enrique-romero 2023-10-04 05:50
The idea is there, however the graphics and armor description are hard to understand in relationship to the gameplay.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD54 → Mecha Walker
By le-don
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 865 | 3.21 | 28 | |
| Fun | 852 | 3.05 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 920 | 2.88 | 28 | |
| Theme | 952 | 3.00 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 902 | 2.80 | 28 | |
| Audio | 693 | 2.16 | 26 | |
| Humor | 670 | 2.68 | 27 | |
| Mood | 976 | 2.84 | 28 |
The idea is there, however the graphics and armor description are hard to understand in relationship to the gameplay.
Neat idea for a game, I'm guessing that the theme is mostly related to weight/inventory limited space. It reminds me of the Oregon Trail with the random events that occur as you travel from town to town, though I think the heavy text-based approach makes it tough to stay engaged. The body/leg/armor parts didn't feel super necessary, I got to the end with the starting equipment, and spent the rest on ammo/money/fuel. This game could be super cool with a few more balancing changes, but it's a great start and submission!
I liked the game but I have to agree that a bit of balancing would be good. Mech upgrades should be a bit more visible. Nice entry, good job!
I like the concept; well done getting a full game loop implemented with some variance in events and mech parts!
I know it's a jam game, so this feedback could be solved with just having more time, but: I felt like I didn't have many important decisions to make as the player. Without feedback or insight into how the events/jobs work (is it just a damage check and nothing else?), I just blindly bought the highest stats I could and accepted every event/job. Maybe if there were events that cared about different stats, (e.g. a shortcut that checks how big/heavy your mech is, saving on fuel/food if you're under the threshold, maybe even with the option to throw stuff away), or regions of the map were different (e.g. short trip, bandit-heavy vs. long trip, difficult terrain) that could improve strategic depth and tradeoffs etc.
This is super cool. Maybe I'm a little biased as a mech fan though, haha. I feel like just the color choices alone and interface are pretty slick, given such a short time. This is definitely the type of game that benefits from having an expanded list of events and things to do/have happen - but I really like what you have started here.
Love your little sprites-the events and balancing could use some work though. They repeat often enough that I was learning each event's outcome. Also it didn't seem like I could succeed at any of the jobs I took even at the earliest stage.
The idea is great even if I hardly see the link to the theme. Very full of content for a Jam game, I liked it. It makes you want to restart a game so it's good
I really like this idea of moving around from town to town and getting jobs and the random events in between. I can see there was a lot going on in this game with the sprites and probably in the back end mechanics with the events, so well done on getting that incorporated. Putting together an RPG that has a reasonable amount of playability in 72hrs is pretty impressive. With a few more features and a bit of polish I could see myself really getting into this.
The concept of building a mech and exploring is really cool. Just having damage and and armor stats without much feedback on what they do makes it hard for the player to make reasoned decisions. It would also be nice if it showed how much food and fuel you need to travel somewhere, baring any events that add/remove them. I couldn't figure out how to make it to the first town.
cool concept and very well put together for a jam game! for me, it felt like the random encounters were weighted a little bit too much toward negative outcomes, although it's possible I just had the wrong stats.
It would have benefited from a bit more balancing and way to make the player want to interact with the sytems
Very ambitious game for a game jam. I really liked the diversity of items and events. Unfortunately the game could use a bit of balancing. Especially in FTL style roguelikes the beginning should be relatively easy but here I had to optimize as much as possible to even get halfway to the first town.
Seems like it's turn-based Armored Core. There's a interesting amount of mechanics going on, but the balance seems off. I lost multiple runs getting to the first town by running out of fuel/food. Some sort of ambient audio for overworld and shop locales would do wonders, as everything else is essentially text-based. I do like the layout of your itch page, with the mech designs on the sides. Your descriptions for events were solid, a couple humorous 4th-wall breaking moments in there too.
A little confusing at first but I enjoyed it after I figured out some strategies over a couple runs!f
I had a really good time with this one! Love the overall theme, clean in presentation as is. I had some issues where the money I made from Jobs in towns would disappear once I went into the shop which was unfortunate because I do like me that brand new mech smell. Had fun, great entry!
Wait, I just got mugged by the NARRATOR? And then some people were being assaulted by bandits and I helped them. The people, not the bandits. Laughed a lot :D
An old friend of mine had a game like this with pirates in his programmable calculator, something like 30 years ago. You had your pirate ship, your crew, and like yours you just choosed what to do and odds did their thing. Then you had to maintain your ship and hire new crew and keep an eye on resources.
Fun entry!
Really cool game! It does have the same FTL feel of exploring the world without its need to runaway from an enemy fleet, so you can really go everywhere and take your time to figure what is what.
The game looks great, especially the mech sprite with interchangeable parts. It might be "held together by bubblegum", but it's cool as heck. The map is pretty functional, so it doesn't really need any changes. What could use some change perhaps is the shop area. There are a lot of different mech parts available from the get-go and it's pretty difficult to wrap your head around it all. Perhaps a slower introduction of various parts would be better, but then it'd require a much longer playthrough, which means a larger map, which means a lot more time than was available in a jam, so it's understandable that you did it the way you did.
As for the map, I liked the random events between towns, but I felt like there were too many of them happening during the travel time. Several times I've had three events during what looked like a not-too-distant journey.
I've had one small bug during my first playthrough - after one of the jobs my condition dropped to -11, but I was still able to play until my fuel dropped to 0 and I got stuck and starved. I wasn't able to replicate it in any subsequent playthroughs, so I'm not really sure what caused it. I definitely went on one of the hard difficulty missions while already low.
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I really liked the premise of this game, travelling from town to town, doing jobs, having random encounters and balancing money & mech needs. It's halfway between a Fallout 1/2 style RPG and old flash games and I love that. The shop UI could surely be improved but it's functional enough for a jam game, and there is a good amount of content in this game considering the artwork for the mech, all the different parts and the random encounters. The amount of options in the shop could be overwhelming at first but I actually enjoyed getting to learn the game's "economy" this way.
There were 2 pretty game-breaking bugs that I encountered that almost gave me give up on the game, but thankfully I found a solution for both:
1. The fuel/food depletion rate seems to correlate with frame rate, because on my high refresh rate monitor I could never make it to the first town even with 7 food/8 fuel. Switching to 60fps seemed to fix this.
2. Every time I successfully complete a job, if I go straight into the shop tab I lose all the money I've earned. I haven't seen anyone else mention this so maybe it's a Vivaldi bug? Anyway, the fix was just to leave town first.
I really wanted to backtrack and keep upgrading my mech with all the TX parts once I reached the end, so this game has clearly done something right. The lack of polish makes it quite difficult to get into but once you do it's pretty fun. Also is it just me or are protection missions super hard?
Came back to see how some of the games I've enjoyed did in ratings, and ouch. I guess the LD crowd doesn't appreciate menu/text heavy games, which is a real shame because to me this is way more interesting than yet another platformer.
Haha, yea, thank you, @feor, much appreciated! I am honestly not that surprised, as there are some serious issues here, like the bugs you mentioned (which might also have resulted in balancing issues). But I am thinking about improving this and maybe making a "full released" game. There might be something there.
But also, I am mostly surprised about the Humor category. I thought I had some solid jokes, but I guess not :>...