Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Fellowship Manager
By elysiagriffin, honest-dan and brainoid
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 696 | 3.56 | 66 | |
| Fun | 956 | 3.23 | 64 | |
| Innovation | 673 | 3.38 | 65 | |
| Theme | 1338 | 2.75 | 65 | |
| Graphics | 557 | 3.81 | 66 | |
| Audio | 486 | 3.50 | 64 | |
| Humor | 707 | 2.97 | 59 | |
| Mood | 877 | 3.29 | 65 |
404 error on the link you provided. Seems like you're having compile issues with UE4? That's disappointing. My game was an hour late because I was having packaging issues. Let me know if you fix and I'll leave a real review.
I really hope you can fix your issues and publish your game. I'll try to come back later to review the game.
No playable game, yet still 3 ratings.. :D I don't understand why people rate a game that can't be opened.
@validdark @Juanlu there is now a build uploaded.
Unfortunately it doesn't work for me. The FellowshipManager.zip just crashes on pressing start game, while the FM_v1_0.zip starts, allows me to change some "jobs" for the fellowship but then nothing else happens. I'm guessing I should be able to move it somehow, but I've been unable to.
@honest-dan Some people rate to be trolls or to be nice. Others rate without playing to help their own game be more visible. Anyway, I'll see if I can get the game to run and rate it.
@juanlu click on your tile where your unit is, and then right click to move it. The rest is mouse driven. I appreciate the time checking it out - feel free to report bugs and we'll get on them this evening.
Okay, long one. Got it to run, random talking king's open mouth is faintly stuck behind his animated mouth . . . which is fading each frame? Okay, game loop. I commiserate. Most of the problems you have, including being overwhelming, I had or have. Once I understood movement, it was pretty solid, but you can click on the top bar buttons during a battle. And the battles are slow. If I press escape, it opens the option menu sometimes. Then it closes it. Then it never works again.
I want to clearly state this is a huge amount of work for a game like this, and I love it so far, but I know from experience how these UI things can stack up.
I was able to play it fine today.
This is such a great idea. I'm amazed how much you got into the game in the jam. I loved how the game looks. It was fun playing around with the battle tactics and seeing how the played out. Fantastic work as usual!
great work good visuals im happy you could upload it. a bit too big of a map for jam and it was quite overwhelming first but overall pretty good job :clap: :clap:
@potkirland I totally understand. I get overwhelmed only by looking at our LD game page.
Loved the ambition! Unfortunately, it just missed the mark for "fun" for me! Still, you should be stoked with the massive amount of effort put into this, with so much production in such a short time! Well done!
I'm certainly not a fan of numbers for the sake of numbers). If some numbers are not needed, then it is better to delete them to hell). But overall it was fun to play).
@paulsams Strength in numbers :) I totally agree
@paulsams Thanks for playing! aye - a lot of numbers, but yeah - a tribute to the "spreadsheet simulator" that is football manager is what we were going for! Each of the stats do something, but that isn't well communicated :) charisma increases chance of recruiting, hunting increases chance to catch fish or hunt animals for example.
And fair @ollieoa - fun and accessibility wasn't high enough a priority for us this time round!
As other point out, there are some issues, but... the idea of combining a management game with battles in this way is nice and refreshing. As expected from your team, quality of music and graphic is truly amazing, especially taking into account time limitation. It is a shame that you couldn't polished it even more.
It reminds me of Mount & Blade & FM manager at the same time. Making simulation game is quite challenging in gamejam, but great work! There is a big panel on the left, but it would be nice to indicate each unit's HP or so. Good job!
Overall a good, big jam game. I think it's pretty polished even if there were issues still remaining. Not sure how football manager does it, but I would've loved to see the unit faces in the battle.
Great job!
@coderaurus @dinwy @zimny11 thanks for playing all! Brainoid did great on music, I love how quick he can make something sounds so epic. The 2D sprites in 3d really gave a lot of character too thanks to Elysia.
We agree it would have been nice to see each unit health in battle (like when you monitor the energy of players and do substitions in FM). Appreciate you giving the game time <3
Nothing but respect for pulling something like this. Great Job!
Very nice art and a great music - feast for both eyes and ears :)! The project is extremely ambitious for such a short amount of time, and you did so much with it, it's quite amazing.
I will start my review with the fact that I never played Football Manager (nor would I want to ;)) - and I think like that's very relevant here. Exploring the map and the commentary during battles were my favorite parts. Commentary is great and the world is so vibrant! As to the fellowship itself, I feel like it would be better if we could start with fewer members - get to know them maybe - before we start recruiting. And maybe even allow me to choose the starting members from a pool of fellows.
With so many to start with, they felt disposable, just rows in a table that I had no connection to. And I think the game would benefit greatly from me carrying for my tiny "minions" ;). Maybe that's also why the gameplay itself felt kinda dry and just repetitive after a short while (or maybe that's because I'm not a "Football Manager" fan ;)). I mean, exploration is cool, and the world is a pleasure to look at, but ultimately you're just doing the same things in every area (almost) over and over, and that thing is not terribly exciting - clicking on actions your guys will perform without you even seeing those actions.
In the current state of the game, the theme feels rather tacked-on. Unstable is just a number in a table and influences little.
It's clear that a lot of love and effort went into this project. And I bet people who love manager-type of games will enjoy it! As for me, the great art and amazing music will be what I remember :)
@fabula-rasa thanks for the detailed review!
I agree with pretty much most of what you said. You'll be pleased to hear these are issues we discussed since the start, but time meant that we didn't have time to make it more focused on the player experience. We wanted a way to choose your fellowship, and that recruitment would be a case of choosing the right people for your army too. We wanted the unstable king to pop up periodically and declare something that would impact the game - such as restricting gold (if we had implemented our gold mechanic to pay the fellows!). We would have liked to have scouts you could send out before a fight to learn about the armies battle block strategy, so it gave you a reason to adjust yours (rather than going in blindly). The unstable stat was meant to play a bigger role in combat too, something you'd visibly be able to notice. But yes.. three days wasn't enough :D much respect for playing it and giving detailed feedback to us! We are glad you enjoyed the commentary and the vibrant world :)
Great work for a weekend. Ambitious as always, but you got a lot of stuff in there.
Incredible ambition on display here. I have no idea how you pulled this off in time!
It definitely felt a little overwhelming at first, and it's hard to tell what you're doing playing around with systems like battle formations on the first few turns. I did eventually figure out what was going on, though, and the rest of the game was a pleasant surprise. The enemies didn't ever feel too challenging, but they don't have to be when it seems like your units are perfectly capable of degrading on their own.
The two things I really would have liked to see are some wandering enemies and random events; supposedly the world is unstable, but it doesn't really feel that way. Having friendly villages slowly get destroyed, the water turning brackish, and other world disasters [as well as reasonable ways to slow them down, such as destroying the related attack party] would add to the atmosphere and make the Mad King's threat a lot more present. Otherwise, I think you really have a great project on your hands, and these Darkest Dungeon esque games about managing a crew that falls apart on its own could easily have some large appeal for a paid product.
Loved it! Loved the polish, gameplay and management of your small army. Lots of options to pick before fighting! Would've been cool if when a member ordered to drink his water went up to 100% in one go rather than having to drink more times. Terribly good art and sound! Like lots of people said, lots of gameplay and content for just a jam! Some say that they miss the mark of fun but that's because the fun of this game is a bit like Dwarf Fortress or Nethack where the fun is in getting destroyed and getting better and better until you eventually click (I love those).
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1172137556?t=01h28m46s)
Someone in my chat summarized my thoughts perfectly:
"So what game do you want to make in 3 days?"
"Civilization VII"
Y'all's ambitiously huge projects are always inspiring to see, and it sounds like you've learned a lot from making this! Can't wait to see how you incorporate your newfound knowledge into future projects.
:skull: **Here lies Dan the Brave. His death was entirely preventable.** :skull:
Really great game. It's amazing what you achieved in just 3 days. Enjoyed playing it :)
Thank you for the fix. end.png king.pngBut it was a great adventure! Beautiful drawn illustrations but the gameplay itself is very difficult :sweat_smile: Grats Team!
edit: It is possible to add optional global button for team tasks? :thinking:
loving the football tactics/ blitzball formation battles
Well done on getting all this done in Jam time. The UI is done really well, I like all the little animations and everything is clear and easy to understand. I like the text at the bottom that narrates the battle that was a nice touch. Overall a very ambitious and polished entry nice job
Wow, huge amount of content in this game for a jam game. Had fun playing it, well done!
Really good game. Loved the gameplay and it felt good to win a battle. There is so much content, I am very impressed. My only suggestion is to explain why people "left the party" (i.e. are they dying in battle, starving, or something else) because I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong. Overall, a very compelling 4x game with a ton of content! Great job!
Liked the music and graphics. The idea is good. The project can be a really interesting strategy.
really cool game, a robust strategy game in such a short time! my strategy was aggressive recruitment, which made maintaining my army a bit of a pain as I would have to manually select every soldier to eat - but in a way that simulates logistical issues :innocent:
This is a very original concept, and what you achieved in the time of a game jam is remarkable. I love the Football Manager attributes and "battle" commentary. Amazing idea tbh. But the game is very buggy and has a weird UI flickering effect going on on my laptop. Also, even though the visual and audio presentation is great, I feel that the actual gameplay is rather limited at the moment. This is a very solid start, and can't wait to see how this game evolves. I think the FM/Civ formula is a winner.
The game was really fun! I didn't notice some of the numbers dropping at first like the food and water so I ended up losing a bunch of people, so I stopped worrying about those and aggressively spammed recruitment to cover my losses before spamming battles. Overall I didn't experience any issues (Nice!) and had a great time, my only gripe is some of the menus were a but confusing to navigate but that might have just been me! Nice work!
An ambitious game for just three people, good job! I love this kind of games and didn't expect to play one in a Ludum Dare. I guess you already received a lot of feedback but I wanted to point out that I wasn't able to see the enemy's formation beforehand, which makes it difficult to take decisions on your own strategy for battles. However, I loved the complexity of the battle system, I just hoped the tactical decisions felt more important :smiley:
People ask me how I managed to make my game in 3 days. And now I ask you the same question. It's incredible.
It's cool that you made this in such short time and with this many intricacies it seemed stable, but I lost patience with the micromanaging of drinking and eating. It seems really unnecessary and uninteresting, and a fellow spending an entire day drinking is still thirsty? And there is only water in a few locations of the world despite it not being a desert? And you have to spend several days straight only eating to not be hungry? Okay that thirst and hunger play a part, but then you could have supplies of it that you can refresh and they are auto-consumed unless you force march. Then let players focus on the other more interesting parts and make those bits more challenging. Maybe I was doing something wrong but it seemed like I had to go back and forth (because you can't stay in one hex?) for turn after turn to slowly build up drink and food to not die from decay of said values and I could scarcely tell if the decay across the board was outpacing me anyway.
@mtabasco we wanted to add a scouting activity you could do when camped near enemies, where it would gather information on nearby armies... but alas.. time defeated us!
@tricky-fat-cat honk is always a pleasure. I didn't comment enough how professional the game looked and felt.
@ty-victorson Yeah we lacked time to do a tutorial, but we hoped at least the popups saying why peeps died would at least be the hard-tutorial to at least explain the mechanic. but yeah, finding out how to lose by losing isn't always the most fun experience in a game!
@gno-evenimente I am glad to see the appreciation to the silly concept of football manager tribute! That is unfortunate (but useful to hear about the UI flicker). I noticed when recording a gif the UI would disappear periodically, but my eyes wouldn't notice it in game. I wonder whats the cause of that.
@animawish haha thats so good to hear you say! its what I said when we ran out of time to code restrictions on how often you can recruit - that the tax of having to micro manager 50 drop downs would be painful enough!
@chairshot-games Thanks for playing! So when a unit dies out of combat, it should popup and say "X units died from starvation" or something similar. Essentially all the out-of-combat stats (energy, food, water, hygiene) go down each day after you spend the day on a tile - and if it reaches 0 they'll die. As for battles, it is simulated so some will just lose their HP based on the simulated positions and ongoing combat.
@denzil-gomes braioidgames did great work to get the commentary working, it really added a tiny bit of personality and silliness that we wanted!
@rookrules thanks for playing! I've not played blitzball but hearing you describe it in stream makes it indeed sound similar to the management style sim this was inspired by!
@rufson congrats on the corrections :D yeah, 100% agree we would have benefited from having filters and bulk actions to make the assigning of roles less tedious. But I also agree we would have benefited from more time haha!
@coleslaughter the death of Dan the Dishonest proved pivotal in the legacy of the Keyboard Cowboys.
@dante2001 thank you - yeah we know its not "obvious fun", these games the fun comes from satisfaction and learning the systems. We didn't quite get far enough to get to that level of satisfaction - but still it was fun trying!
@anchorlight fair points! I actually implemented the enemy units so they could be moved and weren't tied to tiles, but ran out of time to implement something that would move them. I agree some of your suggestions would have really helped us nail the theme. We wanted popup from the king sporadically as well that would help portray how unstable he was, making up laws that would impact your fellowship.
@klosterliv thanks for your feedback. You aren't wrong that in its current state, the required way to survive does focus on repeating some of the "less interesting" mechanics. For us it was about trying to micro manage, and so thats why we decided to make each stat require a day to adjust. We could have simplified it by making resting make you drink and eat, and perhaps that would have more suited a game jam. We also wanted to have easy batch select features, like "set task for all" as a button, and a way to order / filter based on stats to help the process of micromanaging. We did use a formula to ensure you could counter the decay, HOWEVER we didn't have to balance it with player enjoyment at the centre of our minds. Appreciate you gave it ago, and sorry to hear it wasn't enjoyable for you!
@honest-dan I should add that this really is a type of game for me. I think the mix of ideas is just great, and I could imagine myself spending lots of time setting up tactics and reading battle logs and humanizing the fellows, and I don't mean to criticize micromanagement as a feature. Hmm also did you mean anything in particular by capsing 'however'? Something went over my head? Anyway, big respect for this entry.
This was really ambitious for a 3 day jam! The game play was fun once you figure out the mechanics. Overall, a rather satisfying experience
@klosterliv thanks for the follow up! The however was purely meant in the sense of "we did have logic in there *but* it doesn't really matter because we didn't balance it to be fun. Appreciated the input!
Insane how this was made in a 3 day jam. Incredible work!
such a big game for 3 days its crazy.
Wow, as others have said, so much done in so little time!
Wow! Insane how you made this game in threedaieaisdkjsldkjs hello
The font you chose fits so well in the type of game, but the kerning between some of the letters makes it so hard to read lol.
It's not my type of game, so I'll withhold from giving a rating in the fun category. Everything else (as has already been said) is very impressive!
Incredible innovative, I can see a lot of potential in this game!
"The story of my Fellowboat was an epic one.
Unfortunately, after many Battles, after many songs sang at the foot of campfires, many prayers and a few charismatic recruitment, the Fellowboat was defeated.
The third king army was too big of a challenge without proper rest, and our dear heroes, exhauster, semi insane, thirsty and sleepy, couldn't succeed.
The kingdom shall be saved, but not today. Not today...."
You game is really easy to understand, I didn't read any of this page beforehand and just jumped into it blind. After all I was elected to lead, not to read. As this is the kind of game I am used to, I felt at home. This is not a brag, but a testimonial of the clarity of your user interface.
I felt I had to stop too often to take care of the many needs of my army, and didn't really understand how to prevent loosing reputation by doing so. However, I assumed this was more due to a lack of time during the jam and that the game needs more balancing, but it may also be me not understanding something.
This is really polished, with a very nice sound track, a good gameplay loop and a lot of complex design. Congratulation! I loved it <3 Very impressive in 3 days.
Great work! I love strategies!