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The Fregstival
The Fregstival
By honest-dan, brainoid and spacey3d
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 68 | 4.18 | 56 | |
| Fun | 150 | 3.96 | 56 | |
| Innovation | 154 | 3.94 | 57 | |
| Theme | 248 | 4.09 | 57 | |
| Graphics | 30 | 4.59 | 58 | |
| Audio | 24 | 4.27 | 54 | |
| Humor | 152 | 3.80 | 54 | |
| Mood | 108 | 4.10 | 53 | |
Comments
Freg party freg party freg party!
freg.png
This was a really neat take on the tower defense genre. At first, I thought it was unsatisfying that you can't always place towers when you want, but I quickly realized that you are supposed to use your food and fregs as shields to protect the temple. The weapons all felt fair; the one that took up nine tiles was very strong, but also took up nine tiles. There were some fun gameplay decisions like how to place your units to maximize fregs in a row, while not leaving your fregs completely unprotected.
I will say that "limited space" felt like it wasn't a huge concern until very suddenly I couldn't place a unit and lost. It's difficult to plan around since you don't know what towers are coming up.
As usual, the game is very polished and charming. The art is very cute, particularly the fregs and the big statue. There were little bits of juice like bouncy hover text, and satisfying sound effects and music. The one potential flavor miss is having tongue-based weaponry like traditional frog-vs-insect combat (then again, these are fregs, not frogs).
Great work all around!
Hey @jeremy-ryan, thanks a lot for checking out the game - good to see you as always!
I am glad you realised sacrificing food or fregs is also a strategy. With the limited space, we didn't want to make it too tower heavy because it'd just be a cluster f*ck!
We wanted it to not be hard, but people could take time to really try optimise. Chaining fregs together is the main mechanic for score, whilst sacrificing food tiles is ideal, along with some turrets far enough away to kill enemies before they drop a bomb on the shrine.
Limited space you are right - we do have a mechanic to spawn obstacles (pillars that can't be built on or destroyed) but I think it isn't setup for earlier levels or isn't breaking - the game needs a balance pass. We may hotfix that in to appear in earlier levels so people understand where we were coming from. We also have it coded so the tower can change in size each floor, but in the end we didn't have time to balance to know if it would make the game impossible if it went smaller.
Sorry that you had a sudden death. That is one of the known issues - its meant to warn you for each tile you can't place and reduce health of shrine, but atm it just insta-game overs.
We did speak about the tongues! but our creative mastermind spacey felt that the fregs were there to worship not fight! :D
portalis
2023-10-03 11:40
Very creative concept and perfect implementation! Thank you, it was fun to play!
merdeboi
2023-10-03 11:49
Amazing graphics and feel, great sound effects. My only gripe is that difficulty ramps up quite slowly, however it also suits the soothing, relaxing vibe the game is emitting. Limited space aspect is clear and well handled. Exceptionally fun entry.
Might be the most polished Ludum Dare game i've ever played. Everything works so well and feels juicy. Good job!
OMG! such a solid game, amazing guys!!!
Love the style guys, really froggy. My washed brain right now wasn't sustainable enough to beat a high score, but anyway it looks amazing and actually I was scared a bit by HUGE description with hints & tricks (usually it's an indication that game mechanics are not that easy-catching and over-complex), but that's not the case.
There are a plenty of small changes that you might consider to do to make players life a bit easier, but we know how time is running out of hands on LD, so I would say this is quite a solid entry. Nice work!
1. It's stylish and gorgeous, I really love the looks. 2. The idea of fusing Tetris and tower defence is clever and fits the theme extremely well 3. It plays good, but a little bit counterintuitive without reading instructions 4. Great job, one of the best from you!
@tricky-fat-cat - which bits were counter intuitive, so we can consider fixing in a post jam? Thanks for feedback!
@honest-dan it wasn't obvious that turrets require food.
namnam
2023-10-03 19:28
Probably the best looking game i've seen in a jam ! Nice work !
Wow, what a beautiful and pleasant art!
Thank you all for playing and for the feedback!
@danyclockworker @namnam we are grateful for our artist and frog lover spacey3d!
@tricky-fat-cat thank you, really agree. We had tool tips for the tile types and enemy types on the HUD, but we think many people don't know they exist :D
@erlioniel you can blame me for the long page! I tried to simplify it a bit since your post to not scare other people! Its not overly complex as you said, but we def could improve on explaining a few things to the player :D
@merdeboi thanks for the feedback! We usually make the game too hard, so in this one we thought we'd ramp it up slower... but we missed the mark a bit. Its a bit of a slow ramp, then gets a bit too hard too fast! We are considering making a "hard mode" for post jam where it ramps up faster to make a play session take less than 15 mins!
@honest-dan Thanks for the clarifications - if you end up taking a post-jam balance pass I would love to be pinged so I could take another crack at it!
I really liked the gameplay for your LD52 game, and this felt a bit similar, but with that extra spacey3d magic. Definitely a favorite for LD54 so far. :slight_smile:
Love the art and sound! It did get kind of boring after a while though.
tmpxyz
2023-10-04 09:53
The graphics are great, but the defense towers are too few to protect the area.
@tmpxyz Thanks for your feedback! The enemies (apart from one of the harder ones in later levels) will attack the first thing they come across in their chosen lane. The turrets are limited, because you can place fregs/food to "intercept" enemy attacks to prevent shrine damage too! Let us know if that helps?
Ahahha these FROOOGS such cool and funny but gameplay is easy I think but you know... FROOOOOOGS
@anton4ik-dev we started easy so people don't lose instantly, we wanted everyone to succeed the first 5 levels, but those who understand the game best can get higher score. It starts getting harder after level 6 - not many make it past level 10. Be good to see you on the high score board!
Really nice game! Love the graphics. I felt like the turrets sometime just didn't shoot. Apart from that it was a fun gam!
@milan8890 something thats only explained in the tool tip or game page is that turrets need to be adjacent to food tables (the purple piece type) in order to provide them with ammo.
Thanks for playing and for the feedback!
Every time I think you guys reached the peak of creativity in an LD entry, you flip the table (pun intended) and come up with something as crazy as a food-fight frog banquet. Love the graphics, love the feel, it all clicks together by itself. Everything feels very natural and challenging. So far, my favorite entry !
The art style is awesome as always, loved the bright colors and the cartoon shader. Good player feedback as well. It all feels fleshed out.
Concerning the actual game, my biggest critique is that it tries to blend two genres without excelling in any of those. Both the puzzle and TD aspect are okay, but it lacks something (that one mechanic) to blend them together and make it feel coherent and really innovative. It's always interesting to see how blending two genre's together work out though, even if it doesn't quite hit the spot for me, and I'm always curious to see what experiments you lovely peeps will come up with.
senso
2023-10-05 13:07
This presents an intriguing twist on the Tower Defense genre. The music and artistry are absolutely enchanting!
had a lot of fun, reminds me of bad north, which i sunk lots of hours into. a well rounded and polished game.
rickylee
2023-10-05 16:29
wthek spacey score is so good hehe. easy to learn how to play, addictive and looks/sounds amazing another 5/5 game from you guys ^^
image_2023-10-05_172824250.png
**Edit: ez**
image_2023-10-06_191326866.png
rincs
2023-10-06 08:40
I love this, I'm going to try and get to #8
ferg.png
**EDIT** I got to top 5. I tried to go to #8, but all my following runs were cursed with bad rng. So 5 it is. Screenshot 2023-10-07 191827.png
Whether it's art, sound effects, UI, or animation, they are all excellent. It's hard to imagine that a Game Jam can achieve the same level, including operation, guidance, and so on. A highly promising work!
Thanks for letting me play this! Excellent job!
Here's the VOD on YouTube to watch the gameplay, just skip to your chapter on the video! https://youtu.be/-eCnQ8GAhN8
vary
2023-10-06 17:58
It's wild how polished this game is for a jam. I love the art, the sound design, and the gameplay - everything! Putting tower defense with tetris is so clever and it worked excellently together. If I was to nitpick, I guess I just wish there was an undo button? I see that the orientation of the tiles matches the grid when the Frogod shrine is facing you, but it's not immediately obvious. That paired with the occasional misclicked placement (which is a user error ofc) can really screw you. So maybe instead of an undo, can have the tile orientation rotate with the camera? Not sure! Either way, amazing job on a very creative and clean game!
Lovely game. Lots of fun, cool graphics and sound. Well done!
Now I feel a bit dumb 😅 I played it twice; on the second run I even had learned to sacrifice fregs and food to block stuff... But I was still thinking "it seems unfair that they are attacking without me having turrets to defend myself". Then when I came to write this comment it hit me that obviously that was also a time I was supposed to sacrifice them.
But I really liked the game, both the aesthetics and the mechanics :)
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1945057375?t=03h23m47s)
Y'all are seriously one of the few teams that are able to make Unreal games that *don't* immediately gobble up my frames in OBS, and for that I must express my sincerest gratitude. :pray:
This is prolly one of my favorites of y'all's to-date. Very nice work!
pyshnyy
2023-10-09 19:42
I really enjoyed this game. It's legit fun, the graphics, sound-design, gameplay. It overall fells like a finished game and I cannot come up with anything I would change in it. Good job!
This was a lot of fun! The game looked amazing as it always does from this talented team. The gameplay was very satisfying and managing the waves and blocks was quite fun! The difficulty ramped up quite nicely as well. Great work as always!
doot
2023-10-10 14:15
What a beautiful game! It's seriously impressive for a game jam ✨ I had a bit of trouble understanding the best strategies at first, but once you get it it's quite fun!
dsk
2023-10-14 11:37
A game with amazing art style and music which make me feel so relaxed. its gameplay also interpret a feel of "limited space" and very unique, excellent!!!
thyoi
2023-10-15 21:26
Very cute tower defense game. Art and polish are impressive. good job!
fellas. another game to soothe our brains.
another hoard of creatures, crafted by spacey to warm our eyes.
another soundtrack, smithed by brainoid to cleanse our souls.
spearheaded by the enormous, buzzing mind of an honest fellow. An honestdan even.
https://youtu.be/M_clUMUNwm0
fan-fucking-tastic. what this group brings to ludum dare is something the world needs. the inspiration we receive from this sets forth a ripple-effect of creation, untraceable and so very, very vibrant~✨
thank you for making this.
zimny11
2023-10-19 21:29
High quality game as usual! Simply, awesome idea and execution. Great job!
jvdwijk
2023-10-20 20:42
Really good entry once again! Loved the concept and the point system was pretty solid as well! Only thing that I was missing was some sort of compass to know which way my next blocks would be facing. Sometimes I would place a turret in one spot thinking it would fit nicely with a food table, but then it turned out the shape was facing an unexpected direction (I probably rotated my camera and lost track of which was North was).
Other than that, solid entry!