gettingrekt 2023-10-02 17:16
Great game, lacking instructions but when I finally understood what I was supposed to do it was really well done and balanced. Impressive take on the theme and autobattler. Good job!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Auto-Pilot
By woona
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 117 | 3.78 | 32 | |
| Fun | 116 | 3.73 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 112 | 3.68 | 32 | |
| Theme | 123 | 3.90 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 170 | 3.53 | 32 | |
| Audio | 233 | 2.93 | 31 | |
| Humor | 216 | 2.37 | 25 | |
| Mood | 159 | 3.39 | 31 |
Great game, lacking instructions but when I finally understood what I was supposed to do it was really well done and balanced. Impressive take on the theme and autobattler. Good job!
Love the gameplay. Very original. Could be a nice alternative to FTL
Earthlings, I have good news. I manage to defeat the invaders. The final boss wasn't as tough as a pain we had during the ship placement. Sometimes we caught ourselves thinking: why can't we re-arrange the vessels that are already on the field? Or why can't we choose which side is getting bigger after an update? These questions will always haunt us, even after this glorious victory.
P.S. - I wish there were more levels. Consider turning this into a more full-fledged game. I think it has some potential. I would like to battle against some random fleets, etc. The endless mode would be great.
Love the concept, it could be a great battle system for a strategy game imo !
@quasilyte Thanks for playing! I hope you had fun.
I agree that there's a lot of room for improvement in the game, starting from QoL stuff like rearranging your ships after placement and a proper tutorial/instructions to more variety of enemies and more levels.
It's my first time participating in LD and I hope it will serve as a lesson to better manage my time and scope and not to neglect player experience.
And hey, thank you for playing my game. :3
What if we grabbed the charm of FTL, turned it into an auto-battler, and create a fun game in 48 hours? The results? this beautifully executed game, seriously it has the charm of FTL which is a nice game, the auto-battler is fun genre for this space battle game, I did find 1 bug and a few things to improve upon: firstly I managed to start a round while holding a ship and it appeared as a ghost during battle, secondly it would be cool if we could re-arrange the ships after combat, also would be nice if we can select the side to expand, and lastly (tho this is a nitpick and can be ignored) I want ship chunks flying when something is defeated, kinda like in FTL, overall a nice game :D
@stmate03 You've got a keen eye for bugs. 😁 All of these are solid suggestions. Some of these were on my list during the jam, but I didn't manage to actually implement them unfortunately.
Thank you for playing and leaving feedback!
Pretty good, the concept might be enough for a bigger game as it is, with just some improvements and additions.
A fun game, I can definitely see this as a bigger project! Good job!
I really like the game's mechanics. Combining turn-based strategy with Tetris-style ship placement is a clever idea. Good job. In terms of gameplay, I felt that the game's progression could be improved. It would have been better to have a smoother difficulty curve, starting easy and gradually becoming harder. I noticed that in the beginning, some ship combinations didn't stand a chance, and even some expensive and powerful ships couldn't survive the first wave. Additionally, every enemy ship attacking in an area is very challenging. If, in the initial wave, some enemy ships targeted only one ship, and then in subsequent waves, there were enemy ships with area attacks, it would make the gameplay flow better. Nevertheless, the game is very good overall. Good work!
Excellent game! I had a ton of fun trying out different types of ships and ended up playing through twice. Also really well done on the art and visual style in general. I found the UI very easy to figure out and understood right away how to place ships, etc.
Awesome concept, I could see this being a fantastic mobile game, though I would have like a few more credits the father in I got.
Managed to defeat the Titan! It was a close one, though.
win.png
Anyway, I really enjoyed it! I liked how your ships & space upgrades carried over between waves, creating an interesting choice between upgrading space & repairing ships for future waves vs. filling the space with cheap ships like Scouts for this one. The fact that the bosses used line-based attacks also added interesting choices for ship placement - although, as others have said, the inability to move ships hurt that a bit. The game did feel a bit too random for me: sometimes the boss would attack a single, relatively useless ship, while other times it attacked basically all my ships with a single laser; and the randomized ship selection led to me only getting a cruiser for the first time in the final boss (which wasn't a huge problem, but it made me think that there weren't any 3 cost ships until that point). But other than that, great entry!
@plepletier Thank you for playing and leaving feedback! I totally agree that the game would be much better with more enemy variety. In the current version, different enemies have different hp and sprites, but all of their attack patterns are exactly the same. But potentially, there could be different attacks both for enemies and for player fleet.
@perfectsquare Thanks! I'm glad that UI was intuitive enough because I didn't manage to add a tutorial or even tooltips. 😅
@frogman Glad to see Earth is saved by your effort! Yeah, I didn't really spend much time testing or balancing. I just added as many options as I could and hoped that the game would balance itself. 😁 So it's easy to lose just because of a bit of bad luck with ship rolls and especially with enemy attacks. If it was a longer game, I would definitely need to balance it more carefully. Thanks for your feedback!
The game is quite difficult in the early stages. Once you get the hang of it, it's a good turn-based game.
I really liked the design of the ships. Great job!
This was absolutely great!
Due to how the enemies attack (a straight piercing line), it feels like defensive ships are useless... I think the best strategy is just to buy as many *Destroyers* as you can without expanding the playing field too much.
There's a lot of space for expansion of the game just by making more, different attacks!
It would've been nice to have more choices for ship placement: either by allowing the movement of ships between rounds, or by allowing the player to choose the direction the grid should be expanded in.
Like all auto-battlers, I think this too would benefit by an income mechanic: "would you rather save money and take a chance at defeating the enemy, or go all-in and make sure to beat it, but possibly not having enough money do then defeat the final boss?"
@steffo Thanks a lot for your feedback! It's very valuable to me. I totally agree that more attack patterns and more quality of life features would make this game feel more complete.
As of right now, the game is a little bit barebones, more of a prototype checking if auto-battler mechanics work well with polyominos and a challenge for myself to make a playable game in just 48 hours.
I think income mechanic would provide an additional strategic trade-offs if the game was longer. For just 5 fights it wouldn't affect strategy I think, but if there were more than 20 fights, it would enable more different strategies.
Thanks for playing!
Hey, this was really cool. I don't always finish jam games but I cleared this one because I was engaged and interested - which is a really good sign. The core mechanics and gameplay loop were super tight, and it was an interesting puzzle to keep trying to solve.
- I would have like to be able to move my ships around on the grid (not sure if this was a balance choice) - Adding vertical rows, but then getting a new one *behind* your ships felt counterintuitive - The expand vertical button stayed available-looking even when I didn't have enough money to do it - A little music or something would go a long way toward tying the vibe together - $ and <3 signs were clear but ✟ for damage isn't universal to me, despite being the last possibility
Ship designs (both enemy and friendly) were unreal, and it felt really balanced to make for a pleasantly challenging experience which is cool.
Great stuff!! I'd play this - especially on mobile I think.
@lachlan-james Thank you for playing and for leaving feedback! I'm glad you had fun with the game.
Re-arranging ships is a great suggestion. I thought about it during the jam but to implement it properly, I would have needed to consider all the edge cases, maybe even make a ship 'inventory' system, so I didn't manage to implement this feature because of time constraints.
As for expanding the grid, I should have added buttons to the edges of the grid. That would be a lot more intuitive I think.
Also, I should have added tooltips with detailed information about the ships. That way, there would be no room for confusion what each symbol means.
These 2 features wouldn't take that much time, so I have no excuses here. 😁
Initially I thought there would be no audio at all because I have no experience with audio. Adding some sounds generated with JSFXR was a last minute change.
Hopefully, I'll learn by my mistakes and will hone my skills before the next jam.
Thanks again!
@woona This was a fun game. I couldn't figure out the enemy ship attack patterns or if they were random, so that made it quite a bit harder.
@germdog53 Thanks for playing!
Yes, enemy attack patterns are randomized. Firstly, it's a coin toss for attacking rows or columns of your grid. Then, a random row/column with at least 1 of your ships is chosen.
Great job! I had a lot of fun with this, makes me want to step out of my comfort zone and try similar things. It maybe took me a couple attempts to get the hang of what works and what doesn't, but after that I beat it and really enjoyed it :) Hard to say what you could improve on with only having 48 hours, but something that I really enjoy from these types of games is "synergy". Having ships that work well together and also ones that don't. But like I said 48 hours is such a small time frame, you did fantastic!
@mz-eth Thanks a lot for your kind words. I'm glad you enjoyed playing the game!
Nice game, good job especially for a compo submission. I think his game can be grown in many ways to be great. A tutorial would have been good, and as others have said, having the possibility to move ships would make it so much better.
I'm genuinely impressed by the gameplay; it's refreshingly original and engaging. The concept is intriguing, and I can see a lot of potential in it. To elevate the experience even further, consider enhancing the game feel. Adding more responsive controls, satisfying feedback for actions, and perhaps some visual or audio cues to emphasize key moments could make it even more immersive and enjoyable. Keep up the great work!
- Pretty cool idea, it was quite fun. - It would be nice to be able to move the ships between rounds - It would be nice if the ships had different abilities (probably not LD scope tho) - I feel the balancing was a bit off, if you go defensive the enemy gets more turns to damage your ships, if you go expensive ships they are larger, harder to fit and are more likely to take damage, where a small weak fleet can get wiped in one unfortunate attack. So the best strategy is to get high damage 2 hp ships and win after 2 rounds hoping your ships don't get attacked 2 times.
Thanks you guys for playing!
@ellaris I agree with you that re-arranging ships between rounds and more special abilities both for playable ships and for enemies would enable more strategies and make the game more fun. As of right now, there is not much strategic variety, but I thought it would be enough to entertain for 5-10 minutes. Thanks for your feedback!
Love this! Could easily see this expanded further on. Game is perhaps a bit too random currently w.r.t. ship selection and enemy firing pattern. Having some kind of known enemy pattern would interesting to strategize around.
Great game. The ships look good and there is a bit of strategy in ship selection(and a bit of luck). Echoing above, ability to rearranging ships would be useful.
I liked the idea but I can't survive any round, the lasers always kill me vertically and horizontally. Extremely simple graphics and sounds too. I appreciate your effort
I enjoyed this; I think it could do with a little more balancing (and more and more varied enemies). Would be interested to see a full version
Very good job on your first LD! An original, interesting idea that works, with good graphics. I don't know how much ability to complete depends on randomness. I made it after 4-5 runs, it seems that the only viable strategy is investing in attack, looking for those Destroyers even if that means rerolling, and filling the blanks with the other ships. Reselling seems to never be a good option, but I don't expect a fine-tuned game economy from a jam game anyway :D So the gameplay is not deep in this jam version, but it definitely has potential! And I'm very receptive to the FTL aesthetic and game design so I'd be interested in following along if you go further. Big congrats!