FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD50 → E P I L O G U E

E P I L O G U E

By jlv and laniph

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall8803.3935
Fun11802.8635
Innovation9842.9835
Theme13172.7634
Graphics7373.5935
Humor6982.9133
Mood4633.6935

Comments

suvi 2022-04-06 03:46

Liked the pixel art and the choice to use a synth/pad instrumentation classical music.

arianad 2022-04-06 23:32

Love turned based rpgs, glad to find one here!! Big fan of the art and the music was nice, good job!

matt-rice 2022-04-06 23:37

Cute story and loved the art and music!

jogy34 2022-04-06 23:39

I liked the art and it was an interesting concept but I really feel like I'm missing something. I played through it twice and tried to do different things the second time but nothing ended up any differently. If all there is to it is the bad things happening to each character then it really feels more like an extended cutscene than a game. There was no strategy in any of the fights seeing as any additional characters couldn't do anything and you can even still just spam space bar and eventually win most of the time.

tianmaru 2022-04-06 23:42

Very interesting take on JRPGs, I liked Comrade King the best. I just wished the heroes had their flaws themselves and the black knight wasn't the true source of evil. It was a bit short though and the end was somewhat anticlimacting, but I assume there was no time left. The synthesizer version of one of my favorite pieces by Chopin was fun to listen to!

jlv 2022-04-06 23:46

@suvi, @arianad, @matt-rice, thanks for the great feedback.

@jogy34 Thanks for playing twice, and sorry for the disappointment - the game is indeed kind of an extended cutscene. Aside from the intro, the 3 fights have their quirks: - If you do not manage to take out the abomination in 2 attacks, you might be one-shot - The revolution leader can recover HP - The black knight can steal PP.

However I heavily reduced the odds of those happening (less than 20%), as I had no time to balance the game and I am the kind of guy who switches on easy mode after dying once in video games. Thanks again for the valuable feedback.

jlv 2022-04-06 23:53

@tianmaru Thanks for playing and for the great feedback! Yep, pretty black and white story (literally). In my headcanon the Black Knight only amplifies the flawsof the Party (the mage being over-reliant on the Crystal, the king being an actual tyrant and the huntress being over-confident), but I failed at communicating that in text.

hungrycatgames 2022-04-06 23:55

Interesting game and I liked it, although the apparent linear path does greatly limit replay. Perhaps different outcomes from different actions? Fights were pretty easy, especially if you skipped a few rounds before attacking but I think that was part of the intended "story" that the player is following.

ferricsbo 2022-04-06 23:57

Nice pixel art, runs great in the browser, and I enjoyed the classical music choices! Unless I was missing a mechanic, the second fight seemed to easy to lose due to random damage rolls, though quick restarts meant it didn't block progress for too long.

jlv 2022-04-06 23:58

Thank you @hungrycatgames ! Yep, the game is a completely linear sequence. I intentionally dumbed down the difficulty of fights to make sure that people could breeze through the game and see everything; you have a very low chance of: - Being one-shot if you fail to kill the Abomination within 2 rounds - Having the Revolution Leader heal himself if you do not oneshot him with a 3PP attack. I probably should not have set the probability of those event to less than 20%.

jlv 2022-04-07 00:00

@ferricsbo Thanks for your feedback! Regarding difficulty, that's where it gets tricky - if you are lucky enough to pass the abomination in one try, the game can be completed by spamming space, which is an oversight on my end (as is the fact that you can die random through no fault of your own).

codebug 2022-04-07 00:10

I'm not sure I got this game, but I'm not familiar with JRPGs so that's not really a complaint. The music was very loud and I couldn't find a way to mute it or reduce the volume.

There was a fair amount of depth for such a short development period. I liked the sky images.

Well done!

jlv 2022-04-07 00:17

@codebug Thanks for playing, and sorry for the non-existent sound mixing ; the sound volume on my machine was pretty low when I made the game, and I did not correct course since.

You probably did not miss anything: the game is totally linear, barely more interactive than a cutscene, but that's how I like my games :sweat_smile:

scapixel 2022-04-07 07:06

As someone who got one shot by the abomination 2 times in a row, I did get lost trying to find another outcome. Mostly by saving up PP and blocking, though that didn't help, so I felt stuck thinking there was no way past, and that maybe that was the idea considering the theme. I realize reading through the comments that I was wrong, but as I am not a big fan of JRPGs (or RPGs in general really) I stopped playing at the mage temple.

vhalenn 2022-04-07 22:32

The game has a lot of content, the mood is really cool and the music is really well integrated I felt. I just found the combat strategy hard to understand, not very intuitive and maybe the narration part could be a bit more polished with graphical elements or animations as it is the main part of the game. Good job !

xerxeres 2022-04-07 22:33

I really like the art-style. especially the chosen coulers and the design of the Crystal.

woahitsjeff 2022-04-07 22:47

The music was so good! The fact that it changed in every area was *chef's kiss* - as someone who grew up playing JRPGs, it was very cool to play this. Well done! 😄

lintfordpickle 2022-04-07 23:20

I really enjoyed the art and the music fit the game perfectly, but I too kinda struggled with the combat. As a few others have said, I seemed to get the same outcomes when playing through a couple of times (maybe that was inevitable? :))

boxedmeatrevolution 2022-04-08 00:16

I enjoyed playing through to the end and reading the story! The combat was a bit simple, and the first time that I played the abomination I died even after attacking twice, which led to me trying various other strategies without success, until I read the comments and realized I just needed to attack twice and get lucky. Nevertheless, I thought this was a very solid game in pretty much every category! Well polished, good mood, fun to play.

captainexpo 2022-04-08 00:16

Really interesting game, the story is really cool, but the point that the black knight is inevitable going to come back and spread the darkness was somewhat obscure. Overall, great game though.

tigerwolf181 2022-04-08 03:52

Interesting take, I enjoyed the story and jrpg style combat. It took alot of tries to make it past the abomination though, but overall I liked playing it.

sodaro 2022-04-08 06:27

I liked the story element of the former party members being massively flawed (especially the king... damn). It wasn't until the last fight I figured out how to store PP so most of the previous fights I was only using the same moves. Nice use of the public domain music too, great job in general!

ehon 2022-04-08 16:59

Wow, so much content for 2-person team for a jam entry! You guys rock. It's really interesting and unique story, 5/5! Btw if you're planning to patch this game, the last fight is really easy, you can win it by masking space continuosly (i didn't have to pick nor think any of the skills, just the first one). I think a small patch to increase the difficulty could be really helpful to create better balance. Anyways, great entry!

ricardopino 2022-04-10 00:26

Great story's deployment, i wanna know what happen next. i found little bugs that i think you know about it, like the balance in the battle, its feel easy, i love the pixel art, i think you have a great concept to continue develop.

fromage 2022-04-12 03:13

I liked the look of it, and I think there is the germ of a great story here, but honestly I was pretty peeved I couldn't surrender to the revolutionary, heh.