Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → Precarious Powers
By aevek, bongard22, floppynub, rhoka, keenan.wulff, QuantumCaveman, WaylandTheSmith, drsnowdude and zhennaperks
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 767 | 3.51 | 43 | |
| Fun | 816 | 3.36 | 44 | |
| Innovation | 890 | 3.17 | 44 | |
| Theme | 1025 | 3.23 | 43 | |
| Graphics | 582 | 3.78 | 44 | |
| Audio | 616 | 3.33 | 42 | |
| Humor | 947 | 2.61 | 40 | |
| Mood | 1035 | 3.14 | 40 |
It's really fun to use the magic abilities in the game world, and it's cool that you can use your abilities for multiple purposes, like inside and outside of combat. Combat almost feels nice, the one thing I'd suggest adding to make it a bit better is just like a red tint on an enemy when it's hit with a fire blast. Giving the player confirmation that the enemy did in fact take damage goes a long way in the feel of the game.
I love the art! The whole project is really cool. At first I was a little skeptical of the concept, but the challenge of managing the three mana orbs while utilizing them was really interesting. Cool idea and great execution.
Really entertaining game! I love the art and mechanics involved. Great job :D
A funny little game. I need to play a magician to defeat monsters and explore the map. It seems that designers design levels seriously, they always try to give players fresh experiences. However, I think there could be a more interesting gameplay, a better tutorial to tell me what I should do. By the way, I think it doesn't match the theme so closely except it will explode when energy's full.
Love the art as well! The project foundations are really cool to lead to something bigger later! I would still like to point out some gameplay issues. :/ The main one is that it's really easy to dodge the enemies and, so, finish the game. You destroy the crystals, you get out the zone, and then repeat for each. It could have been way more entertaining if you get blocked every time you have to face enemies, forces you to clean the zone to get out. Plus, there is nothing negative about dying, in fact the opposite is true, the crystals and boss life don't reset, and your mana bars restart full... :x It's just some details but for people like me, it could kill the experience hahaha. But really solid entry anyway, you did an outstanding work!
took me a while to realize i could use the ice to cross large gaps but i beat that dark wizards @zz
Loved the challenge of juggling the three mana jars, especially because one is tied to a movement spell. I really liked the seamless multipurpose casting of the ice spell. Great concept and great execution.
Really nice game, I liked the spell progression where they helped fight monsters and traverse the terrain. The art was great but missing some animation and the game needs more enemy types.
Really Good Game
This is a fun play! I loved all the environment assets. The game overall felt decently polished (didn't encounter any bugs), and was enjoyable. Hats off to the music as well. There was a lot of content here (which is good), and I like to give a lot of feedback!
The level design was nice. Fairly intuitive where to move on, and I like that I had a use for the ice attack to bridge the areas! That also forced you to acquire the new "spell" before moving on, same with the fire and vines.
The firing mechanic was pretty fun, but could have used more juice. Hitting the characters wasn't too satisfying. And you might have done something as simple as reducing their size on every hit, as an indication of their "health". Also, most of the game I was focusing on what I was shooting at or what was near my player--it was hard to keep an eye on the health jar! So without any effect on the player when I got hurt, I only realized I was low by chance.
The punishment for gaining too much power is an interesting concept. I think I would have liked something else to use the "bursts" for ... like the fire could have been an attack. That might have been more interesting imho than "you slow down" or "reset the level", but still fit your original idea? Otherwise, I feel like I'm just firing off spells to avoid the punishment, rather than using that "burst" strategically. Still, I think you had a concept and executed it well!
It did take me a while to figure out the crystal pylons--were they hurting me, or helping me? I eventually realized I could destroy them ... but was that the objective? Or was it the boss? overall objective could have been a little better communicated. The game ended once I killed the boss, but since I couldn't freeze a path to it, I felt like I didn't get a chance to really interact with it. The ending felt a little rushed overall, with just the sudden "you win" text. But hey, it's a jam game! It's gotta be rushed haha.
Overall, this was a really solid play. Kudos to the entire team!! Like I said, I like to give a lot of feedback (good and constructive), so I hope it's helpful. Thanks for the game!
Wow, that was a ton of content for a 3D jam game. I really like the cell-shaded look and the level art in general, and the concept seems good as well. Like others, I didn't really understand what the crystals were doing for quite a while. Overall, I had fun with this!
Pretty fun! I think it's amazing how you guys managed to pull off a full 3D game this polished for a game jam! Hats off y'all!! I like the idea of the mana overloading, the UI and effects communicated that idea really well. The music is also pretty calming and the overall feel of the game is pretty good.
I really loved the concept here of getting stronger actually adds more challenge! I think it's really clever that the crystals boost your abilities, but present even more danger by making you unstable because it allows calmer spots where you don't need to worry overloading when you aren't by them (even though I was in panic mode and kept spamming my abilities anyway xD)
The arts was all really good! I especially enjoyed the terrarium style spell icons and the cel shaded game world. The health potion icon felt a little out of place visually, but was still really cute!
some of my ideas if you guys have plans on working on this more: -I didn't know what the beams were doing at first (probs my fault because I dont remember reading the page oops!) I think it just having some text pop up when a crystal first latches onto you that says "super charged" or "overloaded!" or something similar could help and makes your character glow blue or something. Then the glow starts becoming red as you become more unstable until it finally damages you and resets back to the blue color. I think having that color change could help communicate it better while also keeping the players eyes more focused on the action instead of the UI since the beams take up a large portion of the screen.
-maybe healing can be its own spell that you start with that charges very slowly and has only a minor drawback if it becomes unstable, such as healing nearby enemies
-I don't know what happens if one of your abilities is already maxed and a beam connects to you, but if it damages you one solution could be that the beam also increases the max capacity so you dont get damaged immediately or just give it a short time buffer so it doesn't damage you within 1 second of connecting. (I don't know how it works because I kept spamming my spells, and I'm @ work so I'll have to test later :D)
-Boss was a lil too easy I killed him before I even got a good look! Having him teleport around and use more elements could make the fight more interesting, even if the projectiles were just different colors to make it seem like hes using different attacks for the jam version haha
Great work you guys!
One of the few games that I've plkayed until completion this jam! I was a little lost at one point, but it was entertaining and I like the art style!
Maybe I'm biased towards top down 3rd person stick shooters (cough don't look at my game cough) but this was fantastic! Reminds me a bit of Magicka. I loved unlocking the abilities and actually using the "overcharging" affect to my advantage! Excellent game.
VOD Link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1168815129
Neat art style!
although the gameplay feels a bit raw, the gameplay was quite interesting. I also liked the graphical style!
Graphically very imposing game! Mechanically also very adapt, though maybe I'd preferred the enemies to take less hits but be more numerous, as the fireball just didn't feel as having to much impact. Other than that though, really admirable what you managed to get done! Fantastic work!
I really liked how you guided the player via environment, i didn't really get stuck and the progression was smooth, which is usually a very problematic aspect of ldjam games in general. The combat could use some improvements. It was a bit too slow and easy. Personally, after one or two encounters, I just kept skipping the fights. It has a solid foundations - you just need to squeeze more enjoyment from killing enemies. Animations and visual effects go a long, LOOOONG way in fixing that. Even simple camera shake could change a lot in those regards.
[Here's the VOD of us playing this over the weekend!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1171489560?t=03h49m46s)
Outstanding job as always, y'all. :thumbsup: The visuals and audio were both wonderful, and I personally think the design of this game is open enough for plenty of expansion, if y'all are so inclined to do so! :pray:
"PrecariousPowers_OSX is damaged and cannot be opened." I've tried downloading again. After that I forced it to run via terminal but it was indeed damaged (see image). It's a shame because it really looks like a nice game. Schermafbeelding 2021-10-11 om 22.55.07.png
interesting ideas, I could see this game being a good puzzler.
Cool idea of this mage who is too powerful and cannot handle it. The levels were well designed, the mechanics felt solid and self explanatory. Sometimes more visual feedback would have been good, for example when you got hit. Also, the green shots of that one shooter enemy were almost invisible on the grass. Overall, very nice game!
Well played all of you, i'm pretty amaze Oo I like the arrow to aim a ennemy, it's a cool idea. I did not like the trap in the game, maybe a warning when you approach one of them. Solid entry,i've loved to play with <3
Amazing ! I was a bit lost at the start, but eventually finished the game. I enjoyed it !
Oldschool vibes, I rate that!
This is a very visually stunning game! The graphics throughout were brilliant, with only a few cases of z-fighting that I saw. The idea of having three separate mana counters was clever, but I think it may have been better to have the negative effect be triggered when one runs out instead of one filling up completely. This would have forced the player to be more calculated as to when they used the spells instead of just spamming them whenever they are available. Overall a strong entry into the jam!
Such a nice graphics! my respect to all
Wow nice graphic and mood. Nice job