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Super Mowser Bros
Super Mowser Bros
By jrevel, Clement_Feanor, guilloteam and Michael Assing
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 535 | 3.63 | 150 | |
| Fun | 882 | 3.20 | 150 | |
| Innovation | 231 | 3.76 | 150 | |
| Theme | 405 | 3.89 | 150 | |
| Graphics | 133 | 4.40 | 151 | |
| Humor | 182 | 3.89 | 151 | |
| Mood | 528 | 3.64 | 149 | |
Comments
This game is incredibly innovative and a cool and unique take on the theme. It's fun, but there are a few issues that I have caused by bugs. The most important of which is that destroyed farms still provide income. This means that resource management never becomes a problem, and gameplay eventually becomes just spamming fully garrisoned upgraded castles everywhere.
Aside from the accidental downwards difficulty curve, there are a few UI bugs: - Some nodes can't be selected unless players are zoomed in on another node because the arrow keys block them. - Some of the hills in the background draw over UI elements and make building more difficult. - The final garrison slot can't be filled while a castle is being upgraded - When at certain triple-digit-or-more numbers for the not-goombas, the text bugs out and goes down a line.
These bugs are minor overall though, and don't really impact the gameplay that much, just thought it'd be worth mentioning.
I really like the Bario and Mowser designs, and the overall hand-crafted look of the game is really pretty. The music was good and fitting, albeit quite repetitive, and the UI was overall fairly clean and easy to understand.
Gameplay is fun until resources stop becoming a problem, visuals are great, there's a lot to praise this game about.
Great entry!
(Here's where I was at before I decided to stop.) whereimat.png
Its a very great idea but the gameplay seems to be to easy. Farms are producing even when they are destroyed (Bug?). So you got way too much Coins :). Would be more interesting when there were more resource managing. (Or its a bug) Graphic is brilliant :)
Brilliant game design! This is a really innovative take on the theme and I love it!
Graphics are perfect and brimming with flavor.
Music has good energy but could use a little more variety/length.
Probably the biggest issue is the interface isn't designed for each easy player flow. If it were possible to do things with buttons or hotkeys instead of cumbersome clicking and dragging, I think it would feel less like there is a tension between the strategy aspect and simply mouse dragging capabilities.
Fantastic jam game regardless!
This game is great. I love the art-style and the feeling. Great job
Really great little mood ! Very clever use of the theme :D
larsdu
2022-04-05 07:10
The best artwork of any game I've seen so far
This is a fun idea for the theme, I never wanted ~~Mario~~ I mean Bario to fail this badly before. Really tense game at the beginning too! The music is great but it gets repetitive pretty fast.
The art is amazing ! The concept is very interesting, maybe you can improve the interface to made the game experience more better, and put more sound fx too. But it's impressive for GameJam entry ! Great job !
fun idea, I like the cardboard graphics thing. I am not too sure I got how it works tho. it seems like a reverse mario game, which seems like an awesome idea. I think I create a few fortresses but not sure if I did all right. Captura de Tela 2022-04-05 às 05.34.05.png
there it seems the princess had a mustache, lol it was a nice experience this one =)
The concept of the game is so damn cool, and visually you did a wonderfull job. As it was pointed before, to me the biggest problem are the ressource management which doesn't provide a real challenge, meaning that we can just spam castle to easily delay the inevitable end for a very, very long time. But except this, no major problem, and the game feels so polished it's astonishing. Really a wonderfull job, especially with the art direction which is simply excellent. Congrats!
I enjoyed the art style a lot! Looks very cute.
It took me about 4-5 plays until I understood what I had to do. But I have to admit that I didn't read the tutorial properly. :D
I think the most tedious thing for me was dragging the units into the slots. I wished I could just click on a slot to fill them.
Very good entry. Thank you :)
Brilliant idea, the gameplay works really well and art is so good! I think it's a bit easy right now (I stopped playing after 15min and Bario still had 8 castles to cross, full of garrisonned unit.
Is there a difference between green turtles unit and spikes? I tried to alternate between them for the sake of "level design" but wasn't sure if it had a purpose.
It really feels like an idea you can expand infinitly, with "powerup mushroom" you have to put in some structures that will buff Bario, teleporters, and all the classic Mario features twisted from the perspective of Bowser.
Great work!
Great idea to flip the game around. I hope dearly some big corporation that starts with a N allows this game to stay online.
martinek
2022-04-05 15:35
Great idea. I especially love the paper like graphics.
Came for the aesthetics stayed for the castles.
itooh
2022-04-05 16:44
What incredible visuals! Not only the drawings are great (I love Mowser chill attitude), but the paper look works perfectly!
The game loop still might need some work though. I quickly realized that I could go on forever, without having any resource issue. It is nice to be able to place a castle one level in advance, but this means that it provides enough time to plant farms and tower way beyond Bario, and until he reaches them we have amassed enough money to build a castle even further with more farms and resources… Basically: the more you win, the easier the game becomes! It might need some restrictions, higher prices for some resources, or an increasing difficulty to make sure that the run don't last forever.
But it is still a fun concept. I liked that most interaction work with drag'n drop (even though I didn't got it immediately). Placing pawns on the map like this is playful. Good job for this surprising entry!
squaxcom
2022-04-05 16:49
My fav jam so far! The graphics are so cute and the gameplay is good!
Obviously the graphics, graphic style and sound are fantastic as others have said. But unfortunately I don't think the game is much fun as of now. This is firstly due to balancing: I was able to pump out a few buildings and than let the game run for 20 minutes (!!) without doing anything and did not lose. And secondly the controls are a bit cumbersome: why make me drag all units from the left side way over to the slots in the building instead of providing a drop down to chose a unit, for example?
I also think I broke the game. Mowser and the princess got stuck in between screens 2 and 3 and Bario happily fought through all (empty) buildings and then ran out of the last screen but I did not lose and the time was still running:
bario.png
tim-sims
2022-04-05 20:18
This was an incredible game, really cool concept! I honestly just thought it didn't feel inevitable! It felt like you could out-build Bario indefinitely. But still super fun!
arqitech
2022-04-05 22:24
Wow! The artwork is amazing! :star:
Everything was explained very well in the tutorial. The difficulty of the game could be tweaked a bit though.
i love this idea! it fits really well with the theme, i guess it is inevitable that babio always saves cheap 🤪
the game explains itself really well. i did figure out around the 10 minute mark that the game was pretty easy. i made quite a few castles very spread apart, so i guess i could play it kinda like cookie clicker... i'll check on it tomorrow and see if babio makes it 👨🔧
karbirus
2022-04-06 01:56
I really like the idea, but I feel that after some time it gets repetitive and easy to win. I don't really know how I would have done it better, but for a jam it's a really solid and complete game!
Was a bit on the easy side, but scored a lot of points with its charme and graphics and the parody aspect of it all. Great entry!
kimberly
2022-04-06 14:40
Amazing visuals! Definitely not without some bugs, but that's to be expected with such a tight deadline. Kinda wish the music loop was a little longer as well.
It might have been nice to only let a player open up a single drag/drop UI, and to simply let clicking the tokens also add the monsters to those spots. Drag and drop always feels a little clunky to me.
Probably the funniest game I've played so far, though. Love the parody idea.
leom
2022-04-06 15:11
I played 20mn before i quit, with 200+ of each units in reserve and a little bored. Took me long time before undersand how to build something (the drag and drop) and after that it was way too easy. The 2D graphics are some of the best i see so far, animations are nice too and the game is well polished, very good work on that, but it lack of fun for me.
@billnotic thank you very much for this detailed feedback! We made a small update to fix some of those issues (mainly the fact that destroyed farms still provided units), but it's still farm from enough to curve the difficulty. It would need some time to balance everything right, which we definitly didn't have in the jammin' hours!
Thank you very much for playing!
Thank you very much everyone for trying the game! There are obviously many bugs and balance issues still, but we must thank everyone for the feedbacks, we are considering all of them, and hope to do better next time!
@hartvichio hahaha thank you for that laugh!
@squaxcom @kimberly that means a lot, thank you so much!
I recorded myself playing, message me on the Jam’s discord @ Dark Peace and I’ll send it to you. I loved the game but I stopped playing when I saw I wouldn't lose anyway.
chertkov
2022-04-06 17:33
The artstyle is clearly the main source of enjoyment of this game and it really hit the right spot for me. It is goofy and it uses the source material very well. But the gameplay is such a slog; every minute just feels like a waste of time. The game is probably endless, I personally got bored on the 10th minute of minmaxing.
elendow
2022-04-06 19:44
Awesome art style and cool gameplay, but the game is a bit slow and monotonous for my taste.
sawtan
2022-04-06 20:34
I love the twist on the good ol' story, the game was a treat for the eyes, and sure made me expel a few giggles on the way, the difficulty of the game is a bit on the low side as I've seen in the comments as well, but I treat it more as a fun interactive play on one of our most beloved characters and trope! Great job all in all, polished and sweet!
@bottled-up-dark-peace Thank you very much! I'll message you!
@chertkov @elendow thank you for the feedback. Sorry for that haha, we didn't take as much time as you wanted to for the balance of the game. We originaly planned for something like 5 minutes playthroughs for a standard first playthrough, that you could've push a little bit more when you'd know the basics of the game. I think that we mainly did not anticipate how much time consuming balncing would be!
@sawtan your comment is treat aswell, thank you so much! Glad you liked it!
Wow, excellent and funny art style ! Nice tutorial too; very nice entry, great job :thumbsup:
boathd
2022-04-06 21:47
Chad bowser
Really nice art and audio!
The game has some bugs but that's fine with me!
It'll be better if there could be more content to play with. Love it!
tested
2022-04-07 01:38
cool concept (nintendo may sue you)
@boathd indeed haha
@lighty-the-light @forgin-bits thank you very much for playing, glad you liked it!
@tested thanks! I don't think this will have nearly enough reach to be seen by Nintendo, and we don't plan to push this further (or at least, not with the Nintendo related story and visuals)
Fun game, but I gotta say that Bario fella isnt a very pro-gamer guy. I watched him struglle with the same three minions for about 10 minutes. At some point I just felt sorry fo rthe guy.
Really cool concept guys!
tested
2022-04-07 11:42
@guilloteam that was a joke about how Nintendo sues everything
borabee
2022-04-07 13:00
I really really liked the concept and humour of this game, and the art is absolutely wonderful!! Like others said, though, I also found it too easy and ended up beign able to build castles waaay ahead of Bario, which took the fun out of it. And I didn't like having to drag tokens all the way to the other side of the screen, but, otherwise, I though clicking the arrows to change screens was a very inventive interaction and added to the rush of it!
I can really understand the challenge of balancing out the game during the time of the jam. My own game also had problems with balancing and lack of time allocated for playtesting haha. Imo it's one of the hardest things on a jam, when you're too focused on finishing assets and features there's never enough time to test and balance it out! :(
@tested wasn't sure haha, fair point :)
@daniel-klautsch hahaha, game is by default in the hardest mode for poor Bario! Thanks for playing!
@borabee Thank you very much for your feedback! It feels good to know that it's a general struggle in jams. However we'll try to do better next time by planning ahead!
yusovv
2022-04-07 18:28
Great graphics, I'm impressed!
@yusovv thank you very much!
This is really well done. Looks very polished, and very approachable. I liked the music and the art style very much! I think this is one of the best ones I've seen on the jam so far. Well done!
@guy-girmonsky That means a lot, thank you very much! Glad you enjoyed playing!
flenzil
2022-04-07 22:44
Love the style and the subversion of the tropes. Music loop could be longer though. Once I figured out what to do it was pretty easy, since it was very easy to continuously build a castle far away. It is a jam game though so well done!
@flenzil Thank you very much for playing!
korvack
2022-04-08 18:16
The art is splendid! The sound is nice but quickly repetitive. The interface is very clean. It's a shame that the gameplay quickly becomes too easy. Bario would have to learn from his mistakes and become stronger and stronger! It's really good job for so little time, congratulations to the whole team =)
I really like the idea and the graphics are great!
Awesome Job!
I did have a few usability challenges with the game. Click would not register some times. Also the tutorial had really small text / display compared to the game, could be scaled up.
@korvack the whole team thank you! There are indeed many balance issues which we couldn't address during the jam time, thanks for you feedback!
@cary-stanley thanks! Sorry for the inconvenience haha! Concerning the tutorial, I think that it was rushed just before the finish line, it could totally be scaled up almost twice as its current size.
wakobu
2022-04-09 09:01
Congrats ! Beautiful graphics and innovative idea. The game is a bit unbalanced but this is definitely super-hard to get a balanced game in a LD.
whirlguy
2022-04-10 12:08
Definitely not inspired by a certain plumber game! Very different from what I innitially expected though. First of all, I like that you star as the villain and how this game plays with the innevitability of the hero coming to save the princess. It's also not a platformer but instead a strategy game where you create buildings and minions to stop the hero. I thought it was a funny idea and really appreciated all the attention to detail. @clement-feanor and @michael-assing did a wonderful job on the art. I guess the BGM got annoying after a few minutes and it would have been nice if there were more SFX. Props to @jrevel for making the game feel so polished! This is a wonderful homage, thanks for sharing this on my stream!
Incredibly fun game with gorgeous visuals (I do love some paper a-certain-plumber visuals). The only thing I'd change is the balance (maybe make things take longer to build, and don't give back resources once something is built?) and honestly, it'd be a perfect game. The humor is so on point, I love that it takes on the theme in a kind of cheeky, "why does the player always inevitably win", kind of way!
@wakobu thank you very much for playing!
@whirlguy thank you so much for the feedback, it's very much appreciated! And thanks for playing the game on stream, it was super entertaining to watch!
@realtanhen We are so glad you liked the game that much! Thank you for the feedback; many things could be done conserning the balance indeed! You totally got the catch about our take on the theme, always nice to read that!
This was such a good jam idea for the theme. It was pretty fun and pays tribute to the classic. I think the theme of making dungeons/fights for the hero is something that needs to be explored more in games. There were a few bugs but that is to be expected with a jam, the vision definitely shines through! Keep on making games \o/
@frozenfire92 thank you so much, thrilled that you enjoyed it! We'll keep on crafting some for sure!
Great concept and execution, a lot of polish on this one. After losing once and understanding the rules, I played for a long time and eventually it had been like 20 minutes and I hadn't lost and needed to go do other things haha. You should implement an online leaderboard! Also sometimes the UI got on the way of dropping tokens, and Mowser stopped moving quite early on and Bario just ran past them lol
I really love the art. You managed to make it look basically as nice as the newer paper mario - not an easy feat for a game jam.
v high marks from me!
Awesome concept, the art is the best I've seen in any LD so far! The music is great too. The game itself was fun to play, but became easy quite early. Still fun but got to ~30m without much issue. I know the feeling of wanting another 48-72hrs to make it shine, and feel like this could have been even better with some more playtesting and polish. I did notice a couple of bugs: - Text wrapping on unit numbers, spreads across 2 lines - Bario fight UI element got out of whack for me, I assume it's Unity being a pain with how it positions them: Bario.png Great effort and would love to see a post jam version.
ulisses
2022-04-11 10:52
Amazing, all the design of this game is like a demo of a complete game. Like others said, I would love to see a post jam version too. Art style, sound design and game design are so unique... Congratulations, this is awesome!
perrin
2022-04-11 11:29
Huge fan of this one of my fav games of the jam I've played so far. Would definitely love to see this developed further.
The interface is pretty confusing at first, I did skip the tutorial because I'm not good at remembering a wall of text before getting into a game. Would have preferred in-context tutorial prompts in the game itslef.
Only complaint is probably that you needed to tie it to the theme of LD50. If this had end points when you'd completed worlds I think that would be a lot more satisfying than the endless death march.
Obviously after playing for a while I got ahead of the economy and could play as long as I wanted but that's to be expected within the limits of a weekend jam.
I do hope you consider working on this more, I think there's something really special in the making here.
@brotherst Thank you very much for playing and for the feedback! Leaderboard is a great idea, but we would probably have to fix the balance beofre making one haha!
@furtive-pygmy Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! You can follow us on itchio for a potential post jam version (very unvertain for now), and for next jam games (and the previous ones haha)! :smile: https://itch.io/profile/guilloteam
@ulisses Thank you so much! Glad you liked it!
@perrin Thank you for trying it out! I do agree for the tutorial, we planned to do an in-context showing the drag and drop mechanics, but had to choose the simpler one for deadline reasons.
For the theme: we planned to have much shorter games (around 5 to 10 minutes games, at the end of which Mario would win anyway, but the longer you delay him the better), but we struggled to balance things right in order to do so. We would have needed 5 to 10 hours at least to make this better haha :smile:
A deeper work on this is in consideration, but we would need to change the sprites and the too obvious references to Nintendo, for legal purposes. We'll try to keep you in touch if we ever take the decision!
Great game! Really like the twist of the original story, that you use the main enemy as a main character of the game! Nice mechanics, but I'm just too slow for tower defence games, and thats why I was not able to enjoy your game for 100%, but thats my personal problem, you did just great! Thanks!
@leokrechmer Thanks for playing! Nah you are not too slow haha, the game has some mechanical and UX issues, alongside with the balance ones. Thanks for the feedback!
Great game! Thanks for submitting :) Here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1452837899
@mateusboga Thank you very much for playing it on stream, was super entertaining to watch! And thanks for the feedbacks :smile:
Love the graphics and idea behind the game! Would love to see a more polished follow up, perhaps with an ever expanding arsenal of buildings/units.
What a great idea! Love the art/music, and gameplay! I agree w/everyone else that it's too easy, but it's hard to balance that sort of thing in just a weekend.
Loved the game, but I felt like it was a little too easy. I ended up stopping when I got 4 screens ahead of Mario and had more units then I could use
Amazing game with a big amount of work in order to create a beautiful aesthetic. Immediately we understand that you are experienced. I like the graphics which remind me of the original Nintendo license. The main gameplay is not usual. I had fun playing. You made a solid entry. Well done. I wish you the best ++
Great entry, I adore the visuals and the audio loop is just ... so smooth... it doesn't get old at all ! You've mentioned difficulty scaling in chat, but this is a game jam ! Obviously it's not trivial to get it right the first time... And I still love it :) There still is a genuine feeling of urgency, so you build maniacally only THEN to realize... it's all chill. Very well made, one of my favorites so far !!! :) Congratulations !
syafire
2022-04-11 23:22
Hello J_revel,
Thanks for hanging out on stream and sharing your game! I loved the play off of Mario and the art is super pretty and well done. The concept for the game was really nice as well. The hardest part was knowing what I was supposed to be doing. Even after reading the written tutorial it still was not enough to introduce me to the mechanics of the game. I think the UI maybe could have helped explain this a bit better as well.
Also the arrows moving side to side were in the way of the beginning building circles on each new level. I think maybe a walk through/play along for the tutorial would have been better then a written tutorial or sort of a combo of written and showing what's happening and how its being done. I think this could really clear up the communication to the player.
Overall cool game idea, great art just some communication /user experience would help a lot with giving the player the tools they need to succeed.
I liked how you flipped the script on Mario. This would have also fit the "You are the bad guy" theme which gets suggested a hundred times every single jam. Overall, the game is very solid and has a lot of potential, even as a commercial game (obviously, you might want to change the character names to delay the inevitable, brutal beatdowns by Nintendo lawyers in a courthouse alleyway).
In terms of graphics, it is top-notch. Professional artstyle, nice animations and overall great (aside from the default-looking progress bars). In terms of music and sound it was also solid as well, although the music does get a bit annoying after a while since it's so upbeat and repeats on a loop with no variation. The gameplay is a ton of fun as well.
My only issue with it is, as mentioned by many others, the UX is confusing right off the bat and I had no idea what I was doing for the first 5 minutes. I realized far too late the first time around that I had to literally drag the tokens into the slots to build stuff. The management idea is actually really cool, but the UX is so confusing that I had a hard time playing even after I figured out how to.
Despite that, it was a really fantastic, solid and playable entry that even has commercial potential (which is fairly rare to see). Great work!
okamit
2022-04-12 14:46
Really like this flipped take on Mario, making it into a kind of tower defence game. All of the change suggestions I have have already been said, so I hope you make a postjam version with balancing for a more challenging game and perhaps a few more towers, troops etc to make it more tactical and the different units feel like they are needed to succeed.
Love the aestetics and the clean artwork and the core gameplay. Great work!
Wow, cool idea and love the execution! Was a bit difficult to understand how the controls worked at first, but got the hang of it eventually. Love the art and the music really made it come to live. Awesome!
erkberg
2022-04-12 19:26
Really enjoyed playing your game and having you on stream today! Here's the link if you want to rewatch it: https://youtu.be/n5c0GndY1SY
4ahizon
2022-04-12 19:43
I love that your team flip the narrative gameplay. It is a very innovative and creativity thinking of what we already know of a beloved icon.
This is a very nicely done entry! The gameplay is probably one of the most well-done in the game jam, in terms of tower defense-like games. I initially got confused because I didn't know you had to assign soldiers to construct stuff, or that you could drag the soldiers to the little circles to assign them to buildings. I'm pretty sure you went over that in the tutorial, and that the information just dropped out of my head when I started playing. The graphics are very cute and the audio is charming. I did notice some areas where it looked like parts of the environment were being rendered over UI elements that made it difficult to place enemies where I intended-it wasn't a massive issue, but it's something that could be polish up. Overall, excellent entry. Here's where I made it before I decided to stop playing:
Capture.PNG
@drentsoft @saintchristopher777 @rosymaple @geckoo1337 Thank you very much for playing, and for giving us feedback! We are glad you liked the game!
@javasaurus To be honest, seeing you play our little game put a smile on our faces! Thank you very much for the stream, it was great! Happy that you enjoyed it!
@syafire Thank you very much for the stream, and for the detailed feedback you gave! It's helping a ton! Totally agree for the poor UI/UX design, we'll make sure to focus more on that next time. I think that we underestimated the amount of work that should go into it!
@amastryukov Thank you very much for this dedicated feedback. We'll take every bit of knowledge if we consider to push this further; honored that you think the game has some commercial potential. We'll think about it! Glad you liked it!
@okamit Thank you very much for the kind words!
@koningmathijs Thank you for your feedback! Sorry for the UX, we'll make sure to improve it for post Jam version / next jam!
@erkberg Thank you for playing it on stream! It was, as always, a blast to see someone playing it live :smile: Thanks for the link, and for the feedbacks!
@4ahizon Glad you liked it!
@proxy-games Thank you very much for the kind words and the detailed feedback. Happy to realise that there is still so much things to learn thanks to this awesome community!
Really neat idea! I also really liked the artstyle.
Some notes: The gameplay is fun, but it's pretty easy. You can easily get 3 or more screens ahead. I also ran into a bug in the 1.1 version. Bario got to the princess on screen 6 and didn't trigger a Game Over.
With some difficulty tweaks, this could be a really fun game.
jrevel
2022-04-13 12:40
@corrupt-spaghetti Thank you for your feedback, we are currently trying some things to improve the balancing, a new version should be ready at the end of the week ! We'll notify everyone when it's ready, we'll need feedback on that :)
fis
2022-04-15 09:31
Solid game - really nice and wonderful graphics. Regarding user experience it is a little bit annoying to click around the screen the entire time and suddenly the building process is done - so you feel like your effort was in vain. Pretty much the same as in our last tower defense game - and I'm pretty sure your game would feel and work like a charm on a tablet!
alks
2022-04-15 12:25
Such a nice game! Simple game but still rewarding! Art is really nice!! Goodwork!
jzucc12
2022-04-15 12:38
Such a cool and creative game. Great art, humor, and theme implementation. Fantastic job! I did encounter 2 bugs just for you to know. At one point Bario was no longer visible on the bottom track. The other was that when Bario finally caught up to me, instead of getting a game over he just ran past the last castle and eventually went offscreen to who knows where. Didn't detract from my experience at all though.
I really like this! The visual style is great and very polished, the music is nice and punchy and uplifting. I love the idea of base building to stop the hero following too! My only complaint really is the game is a bit too fast and having to click on and then drag into each area was a little finicky with a touchpad. I really like the whole Mario world course map thing being turned into strategy though!
This feels like something that would suit touch screens really well and a great little game to try when you have a few mins. Great work with this!!
A very fun presentation that practically demands a click. The concept is immediately engaging and a fresh take on a formula we all know.
The concept was very unique and I struggled to understand what to do on first playthrough. Honestly that's not bad though, as the 2nd playthrough went very easily and I was outpacing Bario by 2 or 3 screens without a sweat. Honestly for a jam, even though you got a lot of comments about how easy it is, it's probably better to have that than the other way around so that people can experience all your content, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.
It felt really good to upgrade buildings, especially castles to gain slots. I skimmed the comments but I don't see anything talking about the enemy types - I couldn't tell the difference between the different workers/tokens at all. I ASSUME the evolved ones were better than the mushrooms, but when I stared at them in action, I couldn't actually figure out any differences. Can you explain what the differences were here?
Overall the game was very interesting and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the feeling of building out the world map, which is something we've traversed through many times from the opposite angle. I like how much potential this game has as a post-jam thing as well. Great job!
This had a really fun presentation. Paper mario kinda graphics with a tower defense type of mechanic where you're playing as MOWser lmao. Really liked that.
The graphics were great, music and mood were great.
Assigning builders to the nodes was a bit finicky. My first playthrough I thought I didn't understand the game because the guy didn't stay when I assigned him (only happend on the left 2 slots.) - it was finnicky enough that I started only assigning things on the right side to avoid the frustration.
Really clever addition that you could see Bario's progress in each building type at the bottom, everything was very clear and I always knew what was going on. Pretty difficult to accomplish but you nailed it.
There seemed to be a backwards difficulty curve where it got easier and easier over time. Needed some balance tweaking.
Overall really awesome entry! Well done
@fis Thank you very much for your feedback! Indeed it would suit better for a tablet; we are considering leaving the drag and drop mechanic behind for the post-jam build, and replace it with something more user friendly for computers.
@alks thank you for playing!
@jzucc12 thank you for the kind words and the bug report! We'll fix this soon!
@sarah-alexa thank you for playing and for the feedback! Yeah, we figured that the drag and drop wasn't the best idea and didn't quite fit the core gameplay. Will be fixed in the next version!
Interesting entry. After getting a bit of unit generation it becomes really easy to stall Bario, but overall really fun.
Really like this take on Mario, loove the cardboard aestetics and the clean artwork, the core gameplay and the music is nice too. Great entry!
Fantastic presentation, the graphics are absolutely stellar. I like how you went for the artstyle of modern Paper Mario games while combining it with a grittier more comical take on the character designs.
Maybe it's just me, but gameplay is a bit confusing and I wish that it was a bit clearer how to play the game. I'm not a huge fan of lengthy tutorials at the beginning of the game, I'd much rather the game show me that stuff via gameplay. But obviously that's harder to do when you're constrained for time in a game jam. Really innovative and interesting concept, however.
@peachtreeoath Thank you very much for this detailed feedback! Glad you liked the game. I kinda do agree on the fact that it's better to have a "too" easy game for the jam format, however here it ruins the theme adherence haha...
For the units, we didn't explain at all, lacked time (just should've put a note on the tutorial, but we forgot): green units build faster, and the red spiky ones are better defenders.
Glad you enjoyed the game! We are working on a first post-jam version which will set the balance right. After that, we are considering making a "true" game based on the mechanics. We'll keep you updated!
@sasquatchbstudios Thank you very much for playing and giving feedback! Sorry for the frustration about the drag & drop, it will be fixed haha!
Yeah, balance isn't there at all. We originally wanted that a game would last about 5 to 10 minutes, at the end of which Bario would inevitably catch up with the player. We are working on a fixed version which should come out soon, stay tuned!
@krammetje Thank you for playing and for the feedback! Yeah, it's currenlty too easy to get too ahead from Bario; post-jam version which is comming soon will fix that, stay tuned!
@hugo-kieffer Thank you for the kind words, glad you liked it!
@shrillwhip That's so kind, thank you so much!
It isn't only you, the gameplay is quite confusing at the moment. We are working on a post-jam version, and hope to do better in that regard!
maxi1324
2022-04-17 14:24
Really great game Love the idea and the Art Style is also very nice
This game is great! It's really fun to play and a great take on the theme! The art is also amazing! I think I found a bug tho... Once Bario got to my last tower, where princess Cheap was, he just kept going forward, even though I had no more buildings or units. He just left princess Cheap there hahaha xD Amazing game nonetheless ^^
Very creative idea! I like how the reversal of roles in the Mario game fits well in this theme! The presentation is great, the game shines from art and juiciness.
I did struggle at the beginning to understand how places were build, and that you had to drag and drop the creatures to build as well, otherwise the "in progress" actually meant that nothing was being built. Once this was solved, the game gets easy quickly, since you can go arbitrarily far, and Bario doesn't get stronger, so you end up becoming too powerful.
Great game nonetheless, the core part really seems like almost a released game. Congratulations.
Really nice game which is unfortunately let down by balance issues. Bario is not as good as his real-world counterpart and so cannot get through the castles fast enough to be a real threat, so I was able to just build huge amounts of farms with the odd castle at every screen and get a huge number of troops. Also I found having to drag tokens around when doing things to be a little tedious, I think being able to just click them would have been nicer. Nitpicks aside through, I really liked the art and the gameplay felt very polished, so overall great job!
@maxi1324 Thank you very much!
@solanumteam Thanks, glad you liked it! Hahaha yeah we sax that bug a few times, it will be fixed soon in our post-jam version! Bario is like "f*ck it, I'm done, ciao loosers"
@albertnez Thank you very much for playing and giving feedback!
Yeah sorry for that inconvenience, many little bugs were left in the jam version, and balance isn't set right. It will be fixed tho, in a post-jam version soon to come! Stay tuned!
@baconinvader Thank you for this feedback! Yeah, balance isn't right at all, and makes the game way to easy. I do also agree about the grag and drop being tedious, sorry about that! We are considering tweaking it for something smoother and less dexterity-driven in the post jam version, which should arrive soon!
harksa
2022-04-17 23:58
I really like the idea. The concept suits very well to the game jam ! I tested the game jam release and I got into it for like 15 mins before I honestly got bored, sorry ! It was too easy for me. You just have to keep building a castle in the last point and put more castle on the way thereafter. The music is cute but very, very repetitive. The graphics are pretty adorable ! I think there was a bug because it seems like my units didn't do anything against Bario. Did I miss something ? Otherwise it's a nice game. Good job !
moooks
2022-04-18 01:00
Interesting concept, I like the twist on Mario and I thought the art was pretty cool. Although I think to be fun, it requires more gameplay variety. Although it was a very cute game.
joe40001
2022-04-18 04:21
Web build is too laggy for me to play.
Very neat concept! And Super innovative!!! 5/5
@joe40001 sorry about that! Strange, it seems that you are the first one having this issue. Which browser are you using? Have you consider downloading the game?
@joe40001 sorry about that! Strange, it seems that you are the first one having this issue. Which browser are you using? Have you consider downloading the game?
@joe40001 sorry about that! Strange, it seems that you are the first one having this issue. Which browser are you using? Have you consider downloading the game?
@joe40001 sorry about that! Strange, it seems that you are the first one having this issue. Which browser are you using? Have you consider downloading the game?
joe40001
2022-04-18 08:03
@guilloteam I'm on Chrome. I've noticed many web builds don't work great for me. I can check out the DL link though, thanks.
@joe40001 I use Chrome as well and didn't notice any lag, that's odd. Thanks for taking time to DL if you do!
joe40001
2022-04-18 09:46
For some reason it runs waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better for me on firefox. Anyway, really liked the idea. Great art, great design, good game!
If I had any criticisms it would be that (particularly on trackpad) having to click and drag across the whole screen can be a bit much. But honestly had I plugged in my mouse that probably wouldn't be bad.
Great job.
@joe40001 I've heard it can happen, great that you could play! Thank you very much for the kind words, glad that you enjoyed the game!
@harksa Thank you very much for playing! We never saw this bug, thank you for bringing it up, we'll look forward to fix it!
@moooks Thank you for the feedback! It surely does miss several thing gameplaywise to be fun, we'll work on that! :smile:
@dgspitzer Thank you so much, glad you enjoyed the game!
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Hello everyone ! First, thanks a lot for all the feedback you gave us on our game!
There were two main things that could make the game more enjoyable : difficulty, and UX. We decided to work on difficulty first, because it’s what needed the least amount of code rework. But balancing is hard, so please give us as much feedback as you can!
The game is here, **you can select the jam or the post-jam version when you launch the webgl game**. By the way if people want to know how @jrevel did that, we might provide a usable webgl template soon that enable to do multi version easily.
The next patch will fix the horrendous UX that confused so many people, so stay tuned! You can follow us on itch.io to get notified when it is ready!
And tell us how long you survived in this version, the current record is 17:03! Enjoy!
https://guilloteam.itch.io/supermowserbros
Played the update. Definitely seems to be balanced better. I made it around 10 minutes this time. I agree the UI is probably the next thing to update. A simple click to select versus the current drag into place to assign minions would be much better. I _like_ the drag mechanic, but you do it so much that it gets really tiresome.
One more observation - I found myself almost never having time to actively look at/notice "Bario's" progression. Having audio effects to indicate events, especially if they could somehow indicate how close you are to losing might be really good.
And yes, would definitely like to see the code for your version select for webGL. Cheers.
Awesome! Don't have much to say, very fun to play, nice graphics, catchy music, I love it! Other comments already mentionned the UX problems, and the possible improvements on the audio side (to give more feedback and improve the mood). It would definitely deserve a post-post-jam version, with even more refinements and construction options.
eretol
2022-04-19 11:24
i played the jam version, maybe i just missed something but it kinda felt like carpal tunnel the game, having to drag minions constantly which soured the experience a bit :S, nice artwork and mood.
There could never be enough praise for the art. The splendid job there. Please compliment the chef for me. It might be stupid, but I always laugh at slightly changed copyrighted names, like Bario and princess Cheap, I hope I can play it on my Bintendo Glitch console.
I won't be going into details on the pre-jam version, because it looks like you addressed some of the issues raised in the previous comments.
What I don't like is drag&dropping things, especially when I'm building something on the right side. I would consider having the unit resources be put somewhere universally close, like top or bottom, so when time is pressing I don't have to move from left to right many times when I'm building my castle. From UI, I had also a hard time following Bario progress on previous maps, so I had to click all the time.
I haven't managed to understand things like what strength Bario has vs Goombas or Spiky Turtles, whether he will die or will storm through the obstacles without a sweat. Knowledge like this would help me to plan better, whether to speed up the next Tower building or could I invest in the economy on the next level. Your game has some strategic decision-making, but without crucial information like this, it is difficult to choose the right option.
The theme, in my opinion, is not very visible right now. I don't feel like I'm delaying the inevitable, I'm kind of just playing the game until I lost.
Overall great game :mushroom: :mushroom: :turtle: :japanese_castle: :mushroom: :mushroom:
jrevel
2022-04-19 14:12
@haayaargh Thank you for the feedback, we're so happy you liked the game ! I'm the developper of the team, so I can say it : yes the art team did an amazing job ! You are absolutely right with the drag&drop, it felt like a good idea at first, but it is really annoying when all your actions are done with drag&drop. We have plans to remove it totally.
I agree that the tutorial, despite being too long, does not provide crucial information, like units strength. I think we will need to make a proper step by step tutorial, now that we are not in a short schedule. For your information, koopas are strong builders, and spiky shells good at defense. But the outcome of every fight is random, so any unit can both stall bario for a long time or get destroyed at the first encounter. But three spikies still have a lot of chance to kill bario at least once.
Feel free to give us any suggestion that would make the relation to the theme more obvious to you, we need all the feedback we can collect as we want to improve the game in the future !
Oh and if you liked the humor, you might be interested by the games we did for other jams, especially Long Leash that has a similar cardboard esthetic and where you play a happy dog that must do his walk to the park, except there is an old lady on the other side of the leash, and you don't want to hurt her too much in the process... The games are listed in the Guilloteam itch.io page ! https://guilloteam.itch.io/
almost
2022-04-19 19:45
(Jam version)
I got a game over before I could figure out how to garrison units or build units. I tried clicking on the node circles and garrison circles and clicking on the icons of buildings but nothing seemed to work. It turns out that to build a thing I have to select the node, select build, and then drag a goomba from the top-left of the screen to the 4 hammer icons.
I think there should be some UI that doesn't require so much dragging. Building could just always automatically consume 1 goomba and have a "speed up" button which will consume an additional goomba. It could also be that clicking on a hammer icon or clicking on a goomba will automatically assign a goomba. It would also be nice if the units that can be assigned are visually much closer to the place that they can be assigned, such as middle of top of screen, or creating new contextual "assign goomba" buttons.
UI aside, the concept is really original and creative. I like the idea of collecting resources and building defenses to stall bario. Choosing how many of each type of unit to produce and whether to assign them as builders or as defenders is a nice tradeoff, though I think right now you just always have a ton of goombas so you can assign them as reusable builders and make a ton of castles. The art style is also really well done.
*(tested on [Stream](https://www.twitch.tv/Vladadamm) 2 days ago )*
A well polished jam entry with a great reversed parodic take on Mario. The graphics are great, the music & sound works well (though the music loop is a bit too short & can get repetitive), the mechanic and core gameplay feel quite complete with just enough complexity. There were a few bugs (the nodes being out of reach and the "In Progress" destroyed sprite) & a lack of difficulty curve that were fixed in the post-jam version though.
Regarding the post-jam version, the addition of the difficulty curve was welcomed, though it could still be improved imo as right now it feels like there is not much danger in the first 10 minutes as you'd win time while Bario is still slow and then the tension would only pick up in the last minutes. That aside, the biggest area of improvement left is the UX as a whole. Some info is missing right now (koopas being better builders, turtles better fighters, etc...), the drag'n'drop feels a bit slow and the process of building things could use to be simplified (UI/UX wise). It's also a bit hard to keep track of Bario's progression while he isn't on the same screen as us.
albertoz
2022-04-21 11:21
Great execution and I love the graphics!
sopata
2022-04-21 12:44
I think this is one of the most polished games in terms of UI/Graphics and I really liked the concept.
Only drawback - as others stated - the original version is quite easy and practically you can survive for eternity which, unfortunately, conflicts with the theme.
Good LUCK!