Perfect masterpiece. At present, the role of miners seems to be very few. I will look forward to play a complete game in the future.
Excellently executed! The other comments have pretty much summed it up, just want to say an extremely good job!
That was a great game - huge potential here for a full release. Art and music were great. Agree with other commenters about the wood to make bridges - maybe it would be good to get a warning for that like you have with the trampling berries? I know you get the popup explaining the bridges, but would be good to get something the first time you actually put one down.
Really wonderful and interesting entry! If there were more worlds to play I would definitely be interested in playing it more! I totally understand scoping things for the time frame of the jam, but I feel like it could be a bit more interesting if the world collapsed behind you slower so you had a bit more time to explore and plan your journey. I wanted to see things like upgrading the wagons more, but as others have said trying to go for that hinders your production of wood/food too much to allow the miner to join you. Maybe if I also had a map from the start that just showed what I explored and where the crumbling is at so far and then I could see more if I buy it from a village. I also had kind of a hard time understanding exactly what I was looking at as far as the map is concerned. As I said I enjoyed the exploring a bit more so I found the first level more enjoyable. The second world was still good but after failing it several times it felt like you designed it so you had to make a specific set of moves in order to make it exactly to the portal. To me that felt like it took a bit of the exploration out of it. I understand you were trying to put on the pressure a bit to keep moving, but if there had been a few more viable routes it would have allowed for a bit more experimentation and player agency. Overall great entry and would love to so more of it!
Absolutely gorgeous game. Gives me a ton of nostalgia for Oregon Trail. The premise is interesting and thematic. Gameplay-wise, I agree with other feedback that it was a little frustrating that it felt like you had to take fairly specific actions without a lot of guidance on what they should be, like it wasn't sure if it wanted to be more of a puzzler or more of a strategy game. I still had fun with it though and I think there's a ton of potential here.
Really nice game, enjoyed playing it, gj guys
This game scores really high on graphics and mood. The UI is very clear as well. I feel like some actions are a bit tedious, like selecting the front unit again after each move. But great entry!
A difficult game, but the turn based nature lets you plan in advance. The graphics are simply gorgeous and I enjoyed the sounds and music as well. Feels way too polished for a jam game, great job!
One improvement I would make is for your caravan members to gather resources automatically as you pass them by, instead of having to click on them every time. I feel like that would let you think more about where you're going without having to double check if you've got all resource tiles selected.
I tried and failed twice, but still had a lot of fun :)
This is a great concept, I really like it. I think a bit of polish on the controls and extra mechanics would make this perfect for a released game. My suggestions would be: tapping on an empty hexagon next to the front should move the caravan without needing to select the front and the worker caravans could probably auto select tiles to collect from but the player could choose to change these orders. That would streamline some of the more tedious tasks and make the core very addictive. Good job on this!
Wow this is professional level game! Incredibly nice graphics and sound, well done guys!
It's funny that in Russian gamedev there is a meme about the Karawans :smile:
Amazing visuals! As others have said it's pretty hard and I think there's a gem of a game in there you just need to tweak it a bit till you find it!
I like atmosphere of this game. Your game is pretty fun, so please make it more next time. Oh man, game art is goodlike!. Amazing audio, I like it, really. You naileded that theme, really nailed!. Inovation is what is describe this game, nice. Overall that game is good, good job.
Delightful gameplay! I like that you have a learning curve in this game, a player may die twice or trice, but it simply makes more interesting to start over again
excellent entry, proud of you!
What a gorgeous game, one of my favourites so far! The visuals are gorgeous and it has a great gameplay loop. Honestly the level of polish is mindboggling. The audio fits the game well (apart from stutter during a scene change), but sounds great overall. The tutorial was clear, concise and integrated into the gameplay so well that you hardly notice the tutorial is there.
It's difficult, but feels fair and I feel like I improved on my second playthrough. You have made a fantastic game, please expand it and make a full commercial release; it would be an instant buy from me! Great job!
Same ! One of my favorite for this ludum dare, great job ! Really had a good time playing it, thanks !
This feels really unique to me, like a PvE board game. Really fun and thought-provoking, with lots of room to replay and test out different strategies. One of the best I've seen so far!
This is probably one of my favourite games I've played so far here- it's hard to believe this was made in just 3 days!
I like that it's a different approach to the 'unstable' theme and you have to use some strategy to manage all the necessary resources. The visuals and music also compliment the setting/story well. I think this could easily be developed into a larger game with multiple levels, perhaps including more variety of landscapes to traverse and scenarios to encounter besides villages (Ie. Bandits, other travelling caravans). Awesome job folks! <3
My favorite game so far this jam. Felt it was pretty clear what to do and how to do it, except maybe the way resource-gathering worked, but i figured it out. Liked the way it made me think about how to approach a situation and it also made me make interesting choices. Well done!
This game is sad and beautiful. Also it's hard, and I believe it's an essential part of the beauty. It took me several tries to escape Gaia (and I lost all the wagons doing that anyways). I somehow felt sorry for them... And I didn't figure out how to escape the Desert at all. Probably it's doable, but I had to close the game thinking it's unescapable.
I have to admit, I have a soft spot in my heart for different forms of art about world ending and inevitability. Karawan is absolutely a piece of art, which is very rare for game jams. Dome Romantik was a gorgeous jam game, but this is pure art.
Speaking about game mechanics, I'll repeat what SneakyLemon said: the game would be more immersive if resources were picked up automatically, having to always micromanage resource picking is a little bit frustrating (and even more frustrating when you realize you forgot to pick up something).
Absolutely fantastic game! Art, gameplay, music all excellent! My only small nitpick I could mention was a small bug I ran into where the head of my caravan moved on top of one of the other wagons, and the game crashed shortly after.
Make a full version, I would buy it immediately!
This game is incredible. Everything is beautifully crafted and thoughtful, gameplay is simple but also incredibly rich and adds to the world-building. This deserves all praises I can give. Congratulations!
Wow I'm literally almost crying with this game, my eyes are all wet, seriously. It's so perfect in many ways. The story, the narrative, the gameplay, its mechanics, is too perfect, everything too beautiful, and it's a theme I'm so interesting on. The soundtrack, the art. Oh my. Perfect game. FANTASTIC gameplay.
Any bugs and everything that would make this game lose points is just because you didn't have enough time to finish and polish it, and this is fine!
As a beginner in pixel art this game is extremely inspiring for me. Any feedback I could give was already said in previous comments. Please, take time to finish this game, it has so much potential for a full game in other platforms, don't abandon this idea!
May you all have an amazing career in game development, this is beyond perfection, seriously. <3
Btw, thank you for releasing the soundtrack on bandcamp!
Best game i've seen so far. great idea great graphics. very Pog
The visuals are stunning, great job!
Oh wow wow wow, i'm a bit overwhelmed by your responses, very happy! Thank you! The suggestions are also great, i'll improve that in the post jam version.
@suisou the miners aren't needed to win, but the view rang upgrade are nice to have, and the magus can be really helpful (his spells consume ore).
@rhoka yes, interesting points! It really seems there are two game modes underneath here, one being more about exploration and many routes, one being more like a puzzle game that requires specific moves.
@ashley-gb haha, i was really surprised with how fast we went. I had tons of time for improvements and polish, maybe because the underlying mechanics/programming is relatively simple. But i think it also shows that it was our 11th ludum dare. Our day 1 progress for reference (no gathering yet, but the basics were done), with half the day needed for finding an idea https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/karawan/wrapping-up-day-1
@gloomyfolken hehe, i love "darker" scenarios too, somehow feels more significant/profound to me. Especially so since these themes are usually mentally blocked out in our lives.
@m1nus thank you so much, i'm really glad to hear the narrative worked for you. I'm no writer and not a native speaker, but i felt it would give the whole game a better context, and purpose to the journey. So i tried it, i think for the first time, and am really glad if it turned out enjoyable.
Top 10 Entry. Looking forward to seeing more from you and your team!
What a gorgeous entry!
I played it through after ten or so tries. Nice puzzle/strategy system that I could play even more (given that scenarios were solvable more than one way). The musics and graphics made a mood that gave the feeling of being on a road adventure.
The spells, and upgrades spiced up the experience and I liked how there was more than one solution to the problem, so I didn't have to brute force the game all the way through. I would like a version with a bigger world where you would get a part of the map at the time so you could strategize your way through to the next unknown area :)
Great polished game overall!
Really good mood and game overall. With some adjustments I could see it working with random maps as a kind of roguelike.
An absolutely incredible game, phenomenal job. The balancing of need to move and need to gather, and the level design that forces good choices. In awe of this game. Amazing work.
Simply amazing... would absolutely play this if released :thumbsup_tone1: Although... I simply could not figure out how on earth you actually build the bridge... left click, right click.. click on other side of river.. CTRL + click, alt click, shift click... 1,2,3 ... and so on :thinking:
But aside from that incredibly well done - nice gfx, soothing music, nice gameplay .. great idea... by far my favorite entry until now.. :clap_tone1:
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
@purpledartfrog So glad you liked it!
To build a bridge, just guide your lead wagon over a water tile. If you have 5 wood in your inventory, the bridge will automatically build. Thanks so much for the feedback!
@cameron-paxton .... so lack of wood I suppose (yeah yeah yeah... I know) :rofl:
Бедные миры. Оказывается, сколько их, разрушающихся, кругом. И все рушатся, рушатся, рушатся... Хорошо, что есть порталы, ведущие в лучшие миры. Которые не рушатся.
wow - what a great game - the graphics and sound are top-notch and the gameplay was fun.
Awesome game. Nice colors and the idea as board game for one player is very interesting.
Usually I find games like this in my humble bundle.
This is very well made!
It's a mix of puzzle and strategy game that really rocks! The art style and music is fantastic and the mood and theme are very well met.
The only thing that I find, that could be improved is the style of the info message panels, since it breaks the pixel style a bit. But that really is critic on a high level.
dara.PNG
Very well made! A very polished game, that deserves a high score.
Keep up the good work!
Incredible
I managed to finish the 1st level but it took me a good 1/2h!
The desert level is just way too hard, no idea how to get through it ^^#
Mad you 3 could do this in 72h - respect, masterful
There is a minor sound glitch when you start the level and the ressource gathering mechanic ain't straightforward at first, but the depth of the gameplay is incredible - good job y'all :-o
--- --- ---
BTW I'm looking for a team to partake in the next Global Game Jam
I'm a Producer in Game Jams - I keep things organized and on schedule
Drop me a message on Discord **https://discord.com/users/320100445123117057/** [StrangerYann#1119], peace :slight_smile:!
holy hell. I thought I made a fairly polished product but while playing this I forgot I was playing a jam game for a good while! This was a fantastic experience and the best game I've play so far by a mile. you should be really proud of what you've made here, and if there is interest on your part I know for a fact that this game would perform really well as a full release. all I can really say is hats off to you, it was a pleasure to play.
Lovely art style and mood for this super interesting game. I like the risk/reward with taking on new people with you and seeing a slow impending doom always creeping behind adds a lot of tension.
I had some audio hiccups on the browser version but overall i ran smoothly. It was fun and made me want to go back at it just after my runs, so thank you for making it ;)
Always look forward to playing your games during LDJAM! I didn't do streaming this time around, but I did have a lot of fun! The mechanics are very solid, although it's definitely a bit on the difficult side. It took a few attempts and one time I managed to be 1 wood short of getting to the portal before dying. Honestly, I'd be interested in trying randomly generated maps, even if they often were unsolvable.
Love all the polish and attention to detail in this! Really easy to forget this is a jam game while playing. I could easily see this working well on mobile too, I know I'd play it. Although I'd need a way to move the screen about the visible area- unless I missed that.
Unfortunately, I don't have Windows or Linux, so I couldn't play or rate the game, but I wanted to say that the artwork from the screenshots looks beautiful!
Got to the portal on my first attempt lol. Great game and idea. Amazing art and that music just sets the mood beautifully as well. You do need to be able to see a little further ahead to actually plan well, but either way, it's a really great game and idea in it's current form and I'll probably be playing it more. Loved that you could reverse your caravan if you're stuck.
Thank you all for the great feedback, it warms my heart :)
Audio is sadly always a bit buggy in the browser, only works well with the downloadables.
@mordrick Right now the UI is scaled up by 2 (so, each UI pixel is 2x2 actual pixels), so slightly pixelated. The problem for me was, that the game has a different pixel size depending on the current zoom level (either 4x, 3x or 2x the scaled up). I wanted to avoid having the UI more pixelated than the game or mix pixel sizes too much. I haven't tried yet how it would look like with 3x or even 4x, maybe that would be better.
@ursagames I'm very glad to see you here again! We kept our eyes open for your stream ;) It's great that you had some fun with it! We are still busy with Dome Romantik though, no time to continue with this for now.
@kalevrk i uploaded a mac build, but i have no idea if it works. It is a post jam version in any case, with the changes noted on the itch page.
@badpiggy oh wow, first attempt is usually doomed :D Did you see the view range upgrade?
@magic-mike yes - the sounds we use are from a sound pack, not created by ourselves during the jam. Cameron made the music which i really like, but sadly music is no own category so we had to drop out.
Very tricky strategy game. I gave it several shots but always fell short at the wall of wood. You have to plan your turns way ahead of what I was thinking. Need to make sure your wagons are doing something each turn too!
Very cool strategic game! Visuals and animation are simply 5 stars. Gameplay is also engaging. Reminded me somewhat of Curious Expedition. Great job, guys! Shame I couldn't try second world again after I quit the game!
Thanks @rongo-matane . Unfortunately, the Mac build says that the dmg file is damaged and can't be opened, but if you're able to get a Mac build working I'd gladly play it!
Great game! The visuals, sound and overall design work well together and are really polished. From improvements, there are some optimizations to do with the ui but other than that it just needs more content (which I think is what you want from jam games).
Great entry! Making the new caravans follow the path of the main one makes for game-play that's straightforward to understand but still challenging. The difficulty is pretty fitting for one-off stages, but would probably need to be tuned down if they got significantly larger, complicated, or if some random generation system was implemented. Might be nice to have a "skip turn" type thing where the trailing caravans could continue to gather their current location. Would love to see this expanded upon some day!
@rongo-matane Mac version not runnable (says it's broken and should be deleted). Doesn't Godot export to WebGL?
Mac executables need to be signed, I think. They simply don't run anymore on recent Mac systems without a proper Apple dev account signing them. Not 100% sure, though. Previous LD we also had folks complains about Mac version not working.
@tomorrowtoday @civmaniac Yeah, i'm sure you are right. For another game, i know someone who ran some console commands and the could play the game. Godot does export to WebGL, and i did have a web build online (but not linked from here, because it was the "post jam" build and i do not want to "guide" players into the post jam build. Right now i deactivated the web build, because i'm testing something on itch. Somehow, Karawan is listed there as extremely unpopular (like bottom 1%) of all ludum dare games. This was different initially, and the player count still suggests a high popularity - but this changed when i activated the web build. Probably has nothing to do with it, but i'm desparate :D I'll activate the web build tomorrow again.
Great job! Everything here is really nice, especially the artwork (it's always nice to see actual nice color palettes in LD entries) and UI polish (likewise something that tends to suffer a lot in jam games). Some quality of life improvements would be welcomed to ease some of the tedium (maybe have caravans automatically gather, but be manually changeable), if that hasn't already been implemented.
Awesome project! Liked your art style. Gameplay is also interesting. Keep going!
One of best entry, fantastic music, gameplay and art. Great work!
It's looks and sounds amazing, and the gameplay is equally good. Event space in the background looks amazing. Very good game.
Not surprise but still impress I love your previous entry (LD48) and when I see the screen in the feed I was eager to find the time to play this game. And what a game ! the atmosphere is really heavy and the difficulty is well balanced, great work once again !
@nakami So happy that you enjoyed Karawan. Thanks for playing it!
We're actually still working on Dome Romantik from LD48: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1637320/Dome_Romantik/
Game looks great. Love this mood and art.
Game looks absolutely incredible!!
This is a GREAT entry, I'm stunned that you could come up with the concept, the art and the implementation in only three days. The additions of the post jam version, like auto collect and the map, are excellent. It's pretty tough, but rewarding to find the solution... and the music helps a lot. As someone who worked on a 4X strategy game (Humankind), the simple mechanics here are inspiring. Nice job using Godot, I love it :)
What an awesome game! It's completely beyond me how you made such a work of art in such a short amount of time! There's literally nothing I can fault this game for, jeez
Hi there! Thanks for submitting your game for me to play live during my Twitch stream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1173717245?t=0h30m18s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
Incredibly well executed entry! Love that it was made in Godot (so was our entry). Great design and gameplay. It was *just* challenging enough for me in my opinion.
If you're looking for Godot-related game jams, check out the Godot Wild Jam.
Again, awesome entry! One of my favorites so far.
I see a lot of potential in this game. Graphics are awesome, gameplay mechanics are very cool. Super polished. Well done!
This game is fantastic, absolutely enjoyed it! The two-tile forest on the first map seemed very hard to get through first, but it was very satisfying to finally find a way around it with the help of some bridge building and water disappearing spells. Played through all three scenarios and had a lot of fun. This could easily be published as a full game with more scenarios. Great achievement, congratulations! :)
I encountered one small bug: One time I managed to somehow move some farmers on the same tile as my caravan leader and were not able to continue moving the caravan afterwards.
One other minor issue: In my opinion the auto-harvesting enhancement should be enabled from the start, as manually assigning workers to tiles feels a little bit tedious and does not add anything valuable to the gameplay. You should always be able to reassign workers, of course.
@elysiagriffin composer for the game here. I wasn't able to join for the stream, but finally got a chance to watch the VOD. Thanks so much for playing, that was fun to watch!
Hey,
the game has a great mood to it. It's nice to see a retake on Oregon trail :). The artstyle is beautfiul and the music you chose fits really well. I haven't been able to finish the game yet but I'm having a lot of fun.
I think I agree with making it clear what the game is trying to be, as mentioned above by another player. I think the game would benefit from a pause mode like FTL so that you can clearly decide your moves. I also think each wagon should auto-harvest when adjacent to a harvestable node.
Either way, very impressive entry!
Thank you so much for the feedback :) I also appreciate the Godot vibe going on here!
@ddrkirbyisq Hi there! Yes, automatic gathering is part of the post jam version, but only as an upgrade.
@future-labs-unlimited That's great to hear :) Regarding the auto harvest - i'm not sure. I thought about it before, and i felt that it might have a negative impact on new players, as they can roam around and be successful without understanding why, because it's automated. I thought that it might be good that they learn this by hand, and then get the automation for very cheap, maybe starting later scenarios always with the automation from the beginning. I agree that it does not add anything apart from that, but is tedious once you know what's happening.
@arya-s Oh, the game knows nothing but a pause mode. Nothing will happen at all unless you make one move, and then nothing happens again - strictly turn based. The tile removal animation can be a bit slow, so it might seem that this happened "during" the thinking phase. But i assure you, you have all the time you need. Agreed on the auto harvest, it's part of the post jam version via a cheap upgrade.
Yep, makes sense.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing in every regard. The music, the graphics, the gameplay loop, they all come together so well!
My only complaints are: for a quick game jam game, it can be a bit confusing to get used to so quickly, and the sound when you die is oddly grating and out of place with the rest of the game.
And about the auto-harvest: I think there's more of a negative impact if you *don't* include it right away. I think it'd be enough of a tutorial if the map can be set up where each new member immediately passes by a plot to harvest. Excluding the auto-harvest just introduces a bunch of extraneous clicking on new players just getting accustomed to the game
There are so many games that strive to capture the feeling of Oregon Trail, but fail to do so unless they straight up mimic the formula. You managed to create something brand new here that pushes it in a whole nother direction, while still keeping the same great feeling of exploration. Some kind of combination of OT, FTL, and HOMM almost. Did you even pull inspiration from other games or you just pull this one outta thin air?
I really enjoyed trying to figure out the puzzles you set up. The magic system was a great twist to the formula, immediately adding several layers of options on how to optimize the stages. I beat the first stage fairly quickly, but the other 2 I couldn't quite get.
Out of all the LD games I've seen in a while, this one has the most potential for a full version and I'd absolutely love to see it. Amazing gameplay, and all the additional stuff like great graphics and excellent polish are just the cherry on top :)
Outstanding. All the elements fit together perfectly. This game is really challenging, but after almost an hour, I finally beat level one. I also beat the crater relatively quickly. Maybe I'll try the desert another time. This game seriously felt like a finished product. Incredible work.
This game is INCREDIBLE! I would love to see a full version :D
A lot of fun for a genre I didn't think I would like. I played for a pretty long time. I never figured out a winning strat but it was a lot of fun to try. Artwork is great, audio is great. The only thing I'd nitpick was the bit of slowdown added to each turn when the animation plays for grabbing resources. I also had a weird looping audio bug when loading the level on web.
Anyway, its a dope game, good job!!!
Played for much longer than I thought I would. I loved the artsyle and the idea itself is great!
This game is fantastic and very fun. The team can only collect on the move is confusing.
Fun game, and the graphics are beautiful! I think a bit more of a tutorial would've helped, but this was a fantastic entry!
Nice work! :)
I have come with my caravan! Why is it just me? Well the wagons got lost on the way... but I got to eat at last!
Lovely game as always. Had me procrastinating for half an hour. I found a spells description a bit confusing (switch flat ground, didn't understand what it meant until I tried it) I was barely using the spells, because I couldn't build up familiarity with them. They are pretty endgame and misuse sort of resulted in my doom. Which brings me to the last point. Sometimes I knew that I was screwed and had to do the 'ol suicide. A button would for that would be greatly appreciated!
Honestly this is the best LD49 game i've played so far
- Mechanics are simple and incredibly fun to play with - Graphics are gorgeous - Audio is a bit buggy on the web version but awesome - The game fits the theme perfectly
Maybe some more UI feedback wouldn't hurt and the auto harvest makes everything too easy too soon but it's still an awesome game, Good job!
Keep it up!
Wow, this game looks perfect and it's really fun to play! Definitely one of the best LD49 entries. I could play this for hours! Interesting concept and good job, you were able to make this in such a short time. Applause!
Thank you all! :)
@strangeryann i saw your post before, and actually thought about if we could use a producer. Production is it's own art for sure. But right now, we are only 2 people (who made 11 jam games before together) + composer, so it's just working out, we found our flow :)
@peachtreeoath Love your comment, thank you so much! I don't think i directly pulled from another game, but i played thousands of games and are of course totally influenced by all that. Key for me was a picture of a pixel art hex tile map, which i saw after 6 hours of thinking about ideas with none of them sticking yet. This image immediately felt like i'd like to travel with a caravan. I knew i'd have a snake like movement and a crumbling world with that, and that there is some depth to that system. Harvesting only adjacent tiles became clear pretty fast, but i don't remember when i thought about the magus having spells, instead of him only activating the portal. So not exactly thin air, it needed the artwork to inspire the game - but the mechanics were intuition. I never played Oregon Trail, but i know what it's about and heard a lot of comparisons for Karawan ;)
Hey Chad @voidsay yeah, ideally i'd start you with only 2 spells and have more incentive to use them, with more spells being recoverable from wizard tower ruins or something like that. Right now they are fully optional, which also has it's benefits though.
@zsharpfire thank you! What UI feedback would you like to see added?
Screenshot 2021-10-19 075123.jpg
Great game! Took me a few tries to finally beat it. Maybe a bit too punishing if you don't do exactly the right path but tweaking gameplay and levels take time. I understand that.
@rongo-matane thanks for the breakdown! I'm probably in a similar boat where I have played or seen tons of games, and am fortunate to have my brain be able to pull from them easily. Your game probably isn't super Oregon Trail-y in terms of mechanics, but it does share the same general sense of a journey of a ragtag band of followers trying to survive, which isn't as common of a theme as I'd like.
This entry is phenomenal! Love the mood on this, in particular. Great job!
This game is absolutely amazing. I love everything.
Excellent stuff! Really elegant but with added complexity in how you have to plan your route. Super polished all over as well! I love the moral dilema of "helping/foraging" vs "raiding/trampling" as things get desperate.
Extremely beautiful game, I loved it. How did you deal with game design balance in this concept during the game jam?
@denatus Thank you! There is a difference with world 2+3, in the sense that they are puzzle worlds, really requiring a specific solution. Maybe it's not a great idea to mix this with world 1, which has many different possible solutions and is more exploratory -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdAawxRxQjQ
@splitpainter Thank you :) We had plenty of time to playtest, and it was very important for the balance. Initially, the berries only dropped a single food once, not two food two times. That's a big leap, but got clear when testing the game quickly. I mostly had the concept of world 1 as is from the get go, and tried to balance the game around that. I also wrote a small post mortem for it, not sure if it covers what you asked ;) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/karawan/karawan-post-mortem
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