FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD51 → The Curse of the Four Towers

The Curse of the Four Towers

By mateu, Common and Jonathan Vinesar

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall4133.6754
Fun2783.7354
Innovation6653.2254
Theme5333.7055
Graphics4583.8055
Audio2023.8154
Mood3163.7354

Comments

kingofnova 2022-10-03 21:41

might just be me but gets stuck loading at the end.

klasw 2022-10-03 21:46

What a nice game! Very polished :)

slush 2022-10-03 21:48

Wow! Beautiful game, super atmospheric, I loved the music and filters. It's awesome how much variety you managed.

mateu 2022-10-03 21:48

@kingofnova end of what? Try going on the itch.io page, and if the itch.io page doesn't work, try downloading the game for your platform.

thiefaine 2022-10-03 21:49

I had problem loading the game too, but after a refresh it worked ! And the game is worth it :) Really nice, I love shooters so it's "goto" to me. The vibe is great, love the fact the pillars change patterns when destroying it Great Job

fermingimpel 2022-10-03 21:54

I really like the game, it's a bit hard, but its very good

sephowepho 2022-10-03 21:55

That was niiiiiiiiiiceee!!! It's really polished for a LD entry! It was quite difficult for me to finish personally, but I enjoyed it nonetheless! I loved the classic movie scream as the death sound effect! XD (overall, it was epic, I've gotta say)

sparkysa 2022-10-03 22:12

Felt super fun and fluid to play! - the swap every 10 seconds was so clean and satisfying right until it killed me haha

saintchristopher777 2022-10-03 22:12

Very cool game! Quite hard - I gave it a fair number of tries and managed to kill _almost_ 2 towers in my best run. Love the 3D/pixel art mashup! Sound and music are great too.

ry-for 2022-10-03 22:17

Wooo I finally beat it! Really fun + polished. Great stuff :)

jaco-van-hemert 2022-10-03 22:18

I liked the different enemy types that came with every different iteration of the world (they each felt very distinct, so good job on those), and having the four towers as sort of bigger goals made the pacing a bit more interesting than regular wave-based twin-stick shooters.

I would have liked to see some variation in my weapons, perhaps as upgrades after destroying towers, or just pick-ups? I also had some trouble with aiming, as if the bullet didn't always go exactly to where I was pointing, but that could just be me being bad at aiming.

Nice job!

beesnorter 2022-10-04 05:11

The integration of the theme with the music was stellar. The first time the palette, mechanics and music all changed in sync really sold the game for me. The gameplay was great too, I found a good strategy to be to stay away from the pillars during the harder phase (purple?) Great work!

rosypenguin 2022-10-04 05:25

Solid game, love these kinds of arcade shooters. The soundtrack and graphic changes every 10 seconds is very juicy and the dynamic camera angles add a lot to the overall polish. I laughed out loud at the wilheim scream when I died. Superb work!

ideaspersecond 2022-10-04 05:41

Looks really good, but I had a hard time understanding when enemy types would switch. Overall, though, great work, especially with the art direction!

mateu 2022-10-04 05:45

@ideaspersecond did you play with the music on? If not it might have been confusing when the environment changed.

ideaspersecond 2022-10-04 05:46

@mateu I did not, I will give it a try with some audio on!

neon-orbis 2022-10-04 07:52

I really liked the game and the art style, and how the music and graphics changed every 10 seconds. A great interpretation of the theme!

pauls134 2022-10-04 09:22

Lots of great elements in the game! Mechanics are smooth to play with, the difficulty's good, the character changes and movements paths/different attacks are varied. Lovely game ! Great work

thegamearchitect 2022-10-04 11:36

nice game! was a bit challenging at first. cool art style and post processing effects! Easy to play after a few turns and lots of fun! well done!

joedev 2022-10-04 13:03

Fun and challenging, the sprays from the tower were super hard to dodge but it felt satisfying. Love the grungy pixelated effects. Good job!

zl17 2022-10-04 13:21

fun game! player animations seem a bit jank

mrmaico 2022-10-04 14:54

What an interesting use of perspective. It looks like 3D. Very cool! Would love to see a score somewhere. Love the soundtrack!!!

paloobi 2022-10-04 17:00

Really enjoyed playing this. And the music and graphics are lovely. Great work!

2022-10-04 19:52

Awesome bullet hell game, I love the art style and visual effects it looks very polished. Great Job!

mhorth 2022-10-04 20:55

Nice one! Big improvement from your previous game regarding keeping a consistent visual style throughout. Everything felt like it belonged, and was very clearly depicted. Your enemy design conveyed itself very well too, when the bad guys turned into the bigger version, they slowed down which clues me in to how they might behave. Same for the faster swarming birds.

Audio was excellent. It almost went right over my head that the music was changing with the environment. I could tell *something* was happening, but I had to actually stop shooting for a second and focus on it before I noticed that the music was different each time. That's not a criticism, it's almost like it blended *too* well, perfectly seamless transitions right on the beat. Once I noticed it though, it was a great vibe. I also really liked the crunchy sound when pieces of the tower were destroyed.

Only critique I have for you is to try to add controller support, especially for a top down shooter style game like this. I got excited when my controller could move the character, but then wasn't able to aim.

scidev 2022-10-05 00:20

That is quite a neat effect, swapping the enemies every ten seconds, and it makes for very interesting gameplay. Nice job!

2022-10-05 00:24

This is a neat pixel game. The every ten seconds switch to different enemies was interesting. The difficulty felt pretty easy. I felt lost in the game though, I didnt feel like the game pointed me towards the objectives or gave information about what the green things were? I am assuming health? felt kinda stale once i was just shooting monsters. Graphics are super cool just want to know what am i doing on the screen whether through UI or some type of indications.

lorwon 2022-10-05 09:19

I enjoyed playing your game !

What I liked: - The art style (at the beggining made me think of hotline miami). - The mood

Improvements: - Maybe explain what are the objectives.

Good job !

helzinko 2022-10-05 12:34

Really fun game, really enjoyed playing it. Unique take on graphics. Would love to have dash button in this game.

federico-delgado 2022-10-05 14:21

Pretty solid game, i loved the art style and the post processing, the control feels responsive and the gameplay is well balanced (i was so excited when the game suddenly turned into a brutal bullet hell). It's a difficult but fair game, when i died i recognized it was my own fault. The only thing i would add is a HUD for the sight instead of using the mouse cursor and maybe some sort of points system to give more engagement to the player.

I trully think that you can turn this into an actual rogue like with a few things and you'll have a great game to show or sell ;)

galaxybat 2022-10-05 15:10

Nice atmosphere and it was fun to play although I did not defeat all the towers. I like the the towers fired masses of bullets, there were plenty of health pickups to deal with it. Great music

Some subtle indication of where the closest tower is might be nice as I felt lost at times, and to begin with I thought the health pickups were something that would hurt me

woahitsjeff 2022-10-05 22:26

Incredibly well done game, very polished! The graphics and the audio are *mwah* chef's kiss. Thanks for sharing!

jmad 2022-10-05 22:42

Minimalistic pixel art is so complex to me, I admire what you did. Everything is so legible. I really enjoyed playing! The atmosphere with the music and environemental changes is greatly efficient. The Wilhelm scream had me laugh. Managed to destroy towers, but not four in one playthrough. Awesome work!

wolderado 2022-10-06 07:41

Nice game! The way you used the theme is very interesting! Music was very good too. I blends really well with every world. Gameplay felt a bit simple but given this is a jam game, its more than okay. Great work!

resacagames 2022-10-10 17:45

Very nice game!!!! Fun to play, the graphics were awesome, sounds fitted nicely. Only wished I could zoom out a little bit. Besides that, EZ 10/10 Screenshot (267).png

hengen 2022-10-10 17:47

Really polished. Nailed the music and sound effects. Goes to show the value of focusing and honing a relatively simple gameplay loop into something that feels very JUICY, satisfying, and fun.

midnitepixel 2022-10-10 21:16

From an art perspective I love the PSX/Top-Down fusion you went with here, it really compliments the game's vibe.

From a game-play perspective I sort of felt limited by the lack of player choice here. Maybe I didn't get far enough and I just suck? But, usually with this type of game I'd expect some sort of tools I can use to gain an advantage like grenades or shields. It felt a bit unsatisfying when I realized all I could do was hold down LMB. Otherwise the concept and use of theme was spot on and easy to understand right away! It's really an enjoyable and easy to pick up game, I'd love to see you iterate on it from here.

greenradiation 2022-10-11 17:54

A well polished game with a cool visual style, although it's easy to play if you have at least a little shoot-em-up experience. Good job!

bios3008 2022-10-13 11:49

It looks awesome

vphyre 2022-10-16 18:55

An excellent game! I really liked the graphics, and the mood that the game has. The sound is very good and the controls are nice. Although I tried a few times, I was not able to complete the game. But in general everything looked good to me. Good job.

jonmerrin 2022-10-17 00:40

Hey! Great game! It was visually stunning. Had to play with the volume off, so I won't review the audio, but it was really fun!

Some feedback: I had to refresh the page a couple of times before I actually got past the loading screen, too. It took me a bit to understand that the goal actually included destroying the towers rather than just surviving. I also wish I knew what the green dots did. I assumed they were health, but even just a single-screen tutorial of "This is what the things on screen are/mean" would have helped without being intrusive. Finally, I would've liked some indication that the world was about to switch before it did. I think that's more of a design choice, if you want to keep it sudden like that, but I think even some visual warping/flashing/something a second in advance wouldn't give me much more time to react, but a bunch more time to build anticipation.

But that's me trying to do constructive criticism. The game was super fun, and I cannot stress enough how pretty it was. The majority of it was clear, intuitive, and fun to jump right into and try and try again. Really great job!

mateu 2022-10-17 05:13

@jonmerrin Hi! So glad you could play the game! In my opinion, the audio is an integral part of the game, and you're really doing a disservice by not playing the game with it. It really does cover one of your major criticisms. You may not have the time, but if you had just a few minutes, would you be willing to play it again with the audio? Again, thanks for playing in the first place and I would be grateful if you could play with the audio

=D

jonmerrin 2022-10-17 14:42

@mateu Hey, thanks for following up. You are totally right, your audio design is on point! The swell right before the switch did exactly let me know a switch was coming, and replaying it in general let me get a closer look at a few of the details. The music was catchy and set the mood for the type of enemy you were facing in the moment. Also, the healthbar was cut off when I originally played it, but I could see it this time, so actually a lot of my previous criticisms don't apply anymore!

Really fantastic job. Super polished, and a really cohesive game!

jondkoon 2022-10-21 20:39

Really fun game. Love the art style and the varying enemy types.