horda 2023-01-08 22:56
Excellent puzzle game wich makes good use of isometric road building mechanics. Sweet and simple, I recommend !
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD52 → Hartifacts
By lisyarus
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 35 | 4.01 | 29 | |
| Fun | 6 | 4.27 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 35 | 3.92 | 29 | |
| Theme | 326 | 2.27 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 102 | 3.87 | 29 | |
| Audio | 169 | 3.15 | 28 | |
| Humor | 212 | 2.36 | 20 | |
| Mood | 146 | 3.37 | 26 |
Excellent puzzle game wich makes good use of isometric road building mechanics. Sweet and simple, I recommend !
Beautiful, simple, effective, fun, excellent!
Although it didn't fit the theme too well it's still a really good puzzle game! The 3d models look good and the puzzles are interesting, and the UI is easy to use. Some ambience would have been nice (seagulls, ocean sounds etc) to add some more background noise. Overall, a really solid puzzle game!
I really liked the atmosphere of the game and the puzzle was great but the levels could be a little bit more difficult. I completed all levels.
Well, this is quite embarrassing, but I got stuck on the 2nd level! I honestly have no idea what I'm supposed to do here and have been stuck here for 15 minutes. However, the game is quite well-made overall! I don't think it fits very well with the theme of harvest, but I see what you were going for.
Nice isometric puzzle game. Definitely something that could be built upon and could get more interesting as more complexity is layered in. Nice variety in level design as well. Each one felt like a new challenge and it didn't get repetitive despite being so simple. Very efficient design!
@scolondev Ohh, sorry for that! Try connecting to the bottom two cities first, then buying a _/_ shaped road, connect to the remaining city and then connecting to the temple.
For this theme, I figure "getting stuff" qualifies. I really like the mechanics of this game, but the levels are too easy. The solutions felt too obvious. It has a great foundation.
The tile flipping effect when the level begins is pretty nice. The controls are pretty intuitive. All in all, this is very good.
Wow! What a nice game! That was fun and the idea was really innovative! 👍
Nice puzzle game 👍
You found a good pace for the difficulty increase. Sadly no background music and the "shadow" or covered area could have some other color then black to make it not so dark in full screen, or zoom in to the map could also help. Also it would be nice the have a "next" level button or something to not have to switch only for next level to the keyboard.
Excellent puzzle game, relaxing, easy to navigate and understandable right from the start! I could play this for hours if there more levels :) Very well executed, and the truck driving to its destination is a great ceremonial way to end each level!
Nice fun Puzzle! 7 level was pretty hard, but I made id at the end. You lost me on level 11, because I lack action is such games, but it's not the problem of the game :)
Graphics and animations are nice, I'd change some color scheme maybe. Sometimes it's hard to understand where the tunnel of the Temple is (when it's not facing camera) – you have to guess.
@danmerey Ah, that's a shame, there're just 12 levels in total :D
Speaking of temples, you can rotate the camera with the middle mouse button. Guess I should mention this in the description, thanks :)
@lisyarus > Ah, that’s a shame, there’re just 12 levels in total :D
> Speaking of temples, you can rotate the camera with the middle mouse button. Guess I should mention this in the description, thanks :)
Huh, I didn't know that :D Anyway some indication without rotating would be nice (like a small detail). I almost didn't know what to do in one of the first levels, where the entrance is on the back (at that point I didn't know that there should be an entrance, and I can't connect it just like Cities – from any side)
Amazing game! Polished, good simple looking and fun puzzles. Also as I can remeber you are using your own engine, love how rendering and tiles animations ended up looking) Untitled.png
@corporation Yep, that's a custom engine. That's the only way I can get my package sizes below 2Mb :)
Game feels great to play. Placing roads, connecting cities, feedback is fantastic. The rippling animations on level start and the truck driving when you finish the level are excellent touches. Puzzle design is on point, too. You have to be very thoughtful when choosing upgrades. This is one of my favorites entries so far :slight_smile: I played through the whole thing.
One UX gripe -- I couldn't tell how much a piece cost to place before I bought it, which messed my math up sometimes. Luckily it was easy to restart the level.
Cool game, music could have enhanced the atmosphere a bit. The puzzles were fun, easy (thou I had to restart some levels more than once). Ran out of levels way too fast - I really enjoyed it :)
nicely done! I don't know why, but I just couldn't figure out the seventh level. I always seemed to miss a little bit of money. In other words, it was a good puzzle! I love the way how the level spawns in. Really wished I was able to do something similar in my game.
Damn, did you manage to make this game in compo mode? damn, I'm so impressed. I came to thank you for playing our game, but I'm really impressed with yours, I thought it was very innovative, very cool art, very cool gameplay too. Too bad I'm terrible at playing lol, even mine I die several times before I can pass.
Ok, so this is a great game. Even more great given that levels can be configured as part of png files. And greater still since this is a *compo* game. Also, awesome work using a custom engine!
Like @danmerey mentioned above, Level 7 stumped me a bit before I, you know, figured out [no spoilers].
I love the low-poly art style, and I especially love the seamless interaction the user has with the hexagonal grid tiles. I have an intense appreciation for the number of models that needed to be made for the different road types, and the system that detects the orientation for tiles-to-be-placed.
The animation of the truck from the artifacts to the main city was nicely executed. It added a good dose of game feel. It's also cool that the trucks speed up if another artifact is captured while one truck is still driving!
The only thing this game could've used was a small hint at how to use the mouse. It took me a second to realize that I needed to click and drag from the main building to create roads (I thought I had to click and place).
[FINALLY](///raw/a43/d4/z/562b9.png)
From trying out the custom map maker - is there a color I can use to specify the orientation of the artifacts? I made this map, but I don't think I'll ever be able to reach the artifact lol.
ld52_hartifacts2.PNG
@therealjtgill Thank you a lot! There're actually only two road models really - a straight and a curved one, others are combinations of these two :) The road placing logic was something I really underestimated the complexity of, spent a whole day just working on it.
Good point about clicking vs dragging the mouse: I guess I should've just kept the "Drag to build a road" text on from the start.
Thanks for using the, erm, "map editor" :D I'm happy someone did that. You can change the orientation of a temple with the blue channel of the pixel: it needs to be a number 0..5 that specifies the orientation. 0 means bottom-right with the default camera orientation (it's just "right" in the PNG), and then it goes counterclockwise.
Really satisfying little puzzle game - especially impressive considering the >2mb and 48 hour constraints it was made under. Level 7 definitely also stumped me for a while, but the rest of the puzzles felt like they ramped up in difficulty super well
Great idea - great implementation. I really like you didn't go with standard "Harvest crops" game, so I can really appreciate some variation. Also always fun to see some engine variation, not always Unity/Godot/Unreal :smile: (even though I used Godot myself - trying to learn something new).
Really liked the intro/outro tile flipping. Sounds were on-point, but as some mentioned some background audio variety would have helped.
The levels were easy enough and pretty straightforward to solve. My only problem, that there was one and only way to complete the levels. Sure the order of construction may be a bit different, but you always end up with same configuration. So I think it would be great to relax possibility space a bit for puzzles, at the same time you could create somewhat more challenging ones. Then again, I fully understand if that was deliberate choice for `Compo` scope that would allow more players to complete the game.
I tried create a level with what I said above in mind - allowing more design choices for the players. But the maps were in 2D, so each pixel has 8 neighbors instead of 6 in hexgrid. Couldn't figure out which 2 pixels are you dropping to create hexgrid. Maybe example template with dropped pixels would be helpful here. Also it seems the artifact mines are automatically oriented to closes patch of land? (Thinking of a case, where should be a longer bridge to the mines, even though there is land nearby)
From design side of things, would be interesting so see more map tile types. For example: 1. Cities with exits not to all sides (then how to orient them?) 2. Pre-build oriented patches of road so you have to build around or with it.
@bloodycoin Thank you for great & kind feedback! Yes, having a single way to solve a puzzle was a deliberate choice due to time restriction: with multiple solutions it is very easy to miss something that breaks the level completely :)
Considering the levels, notice how all levels are kind of rhombic in shape, or more specifically they are parallelograms, which are skewed rectangles. They are built by taking the rectangular tiles from the level bitmap, going from bottom to top row by row, shifting each row of tiles by 1/2 to the right. I completely agree that it's not the most intuitive thing to work with! Even I got confused about it multiple times :D What helped me is the realization than in the bitmap each pixel only has 6 real neighbours; the 2 on the top-right & bottom-left are kind of fake.
The orientation of temples is determined by the blue channel of the pixel: values 0 to 5 mean 6 possible orientations, starting from east (positive X in the bitmap) and then going counterclockwise. A questionable choice, again, but it works and this felt enough for Compo :)
Nice, thanks for explanations. Well I agree, that building levels from bitmaps is a lot easier and intuitive once you wrap your head around it. At least easier than defining hexgrid space from 3D mathematics. Just some explanations how to define levels would be helpful, as the only other choice we have is to go through code parsing that bitmap :joy:
Really cool concept and puzzle game. Plays great, I'm just not sure whether I should vote for the Theme in this case.
UPDATE: actually I think it fits the theme, indeed, and in an original way.
PS: I was surprised at the very small download size by being a 3D game, then I noticed it's because you used raw C++ with SDL, rare to see it around :)
very cool game, cannot believe created in 2 days 🤩
This was a really nice puzzle. It was not as easy I thought it would be at start. The game is easy to understand, but made my brain work a bit.
Very nice work ! Well done !
Really fun game and very well done for a compo game! I love the hexagonal grid being used as a puzzle game within a world and after finishing the full thing, I really enjoyed the puzzles. This is something I could easily see turn into a full game!
Very good puzzle game, I love it !
screenshot-2023-01-15 18_38_53.png
It is a pity that there is no music, but the game is really fun and i played it until his end with pleasure =)
Very cool puzzle game!