superklever 2023-05-02 15:29
Very cool graphics style, I like it. For a game demo, it's done nicely
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → Void Scion
By Alyssa Sanden, technoporg, John_is_coding, Kuzushi, Chrome Wizard, Alex6725 and Braxton
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1050 | 3.05 | 40 | |
| Fun | 958 | 3.00 | 40 | |
| Innovation | 1018 | 2.80 | 41 | |
| Theme | 1142 | 2.97 | 36 | |
| Graphics | 913 | 3.10 | 41 | |
| Audio | 588 | 3.13 | 38 | |
| Humor | 892 | 2.55 | 30 | |
| Mood | 970 | 3.04 | 39 |
Very cool graphics style, I like it. For a game demo, it's done nicely
I'm getting a 404 error while trying to download the Windows build.
same here unable, to download windows version
Windows build is fixed now.
I like the spear mechanic! I got to the boss but it left the area and I couldn't kill it haha
Maybe a bug: The credits list music and sfx, but I didn't hear any music? I played through a few times. The game gave me old NES era adventure-rpg vibes. Especially the type that I'd rent from the video store and didn't come with a manual and there was like, no explanation for why you were in this fantasy world or what you were doing. I love that feeling of mystery!
Great game overall, Interesting combat system - reminds me of "Realm of the mad God", also amazing that you added a shop and XP system ! Some great mechanics that could have great use in future games, well done! - Tim
Worked on Windows for me (May 3rd). A complete game with combat, an upgrade system, multiple attacks, multiple enemy types, and an ending, props to the team for shipping. The guide-able spear attack in particular was interesting to play with. I wanted to see more development on this theme! I beat every enemy by simply spearing them to death and ignoring their attacks; didn't seem like I had a way to block or dodge the archer's arrows, for instance. Attacks costing health was an interesting mechanic, but the answer was still just to kill enemies as quickly as possible (so they couldn't deal more damage). Always only one enemy on-screen.
The combat mechanics were really unique, I think they'd really shine if you took this game even further. I never really felt like enemies were enough of a threat for me to use any of my spells besides the spear (which is a dope attack, I think it could be even cooler if you were encouraged to "multitask" when attacking, like use other spells/attacks to deal with the enemies close but get your spear circling the rest that are closing in). The ending was a little confusing? I found a big guy and attacked him but he seemed to die in 3 hits. (lvl 3 spear) Still, that was neat! Good art, unique gameplay, good job! :smile:
Fun game. I liked the different magic spells, specially the one that followed my mouse.
Good and interesting idea game
The loop of killing enemies to get upgrades felt pretty good. I think having a little more clarity or impact of what some of them did might have helped. The concept was unique and presented well. Nice stuff!
I found the gameplay mechanics to be quite intriguing and the variety of weapons to be enjoyable. The classic style of the game was a nice touch. However, I think the game could benefit from more challenging enemies and higher stakes, as well as a longer playtime. Additionally, I appreciated the unexpected plot twist that occurred after defeating the boss :D
Seems cool, wasn't sure what I should be doing other than wander around. Didn't play for too long, so maybe I missed something important.
I enjoyed the main combat mechanic quite a lot, although some of the enemies didn't put up much of a fight, the boss included. The best were the archer and the guy on the horse, those were more formidable.
The combat was cool! I wish I got to use them more in a more difficult setting or that the final boss was a bit harder. I also wished that the between combat/finding an enemy was more streamlined. The spear and melee attack felt good to use! Nice fun game~
Well done on this game! The graphics style is really cool and the spear mechanic is a lot of fun to use. I also appreciated the upgrade system and the addition of a shop. I do wish there were more challenging enemies, but overall, a great game with some unique mechanics that I hope to see more of in the future!
I was hoping for the health bar prompt to become the theme too! The combat mechanics were pretty fun, especially aiming the spear to piece through enemies multiple times. I wish the game had been more difficult as it would've made combat more satisfying. Overall good job!
Neat ideas on this. Damaged myself quite a bit, if you hold the mouse down- then the "spear" doesn't damage the enemy any more after the initial contact? A bit less empty space for the map would have been nice too, but it's a ludum game, so hard to scope them~ Was a jolly little experience overall!
Fun game! I think my biggest wish is that there were more enemies β I enjoyed the combat but I spent a lot more time wandering around the map than I spent fighting. The health meter mechanic is cool though!
Cool game!
I had some performance issues at the bottom of the map, but I do not know what caused that. The spear attack is definitely a unique idea and gives players a chance to inlict more damage depending on how well they handle the weapon's limited duration and movement.
What I feel it lacked was perhaps a cost for using your abilities. It would have introduced some more difficulty.
Overall - well done.
I don't understand the link with the jam's theme but nice game !
Nice game.
Spear weapon is a good idea, the fact that each attack cost you some life too.
I felt the game was too easy, it need more enemies that you can 'chain' with your spear. I felt Boss was also too easy. Perhaps it need some range attack, or repulsive attack, 2 phases, etc...
Overall, I had a good time. Well done.
@xamora The link to the theme is to deliver souls to the god at the end, through the sacrificial altar.
@technoporg Oh i understand now, sorry my bad xD
@m0zrat The intended gameplay path is that you follow the cobblestone trail from your spawn point, walking around the map and defeating the enemies you encounter, then upgrading your spells at the gargoyle shrine you encounter, before confronting the final boss and discovering the ending at the altar that appears when you defeat it.
Congrats for your submission on your first game jam!
Liked the combat mechanics (the void was my favorite) and I found you created a big map considering the jam's deadline.
The music and the SFX were pleasant to hear.
For some reason, some parts of the map dropped the FPS.
Overall, a good job!
I had kinda bad performance in general, and the boss crashed my game the first time I got to it and hit it with the spear a few times.
Wow, big team. The game seems kinda incomplete. The world is very empty. I kept wandering around for ages and only managed to find I think three enemies and the boss. Which weirdly enough was the easiest of them all to defeat. π€·ββοΈ
Went for another run and found the start knight enemy, two shield ones, bow man and the cavalry. Then it seems to just be a whole lot of empty space to wander around in. That isn't even enough enemies to warrant an upgrade system. The enemies were also a complete joke difficulty wise. Your on attacks did more damage to your health than they did. Few of them also had completely unavoidable attacks so not a great design in that manner also.
The three different attacks weren't distinguished enough to have them all. Should have focused more on making one of them at least feel good and then maybe have other upgrades be for movement speed and health and so on. And of course would need a whole lot more enemies to make those upgrades matter too. My favourite from the attacks was the spear as it was the most polished one and had some interesting potential mechanic on the snake-like cursor following.
The character sprites looked pretty good. And the health bar especially was top notch. The tile set itself could have used some more love. They didn't really fit together and even in the only part that was tried to smooth out the "tiledness" on the road corners, it then was bleeding to the grass and looked even more awkward.
Having just few minor variations for each tile would go a long way to break up the repetitiveness and make it look more natural. And then of course have a more nice blends for going from tile to another which those road corners started to resemble already. And then of course just adding some decorative sprites of stones, tree stumps, flowers and so on every here and there would help tons to make it feel more alive.
It was also sometimes hard to distinguish mountains and the cobble road from each other when coming from a grass or dirt patch and only seeing one of them.
Screenshot 2023-05-07 at 9.53.41.png
Music was nice and chill, fit the vibe of just wandering around aimlessly perfectly. Even though it was a rather short and repetitive loop, it didn't get boring. It's still playing on the background for me while I'm writing this. The sound effects were good also. Having a small bit of variety in repeated ones like the walking one is so important (and often over looked). Kudos on that. π
Would have been nice to have some restart or any option really to get unstuck from the game over screen.
Went for another stroll through the game. Managed to kill the final boss with a single spear swipe by wiggling the mouse over him. And then the whole game crashed. π€·ββοΈ
And I also had some very weird frame rate stutters at random spots where nothing was even happening.
Anyways, good job! π
The game was very laggy at the bottom right of the map (almost unplayable). I was expecting waves of enemies to come in, not the game is pretty quiet and nothing much happens, which made me lose attention. You could consider adding some indication or reason for the player to go towards the action. Nice sound effects and music!
@christian-zommerfelds Thank you for your feedback! We appreciate your taking the time to play our game.
We sincerely regret the lag - we ran out of time for extensive playtesting and just stuck to the area around the path. We believe the issue comes from having collision shapes on every mountain and water tile, and we will be sure to give more care to performance concerns and quality control in future jams!
An indicator of the direction for the player to go would definitely be beneficial for this short jam format, as we have heard it's fairly unclear what to do at the moment.
We'll make our next game even better!
@firespike33 Sorry about the lag issues you were experiencing. We had attempted to mitigate them by disabling certain tilemap features, but we unfortunately did not do our due diligence in testing every corner of the map.
Did the crash you encountered arise when using only the spear on the boss? We had a tester who discovered that the melee attack on a dead enemy causes a crash, but we would like to tease out all possible edge cases to figure out where we went wrong.
I liked the spear attack, the spear attack also seemed to be the only useful one because the melee didn't seem to work and the spinning discs were never necessary because there was only ever one enemy. I didn't really get lost, following the grey path was pretty clear to me. Interesting ideas here, but could use a lot more polish.
@antti-haavikko Wow, thank you so much for that writeup! Yours was easily the most detailed and constructive review we have received so far. I'll answer on behalf of the team.
The enemy and attack balancing were definitely the biggest things wrong with the game. It causes us so much pain to not be able to tweak a few numbers and re-upload it... We ran out of time to finish an enemy spawning mechanic, so we chose to only place a few, which we now realize was not the right decision to make. I had seen how many games were criticized for being too difficult, so we went too far in the other direction.
With more enemies, the attacks may become more distinguished from one another, as they fulfill the purposes of AOE damage, single-target melee, and long-range pierce respectively. Right now, though, in one-on-one combat, spamming the spear is all one really ends up needing.
>"nice blends for going from tile to another"
Like this one?
grassdirt.png
Despite spontaneously skipping school on Monday to get the game done, we still ran out of time to implement everything we had originally planned, nice tiles included! We were overly ambitious in our original vision for the game :) The second game jam we end up doing should go much more smoothly, not in the least because we'll have more than 2 months of prior game development experience going in. You're not wrong in thinking the game was incomplete. There was more we would have liked to put in, but overall, we got the important stuff, and are proud of what we created!
In terms of the more technical details, sorry about the frame drops and the crashes. Those always take away from the experience of a game. We had disabled the water tile animation to try and smooth out performance, but some other lag-inducing aspects of the game slipped through the cracks. We have since developed a much faster water animation shader, but it's too late to put that in now. The crash you encountered is because when the boss is hit quickly enough, the hit animation is played after the boss is dead. None of us were good enough gamers to discover that bug :smile:.
I would respectfully disagree that a restart button is necessary, in the context of the jam. Players are meant to walk around the map, defeat the boss, then finally experience the cutscene and end the game. The game is currently not going to be replayed extensively, so we directed our efforts where they would make more difference for the average player.
I'm not going to lie, it's hard not to take the criticism personally after pouring so much into the game, but at the end of the day, I recognize that it's only through honest feedback like yours that we're ever going to improve, so thank you again!
If you don't mind, I would really appreciate your opinion as a more experienced game developer on whether continued work on this game would be worth it.
Have a great day!
@technoporg IIRC I threw the spear at the boss and turned it around to hit it 3 times or so, and the game locked up during one of the hits. I hadn't hit the boss with anything else.
Yes blending just like that. Anything to break it up looking that much tiled really.
So was it your first jam game? Of course better time management and understanding what you're capable of achieving in some specific duration comes with more experience.
Well yeah, maybe restart wasn't needed but getting hard locked in a game over screen wasn't great either. Could also let the player continue roaming around after that too. Of course at its current state, there wasn't anything really to do.
Continuing on a jam project is almost always a good idea. If nothing else you end up learning something more while doing so.
Good job making a game.
Kudos for using Godot. The mechanics are simple, but polished to some extent (for a jam game) - there is also some narrative, which is always kind of hard for short jams.
I enjoyed mechanics where you pay with blood to cast (inspiration by Vladimir in League of Legends? If I remember that correctly - it's been years since I've played it).
There are few things to consider for next: - Starting with enemies marching right at you can be a bit frustrating (keep in mind, most people don't read instructions - I've learned it the hard way over past jams, and since then a tutorial 'level' is often a must) - If one thing is missing - it's a bit more enemies. Balancing jam game is hard (overdo it and no one is going to win), but there is just too few of them. I didn't have problem rushing through. - Environment could do a bit more polish (I saw the blending post in comments - and yes, that is one of the missing things ... but as usual, sacrifices has to be made to finish).
For a jam game, it's not bad (finishing it and posting it is always a feat).
Keep up the good work!
Hello! One of the artists speaking, I'm so grateful for all of the feedback everyone here has given! Thank you so much for playing our game, I would have put so much more time into making actual character animations and directional sprites but I unfortunately got sick halfway through the jam. I'm still glad that it's good enough to publish something good, especially considering this is my first real game jam!
It was fun! I donΒ΄t undestand if I make it to the end, I find a big boss I defeat it but then get a game over screen, nice graphics and music, good work!
@dreamerflow The intended message at the end is that you delivered the souls to the evil god, who then took your soul as well. Sorry if that was unclear!
@technoporg oh I see,and how you win? You need to find the good God?π€
@dreamerflow You're a blood sorcerer with dark magic, so finding the evil god is "winning"! There is no good god, but when you deliver the souls, you have accomplished your goal! I hope that helps. Sorry for any confusion; please let me know if you have any more need of clarification.
@technoporg is clear now, interesting use of the theme, thanks!
Game is very laggy on windows.