Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Dice Settlers
By jimbly
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 14 | 4.17 | 30 | |
| Fun | 10 | 4.25 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 11 | 4.17 | 30 | |
| Theme | 31 | 4.28 | 30 | |
| Graphics | 125 | 3.71 | 30 | |
| Audio | 174 | 3.13 | 28 | |
| Humor | 144 | 2.85 | 26 | |
| Mood | 72 | 3.75 | 28 |
The theme with the graphics are spot on 👌.
At the same time the graphics could be a bit simpler/cleaner e.g. for the "MARKET" & "PORT" there is much going on in on icon.
I enjoyed the core gameplay loop but after ~20 or so turns i wished some sort of lose condition to make it challenging and prevent me from reroll spam.
As a fan of boardgames I really liked this one a lot. The 1-bit graphics make it feel classic and everything is very clean. My only complaint is probably that it is a little long for the rating portion, which means people probably won't play to the end. (unless they get hooked like me haha). I didn't notice if there was some way to lose, but I saw on the leaderboard (super cool) that there were some people who didn't finish. Does it just track if someone leaves early and puts down what turn they left on?
@chlu Thanks for playing! Yeah, a lose condition (or, some general pressure, consuming of food each turn, or something) would probably have helped add some good tension. Rerolling isn't _that_ much different than just using the Kitchen though, so maybe not a big deal. The only thing to really dissuade reroll spam is your falling position in the Hall of Fame, if you happen to get to the end ^\_^. And, yeah, a few of the buildings were a little noisy, I wish I'd spent twice as long (e.g. another hour ^\_^) tidying up more of the graphics, but it was either that or add a few sound effects =).
@phlip45 Glad you enjoyed it, and congrats on getting all of the way through! It really did end up pretty long - the one user test I did lasted over an hour and she got stuck with a bug, didn't even beat it, and even then didn't experience a handful of the buildings, though I made buildings _much_ cheaper after that, but they still take time to build and get into play... The leaderboard gets submitted to every time you end a turn, it's basically my cheap/lazy version of adding analytics so I can see how far people get, so the people on there that haven't finished either quit, or are currently in the middle of a game.
Amazing work. Can't say much more. The game is too detailed (good in design) for a gamejam/compo. Perhaps a save/export-save feature would be handy to coninue playing later/on-mobile :)
@validbit Thanks for playing! Yeah, a save/load would be nice, this might be fun to play on mobile (haven't had a chance to test the controls on a phone... but I *think* it should all work fine there...).
Great board game feel. Hope you take the game further moving forward. :)
First minute landing in the game, beautiful visual style and really appreciate the explanations provided in the top left corner. Nice idea to have the different sides of the die have their own level. The core mechanic is very enjoyable, it feels very well-balanced. I got a bit stuck at one point because I didn't realize that the Cuddle Room needed two tiles. Also took me a bit of time to realize that I could pan around, though also I only tried when I had expanded to the edges of the initial view.
@joey-shipley Glad you enjoyed it!
@resevoir Thanks for playing! Yeah, I was worried about the placing of 2x1 rooms, tried to convey that, but definitely could have been better, glad you figured it out though. I really should have added a mouseover showing the two tiles it'd replace while mousing around, that would have cleared that right up (beyond the initial potential waste of a turn to activate the Shed, for course ^_^). Similar worries with panning, but I figured people would stumble upon that at least accidentally by the time they actually needed to pan the view, there's plenty of nearby unexplored tiles to start with ;).
As you did last time this is a great game. I was having a lot of fun and it got me interested until the very end.
very well thought out mechanics, it can drag on a bit, especially in the beginning where I got a bunch of merchants, but the Assign in the kitchen mechanic saves it a lot. Great work!
Edit: I'm number 10 on the scoreboard :D
It took me a while to understand how the game works and thought about just giving up but I kept playing because the game seemed very professional and I am glad I did because it got more fun the further I got.
@nullval Thanks for playing, and glad you figured out the kitchen, instead of just hitting reroll a bunch, which is less fun ;). I actually even added something where the game cheats and re-rolls if it ever gives you the exact same roll two turns in a row (so, hopefully you didn't get 2 traders 2 turns in a row or maybe that wasn't working ^\_^), but even then, often there's not much you can do with some of the dice. If I thought it out a little more, perhaps every die would have something they could do each turn - I was going to do that with allowing builders to work at gathering, and maybe merchants to earn some money in town, but that would mean either even more action spaces, or having to show that a single space can be used by 2 different kinds of dice, and that seemed like too much work ^\_^.
@verttixpertti Cool, glad you stuck with it, and, it looks like you've got the new high score (for players from Ludum Dare anyway - the actual top score is some kid from a Discord for one of my other games who likes competing a bit ;).
@Jimbly haha I think I just got lucky
What, luck, in a die-rolling game? Pfft.
What an awesome game! I couldn't put it down. I liked how the lack of loss condition lead to a nice and relaxed experience.
@adam-gould Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, I was going for a more chill experience, which isn't to everyone's taste, but some of us quite like =).
Excellent! The visuals were maybe a bit busy at the very start: even though the slots were you cannot spend the dice at hand are grayed out, the background graphics (like the herbs) still stand out. But once I knew what to look for, it was fine. The tutorials helped. I burned at lot of cycles at the end because my last dice did not have the required temple face. Luckily, I had enough resources saved to buy a new one so I did not get locked out. Inspiring entry, thanks :)
well i think i've been on this game for almost 2 hours, my vision is blurry now.
i love dice games, and the overall concept is great! i wish the map was not always the same tho. apart from that, upgrades are cool, and learning how to use them was great. it is a very good compo game!
thank you for these two last hours mate :D
(i got 189 turns, i wonder how it can be doable in 50 haha)
@fmdkdd So, at the end you were down to one die, it didn't have the right face, and you managed to use the Library to buy a new face, apply it, and win the game? That's awesome! I wasn't even sure if people would end up exploring the library building, glad to hear it got some use =).
@amarokczukay If you play a new game from the main menu, it always starts with the same seed (for the competitive speedrunners amongst us...), but if you go to the Hall of Fame first, there's a "restart game" or something that actually chooses a new random seed, if you really want to play again. The only difference on the map is where the temple/forest/quarries are, not particularly interesting, though =). Glad you had so much fun!
Really well executed game. A lot of depth for a jam game, too! Awesome work.
Very nice. Simple and elegant implementation but with a lot of depth of content. Could have used some BGM, but otherwise excellent!
While it starts a bit slow and maybe just a bit confusing (not unlike some great board games), this game just grows in depth so pleasingly! I loved it and the graphics feel just right too. Amazing work.
Very nice, I love the mystery of the temple and ending. Took a minute to figure out the mechanics but after that it was very clear.
Really nice entry
Very cool and fun game! (And addictive I might add). The mechanics were very solid and after a short while, pretty easy to use, and it had an amazing amount of depth and detail for a jam game. Great stuff!
Very professional! I admire the high quality of the gameplay and the cohesiveness of the graphics and audio! That being said, it certainly felt like a slog to play, especially at the beginning when I had just two wimpy settlers that only wanted to Gather after I already emptied the quarries and forests. The screen also got really clustered from all the text on the screen, which could sometimes overload my senses.
Thanks all for playing and the nice feedback!
@niterich Yeah, there's a bit of luck, although you can always Kitchen your two gatherers into an explorer to find stuff for them to do later, so hopefully didn't ever feel like you were out of options. Visuals definitely got pretty clustered, I even turned off a bunch of the labels until the appropriate die is selected where I could, but I still wasn't happy with how noisy it felt. Don't think it would have been very discoverable without at least some text, though... probably just adding a bunch of whitespace between the tiles woulda helped at this point, but could probably benefit from a different style (higher res, smaller text) or something...
Wow, I loved that, it feels like a finished game already (:clap:)! Somehow I made it all the way to the end, an I loved *every second of it!!! Suuuuper* polished entry, it has a great amount of play time without getting boring or repetitive -- which is something I've faced a lot of personally. It took me a little while to understand my goal (mostly because I forgot which way was west :shrug:), but even with that little hiccup, I managed to finish it in 133 turns (:sweat_smile:)! I really have nothing negative to say about this; it's *really really* professional and well balanced, extremely well illustrated (not too complicated, but consistent), deep enough for complex strategies and simple enough for *me* to finish it.
Well done, I can't believe this is a Compo submission! 5/5 stars, took my attention for well over 20 minutes! :beers:
@sephowepho Thanks for playing and your very kind words! Congrats on making it to the end!
And for anyone curious about how long the game takes most people, check out this post here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/dice-settlers/interesting-statistics-about-dice-settlers
Fun game! It feels a bit restrictive in the beginning as there's not much choice in where to place dice. Wood and Stone also both seem horrifically expensive considering how many game actions it takes to get gold compared to harvesting wood or stone. This really solidly made and I'm impressed this came from just 48 hours. Great work <3
@ghostbomb Thanks for playing! Yeah, I didn't really expect people to buy wood and stone, I just had to put _something_ in the shop when I was throwing it together, and forgot to come back later and balance it. Also wanted some way to get unstuck if you managed to get rid of all of your harvester and explore face or something, I dunno ^_^.
It s very well done! It was slow at first and yes took a bit of learning at the beginning but once I got the hang of it - oh boy, I was hooked. my only issue was overlays on the tiles being the same black/white even with the tinted background was quite difficult to my eyes.
I liked the art and 1-bit definitely helped! Lack of music was not missed at all in this case, the frequent interactions and their sound effects had their charm and filled the silenced very well.
Played twice got it done under 100 - probably could have done earlier but just did not want to part with my die :| some of the buildings I did not feel the need to explore. harp for instance. Very nice touch of the small hints/narrative upon exploring!
It is very dire in need of a tutorial of sorts tho. I had not checked the guide in the description which added to my own fun but I figured it out in the end. Would have helped a ton if it was part of the game like the initial few steps
In this version at least, it felt like a rush to find the temple and finish it. Resource requirements increased a lot. felt like it s easier/better to rush the temple than build bunks
I really like this entry - well done. you may be on to something here! would definitely be checking this out if you were to continue working on this post-jam
@cagil-ozdemirag Thanks for playing, and all of the great feedback! I intended the game to be playable without the guide, but after a (post-submission) playtest I got a little worried by how incredibly lost and confused someone got, so made that to help along the less gaming-savvy players, glad to hear you didn't need it ;).
Wow, that was a hell of fun! Spend way longer than I expected :smile: It is surprising how fast you can grasp the rules even though they are relatively complex (very cool trick with the determined dices at the beginning forcing the player to certain actions explaining the mechanics) The plant seeds -> sell crops -> buy seeds mechanic seem a bit strange to me, but it worked pretty well in conjunction with the other ones.
One small issue I had: Sometimes it was a bit hard to see if there are free spots for a dice or not, so maybe some guidance could be added here (though I am still amazed how much you managed to do in time) Apart from that fantastic work, currently my #1 in fun!
@oadt Sweet, glad you enjoyed it! And, yeah, I decided that the #1 thing for people to learn right away to not feel frustrated with bad rolls was how to use the Kitchen, so decided to just force the first few die rolls as a tutorial, I'm pretty happy with how that worked out =). And, yeah, better communicating what you can do with a die would help - if I hadn't decided to do 1-bit graphics (which, admittedly, cut down my time spent on graphics leaving more time for gameplay, which was key on this project ^_^), or even just dropped monochrome, some color coding of die faces or more clear highlighting with colors probably would have went a long way...