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Mystic Postman
Mystic Postman
By interpixel
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 1128 | 2.85 | 23 | |
| Fun | 1163 | 2.54 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 1123 | 2.59 | 23 | |
| Theme | 895 | 3.54 | 23 | |
| Audio | 649 | 2.95 | 23 | |
Comments
duncant
2023-05-03 20:42
It was a bit confusing, I seemed to get some stuff to deliver when I run near a town but then I didn't really know how to deliver it. Also I had minus dragon coins. I gave up fighting the dragons after a couple of goes because it didn't seem to help in any way so I just kept pressing escape. I enjoyed running through the water and fighting under water dragons :) It felt a bit like there was a game already made and a basic delivery mechanic was added. Not saying that's the case necessarily it just felt like the delivery and dragons stuff didn't really go together that well.
Still though, really good effort, nicely done.
I didn't understand what to do. I ran towards the castle for a long time, then suddenly 2 dragons appeared right out of the air near the lake. I pressed the "end turn" button, the window disappeared, the dragons remained hanging in the air and lost interactivity ... But anyway, it looks beautiful.
@gamescodedogs sorry, i will add some instructions to the description. the castles have a door on them you have to go near it for a prompt to enter. if you end turn the dragons take their turn in combat, i didn't have much time to do vfx to highlight what was happening so sometimes their action doesn't seem very apparent unless you watch all of the hp/ep bars.
This is a cool game. Exploring the area was pretty fun, however i got stuck at one point since I couldn't click on a dragon (they are outside of my field of view)
Couldn't figure out how to obtain items to deliver, but nevertheless earned some coins and purchased some upgrades. Some battles had dragons mysteriously healing instead of receiving damage from my attacks. Nice that castles are tall and can be seen from afar, no need for a minimap.
@bluedandelion yeah didn't have time to add spawn zone control. Normally you should be able to hit the escape menu option under end turn to leave a battle that is not working out.
@tangiblegames they probably did receive damage, they just used all of their energy to heal it back immediately; it's a 6 cost spell they all have. It needs a better indicator and some vfx to show the healing action being taken or maybe a battle log, but i spent too much time working on the map topology and tree placement on day 1 so ran out of time. Deliveries should just get added in x5 increments whenever you visit a new castle that is at least 15s travel time away. Could be a bug if that doesn't happen
Having 19 coins i cant buy skill for 19 coins because game says i dont have enough. If the prices represented as floats just round them down to int. Снимок.JPG
Sometimes dragons can spawn inside of slope and become untargetable. Sometimes camera is facing the wrong direction so you can't see enemies and therefore attack them. You should either make camera movable in combat or make it automaticaly face enemies. Also it's possible to target your character with damaging spells which is counter-productive. Target highlighting would come handy.
Animations are too slow for my taste. Duration of 1 second or quicker would be nice. And most important - in a game where the main objective is to run around you shouldn't make players always hold shift to sprint - just make sprint the default behaviour.
Overall i like the concept. If you add more various locations and quests that explain what you delivering and for what reason then it can become a great game.
Hope this feedback helps. =)
stormcat
2023-05-18 13:32
Cool game, and it was crazy to see a world that large for a game jam, but there wasn't a lot of variety and it was a bit unclear what you were meant to do.
@mountaininn good feedback, all things i had on my list of lower priority bug fixes. would have liked to have implemented but ran out of time. Except the sprint button thing, mine stayed on after a short time of holding it anyway so will have to take a look at that next time i work on a similar character controller.
the coins are integers. I suppose i never noticed it because i never had exactly the same number of coins as the discounted item. sorry for the bug. just found the source of the problem
if(this.playerData.gold > price) { ... } forgot to put the >= instead
Very ambitious entry and I enjoyed it a lot. Would love to see this game be developed further with a little polish it could be really fun. Great job!
Wow, impressive to have something like this for a jam. It was a real pleasure to explore this land!
tan90
2023-05-19 03:03
The entire game style is very beautiful, and the characters' movements are very smooth! I really like it! And the music is very soothing and relaxing. When I passed by a small stone. It only appears every time I pass by it, making me think it's my goods.
It's a good proof of concept! Once I figured out what to do, I enjoyed running around. I wish the starting location was right next to a city or you started with some deliveries. I'd love to come back and play it again if you polish it up for a post-jam version!
magprog
2023-05-19 03:54
I was surprised to have this large of a world in this sort of jam, good for 72 hours.
I like the idea of just 'vibing' and going from town to town, getting better upgrades over time. Out of anything in the game, the combat felt tedious. I think using key buttons, or a quick UI for fighting would really help what's here. Also, a skill gem for movement would be pretty nice.
@acearcher thanks for the feedback, i think i will continue working on it after the jam until it reaches something i can be proud of. It may take a while but if you follow my page on itch.io you should get notified in the future when i eventually round out the game and release a major update adding in all of my dream features. I think i will develop it as a roguelike pseudo-deckbuilder since i think improvising and making combat strategies on the fly is a more enjoyable way to do turn based combat than the standard jrpg/pokemon way where you just have a preset move list each round.
@magprog thanks for the feedback, the movement gems are a good idea, i want to make moving from place to place more stimulating for sure. The world is technically infinite as that is what i spent the first day developing, but i want to add more diversity and biomes with different enemies, events and resources in each biome.
I think i will overhaul the combat system pretty heavily making it more like a deckbuilder so you have to think about each more more to avoid being defeated.
lcstark
2023-05-19 21:16
Interesting game! Looks like you've managed to put a lot of things together in a pretty short time.
I'm having problems with understanding the delivery system. When I start the game, I have "0 deliveries to make". I run to a castle in the distance, and inside it I have several options to buy some skill gems, and also an "deliver items" option, which is giving me "+0 coins". I run to the next castle, it looks the same. After I visited 4-5 castles, the last option is suddenly showing it will give me "+40 coins", but I never picked up anything to deliver and at all times (before and after gaining the 40 coins) I still have "0 deliveries to make". I think it would be better if the player started with a delivery to make, having a specific castle to deliver a package to, and there should be a marker showing them where to go. When they'd reach the castle the quests could start spawning randomly.
The combat is a nice idea - it reminded me a bit of PSX-era Final Fantasy games, only without the time element. If you need to click an enemy to target a skill on them, having the ability to rotate and zoom the camera is a must, although you could probably make it much easier if you simply allowed the user to click on enemy HP bar instead of their model. Also, while the option to escape is a good way to avoid bugged-out fights, it kinda makes the combat pointless in the game, as you can escape from every battle without any consequences.
It was also pretty weird that I could just run underwater like it was no big thing (made for a much shorter way between each castle! :P), but it was really funny when I got attacked underwater:
mystic_postman.png
And even funnier when at one point I escaped the underwater combat and tried moving around the enemies, but kept getting stuck in their colliders. Maybe when you escape from combat the enemies should despawn?
skel3ton
2023-05-19 22:12
what a crazy entry. the world is surprisingly big, i might make it a little smaller in this LD jam. good job
@lcstark thanks for the feedback, all things that i wanted to do but ran out of time sadly.
The delivery system i realised was confusing after submission so i added some notes to the page to explain it, pick up happens automatically near a castle, drop off is manual inside shop unless you have >=20 deliveries then drop off is automatic outside castle as well, since you are at capacity. The amount you get paid is based on how far you have taken the goods for delivery. So you get 0 if you have just picked them up and put them back in the shop.