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Crysterra
Crysterra
By ciaranw and teto
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 1064 | 3.28 | 43 | |
| Fun | 1237 | 2.93 | 43 | |
| Innovation | 853 | 3.21 | 42 | |
| Theme | 960 | 3.31 | 42 | |
| Graphics | 995 | 3.32 | 43 | |
| Audio | 862 | 2.90 | 43 | |
| Humor | 1008 | 2.51 | 40 | |
| Mood | 1213 | 2.92 | 41 | |
Comments
lukein
2021-10-05 12:38
Love the idea you got from the theme! This mechanic could extend to way more, and more diverse, gameplay loops. Like building more terrain, build stuff on it, manage ressources..etc With everything and its grandmother moving around every few turns.
Something bother me a bit tho. I managed to get to credit on first try, without any harm done to the crystal on top of that.. Was it intended ? The guardians may be too strong, or enemies too weak, since i'm no god gamer myself.
wilko
2021-10-19 21:45
The camera controls are really tight and the presentations is really nice. However it took me quite a long time to get my head around the controls and what to do
teto
2021-10-19 21:54
@lukein Thank you for the feedback! We did intend to put some terrain altering mechanics in there but ran out of time unfortunately! (Even has a button for it in the action options but never got hooked up cri)
We've made it a little harder now so feel free to have another go!
teto
2021-10-19 21:55
@wilko Thank you! That's good to know! Of course, for us, it's very clear but good to hear from an outside perspective. We'll try and get more of an instruction/tutorial bit in the next game then!
Found it a little tricky to learn - a tutorial would've worked wonders. Love the aesthetic and the idea, though!
Nice work :)
For some basic criticisms... I would definitely recommend a UI overhaul and small tutorial as it can feel a little unintuitive at first. I didn't feel much feedback on the Crater/Raise tools and the lack of a more distinct design for your crystal-throwers and knights makes differentiating the two troublesome. Some of the sound effects are a little too loud, particularly the world movement.
Okay... bashful criticism out of the way, let's get to the meat of the comment. There's one question on my mind: how'd you do this in time?
This game came as a total surprise to me, in that I genuinely don't know how it was done nor how it works so well in what amounts to a single weekend. I like the concept and the world-shifting mechanic is a very unique way to handle your defense, setting up a unique compromise where you take damage to avoid an even worse penalty. I feel that some balancing may be in order, but that doesn't take away from the accomplishment-- you have my full attention and I could genuinely see myself playing more of this with more content.
Really, the part that blows my mind is the execution-- the world shifting feels like such a natural part of the game and adds enough variety to chasing enemies that I would want to leave nothing to chance when they got anywhere near the crystal, regardless of elevation.
Aside from this, the art and music (the presentation in general, really) is very nicely put together. I just hope there are more enemy designs on the way.
A part of me wonders if you could also put together levels that leave the levelshifting you control behind, where you attack an enemy crystal nation that controls their own worldshifting crystal to act against you.
Whatever you might have in mind to expand on this concept, I hope to see more of this game postjam!
Most of my issues were small quality-of-life usability things: - I felt like I wanted the ability to pan the camera, rather than just rotate it. Sometimes it was tough to get an enemy in view. - A few times, I didn't realize that my character was out of AP. I think auto-cycling to the next character could be reasonable. - Similarly, sometimes I didn't immediately know when the enemy turn was over. Auto-selecting a character might help there too. - I was having trouble attacking the enemies -- turns out I was just clicking on the tile beneath them rather than their actual sprite. Selecting the tile they're on should probably count as selecting them, and conversely, hovering on their sprite should probably highlight their tile? - I expected the "end turn" button to just pass the current character's turn, not give control over to the enemy.
I know game jams are always about making concessions about what you do and don't have time to implement, so it's understandable that a lot of the above isn't there (sounds like you were quite busy already). Good job getting in what you did, though! I particularly like the animation when the terrain changes -- it's so smooth and lively.
Very interesting tactics-like game! After learning the mechanics, I really enjoyed it. The graphics were really charming and smooth, especially the way it transitioned between different board-states. The sound effects were fitting, and everything was fairly charming!
I did feel like it was kind of limited by the ways it presented information to the player. I never really knew where I could move, or how much it would cost, without mousing over tiles. An overlay would really help in communicating this. As well, with my ranged units, I didn't know where they could shoot, and it took me a while to figure out I could shoot as far as I wanted, so long as nothing was in the way. Communicating this would really improve the game feel. As well, I wanted to be able to click on the units vs only being able to click on their names.
Excellent tactics game (among my favorite genres!). Loved the additional actions that allow you to raise/lower terrain. Good controls but keyboard shortcuts are very much needed especially for frequently use action like movement. Also movement should be the default selected action. Great job!
I liked the idea and the graphics and music set a nice mood. The little intro story also helped a lot for the mood. I did however find it a bit boring but that might be tied with the fact that I didn't really understand how to prevent the crystal from becoming unstable. I get that the actions you do can destabilize it but is there some restabilizing action? And what do the enemies do exactly, I just killed them before they got to the crystal. I feel like there is something really cool in there but due to lack of instructions and maybe a lack of variety in the mechanics it didn't completely come through. Most of my critique sounds negative but overall you did a really good job! Cool game !
The only bad thing is the camera lock on characters. Really good work.
tekk
2021-10-20 11:40
I like the changing ground effect, but its kinda hard when you positioned your ranged troops on the top of something and next round they are useless :/
Incredibly well done visuals. Gameplay was great as well, however, I feel like there should have been more challenge or perhaps even resource management. For a game jam though, this is really well done. I kinda want to see an expanded version of this.
ciaranw
2021-10-21 01:05
@python-b5 Thanks for the feedback - yeah I agree, would have loved to put in a tutorial level or something, but ⏲⏳ :P Was hoping that the pop up boxes would give some assistance, but maybe could have done with more!
@anchorlight Wow thanks for the in depth feedback! Unfortunately we didn't get time to implement the crater/raise abilities. I probably should have removed it during bugfix. Glad you liked it :)
@adafheyesh Thanks for the feedback, those kind of subtle QoL things are really helpful to know about :)
@nardandas Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I wish some kind of overlay was easier to draw. What exists is definitely a compromise, but great to know where the pain points were. Glad you enjoyed it!
@negator2vc Glad you liked it! Although the ability to raise/lower terrain wasn't actually implemented :cry: - The island just gets unstable occasionally :P
@shakedimus Thanks for the feedback, good to know! The kind of mechanics you mention were planned, but unfortunately didn't hook them up in time. @teto also informs me that she did actually put enemy descriptions in there... just I didn't hook them up :face_palm:
@basset-romain Thanks for the feedback, yeah I agree the camera is a bit janky... I don't really have a good feel for how to make a good 3d camera (so if anyone has any good resources, lmk) Maybe I just overcomplicated it by making it rotate around a point :P
@tekk Yeah the pros and cons of an unstable island! Was hoping to get a better way of keeping the island stable, or making permanent modifications so that you could be more confident in your positioning! Would definitely be on the table if we were to make a v2!
@real-flamingicecubegames Thanks for the feedback! For our first 3d game we were very happy with how the visuals turned out! Resource management would be a cool expansion!
Good one
very good game, i really like your concept
rjmarzec
2021-10-21 07:06
A really well done game! I always love a good mix of 2D sprites in a 3D world.
Like others have pointed out, I would have loved to see more! Once you get a grasp on the controls, the game feels a bit stale and slow when it's just move to the enemies and attack. I would have loved to see the terrain moving around having more of a role in the game as well, since for now it sort of just looks pretty sure without feelings like it impacts much.
Still, overall a very solid jam submission!
pikario
2021-10-21 09:16
Great idea based on the theme !
I really like the simple graphics 2D/3D, it looks nice :)
Just one thing that frustrated me was I never know wich Crytal Gardian I selected with left menu, adding them numbers or colors would have helped.
But well done !
pandore
2021-10-21 09:25
Really nice entry ! Some way to differentiate the guardians could have been helpfull but other than that the gammeplay is dope. To be able to pan the camera would have been a plus as it's sometime a little tricky to place the camera in certain situation. I wasn't fan of the music tho but this is a matter of personal taste ;)
Good job !
I liked the concept, but playing was a bit difficult.
Firstly, I noticed the terrain could not be changed from the comments and while playing, which is a shame because this is imo a more important mechanic than the guardians being able to move or attack, since it's the one mechanic that ties to the theme and is pretty unique compared to other games of the same genre.
Secondly, as others stated, the camera was a bit cumbersome from time to time, when the target is close, it works decent enough, but when they are far away it's difficult to control the camera to frame them correctly
Finally, the selection of entities and validation of actions were super sensitive, as in most of the time clicking would not do anything, I would have to click ~20 times for an attack to finally trigger, despite the target cell not being red. I eventually noticed clicking directly on the enemies' sprites worked better for attacking them, but even then it was very finicky.
The game looks awesome, and the concept is interesting enough that despite all those issues I would still like to try an improved version with all the mechanics in and better controls.
I like the and innovation in the theme as well as gameplay But Guys, you can't expect everyone to have godot so try to release to release a windows version!!???
@spider-developer this is a windows version.
Overall game idea is cool but I didn't like the controls. Choosing actions, tiles, players, moving camera was uncomfortable. It needs some work but it has a lot of potential. Thanks! Good luck!
Sry @quanperfect i Installed the zip file!
tau
2021-10-21 16:29
Hey! I love turn based games so this is a really cool little concept that could be amazing in a game like advance wars or something. Love the music, it gives me time to think stuff through. Also love that you can rotate the island/camera, even though it doesn't always rotate the way I want it to :)
I wasn't really sure what it is or what I can do in the beginning, and at some point there were no enemies I could shoot... But I feel like this could become a really cool game.
rengo
2021-10-21 17:28
im too retarded to even open the game
Ooh, this has got some charm! I like a classic turn-based strategy game, and the shifting terrain mechanic is a very cool touch. Others have mentioned the UI a bit, and for the most part I agree there are things that could be streamlined to make the execution more smooth. It is an impressive entry given the length of time.
The art was a nice touch, and the audio was easy on the ears. Really great work with this entry!