Golden Hour

kyboon 2023-05-03 19:22

Beautiful game! Art style is great, the music and sfx are on point too. Left and Right cannon controls are awkward at times but I guess that's by design, once you get pass the learning curve it's pretty satisfying to hit a ship with those cannons.

I also like the map and spawning infos. The game mechanics are easy, but quite some thinking and planning are required if the player wants to get higher score.

Just one minor suggestion: the font is a bit hard to read, maybe get another font that fits the game theme without sacrificing readability.

Good job!

braveskin 2023-05-03 19:23

This was really cool! Very pleasant atmosphere and fun combat. I wish there were a mode without a time limit so I could explore the map since it looks so nice in this style.

saviqq 2023-05-03 19:24

Ay Matey what a nice pirate game you have here, I enjoyed downing those ships very much. Interesting little experience. Especially how water was visualized. The thing that was bugging me a little is no matter the level of destroyed ship the upgrades were the same as if I would down level 1.

Pros - pirates theme! - visuals and ambient music

Cons - little confusing shooting controls, sometimes I was not sure which key to press if I want to shoot to specific direction

christian-zommerfelds 2023-05-03 19:26

The game looks amazing! I think there is huge potential, but unfortunately the enemies kept disappearing into the island, making it a bit frustrating. Very fitting musing and sound effects. I don't know why you added a timer, but I guess there is only so many features you can build in 72h :) Well done!

resacagames 2023-05-03 19:27

Great artstyle!! Had a lot of fun, combat was simple but very satisfactory, palette looked beautiful. Nice entry!!! 👏👏

2023-05-03 19:28

beautiful looking game! i especially love the water shader. only problem i ran into is the fact that the controls for firing don't flip when your ship is facing the opposite direction, definitely broadsided a couple of islands instead of my target due to that. well done!

nazorus 2023-05-03 19:29

Probably my favorite game so far, I really like the visuals, especially the color palette. The gameplay is simple and fun and it felt good chasing merchants and upgrading my ship. Music was great too. Good job on making such a quality game in 3 days!

Et content de voir des français participer à la Ludum Dare :v:

karreg 2023-05-03 19:29

Awesome game with a nice graphic style ! The ability to read the map and trying to intercept ships on their way is a nice addition and suits the theme very well. Congratulations !

swen 2023-05-03 19:32

Nice game, I scored 20! I enjoyed plundering and getting the upgrades. The music that got more tense when I got in battle really helped with that. Would be cool if the enemy ships fought back more and didn't just get faster. But that could also be me needing more speed upgrades.

Great entry! Amazing job.

freezedice 2023-05-03 19:33

Nice to see some Godot games out there. The map was a very nice touch, was fun tracking ships and planning your next step!

josephgallear 2023-05-03 19:37

Great and addicting game; I think I played about 6 runs. The movement felt fine and it was fun to aim the cannons whilst also avoiding the firing line of enemies. Also a really unique take on the theme, having to disrupt the deliveries rather than doing them yourself.

The boat did feel a little slow, even after getting a few speed upgrades. It didn't feel even remotely possible for me to reach the last two ships in time. Also, I was a little unclear on what the + symbols on the upgrades meant. I saw some upgrades with two + next to them, and others which were highlighted yellow?

Overall, I had a lot of fun playing and the selection of different upgrades available was really great! Also, on top of all of this I forgot to mention that the art looks amazing!

fabula-rasa 2023-05-03 19:55

The game is really beautiful and so serene! Your shader is very nice, colors are great. The game feels meditative, really. Very meditative bloodthirsty pirates :wink:

Movement controls work very well, and it felt natural to swim around. Enemies work strangely, though. They can despawn right in front of my eyes and spawn right on top of you. I had a level 3 ship just appear on top of me, taking about 80% of my hp in the process. That was funny :grin:, but felt kinda unfair.

Randomized level up choices are a nice touch - adds to replayability. Overall, it's a very nice jam job! And again, very beautiful, I feel relaxed just looking at it. Maybe I should have become a pirate!

As an aside, you really should have opted out of audio (per jam rules), as you didn't make all the sound.

celtican 2023-05-03 20:08

Love this. This has some properties of a Survivor-Like game, in the sense that you constantly grow stronger as you defeat enemies.

Good list

- Pirate theme is a good theme! Yar har! - Upgrading after defeating an enemy is a very satisfying design pattern. Blowing up ships lets you blow up ships faster. - The map was wonderful. Flavor-wise, it's clear that this is a stolen map. Gameplay-wise, I was using it constantly, and felt intelligent when I could plan out a route ahead of time (even if that plan went sideways). - The shifting music was superb. - The controls could use some work, but I do like the overall control scheme. Being able to fire in only two directions is very refreshing when most games let you shoot anywhere. - Likewise, the enemies only being able to shoot in two directions was satisfying as well. I was always balancing whether or not to stay still and aim, or going side-by-side the enemy and risking getting hit. - Art's good. Looks great! - The theme interpretation is great. You aren't delivering anything, you're *interrupting* the delivery of things. (This is the same interpretation we had with our game, so I'm totally biased.)

Bad list

- I quickly found that the Speed upgrade was perhaps the most important one, due to the enemies being incredibly fast at the end of the game. However, even when I grabbed Speed as much as I could, I was never faster than the final ship. - There was no tutorial prompt in-game that told me to open the map. Luckily, I read the text ahead of time, but—as I'm sure you know—most people don't. - I also occasionally had trouble with the cannons. For the most part it was okay, though. Ultimately I still like the mechanic. - I'm not sure how I feel about the cannons inheriting some of the player's velocity. I've struggled with this same thing before, I'm not sure what the most satisfying solution may be. - The "Level" text above each ship looks a little sloppy.

Wish list

- A way to reach destinations more quickly would be much appreciated. Perhaps if you are moving in a straight line long enough, you get a gust of wind and an increased speed. - On the map, I would have liked to see the player's ship as an arrow instead of a square, that way I could tell where I'm going. The enemies should have arrows instead of squares, too, but it's more important on the player. - Perhaps it would be cinematic if the camera zoomed in while a ship was nearby. - More ships! I think this game could lean a little closer to the Survivor-like genre by simply adding in more enemies. - I really want to be able to slowly rotate even while I've completely stopped moving. It might not be entirely realistic, but it would be less frusturating. - Perhaps you could hold down left and right arrows to charge the cannons to fire longer distances? Preferably, the player should also be able to see the path that the cannon will follow. - I'd like to have the camera not be restrained to the bounds of the map. The camera not being locked to the player sometimes might be why I dislike the cannons inheriting velocity: my viewpoint is occasionally relative to the landscape, not the player. Perhaps there should be a fog that slowly damages the player if they sail too far into it?

Overall, really nice job. It's fun to see a team full of programmers for a change.

Also, wow, the Ludum Dare algorithm really did just give you a ton of reviews in a few minutes, nice :sweat_smile:

lisek-gagatek 2023-05-03 20:36

Cool visual effect. Is it custom fullscreen shader on a normal game with color snapping? Looks good, although it could use some smoothing/antialiasing.

The gameplay was interesting, although it was too slow for my liking, even with fully commiting to speed upgrades. I wondered why it was hard for me to aim and then I noticed that the bullets keep ship's momentum when fired. I think that, while it's more physically correct, it makes mechanics worse.

chompdev 2023-05-03 20:45

This game is gorgeous! The effects like fog, waves, and cannonball trails are fantastic. The controls are super smooth and fun to use. Music and sfx are perfectly suited. I'm still not quite sure how you did the island heights and reflections, but the style is brilliant. The gameplay is immediately intuitive and fun - definitely gives me Black Flag vibes! Love this game; great work!

clarkdjent 2023-05-03 21:52

This game deserves A LOT more love! Had so much fun playing this! I felt like a had a little too much control of my ship, would have been nice to feel a little bit more resistance when trying to turn or change direction in the water.

tyrannas 2023-05-04 12:49

@everyone: Thank you for the great detailled feedbacks and yeah...we know speed is an issue, we didnt want to push a fix about that since it would have been a bit cheating, but we'll make a small postjam version with better speed and upgrades ratio :D

@kyboon Thank you and yeah good point we'll try to find a font !

@saviqq We definitely thought about getting better loot according to ship level but we were to much in a rush at the end of the game for that sadly!

@braveskin @christian-zommerfelds yeah the timer was a way for us to force the player to use the map to plan his route while being in a rush. But maybe there is a better way to do that! (and about the ennemies disapearing it's simply that they arrived at destination but that's true there could be a visual indication)

@nazorus haha merci ! qu'est ce qui nous a trahi ? le ZQSD dans les commandes ?

@swen Wow well done, 20 is not easy to achieve !

@josephgallear the upgrades with yellow "+" are meant to be "rare" updates, with less drop rate, but the system definitely need balance since everyone is taking speed first because of the slow ship haha. And yeah the design of the ships routes is not optimal and i'm afraid you cannot reach them all, we'll fix that too

@fabula-rasa Thanks! A lot of work was put in this shader haha, especially for the export which was a bit tricky. For the ennemies disappearing it's because they have destinations and when they arrived at their destinations they disappear, you can see that on the map :) About the audio well...we opted in, since I made all the music and it took me quite a lot of time, and I used free resources for the 3 sounds, as I don't have the recording material (nor the seaguls) with me at home, as I'm pretty sure a lot of jammers are doing (but it might have been more obvious for our case since we credited it in our description). But I agree, it's not an easy situation.

@celtican Wow thank you very much for your super exhaustive review!! For the velocity of the cannons well...It was a debate in our team haha, but there was no solution that everyone liked so yeah, we kept this one. Interesting point for the camera moving when reaching the boudaries of the map, we might indeed try to do something different. About more ships: yeah definitely, there could be an endless game with day / night cycles, we put a timer cause we wanted the player to be forced to use the map to plan an optimal route, but there could be just a timer for each day, and then new ships and routes every new day. Anyway, thanks again for your time playing and writing reviews! (And yeah, we went for dinner and suddently had 15 new reviews just after eating we were the first surprised!! Now, time to rate more games)

@lisek-gagatek It's indeed a fullscreen shader ! (well actually several shaders since it's not the same for the background and for the shallow waters)

@chompdev The islands heights are hand drown haha, no magic in this one. Reflections are a great shader by @Kerdelos

@clarkdjent Noted! It's quite hard to balance though since some others complained about the ship being not controlable enough :P but maybe some things can be changed to make it bett

fabula-rasa 2023-05-04 13:07

@tyrannas I agree it's not an easy situation. I think that music and SFX should be separate categories. I often see people who make one on their own, but not the other. It does seem kinda cruel to make them opt out of the whole category, when a lot of work was put into part of it, but it is what it is.

We make all the SFX on our own - which is a lot of fun and a lot of effort - but never make the music (neither of us has much talent in this, and we definitely don't want to torture people :grin:).

sodoj 2023-05-05 22:56

A fun little naval combat game! The ship is very smooth and fun to control! It was also a strangely relaxing game, despite all of the carnage that's happening on the sea. It looks beautiful and it sounds lovely! Not much I could add that others haven't pointed out, I had some real nice and therapeutic time sinking enemy ships while making my ship a strong force to be reckoned with!

mitur 2023-05-07 09:47

A very well made and polished game, had a blast... blasting other ships :)

Maybe add more simultaneous ship spawns, since I found myself roaming without a battle for quite a bit.

torolchuk 2023-05-07 12:56

love your work. The game has a simple idea but allows planning and developing strategy, which is great.

jozef 2023-05-09 22:31

I'm impressed by how much you've managed to do! Love all the small and not so small details, music changing in combat, birds flying around, beautiful shader. One of the most polished games I've seen in this jam!

sam-gorman 2023-05-10 02:54

The game is gorgeous, especially impressed with the shader effects on the water. Aiming took some getting used to, but I eventually got the hang of it. I wish there was a little more depth to the gameplay, and that more ships were active at any given time. Nice work!

jin9310 2023-05-11 13:19

This is really nice! I love everything you have and would love to see more. The only thing I am missing is the theme, as you just steal supplies. Don't get me wrong it is great and as always theme is something you can or don't have to follow, so this is barelly a complaint. I would definatelly like to know if you create more of this. Great job!

tyrannas 2023-05-11 17:20

@jin9310 Hey thanks for your feedback :) about the theme, our point is: instead of delivering stuff, other ships are delivering stuff and you need to prevent them from doing so, it's a bit of a twist I know, but some other people liked it ;)

ava-skoog 2023-05-11 17:42

Very pretty! Unfortunately completely freezes for me every time after the first shot or two :( Looks like Godot, any chance of a native build? Would have to be macOS for me but. Game looks so cool!

tyrannas 2023-05-11 18:44

@ava-skoog not playable at all after the first shot ? I've read somewhere that html5 builds are not working on Mac for godot4 :/ maybe one of our dev can make a native macos build i'll let you know ! Thx for trying anyway :)

ava-skoog 2023-05-11 19:32

@tyrannas: Indeed :( Game boots up fine and I can start playing, move around, toggle the map, but then I approach a ship and fire a cannonball or two at it and the screen freezes. There's still sound, but it doesn't seem to accept any more inputs as I can't hear any more shots or anything if I try to shoot more. Don't worry about it if it's a hassle, just thought I'd bring it to your attention, and compliment a cool-seeming game anyway 😅

tyrannas 2023-05-11 20:23

@ava-skoog That's interesting though because almost everyone I know has a small lag after the first bullet but it doesnt make the game freeze afterwards. So we might try to find a bug !

thesmellofoxygen 2023-05-12 21:09

Wow these visuals are like sunset sherbet! I love them. The gameplay loop is simple and relatively engaging, though it's a bit on the slow side. I can't get enough of the vfx and sfx though. The calming birdcries, ocean sounds, and soundtrack were excellent choices.

tyrannas 2023-05-12 21:44

@ava-skoog There is a macOS build now available in the download section if you want to try it :) https://kerdelos.itch.io/golden-hour

ava-skoog 2023-05-13 11:49

Thank you, it worked! 🎉

Was initially roped in by a screenshot with the gorgeous graphics. Started reading the description and thought it sounded nice, but then... "but you're a pirate" 💀 Didn't change much however, I very much enjoyed hoisting the jolly roger too! 🏴‍☠️

Wonderful atmosphere with the twilight colours and occasional gulls. Would've worked without the map but it added a lot. The music is really good and adds to it all, and it's great to have the other tenser track during encounters.

Controls were fine but I did occasionally get confused as to which key I had to press to shoot in the right direction depending on my angle. Since the main game was controlled by keyboard it was a little weird to have to move over to the mouse to pick options. I wonder if both of these issues could've been solved by moving aiming over to the mouse?

Since the game wasn't too fast-paced I actually kind of liked that you couldn't reach the key to open the map from either hand's default position, like I really had to move around the ship a bit to interact with every station.

Of course the upgrades and levels and timers were cool. Felt good picking different strategies each replay. Overall really liked this one! Fun and pretty. Cool stuff!

*As an aside, can I ask what you did to get the build working? Yours worked fine on M2 with Monterey, but I couldn't get my own Godot (3.5) game to do so even when building on the same machine, so it will only run on my older Intel machine :(*

tyrannas 2023-05-14 18:54

@ava-skoog wow thanks for the very complete review ! About the controls to pick an upgrade, you should normally be able to pick the upgrades with arrow keys, but maybe there is a bug on the mac build ?

And about what we did to make it working I'm afraid I don't know what our macOs dev did, I will ask him, but normally Godot 3.5 web builds should be working according to the docs that's odd.

ava-skoog 2023-05-19 08:08

@tyrannas: Oh, might have been an oversight on my part. I didn't even try in the upgrade menu, I just wasn't able to start the game using any key when there was a single button so I just assumed it was the same for the upgrade menu. Maybe keyboard *did* work even on the start button too? 😅 And yeah, web builds have mostly worked fine on Mac, just wondering about the native build c: