Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → The Dungeon Lord
By thoastbot
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 543 | 2.92 | 23 | |
| Fun | 589 | 2.45 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 244 | 3.45 | 23 | |
| Theme | 574 | 2.68 | 21 | |
| Graphics | 533 | 2.78 | 23 | |
| Audio | 1.83 | 5 | ||
| Humor | 414 | 2.33 | 20 | |
| Mood | 556 | 2.47 | 21 |
I'm unable to play your game :(
I'm running the web version in firefox. A few seconds after starting, the game slows down so much that I can't interact with it anymore and things happen many seconds after clicking (if they happen at all). There might (also) be a memory leak as the ram usage keeps rising.
I am pretty sure I am about to get fired by the Hero Association...
This definitely feels pretty unique. I did find it pretty hard to understand what to do. I felt like I was supposed to treat it like a tower defense and that enemies would follow the path but the enemies just kind of seemed to wander off wherever they wanted to. It wasn't really clear visually what the bats or spike traps did either. It kind of gives me Dwarf Fortress vibes, where its something that most people will bounce off of instantly because the rules are fairly complex and the graphics are very simple but there could be a lot of potential depth for people willing to dig into it. Regardless, it's pretty impressive considering you didn't use an engine or libraries. High scoring for innovation for sure.
So i looked into a memory leak/unplayable bug, thanks to @frib - fixed a little thing with my graphic draw function. I hope now its playable for everyone <3
The code zip for the release is unchanged, i added a link to the bugfix zip and updated it on the website so people can play the game without destroying their ram x)
Awesome! I always wanted to make a game like this. Takes a minute to get used to how to play, and i'm not sure how much of the initial tutorial stuck in my head cos it was a lot :') I think I broke the path finding with too many 4way loops, maybe my dungeon was just too fun they didn't want to leave. One point, not really a criticism. I closed the browser at some point, so had to reload the game and lost all my 30+ min progress :( don't know if you intend on a autosave that would fix this. That said, I'll def be coming back to this after the jam.
Interesting game ! Hard to play and hard to master It's sad, something is missing.. audio perhaps ? But pretty good experience ! Nice job
Pretty neat! I don't hear any sound, is that expected (maybe opt-out of the category, if so?).
Even with only a few traps and monsters, my heroes seem to really get stuck... they encounter one, and most of the time decide to walk backwards, and then encounter it again, so never leave... I've spent quite a while just waiting around, and _finally_ had a couple heroes leave, earning about 500 when they did ^_^. Doesn't seem there was much I could have done to encourage them (I already had them sticking to one path, they just like to go backwards...).
I like the simplicity of style and concept, after just a little while it was pretty clear how everything worked for me. Good job!
I found this one a little too hard to get used to. Maybe it would have been better if I actually played on a phone where I could use the power of 2 thumbs instead of 1 mouse? I think a video/gif of you playing the game to show how to get started would have been a godsend.
Thanks for the entry!!
To all of you who cant hear the music. I couldn´t find out what the problem here is, maybe it has something todo with browser configuration, not sure :<
Would opt-out of the music category now to prevent further confusion, but it is "required" - so either you hear music and rate it, or u dont and know that there should be - and just skip the voting for it. <3
Very unique concept, I had fun making a dungeon.
The game feels like it has a lot of depth to it, the idea is quite interesting, the sprites are cute, sadly i can't hear the music :/ I really like that you only get money once the heroes leave. I want to understand this game and play it more but there are issues with it which make it a bit hard for me to continue doing that.
Now comes "a bit" of (hopefully) constructive feedback, (in the form of my thoughts while playing this game).
Initial thoughts after 10-15 minutes:
The controls feel a bit clunky and slow, which was probably the biggest turn off for me. Even though this was designed for mobile, i think it would work much better with keyboard controls that allow quick choosing of things to place, rotate (maybe have keys 1-8 assigned to things you can place, R to rotate etc), so you can get used to them and eventually breeze through placing down a complex dungeon. I'm not really sure what the heroes do, and how they plan, i thought they walk along routes, or try to get to the end, but most of them are just walking around the map randomly for me. It would be nice to either describe their routing somewhere in the instructions, or show their planned routes in game?
I'm not sure what the effect of traps, monsters, boulders or treasure chests are on the heroes either, and in general it feels like whatever i do to the dungeon, even if it's interesting or cool, will not have much effect on what happens.
more thoughts after 10 more minutes and understanding some things:
okay turns out placing a monster on the road makes it impassable, which causes characters to go off the route, but where do i put them then? Are boulders just walls? if so, i'd recommend making a sprite/name that fits the functionality a bit more
This seems like a bit of a bug in the routing code, but the heroes will route in the following way, and then get stuck in front of a boulder, just 4 steps shy of the exit, not moving anywhere
dungeon.png
And i just noticed this is a compo game, which makes it quite obvious why and how these issues could have arised.
(if you have any questions, or want me to look at the game a bit more, feel free to tag me)
Paint <3
The idea of this game is certainly unique and it can improve. It seems that this game requires a lot of planning, but when the heroes' speed is slow and you don't have any money left, it can be painful to wait for them. A couple of suggestion for me is that you can decrease the spawning time of the heroes and also increase their speed. Other than that and my some other suggestions that fit into your things-to-be-done, great work!
I had some trouble figuring out how to place the tiles, but after i got the hang of it, i had a lot of fun!
Great job! I love to see Javascript games like this one (it's nodejs who pays the bills in my house \o/)
Just missed some sound effects...
@peter-ondus
Thanks for the great feedback, helped me a lot to finally understand the problem players have with my game. I added an extended tutorial to understand better how the game works.
I should have really said somewhere that this ain't no tower defense game, and that u have to build objects into the path, so heroes can interact with them.
I feel like the biggest thing i have to improve in for the next Ludum Dare, would be to make better tutorials (or decide on easier games, but i cant seem to find the joy in this, if i´m not challenged on the coding part)
@thoastbot Yeah i think the problem is (well the problem i encountered was) that placing a monster in the middle of the road just makes heroes go off in a random direction, so i assumed that's not how i should do it, so i put it next to the road instead, which then did nothing...
I think a good solution could be for the monsters etc. to be independent of the paths, so that you have a "path layer" and an "object layer", i.e. a monster/trap/chest can be placed on a path with the path staying there.
And that last paragraph is just an absolute mood, all the comments under my game just say controls hard.
It also might be worth to give the heroes a better routing so that they won't wonder aimlessly around empty space just for you to then herd them to the exit, like i did (at some point i just gave them a pasture to hang around in and then i randomly routed some of them outside to get money)
This was the most complicated game I've seen this LD, and I wasn't COMPLETELY sure about what I was doing even after some time in it, but I like it. It really has some old mobile gaming vibe to it, the graphics are nice and clean the idea of bulding a dungeon bring back some Dungeon Keeper's memories.