FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → Lava Tactics

Lava Tactics

By animawish

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall10413.2433
Fun11432.9133
Innovation3853.5933
Theme7613.5933
Graphics11652.8233
Humor9032.5831
Mood11782.9532

Comments

quasar098 2022-04-05 22:23

this game is a little complicated, but it was fun to play

labete 2022-04-06 12:11

The game is complex, sad that there is no audio. Wasn't sure what to do with the animals once they were all in one spot. Digging seem to slow the lava a little. I guess what I would have liked to see in this game was a little more effects of my actions. I felt so small and powerless against the lava (thou I suppose that is the case). Overall, I enjoyed it till the inevitable end made me feel hopeless.

evileptic 2022-04-14 10:20

Hard work... :smirk:

bios3008 2022-04-14 10:23

This game is hard to understand what have to do on it. >,<

zimny11 2022-04-14 21:07

Interesting game. I love the amount of different interactions. The game did not fit my screen, but the cut-out wasn't big, so I was still able to play. Anyway, cool game!

toppervideogames 2022-04-15 02:11

I am impressed with the amount of actions that are able to be done in this game! Being able to shovel dirt around did have a noticeable impact on how lava would flow, though it did eventually flow over even the highest of walls I could make. Ice cubes seem like the best items to use. I would have liked to somehow work to plug in the lava holes, but as the game can only delay the end I understand.

My best strategy was to hide in a corner while digging as many walls as I could. I got past 200 turns which seems like a lot. The most fun was watching the simulated lava flow across the entire map, I can see good potential in the system! Being a fan of turn based strategy games I would have liked more goals of some kind, but as it is this game is a good effort!

brachistosauro 2022-04-15 10:20

Oh, I'd love to try this, but it doesn't fit on my 1366x768 screen :sob:

animawish 2022-04-15 12:05

@brachistosauro @zimny11 Sorry about the oversight! I've just published v1.1.2, which allows you to shrink the window by pressing F1.

fragment-games 2022-04-15 12:41

As mentioned above, a bit complicated. But hey, finishing up a gamejam game is i big win! :-) Keep it up. It has a lot of elements.

necdilzor 2022-04-15 14:18

Lava flood is inevitable! I liked the concept but I think the game is a bit complicated to understand. I was able to survive 78 turns, though. Good job on the game!

yusovv 2022-04-15 15:17

Interesting mechanics and detailed, did you work on it for a long time? good job!

ciaranw 2022-04-15 20:56

I liked this! Like a fluid simulation turned game. Once I got the hang of interpreting the topology of the land it became a bit easier to predict where the lava was going to flow, which was pretty cool. I found the ice to be very effective. I wish the gun scared the animals away - I wasn't sure what actual purpose it served in this case... shooting the lava clearly doesn't help :P

Clearly a lot of effort went into this game, it has a huge number of features and a lot of complexity. I like the simple art, and the map itself is pretty in its own functional way.

Very nice entry!

madbarron 2022-04-17 16:11

Very cool! I really felt like I was delaying the inevitable :D

Everything made sense and worked as it should. It would be nice if dead teammates looked different than living ones. I liked the hotdog, and the fact that you can aggro the bears. Congrats on a great entry!

0x746564 2022-04-17 23:21

This was an interesting entry. The map and lava movement reminded me of Sim Earth.

Impressive amount of options for a jam game, especially with all of the world customization.

If I had any criticism it would be that it felt like the only useful item was the ice and it would be nice to have the dead firefighters show a bit differently.

The game really lagged with the lava height overlay on which was unfortunate because it seemed like it would be really helpful.

squidmobile 2022-04-19 03:27

Cool and unique, I got 363 turns in by creating a pillar of dirt 40 high, then all that was left to do was wait around and shoot at the lava with my trusty handgun.

knatt 2022-04-19 10:27

A novel take on the theme, great work! It reminded me of the creeper world series of games, except turn based. Major props for the variety in actions and the ability to set up the map before the game, that must have taken a while! Some more feedback would be nice when doing actions, and after a while the gameplay loop gets a little tedious. Great submission!

lecloow7 2022-04-19 15:57

nice

jozgames 2022-04-19 17:00

In the early game it's fun, get to know what to do and the coments in the habilits springle a little humor in it, as time pass the game loop get repetive and tedious, but the game ideia and mecanics whas nice.

prakkus 2022-04-19 18:16

Wow, this is a lot to get in for an LD game! We had a 'save things from lava' idea too but weren't sure we'd be able to tackle the flow mechanics, display them well, etc. in the time we had, so mad kudos!

For the amount of mechanics in here, I felt like I got the gist of them pretty quickly. I did forget to use all my people's actions a couple of times (it's tempting move someone -> end turn -> repeat). Since there's a 'wait' action anyway, maybe just don't let the player 'end' unless all the people acted?

I agree with other folks that fewer, more impactful actions would be my preference. I was playing with mostly random abilities and one run I got no ice cubes which made everything feel impossible. I love the idea behind the terrain/bomb/shovel stuff but struggled to actually use it well, and moving one tile of lava seems pointless compared to removing a whole area of it with ice. Same with the healing stuff where once I was being overwhelmed, getting a few hit points back didn't help much.

The concept is great though and I'd love to see a version of this that focuses in on the core 'lava removal' mechanic by doubling down on the movement and support abilities alongside the ice cube (using coffee to let an ally get closer to lava _and_ remove a chunk of it felt really good).

P.S. I'm so happy Love2D is still around and being used! I remember hearing about it _ages_ ago when it was first released and publicly available game engines were few and far between. Good stuff!

ldjq 2022-04-20 05:00

Cheat mode was very helpful for learning the game's systems.

bloodycoin 2022-04-21 17:04

As last time, I am glad to see Love2D entries. I can see you went over the top with sheer number of actions and interactions, lava flow simulation and even added animals on top of that. I can see a lot of work being put into this game.

BUT that's a lot of things to understand right off the bat to play the game. In addition to that you need to control 5 characters. That becomes rather unwieldy.

Some thoughts / suggestions: * Add keybinds to select your characters (1-5) and keep the visual modes for F1-F7? * Would be really nice to be able to do simple actions as digging and moving entirely with keyboard. Would play a lot smoother. * Having one action each turn (x5 while alive) against all the volcanos (9x by default) gets really overwhelming really fast. Reducing `fun` factor really fast. * Add introduce volcanos over time. That would give feeling of achievement, when finishing or almost finishing to contain one volcano. Only for new threat to appear. * Give more default actions, so player actions would feel like actually having impact. Or give some squares free movement? * Now it feels like going against final boss at level 1 in classic JRPG. * I think this time you went too much for `feature count` instead of `gameplay loop`.

Then again, all the work you did with all the options is really impressive.

Oh, and minor issue: once defaultly selected character is dead, it still gets selected by default, and you can choose actions for it. Though you cannot execute them, still had me confused a few times.