ascenial 2023-10-03 03:24
Really smooth audio had fun playing it. also the minimalist art is satisfying.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Arcane Echoes
By krassenstein
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 812 | 3.29 | 45 | |
| Fun | 739 | 3.20 | 45 | |
| Innovation | 874 | 2.96 | 45 | |
| Theme | 509 | 3.72 | 45 | |
| Graphics | 862 | 3.02 | 45 | |
| Audio | 404 | 3.47 | 43 | |
| Humor | 739 | 2.54 | 39 | |
| Mood | 838 | 3.16 | 44 |
Really smooth audio had fun playing it. also the minimalist art is satisfying.
The concept is great, though there were a few issues I ran into. It says it is intended for controller, but as far as I can tell the end wave button is only clickable with the mouse. I also had everything except for enemy spawning freeze when replaying from the game over screen. The projectiles also felt a little clunky being offset from the player when shooting up or down, when the enemies move towards your center. This led to a few moments of standing directly under an enemy but my shots missing to the side. I would have liked to see a little more variety with the upgrades, maybe splash damage, chain lightning, etc. Overall though, this is a great game concept, good execution, and excellent audio.
nice! Definitely would have liked more player feedback and sound effects, but pretty alright overall :) Also could have been cool to see some enemy or weapon variation, but I do like the enemy designs
As well as DarkWolf mentioned I did have the same problem with the end of the wave unclickable button. Though I didn`t feel like the projectiles were clumsy, but I really wished I could control the movement with the left stick and aim with the right one, aspecially when there are a lot of enemies. The game works smooth and the music is funky <3
The idea of losing area for better stats is good! nice game!
What a lovely small game. The concept is cool , the fact that I can loose something from upgrades and the arena is shrinks XDDD wonderful. I spent like 20 minutes trying to get arena as small as possible XD
Great game! Had a fun time playing it
@ascenial Thanks man! Happy you liked it!
@darkwolf We patched this as gamebreaking bugs stink. Thanks for playing!
@aidanbacon We have 2 rare traits for more screenshake and knockback when you fire. Maybe you can find them. I'm not the best artist, so I'm happy I made 2 decent characters lol.
@paul-thick I'll look into this, I thought it was fixed, thanks for playing!
@lastuck Thank you!
@nirlandec Hey thanks! The arena ends up getting SO TINY. :)
@final-turn Thank you!
I really enjoyed the game, although would be cool to have more enemy types :)
Nice entry!
The core game loop was really nice: kill ghosts, buy upgrades, slowly get the arena smaller and smaller until you eventually die. Tying the size of the arena to character improvements was really interesting, especially since they also went the other way --- you can grow the arena, at a cost.
A little bit of feedback on some particular mechanics: - I think it's rarely fun to have "bullet speed" as an upgrade. It usually makes very little gameplay difference (the enemies are walking toward you, they're going to hit the bullets anyway), but it makes the projectile *feel* a lot worse when it's slow. I usually like to start the bullet speed fast and leave room for more interesting upgrades like the ricochet, firing speed, etc. - This one isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but making it so you can only fire in the direction you're moving can make combat unsatisfying. You generally want to shoot toward enemies, but move away from them.
Of course, this is all very subjective. You know your game better than anyone.
The audio work is great! The sound effects are punchy and the music was really pleasant. The character designs are nice and I liked a lot of the little graphics details like the on-hit effects and "turn around" animations.
Nice work for 72 hours!
Solid Entry, I would like to complain about that it might not be a good idea to make the facing of character become the shooting direction, especially your mouse input can vary that makes you shoot in another direction which is really annoying. The overall experience is great and the shrinking space makes it really intensse atm. Nice Job!
Had a blast playing this, very cool entry, well done.
Simple and funny!
Well done! Take a candy! :candy:
I like that the "upgrades" also had a downside. That is a neat twist on a familiar system.
I played with the gamepad, and I did feel like I had better control; however, I think the shooting direction should not have been tied to the movement input. This means that you really have to be walking toward the enemies to shoot them, and since they are also moving toward you, you end up shooting once or twice and then running away to gain distance. Eventually, I feel like I'm just kiting enemies around! The controls could be improved with the mouse pointer or with the right joystick.
Great job for a solo dev!
Really liked the idea and it was fun for some time. However, I never had enough gold for things, partly because I couldn't get the gold from all of the enemies, I think that you should simply get +X gold upon killing an enemy, instead of collecting it. I liked that you actually had to strategize and pick an option so that the level size doesn't decrease too much. Also you should be able to aim where ever you want instead of just aiming where you move. Rest of the game was fine, never encountered a single bug, and had great polish. Pretty decent overall!
I like the idea, but limiting shooting direction to direction of the character feels uncomfortable. I usually can only kill first 2-3 enemies, after that they spawn really fast, so i can only run from them rarely shooting and mb killing 1 or 2 enemies. It would be great if i could run from enemies while shooting them. Also upgrade balance feels strange. They already have a debuf which is decrease of area, why do they also decrease some of your stats? Moreover you pay gold for them.
Nice game, amazing soundtrack, very well done. In my opinion, 1: ad a delay when the shop open, because when you mash the space button to shoot you the buy the first thing directly. 2: the game seems to hard, either the enemies at the beginning need less life or the upgrade need to be cheaper (because they all have benefit and drowback) 3: (in the futur) add more weapons and enemies
But the concept is great, really well done
It was a good idea with a good backstory. Unfortunately, the gameplay is a bit tricky, it would be better if at least the projectiles were shot in the direction of the mouse regardless the character facing the direction or not.
The coin progression was a bit unbalanced because it was about Round 5 and I was not able to afford any of the available upgrades. Also, the fact that the arena size was a part of the bargain made me not wish to buy any upgrades either because it felt that I was buying something that would hurt my progression.
I think there are problems with balance. The enemies become disproportionately stronger than me with each level! The controls are still not very convenient; I would like to shoot at enemies while retreating back. In general, the idea is very cool!
Music is so awesome, i've really enjoy it.
Main control issue I had was aiming projectiles was based on last moved direction - maybe this was better on controller if it was twin stick? I didn't have a controller on me to try!
The idea of space getting reduced as you chose your upgrades was interesting - a bit of a doubled edge blade. Just felt like you were forced to do it else you'd not upgrade. Did some of the powerups reduce the size by different amounts? maybe that woulda made player choices feel even more interesting.
Nice concept, feels like you got a core for something like vampire survivors too if you ever wanted to explore that.
interesting
The flip of the paper dolls looks quite fun. The item designs are quite interesting too. But for me, it's a bit challenging. Maybe in the season, you could consider slightly lowering the difficulty so that everyone has a chance to fully enjoy all the game's designs.
Nice little game I'm glad you can strafe shoot. i didn't know about the first time and it ruined it or for me but one i found you could use the arrows it made it way better :)
Was the game updated after the jam period? I ask because I see people speaking about not being able to shoot in a different direction than the one they were moving to so I wasn't sure if this was there from the start and people just missed it or if it's an undocumented post-jam update.
Anyway I got to the 10th wave before dying. The game felt a bit unfair with the difficulty scaling faster than one could get upgrades to fight it. With the way the level clears between waves leaving the gold behind, I felt like I was fighting in wave N to get gold during wave N+1 to *maybe* get upgrades for wave N+2.
Nice entry here and I had fun playing. I was confused that my "bullet damage" was going up so the numbers seemed like they were larger... but it was still taking three shots to kill each one... which didn't make it feel more powerful at all! :D Love the tradeoff of space for power though. Nice!
I liked the game and it’s interesting, keep it up
This game really caught my attention. I liked it a lot, and the concept is fantastic