FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD52 → Jack the Reaper

Jack the Reaper

By fabdynamic

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3132.8526
Fun2932.7726
Innovation2972.7226
Theme2962.8526
Graphics2912.8926
Audio2811.4119
Humor2212.3124
Mood3072.5024

Comments

reevest2 2023-01-09 04:19

Really cool style

xlores-liang 2023-01-09 07:22

Cool game.

I kept transpooting to other farms and finally found a good branched map with only one monster. I settled there and won easily, with no more new challenges.

fabdynamic 2023-01-09 16:49

@xlores-liang excellent! As I was reading your comment I realized that I must have overlooked a simple difficulty/reward mechanism that would have inherently made what you did less rewarding. I never put that mechanism in so you optimized the game perfectly! Nice work and thank you for playing it and providing this valuable feedback :)

fabdynamic 2023-01-09 17:22

@reevest2 thank you for the compliment on the game and for stopping by to rate and comment :)

nick-saulnier 2023-01-11 03:42

Everything that is here is super complete, I like the artwork visual style a lot. I won the game on the first map generation, which might not be very usual? But in my case it wasn't very challenging :P. It may just be a case of procedural rules tho.

Good work!

cutesquirrel 2023-01-11 03:45

Nice little game. Controls where good, and graphics is simple but clearly communicate. Good entry!

paloobi 2023-01-11 03:55

I like the twist on the classic pacman style pickups, where you have to plan to revisit tiles, it creates some interesting challenges. Gameplay has a nice feel, mix of action and puzzle. I like the font and colors choices on the farm tiles in particular.

I also won on the first map generated, and actually didn't realize there were multiple maps until I saw the comments here. I played a few more and I enjoyed the variety of strategies, I would have enjoyed having to progress through the levels. The ones with more enemies were challenging, and would love to see maybe either faster enemies, or some change in enemy behavior or speed over time (maybe another nod to the pacman homage?).

Overall, well done!

thomasward 2023-01-12 16:20

Simple, quick and entertaining game. It's quite easy, but hey -- arcade games shouldn't be that much of a challenge, should they? A nice mixture of Pacman and Minesweeper lol.

fabdynamic 2023-01-12 16:57

@paloobi @thomasward @cutesquirrel @nick-saulnier thank you all for playing this game and for the kind words and constructive feedback. I wonder if it could be expanded to be even more like minesweeper? now my brain-gears are turning!

owca 2023-01-13 09:22

It was fun to play. The game plays very smoothly. For some reason it was very satisfying to clear the whole level. You perfectly nailed the 80's vibe. It even recalled my memories when I got my first 8bit console as a kid :)

During first playthrough I fully finished the first level and the game was over. I was a bit supprised because I expected there will be more levels. Then I noticed I can jump between different levels. The "n" key was effectively a "pannic button". It makes the game much easier because I can always escape from tight situations. I think it would be better not to cycle through ALL level but each next level should have more enemies. This way each time you press the panic button you need to take the risk that it will be only harder and harder. This would also require that every level has at least 2 enemies (so you can get trapped and be forced to use the panic button).

When it comes to mashing up some more classic games I though about bomberman. For example if the field is fully harvested (9) you can place a bomb on it, which can kill or temporarily disable enemies within range but also resets fields in range to 0 (so it has pros and cons and player needs to decide).

john-gabriel 2023-01-13 20:05

A clever take on the classic Pac-Man formula! It's a little too easy for a classic arcade game, but there's definitely mileage here if you decide to make a post-jam version.

fabdynamic 2023-01-13 20:15

@john-gabriel Thank you for the kind works and feedback! @owca Thank you for the positive and constructive feedback!

I appreciate you both. :)

reivilibre 2023-01-13 23:31

Agreed that it was a bit too easy — I mostly ran around in circles and it seems like that makes the score grow really fast? BTW the keyboard mapping isn't 'correct' in that it doesn't use the physical location of WASD but rather relies on WASD being in the same place in the player's keyboard layout, so I had to change my layout for this game. This is not too uncommon here but some game do it right as well.

gotanod 2023-01-14 19:00

Good game! It's easy because you can revisit a 9 cell without any impact. Q'bert game had levels where every time the block changes so you need to plan how to visit each cell.

fabdynamic 2023-01-15 02:13

@reivilibre that makes sense and I hoped that the arrow keys worked as a backup but do some games actually sense which keyboard layout it is or do they just give an option to remap in the game? thanks for this great food for thought and thanks for working around it with a remapping!

@gotanod thank you! I thought about that qbert thing and am not sure why I didn't do this game that way. Probably for Jack the Reaper 2: Reap Harder ;)

ghostbomb 2023-01-15 12:04

This reminds me of one the first games I ever made, which was also similar to Pac Man. Very cool.

Some more risk and reward would go a long way. Levels should probably get harder the longer you stay in them, and it should take longer than an instant to go to the next one. This concept has potential.

reivilibre 2023-01-15 14:40

@fabdynamic in Godot at least you can choose to either map to a 'physical' key or to a key by its letter/label. If you choose the 'physical' option then the keyboard layout doesn't affect which key is meant — I presume there will be a simple way to do this in whatever you're using. I've seen some of the Unity games do it right as well, even in a web browser so the information must be available at all layers down.

I have never used Unity but https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UIE-Keyboard-Events.html might mean something to you:

> keyCode: The keyCode property returns a character key that corresponds directly to a physical key on an input device, such as a keyboard or joystick. The difference between the character property and the keyCode property is that keyCode represents a physical key, while character represents the entry of a specific character. For example, both a and A return keyCode=KeyCode.A during a keyDownEvent.

fabdynamic 2023-01-15 17:43

@reivilibre fascinating! I was able to switch my keyboard to azerty and replicate the problem you are describing and I think I know what to do. Thanks again!

fabdynamic 2023-01-15 17:43

@ghostbomb Thank you! you are right and I appreciate your feedback. :)

hungryroy 2023-01-16 06:04

Those mean Pac-Mans keep chasing me and getting my stuff! Nice simple execution, I like the graphics and the fonts. Some text such as the "You win" message are cut off when I don't full-screen the app (they are shown complete when I click full-screen)

fabdynamic 2023-01-16 21:03

Thank you for the feedback @hungryroy and for playing the game and offering those kind words. I'll have to fix that UI responsiveness problem for the sequel :)

ofiro 2023-01-19 14:58

Hey good job :) I won pretty easily because of an easy map, I see in the comments that the maps are randomized?

I liked escaping the mean farmer. It seems in the win state you can "stash" endlessly by pressing n.

fabdynamic 2023-01-20 22:52

Thank you @ofiro ! That mean farmer is a jerk and I'm glad you escaped :) I appreciate your feedback.

erkberg 2023-01-22 17:47

An interesting take on Pac-Man! Right now, it is super easy to win, as we can just continue to the next farm when getting into a tight situation. I kinda enjoyed this aspect though, it makes the game more relaxed than it has any right to be :D Some audio would've indeed gone a long way for this game, but it's fine the way it is. Did you know you can opt-out of categories for rating? Would've been advisable to do that for audio in your case.

madbeagle 2023-01-26 11:34

What a coincidence that we both have LD games with the same pretty unusual name, although mine was from a few years ago: https://arlagames.itch.io/jack-the-reaper