FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD54 → Far Away: A New Home

Far Away: A New Home

By skosnowich

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall5083.6321
Fun3453.7121
Innovation6633.2321
Theme9912.9221
Graphics7693.2522
Mood8463.1521

Comments

acckaya-sotona 2023-10-04 09:23

Me like this game

ecenizo 2023-10-07 09:34

I really liked how polished it looked, and how elegant it was on it's design! I feel it has a lot of potential if you want to keep working on it. Great work!

christian-zommerfelds 2023-10-07 10:44

First of all, the game looks neat, I like the style. I wish I could have resized the window as it was very small on my 4k screen.

I found it weird that I couldn't change which unit types are used. For example, I could have used only archers to defeat a spearman farm, but I was forced to use cavalry.

Some music and sounds would have added to the atmosphere.

After two maps somehow I got bored, maybe it's missing more game elements. But I like the direction the game is going! Reminded me of Heroes of Might and Magic :)

exofrenon 2023-10-07 11:26

That was a great little strategy game that reminded me of Risk with the right scope for a LD jam. I finished all 4 maps, but in the last 2 the castle was not even contested, I just won by default even though the enemy had a lot more troops.

Overall, I liked how polished this was. The UI was very intuitive, there was even a pop up window with explanations when you hovered over an icon, and I didn't encounter any bugs (besides the app crashing when I finished the 4th map). The gameplay loop was also pretty solid, gathering money, then troops and then capturing the castle to train your troops, but I didn't quite get the mechanic of having more gold than your opponent and why it was there though. The graphics also got the job done.

A very nicely designed game overall, congrats!

togis 2023-10-07 21:29

What a amazing game, it's really hard to make a turn based strategy game for a jam but you succeeded!

Your game is really easy to pickup and understand, it is very intuitive.

I would have loved an option to go Fullscreen as your game can not be resized and it's very small on my desktop.

fabula-rasa 2023-10-07 22:09

Very nice! Shame there are no sounds, as that would add much to the atmosphere. But we all understand time constraints :smiley_cat:

The game works well, and the systems seem well-polished. I won with a consistent strategy of work-recruit-rush to the castle to fortify. I didn't really do much raiding. It seemed to me that I loose in a raid more than I gain. Maybe if I would really lean into infamy, there would be more benefit. But I didn't want to rule over ravaged countryside :smile_cat:

savidiy 2023-10-10 19:45

Thank you. I love strategy games. It was nice to meet such a good result on LD! Thanks!

jimbly 2023-10-10 23:23

Very nice strategy game with a lot of depth for a jam! Ran into one bug if I was on the castle, then clicked to move somewhere, they clicked "capture", it'd move me off the castle and "capture" there (everything worked, just a visual glitch). I really liked that betraying a village/camp that you recruited from had consequences. I would have liked slightly more control in battle (sometimes it didn't seem to use the troops I would have picked), or some explanation of why it was picking those troops.

skosnowich 2023-10-11 19:27

Thank you very much for your feedback you all!

@christian-zommerfelds @jimbly Yes, the game would benefit a lot by adding the choice of which troops to send into the battle, I also noticed that during playtesting. In the beginning I implemented the battle system, so that proper "pairings" of troops were automatically chosen. So each side choose a beneficial pairings by turn, so that there is no advantage for neither side. Of course, doing that, a village with only spearmen only chooses cavalry as enemies - so that's a clear advantage for the village. I would've liked to change this system, so that the player could decide which troops to send in, but sadly ran out of time. I noticed the problem too late.

@fabula-rasa I liked the idea of choosing a "good" or "bad" approach to conquer the land. That's why I added the possibility to raid villages and yes, you're right there is no real benefit in that. That's why I introduced a battle advantage when you have a certain amount of gold to somehow make the "bad" approach beneficial, but that wasn't really thought through (@exofrenon). Especially because you could also get that battle advantage by working a lot in the fields.

In the end I think, I just should've gone with a simpler approach instead of having the choice between "good" and "evil" (kill your darlings).

@christian-zommerfelds @togis Yes, I definitely need to get into building a settings menu for changing window size, full-screen etc. for my next jam game. Didn't looked into this stuff in Godot.

@christian-zommerfelds @fabula-rasa I would've liked to add some sound effects and some music, but my time management was too bad.

hora-timer 2023-10-13 14:29

Que incrível gostei da criatividade parabéns!

lastuck 2023-10-13 20:23

Great concept! It has lots of potential, even outside of the jam!

kilirane 2023-10-15 13:03

Great idea! The game systems are interesting. Obviously, as it's a jam game, it's clear that it was difficult to balance, and as it stands, working a lot on the farm and then recruiting everyone seems to be much more advantageous than choosing to make war on every village and camp. The minimalist graphics give a good idea of what it could look like given more time, The map is clear and easy to read. The side menu, on the other hand, is a little rough and it lacks a bit of sound for immersion.. Anyway, well done, I enjoyed playing it!

voidsay 2023-10-16 16:36

No issues on Linux. I'm a sucker for old school dice based combat systems. A bit disappointing that there weren't enough fights to pick with only one AI. One time it wandered off and I could take the castle with no contest.