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Cursed Unicorn
Cursed Unicorn
By gord10ahmet
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 482 | 3.11 | 41 | |
| Fun | 424 | 3.07 | 41 | |
| Innovation | 503 | 2.82 | 41 | |
| Theme | 366 | 3.52 | 41 | |
| Graphics | 418 | 3.15 | 41 | |
| Audio | 474 | 2.38 | 41 | |
| Mood | 225 | 3.41 | 41 | |
Comments
It's a fun game, I liked the short narrative intro, the graphics and the overall mood.
As for the downsides, the audio side feels a bit empty with only few sfx and it would have been nice to have a small music loop or some ambient sounds. The balance felt quite off as the Faster Attack upgrade is kinda always a better option compared to the Heal. Also, as the difficulty curve comes at a stop after 5-6mins while our character still levels up, after a bit of time I got to the point where I couldn't lose anymore as I was killing enemies faster than they were spawning, delaying the death of the unicorn undefinitely. I'll just assume that after a long time, baby unicorn would become big and we wouldn't be able to hold it anymore, it'd end up wandering away from us and ultimately die from the spirits, so its death is still unevitable.
Still a solid compo entry overall.
Great narrative intro! I played about 5 times, but it was very difficult to get past level 3, I think it would be interesting if you could heal all your life instead of just a little, because the fast attack takes time to scale and so it's not worth investing. (at least in the my game) With the introduction given I believed there would be music, but the sounds created a nice atmosphere.
An additional comment on the sprites of the spirits in the dark with their eyes glowing, they were awesome. Congratulations for the game!
darandin
2022-04-04 02:34
I was able to make it to 5:17 on my 3rd try :) - Fun. I liked the mood and this definitely fit the theme.
When the game first loaded I was left wanting start screen or a "click to continue" message to know the game is ready for my input.
Nice work and thanks for the game!!
kory
2022-04-04 02:50
I liked the lore :)
The game is pretty fun. Id like if I could see what enemy was being targeted though, the faster attack upgrade doesn't do too much early on and the targeting, at least without knowing what I am targeting, is a bit jank and inconsistent.
Do the zombies move faster or just spawn faster?
jcmonkey
2022-04-04 03:55
i got to around the 2 minute mark, but the zombies kept standing on each other and it was keeping me from flying away. giving the zombies flying is fine, but i would personally not let them stack on top of each other. because the only way to get away is to fly left or right. you could add in a kick to push them down, or some other aoe attack that could knock them back.
wogabi
2022-04-04 04:46
Wow what a fantastic game! I love to protect unicorns and kill zombies so this is a perfect fit. Great job
binroot
2022-04-04 04:56
I got 1 minute in, and then it got really hard! I wish the enemies could levitate as quickly, or had some sort of limited time that they could float. Other than that, great concept! It was missing some spooky music haha. :smile:
The gameplay was really simple but just didn't do it for me. The tiny y axis meant that to be able to survive longer, you could just fly to one side of the map and then slowly back to the edge while shooting, fly over all the enemies to the other side and repeat. Healing does next to nothing and for most of the early game all you do is upgrade attack speed since you take no damage. Once enemies flood the game and you can't fly over them all, there is nothing you CAN do except heal. Also, I dislike the decision to make shooting automatic. That kind of player input helps to make the game more engaging, and as it stands there isn't much substance to the gameplay. The dead silence also was unfortunate, even some kind of low hum would have really helped the mood. However I really liked the story behind the intro, and the decision to make the enemy eyes glow in the dark was a great choice and helped with the ambience.
Cool story poor unicorn :(
Thanks to everyone who gave feedbacks! I will increase the heal effect in post jam.
@vladadamm You are right about everything. Music would complete the game, but I don't have composing skills. I had thought of putting a time limit for the game, where an invincible enemy would kill us, but I didn't want to borrow too much ideas from Vampire Survivors. Maybe I should had.
I made progression harder on further levels after reading your comment.
@pierce-brooks They spawn faster.
Gets really hard past the first minute. I lasted 1:28. The art is nice and creepy. Great Halloween/darkness/grave vibe to it.
antonsem
2022-04-04 17:29
Nice intro, I loved the Unicorn! I wish there were some room for tactics though
sapazu
2022-04-04 18:13
Good story & theme. This is good game, but I think there could be more depth in gameplay. Also enemies spawn too frequently, but it is hard to balance your game during jam. Anyway, I liked it!
darzu
2022-04-04 19:30
Loved the narrative. Simple but fun gameplay. The level ups got us hooked. Great start! Would love to see some more powers and ways to avoid the dementers haha.
pke1029
2022-04-04 21:53
Love Vampire Survivor. The space is a little small and I was quickly overwhelmed by the enemies. I think with more upgrades and some balancing of the enemy spawning the game could be really fun!
My though process "Oh! Cute Unicorn! Oh wait, the theme is Delay the Inevitable. Oh no."
Cute game, reminds me of something I played on Neopets a while ago. The addition of I-frames would really help when you get trapped in a sea of enemies. Fun and innovative, the level ups gave me something to work towards and the choice between healing or fighting better was a good decision.
Going to state what most have said already, wish there was a bit more mechanical depth. I found myself flying to one side of the screen and waiting, then going to the other, rinse repeat. Other than that, good job!
I liked the dark art style and the story behind it. The most problematic part about this game is the gameplay. The only thing you do is to wait until they get close and then change your position to wait again. To fix it there might be some platforms or shooting enemies that force you to dodge them so the player can come up with a strategy to kill them first.
It is fun and challenging game. After couple of try's I achieve to survive for 5 minutes 28 seconds. Well designed difficulty curve. :unicorn: :sparkling_heart:
Curse those evil spirits! How dare they touch my baby unicorn! I loved to have seen more different kinds of upgrades :)
Entertaining and surprisingly challenging. There's definitely room for more depth and mechanics that offer different playstyles, but for the time allowed this is good fun :)
Cool backstory!
The art was nice and the game felt fluent. I would say that the mood of the game is definitely set well.
A point of constructive criticism is that it seemed very hard to choose which enemy to attack (the mouse button direction didnt seem to influence it, I am not sure if there was some other mechanic that let you aim but I couldnt figure it out). I think being able to aim could add some more depth to the gameplay with creating exit paths from certain situations etcetera, now at times it felt a bit more like just holding the mouse button while flying around.
Good job on your entry!
itskdog
2022-04-05 21:53
Liked the dark fade on the enemies. Could have used more power ups.
Thanks, everyone!
@haastregt The protagonist aims the closest enemy. I should have made this more clear.
kaleido
2022-04-05 22:45
Hard game, but liked this a lot! Great job. Nice story and mood.
dobryn
2022-04-06 00:14
the art and story made me laugh so hard ... :laughing:
the started of feeling easy but as I kept playing it became pretty hard. i really like the fact even within all these there are strategical choices that need to be made.
having more mechanisms or simply to state having control over the weapon I think is a necessary addition, but what we have here is quite nicely put together for the jam :eye:
I enjoyed playing it.
cemre
2022-04-06 10:10
I like the story a lot, it's very touching. Also the art is amazing, colors are beautiful and gothic, I love it. I would like to see a bit more spaces between enemies, because it's so hard to find a way to escape.I think a little bit more user interaction and control could feel more engaging, I observed that players love that kind of thing. Also I want to congratulate you, for 48 hours you made a fantastic game!
okamit
2022-04-06 16:09
Neat game, perhaps it gets hard a bit to fast but otherwise nice!
Good work!
brainoid
2022-04-07 14:43
Hey, I'm not gonna state obvious here as many others mentioned vertical roaming is not big enough blah blah... I do not agree with those that say who you are attacking is not clear, it's obviously targeting the closest one. I definitely see this being much more playable with better verticality, maybe with some floating objects in the level so you need to flappy bird around things... And of course a variety of upgrades :)
Thanks for participating, btw I saw the game on ÜNOG <3
The concept is so nice, gameplay is a bit hard i think but you did a good job!
Funny lore! Not sure why you opted out of humor. I kind of like the auto aim thing, the upgrade mechanic is great but the attack speed upgrades don't feel impactful enough. Eventually the zombies were giving each other piggyback rides and I couldn't jump over the conga line lol
Good job overall!
Thanks, all!
@ismael-rodriguez I didn't design the game as a humourous game, though. The story was about the inevitability of death. I can't manage drawing pixel arts that look serious, maybe it's what gave a funny feeling.
@gord10ahmet ah sorry lol I think the colorful unicorn juxtaposed to the scary zombie things threw me off :sweat_smile:
I enjoyed this game, and for a compo game you managed to do a lot of things. I find the unicorn incredibly adorable, so great job on that. Makes you want to protect it to your final breath!
This makes me think of "Vampire survivors", but from a platformer perspective; which actually is a great concept :smile:
I managed to reach level 8, which I am pretty proud of. What did you reach?
@simon-rahnasto Thanks, Vampire Survivors was my main inspiration. I don't really remember my highest level after the final balancing, but it must be close to 8th level.
carla
2022-04-09 13:56
When I read "unicorn" you really got me in :P Really nice idea and easy to play! Also, the theme was really accurate. I got a bit stressed because I kept getting trapped by evil spirits all the time :cry: , I found it almost impossible to reach to the end of level 3... I've challenged myself to at least complete level 4, I took it personally!
@carla Thanks. I uploaded a post-jam version of the game today that also addresses this problem.
I can definitely see the influence of *Vampire Survivors* here, and the game strikes me as a good sort of proof-of-concept for a side-on take on it. To really scratch that itch I think you'd need a bunch of different weapons/upgrades but in 48 hours who has the time? I feel as though the effort put into the intro was probably time better spent: it helps the whole thing feel complete.
One quibble I do have with the game as it stands is that it seems as though the witch targets the enemy that's closest on the X axis but doesn't consider the Y axis. I also ran into the piggy-backing enemies problem that a bunch of other people have already described, but felt as though I could possibly have taken out the upper one (particularly with a well upgraded attack) if I hadn't been stuck targeting another that I was currently flying over. I might be mis-reading what's going on there, but unless I was pretty much ramming into the top guy it seemed as though I would usually shoot at the one on the bottom, even if hovering quite a way over him. I'm also not positive that "heal" pulls its weight as a level-up option: since you can't simply plough through enemies, I pretty much found that the only time I lost significant amounts of health was when I was already doomed.
All in all, though, this is a neat game! I found myself compelled to try it multiple times which is always a good sign.
@damonwakes Thank you for the detailed feedback. I worked on the problems like enemies getting piled, low effect of health upgrade, etc. on the post-jam version.
The witch considers the Y axis, too, by the way. But the pivots of the witch and enemies are different; witch's at the bottom, enemies' are at the center. I guess this situation caused the problem.
@gord10ahmet Ah! That would explain it - I also found the witch tended to target the lower of two enemies while on the ground, but I put it down to them scooting out faster than the one on top.
filgru
2022-04-20 21:27
3:38! I reached level 7! Very nice take on the theme. I like the graphics. Too bad there is no music. Very funny idea with protecting baby unicorn. Your game is quite addictive! Good job!
filgru
2022-04-20 21:37
5:20! Level 8 :))
Pretty impressive for 48 hours, especially the graphics are nice. On the con side: I'm not sure the combination of larger entities (player, enemies), i.e. making it harder to dodge because there is less space on the screen, and basically flappy bird controls for up/down adds anything in terms of gameplay in comparison to Vampire Survivors. Also only having two upgrades is a bit sparse.
bogden
2022-04-22 20:11
Not much gameplay here unfortunately. You mention that you're inspired by Vampire Survivors, but this game is missing the multiple weapons/items that make Vampire Survivors interesting. Without variation, the gameplay just becomes floating around left and right while clicking "faster attack" every now and then. There's not really any strategy or meaningful decision making, which seriously dings the game on "fun" points.