Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Medieval Messenger
By jose-bonilla
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 695 | 3.47 | 25 | |
| Fun | 1002 | 2.93 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 620 | 3.30 | 25 | |
| Theme | 175 | 4.30 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 516 | 3.80 | 25 | |
| Audio | 429 | 3.45 | 23 | |
| Humor | 2 | |||
| Mood | 640 | 3.47 | 25 |
Nice game! Happy to see you went and fished it for Jam. Cool music and art style. The enemies are a bit unfair, since I did not find a way to shake them off. Also, is there and end to the game, or you just go as long as you can, info on that would be nice :) Anyway, good job with the game!
Thanks for your kind comments! Enemies have a probability of idling, so if you run from them you should be able to fend them off, provided you don't traverse complicated terrains :) There's no ending, I added that to the Q&A above :) Best, manta ray
This game was super fun! The graphics and music were perfect for the medieval vibe and the gameplay was great. The enemies chased a bit far but it also kept the game a bit more intense so I think it was great. 10/10 Game very fun.
I wish there was a way to move forward more than one tile, but it was cool~
@eli-heinrichs Thank you so much for your kind comments! It's great to see you enjoyed it.
@rincs Thanks for playing it on stream! It was great. I thought about that during the development, but since I was originally going for Compo, didn't make it, and then I spent the rest of the time completing what I couldn't deliver on Sunday :D
@jose-bonilla Makes sense!! You gotta make sure that a game gets finished first! xD
Fun game! You pulled off the grid mechanics very well.
I loved the art style and the music. I felt controls were a touch cumbersome at times and I wish the player had some form of defense. found it easy to get surrounded through the difficult yellow terrain. all in all I really enjoyed the theme, and thought some really good effort was put into it.
Wow, great game, seriously. I`m impressed it was made by only one person! The vibe reminded me a lot of Catan, the board game. At first I thought that being unable to attack was a little boring, but having to think carefully about the next moves really adds to the gameplay. Setting aside the time constraints, I would have loved to see some form of interaction between enemies, adding another layer of strategy. For example, maybe the spider attacks the thief if it is standing within its range. Amazing game, great job!!!
@rocket-and-blanky thanks for your kind words. I had never implemented a hex grid before and it was fun.
@doublemintben thanks! I agree with the movement being cumbersome, I thought about adding some pathfinding - at be the cost of having to predict the enemies several steps in advance. Thanks for playing!
Thanks @team-gaivot for the praise, I really appreciate it! Your idea is amazing, interaction between monsters would be awesome, it would lead to emergent behaviors. Thanks :)
It is a fantastic concept, would love to see it expanded upon!
Very cool game, interesting idea. Enemies are unfair though - if you were caught surrounding by desert or mountains - you'll die 100%. That would be nice if they use the same cost of moving as the messenger does.
The map looks amazing, all the tile types are perfect and they go together great. I got a bit stuck trying to deliver a package to the King of Southampton after he just gave me a job, he kept telling me to get on with it. It almost made me want to not deliver his package!
@thatsommes hey, thanks for your kind words! I probably won't but it indeed was interesting to design and develop it.
@duke-ua thanks for the praise! I found it hard to balance it, as setting the same cost would make them too easy to dodge. I ended up including a probability of idling and a probability of not attacking even if they are next to you (thess probabilities vary by monster). I guess the dessert is too hard :)
@tompudding thanks! It means a lot since I suck at art, that's why I love the compo, it forces me to try to do the art by myself. I ended up liking the look of the tiles.
I think what you mean by the "I got stuck" part is that you used the 1.00 build and you got caught in the UI bug which clicks through and, if you happened to click in the castle and the button appeared exactly above it, if you click the part of the button that is above, you'll get the click through and it will trigger the message again. To fix it you can click the part of the button that doesn't overlap the castle. I fixed that bug 8n 1.01 because apparently it happened to other people.
Thanks for playing!
I would like some more predictability with the enemies
Thanks for playing it @kiti-dev :) I agree, it would help with the strategy element.
Cool framework you have going here! Great job making the tiles, it really feels like a board game.
There's not really too much gameplay happening though. Travelling to locations was quite tedious. Maybe reducing map size would help, and making it so you don't need to click on the character before taking a turn. The turn-based aspect wasn't really explored much, but it would be interesting to see the enemies on the map telegraph their moves so the player could play around them. You could give the enemies different abilities too.
@francis Thanks for your comments! Thanks for the praise regarding the framework and graphics! Especially cool since I am really bad at drawing. I agree with the gameplay aspect, I think it was too ambitious for the jam, especially since I didn't have much experience designing it. I managed to implement it, but in retrospective I think it lacks things to do. Travelling is tedious as well, as others have said, a kind of pathfinding would be much better. This much I envisioned but did not have time to implement it. The part where enemies telegraph their moves would be amazing and would have a distinct aspect in terms of strategy, great idea!
In general I'm happy I was able to pull off the programming (hex grid, turn manager, UI etc.) but I think for future turn-based strategy games I'd need to implement the other gameplay aspects to make it more fun and better to play.
Love a good hex grid! I loved the visuals, and the audio was fantastic, the goals were pretty clear, and I liked that there was a "Centre on the player" button, a godsend with such a big map! I'd echo what others above me have said with regards to travel being a little tedious with only being able to move 1 space, I'd have loved either a move queue, or just a "you can move 3 actions worth of spaces" kind of mechanic, that would let you move 3 spaces over grass, one over mountains, and one with a move left over for forests.
Otherwise I had a ball, great work!
Thanks @shane-gadsby for the praise :) I am happy you enjoyed it. Good idea about the "x actions worth of grassland", I think it might be better than the queue.
It was a lot of fun to play. I found the soundtrack to be somewhat unnatural and had some difficulty escaping enemies, which made the game challenging. But these are minor issues and didn't detract too much from my enjoyment of the game. Overall, it was a lot of fun to play, good job.
@pedryx thanks a lot for playing it and for your kind comments!
you seem to get dropped
@regismeysso hi, thanks for commenting, sorry but I did not understand your comment... Can you elaborate please?
Better remove the need to select player before moving. If a game has only one playable unit there's no need to select that unit every turn it's just annoying. Upgrades would be nice maybe make each delivery give upgrade point to spend on abilities like move 2 hex in one turn, or scare away mobs.
Thanks for playing it and for your feedback @Mountainlnn! Nice idea on the upgrades. Wish I'd had more time.
I like the concept of hex-based movement games like this, although I noticed a few rough edges when I played. For one, having to click tile by tile over and over on a map this big was pretty tiring, it would have been nice to be able to draw a path or something and have the whole thing be executed at once. The terrain difficulty mechanics were super cool, but I got really frustrated when I realized that the bandits didn't get affected by them at all, so entering a mountain or a desert was just a death trap if any of the enemies caught sight of you. I also encountered an issue where I'd have a package to deliver to a location, but I couldn't because they had a quest for me to deliver something elsewhere, resulting in me having to go in a big circle to deliver the second package, and then return to deliver the first. The art was really well done, and it reminded me of classing turn based games. I also liked that fighting wasn't a mechanic, just fleeing. Nice game!
Wow thanks for your great comments @aurailus! Good feedback as well.