Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD50 → Gone Out West
By sita
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 314 | 3.43 | 26 | |
| Fun | 327 | 3.31 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 136 | 3.70 | 26 | |
| Theme | 272 | 3.70 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 166 | 3.81 | 26 | |
| Audio | 400 | 2.82 | 25 | |
| Mood | 162 | 3.56 | 26 |
I like the idea, and totally adore the wait mechanic how it changes the light and shadows according to the time of the day, pretty cool! The games has A LOT OF mechanics, especially for a COMPO entry, so good job with that. I think a little bit more polish could make this game into a fully flashed game for a proper release :) Something like an endless survival.
Overall, pretty cool entry.
For a jam game this has an impressive number of systems, it's a bit tricky to keep track of them all but your tutorial lays them all out nicely.
Fighting is really hard. After 3 tries, I choose to avoid them completely. Take me time to understand how/when/where to heal her. Empty hearths would have been nice to understand when she's not fully healed. (I finally understand where to heal). The reward for a letter is missing a $ sign. Overall, the game mechanics work well. And after understanding everything, it was really enjoyable.
Thanks you all for the feedback!
@draconic-rabbit I've hoped that the idea where to heal Her would be a bit more understandable, but it seems I've missed the mark.
Although usually I avoid making hard games, but this time I felt like making the mechanics of fighting hard would be the right choice to make. I felt like fights have to be risky for this type of game. They do offer big rewards, but they also are punishing.
I didn't consider adding "$" sign to the letter rewards, but I guess it'd be clearer if I've added them. Thanks once again for the feedback.
@iluvatar @jibberwocky thanks for the feedback!
@sita About "Where to heal", once I saw the indication : It seems quite obvious (same for ammo) and a smart design. Maybe my difficulty to understand came from being too focused on City/Letter mark overlay.
Wow, this compo game has a lot of mechanics. I didn't quite understand the fighting. I felt like I dodged the bullets but still got hit. Apart from that a nice mix of strategic and action elements. Impressive.
@attala sorry to hear that! I don't think there's much to fighting, apart from trying to avoid obstacles and bullets, so maybe you've just ignored obstacles?
i loved the game although i was confusing at first
That was it @sita Ignored the obstacles. Tried it again and now I got it :)
That game has a lot of gameplay elements, that's impressive ! Very nice entry
Once I realized that fighting can be avoided by just waiting in town until the road it safe, it began to feel like I could survive indefinitely. This might be the most complex compo game I've ever played, which is impressive, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong by not understanding the mechanics completely. I really like the horseback riding animations.
Took me a while to realize where the healing/ammo towns were, those might be more clear if they were a part of the UI, the low poly style made me think they were just other generic buildings. That being said, a pretty robust amount of systems for a compo game. Gameplay's fun and varied, theme's great (if a little depressing), looks charming, good job
A very nice game idea! Interesting gameplay, although it becomes somewhat repetitive after a while. The tutorial feels a bit overwhelming (you keep reading text & clicking in the hope that you're going to start playing already, but the text goes and goes on), and reading large text on a wide screen is a little bit painful :( The bandit encounters felt a little weird, the horse feels unresponsive making it almost impossible to avoid obstacles. Anyways, nice game, good job!
@lisyarus it's a shame it weakened your experience! I've wanted to make sure players don't get confused, but in the end I've ended up adding a lot more information than needed :( - I bet it would be great if I could spread the information over time, but a more complex tutorial would surely slow down the game development - and some players ended up confused anyways. Creating tutorials is a fine art that I had no time for this time :(
Initially I've also planned on targetting Android, so that's one of the reasons the text is so big - in the end I've decided to settle on this horse riding system, so it was not possible to port it easily.
About the horse riding - at first horses were really responsive, but it made it too easy to dodge bullets, so I've changed the system to the one based on acceleration, as it's present in the game. To counteract this, you don't receive damage immediately from hitting obstacles, so if you're trying to avoid them, you shouldn't receive too much damage. Myself, I am rather happy with the model of the riding, although I'll understand if someone complains about the hitboxes of gunfight being too small (they are).
Like everyone else said, there are a lot of different systems in place :smile:.I don't know if it's because I found combat controls somewhat difficult to manage, but that made me consider the letter delivering/healing portion of the game much more enjoyable.
It's also kinda bittersweet that you're delaying the inevitable (her death) which makes you trapped in an neverending life of fighting bandits and delivering letters. I know a lot of people would do the same.
It IS a bit overwhelming at the start. Oh, and the fact that the combat was "optional" because of the resting mechanic was actually good for me, because I could focus on the letters haha.
Good job with this entry!
Well executed and jam packed game. I think that the visual style of the world map was great and I liked the idea behind the delivery system. I would have been very happy to play a game jam game with just that system. Personally I did not enjoy the bandit fights, something about the controls felt sluggish to me and I found it almost impossible to doge the obstacles. I think that this was an excellent interpretation of the theme, while you know what the inevitability is it still feels important to delay it.
Fantastic game jam entry, a bit more polish on the sheer number of mechanics and this would feel like a fully published game.
Reading other comments here, apparently I did not notice the “wait in town” option at all, so I got stuck fighting a lot more then I would have preferred.
Game is really cool by its mechanics and graphics on the global map, the only thing that it's too easy if you avoid fighting with bandits :)
The most realistic horse control since RDR!
Very challenging horse controls!
Really impressive what you've been able to achieve for your entry!