Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD53 → The Smuggler's Map
By phanelly and edoardo-talamini
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 287 | 3.85 | 32 | |
| Fun | 466 | 3.56 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 79 | 4.08 | 32 | |
| Theme | 20 | 4.55 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 33 | 4.65 | 32 | |
| Humor | 724 | 2.85 | 30 | |
| Mood | 82 | 4.23 | 32 |
What a very unique game idea, the art style is beautiful and extremely consistent! I do however feel like the UI readability did suffer a little due to this consistency. Initially I didn't even realize the right side of the UI was a legend, I thought it was just aesthetic scribbles ^^' This is of course nitpicking on the highest order and after I understood the UI everything made sense and felt right. Good job and keep up the good work!
I really like the art, its a nice vibe. The music, sound effects, and art really make it a fun experience. I found the pirates to be just enough of a problem to keep it interesting. Altough one killed me when it spawned from the sea. :(
Amasing game! Sounds and visuals are awesome. Strange bug with movement when the ship goes off the rout
very beautiful and fun
I really like the theme and the drawing-of-the-ship-route mechanic was very fun! While pretty to look at, I found the icons a little hard to understand/read -- especially with the background image not scaling to 100% width on full screen. Awesome job overall!
Very special and good game. I like the atmosphere, the music and the graphics are amazing. Congratulations :)
Wow very cool art style! gameplay is fun enough wanted to see all the beasty drawings so I kept playing.
Uh wow, very nice one! Love the old map graphics, every UI element fits the style very well. Using the dotted paths on the map which you can control by the mouse is such a great idea, you made an awesome mechanic out of that known graphical element.
Great job, congrats mate!
Got the one million :laughing: Very cool game. Was a lot of fun!
A few minor nitpicks: - In the second half of the game (After I had around 400.000 score) no more pirates or navy would appear. Nessie was just chilling in the middle of the map. I just had to plot my course around her. - Reading the legend on the right was a bit annoying. Maybe remove it completely and add the "source"-island to the requests. Something like: island A -> treasure map -> island B - The island shapes could be a bit more distinct, to recognize them with one glance. (Halfmoon- and Bridge-island were good examples :thumbsup: )
All in all a very good game. Nice graphics. Fitting music! Good job! :)
the-smugglers-map.JPG
@jkyd Thank you for the heads up on the screen scaling, I'll look into that. Also thank you for the feedback on the readability, after the jam we'll have to rethink that! On the same category, thank you @icch-howw for the feedback!
@hedroncrab you are right about the boat drifting away, it was such an annoying bug! Luckily I managed to fix it like one hour after your comment, luckily soon enough before the end of the jam ahah!
@stefan-funke thank you for the meaningful feedback. Weird about the ships not spawning anymore! I wonder what caused it. I like your idea about the redesign of the legend, we well think about it when we redesign it. And thank you for the feedback on the island shapes, such a good idea <3 Also I see you reached 1 milion, I hope you found it funny.
Very cool and funny game! I really love ship control mechanic^^
It was fun to run away from pirates but i don't understand how to destroy them. After playing 6 minutes session I was being chased by 4th pirates ships. Iw was scary😱 Overall i really love tha game. It's really good project!
Awesome graphics My respect to the artists❤️
i think that this is the best game!!! love all cathegorics
Such a good work! I reeeeeally love the art, pirate maps, old fashioned monsters, I love this aesthetic! the gameplay is simple but addictive, you can play it for a very long time! I noticed two small problems: perhaps you should have made the legend and list of deliveries more explicit, to make them more visible. And sometimes the ship can get stuck in the island, it can be dangerous if you are being chased by enemies. Anyway I really enjoy the gameplay, great job! <3
Thank you all for all the positive comments, critics,and feedbacks. I had a lot of fun drawing the asset for this game (especially the monsters) so I'm very glad that they have been liked by so many!
@hoeleboele I will rub this in my programmer's face for a while :eyes:
@jkyd Yes maybe I went a bit too on the pretty side instead of he readable one :sweat_smile:
@stefan-funke Congratulation! I hope you had a good laugh! And yeah after all monsters spawned I'm afraid enemy boats do not survive for long . Sorry to hear that the Snake decided to chill out in the middle of the map lol. Thanks for the great feedback anyway :thumbsup:
I cannot respond to everyone but know that all your comments are very appreciated and cherished!
I'm really impressed!!! However, there is a little bug on one of the island (didn't screenshot it for first time): изображение_2023-05-02_142350965.png
Also, i think it would be very helpful if I could change the font in settings because it's little hard to read
But everything else is great! I like the graphics and mechanics!
Neat and pretty little game with some interesting potential for further features! I can see how this could be a cool concept to expand on.
Some constructive criticism: - It usually struggled trying to identify which island has the resource that I currently need. Although there is a legend, the fact that everything is the same colour made it somewhat frustrating to pattern-match the islands on the right to those on the left. To solve that problem you could use some sort of colour-coding (e.g. give each resource a colour and apply that colour to parts of the island that offers the resource) or provide a tooltip that displays when one hovers over an island or clicks it and that displays the resource. - Since the pirate ships' speed is similar to that of the ship one controls, the point at which it becomes nearly impossible to deliver resources is reached rather quickly. The problem here isn't that it makes the game difficult - it that it makes it feel *unfair* (at least to me). I'd love if the speed of one's ship increased with each new pirate ship that spawns (or if it already does, to make the increase stronger). That way, beating the game would feel more like a test of my skills, not of my patience.
@luxiffre yes I can see why the legend could be a bit *too* diegetic. All enemy ships are slower than the player one, but we know that they like to gang up on a port, and while possibile to bait them away, it's easier said than done when there are like four of them.
Thanks for the feedback!
This is really good! The game looks absolutely beautiful and the music is :100:! I am STILL in love with The Wellerman so full marks there from me! :grin:
I had a pretty difficult time reading the legend at first; I feel like some colors would have been a more helpful guide. That said, the player has plenty of time to figure things out before the pirates arrive. This did make the game a bit of a struggle, though.
The idea of using a quill to draw out the path the boat will take is pure genius! I never would have thought of it and it is very creative. Unfortunately, I also think it's the major thing that's keeping this game from being more fun. I had a hard time controlling things using the track pad, which led to me being sunk by pirates :(. I suspect that just clicking and dragging to have the boat move in the current direction of the cursor would be easier for the player to control. Or maybe a compromise would be to slow down the pirate ships in order to compensate.
Great game. Loved the artstyle, ambience and the quill as mouse cursors is so cool. Navigating the ship worked very intuitively and was pretty flawless at all time. I think the interaction between the different enemy types also adds a lot to the mood and feel of the game, though it offers the player a little to much room to sit out overcrowded situations by just staying out of the conflict zones and wait till enemies eliminate each other themselves.
Like others commented, the cognitive link to do for the player between supplied and demanded wares being visually placed on different sides of the screen was also the hardest part for me in the game.
I really liked the graphics, setting and the mood! Totally my thing. I guess I wasn't the only one who was preparing for Cartography theme, huh :D All sprites are very nice, the only downside is the path line, but it's easy to fix.
The gameplay and controls are not interesting and polished, but I believe it could be improved with more time :)
Very promising concept. I found the controls to be a bit fiddly, but otherwise it's super polished and has a nice difficulty with dodging everything. Nice game overall :)
Excellent atmosphere! Excellent music! Excellent environment and creatures!
Very impressive art style! The way of gameplay is quite innovative!
Wow. This is such an amazing game. I did work on a game that felt very similar in gameplay and graphics. But it's been somewhere hidden on my hard drive for some time now. Maybe I have to stea... er prirate some ideas from this game for it.
I agree with some comment that the legend on the side is a bit tricky to navigate or read. But just showing the island liek "go there", "go here" would probably make the game too simple. Not sure how to solve that issue. But I still had a lot of fun. Even with dying a lot on my first 5 runs or so
I am so happy to see so much appreciation for the style and the gameplay! Thank you all, truly.
@frabjous-studios , @amunonra , @noskro I promise to design a better UI next time LOL (And Noskro, do not pirate too much or the Marine will come, or even worse.... :eyes: :laughing: )
I've made good trades, but that pirates were crazy - they're just going for me and every time got into the whirlpool. Are they crazy or just brave warriors to pursue the pirate greatest deed? Pretty funny and especially liked the famous pirate theme!
Cool and fun game. I like that islands and what they produce look similar. I'm a bit jealous of your paper texture.
Minor nitpicks: - Since my patience is `null`, ships felt slow. - Triggers are way bigger than the sprites
Overall very good game. Well done!
Nice idea, fun game!
Very hard to go away from pirates, and select your ship feels a little bit bug, bacause I can't micro dodge when someone close. It always rotates to some direction that I don't need. Also I liked the idea to draw your path, it's nice
Graphics and sounds are great
@waterflow as the programmer of the team which consequently programmed all the AIs, yes, the pirates are definitely crazy and this is not a bug.
@ping78 yes, the dock triggers are way bigger in order to make things easier for the player. If instead you're referring to enemies' triggers, I thought I was precise and fair with those. Let me know which one you think feels weird
@sneakyfox yes you're right: micro movements are very difficult because if you click anywhere else than the exact center that's gonna be the first destination of the path. I should have fixed that but I had much other stuff to fix first ahah.
@noskro yarr harr
Very well thought out game. I included it in my Ludum Dare 53 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. https://youtu.be/d5bLQmuzzPs
@jupiter-hadley hope you had fun! :)
Dock triggers are quite big in my game too, for the same reason. (if you can call distance check a trigger) I was referring to enemy/player triggers. Seeing that distance between the sprites, did not feel correct.
tsm.png
I like the graphics, the pirate songs and the gameplay! I think it feels realy cool to draw the path in real time to avoid ennemies, and the progression from pirates to navy to monsters feels great, especially because they interact with each other.