Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Graveyard Kerfuffle
By lone-wolf
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 231 | 3.27 | 22 | |
| Fun | 239 | 3.12 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 242 | 3.07 | 22 | |
| Theme | 163 | 3.62 | 22 | |
| Graphics | 268 | 2.92 | 22 | |
| Audio | 187 | 3.10 | 22 | |
| Humor | 148 | 3.05 | 22 | |
| Mood | 235 | 3.05 | 22 |
Pretty fun. I'm not really sure why the wand needs to be inaccurate? I feel all that does is have me walk around a bit, till I can get lucky and get a more accurate hit.
I like luring the zombies into the fireball. Pretty cool game loop!
Overall pretty good, I appreciate the character customization _(However, looping options would be great to include)_. Once I understood the mechanic, it was pretty fun. I think I was a little confused by the ending, as I wasn't sure if I had won or lost!
Thanks for playing!
@ooboob The wand being inaccurate explains why you don't just resurrect your relative. I guess I don't really need to follow that logic for the fireball summoning if it makes the game more fun though.
@abrds What do you mean by 'looping options' in the character customization? and yeah, there isn't really winning or losing in this game, other than not making it to the ending. The unspoken joke is that the main character wanted to resurrect their relative back to normal, not as a zombie :P In the future if I do a game that "doesn't have winning" I'll put extra focus on having a fun gameplay loop though
EDIT: Heh, whoops. Fixed the names
* Fixed web version failing to communicate with the 'relatives server', you should see more than just the basic zombies now
I think you swapped our names around - not that it matters :D
"The wand being inaccurate explains why you don’t just resurrect your relative."
Ah didn't catch that. Yeah, I don't think you need to change the fire mechanics because of that
We do a little fireballing, we do a little dodging the dead. Simple but clear mechanics, I wonder if there might be more challenge if the zombies were faster, but you could dash to the side. I died once, when I thought I was out of range of the fireball circle at the edge of the level, but my death proved otherwise.
And I'd say making it to the end *is* winning, you have a pretty clear win condition here: kill all zombies. Opposing that is a loss condition: get killed by zombies (or stray fireball).
The pixel art is clear, but I would've picked more of a side view. Straight top down is always an odd angle.
Unexpectedly cool to be able to customize my relative at the end! Pretty neat mechanic allowing the player to both summon and fight against the summons.
That was pretty fun! It felt like a really polished and complete game loop. Also thank you a ton for including a volume slider!
The inclusion of customization was super unexpected and fun. I also thought the indirect summoning was a funny inclusion and made for some frustrating (in a good way) situations trying to get the zombies to move around just right. It maybe could've been a little bit more difficult
I think I may be experiencing a bug where no enemies spawn. I'm just in an empty graveyard where I can walk around and summon fireballs
@camd67 Thanks for playing. If I were to continue this I'd probably make it harder and add a difficulty slider. Did the zombies have any names above their heads btw?
@maymay What errors do you see in your console? Does reloading the page and playing the game again fix it?
For some reason if I view the game in a private tab it doesn't load in other people's relatives, so maybe that's a related bug. I'll look into it...
Hm, no errors in the console and actually this time I loaded the game Zombies are spawning but just very very infrequently (maybe once per couple minutes)
@maymay You need to rightclick to summon them. Maybe that wasn't clear?
Ahh haha I didn't quite connect that. Thank you!
Me thinking about people who review my game and dont read the story or instructions: "OMG people are so stupid and can not read simple instructions."
Also me: *Never read any info about the game and just start playing and get confused and frustrated*
I was very confused about: - Why would I summon enemies that are trying to kill me? - Why is my attack so inaccurate? - Is there any way to win? I can kill Tonttu Toljanteri, or run away?
The customization and online features were super cool and explain the shortcomings on other areas of the game. While you could have dropped the customization and online features completely and focused on playtesting and gameplay loop, it would have not been clearly as cool as this entry! While the customization and online thing did not make the game more fun, they made it super cool!
The gameplay, graphics and sound effects were good, but nothing super special.
@lone-wolf no, I didn't see anyone else's zombies or names. I did get a console error saying that "blocking mode is not supported for the web platform" and I did indeed play on the web version. Playing on Firefox. Happens every time I open the game but other than no names visible, everything else works totally fine for me
@martta Thanks for playing and reviewing!
As I was making the game and deciding to work on the server/relative system I had the nagging feeling I was going to pay for not putting more effort into an explanation/tutorial, but wasn't fully sure what was missing, so reviews like yours are helpful.
* In the start movie I tried to convey with the sad face over the middle grave that someone had died, and you wanted to bring them back to life. I probably could have fleshed that out more. * Both the attack and summoning are inaccurate, which is why you don't bring your relative back from the dead first try, and probably why the wand wasn't stolen from that tomb/coffin long ago. I think I needed to figure out some way to better explain the inaccuracy part, and the inaccurate attacks just took away from the fun of the gameplay. * There's no way to 'win' other than making it out of the graveyard alive. When brainstorming the game I thought up the inaccurate wand and relative's grave in the middle of a graveyard scenario first (which I think can be fun/stand on its own if implemented properly). Following the rules of the game's world I'm not sure there's any classic win condition I could have added though, other than maybe the relative not actually being in their grave (queue mystery spy thriller sequel), or the wand suddenly working the way you want it to when you manage to cast it on their grave.
Thinking about it now I probably overscoped with the story, but much less drastically than in previous games I've done, so I'm happy :P
---
@camd67 Weird, Firefox works first try for me. A downloadable build might work, but I've probably taken up enough of your time by now. Thanks for reporting, I'll have to add more debug logs if I do a game with a server connection again.
Tomb Raider Pyromancer Simulator
fun game =) maybe the relative in the last fight could take a couple more fireballs?
I feel like after summoning 15 zombies you'd have an inkling that your relative ain't going to come back the way you remembered them...
I loved the online features, but missed them on my first run because of my ublock settings, so I had to play again. You may want to have some sort of indicator for when the game's running without a server connection so unusually paranoid people like me notice when we've broken something :).
Some have criticized the randomness in the fireball targeting, but I feel like that's where most of the game's fun is coming from. Otherwise, killing the zombies would start to feel somewhat mechanical after the first two or three. With the randomness you have to strategically combine targeting and kiting, which makes for much more interesting gameplay.
Nice game! I'd check the accuracy of the Fireball-summon. It's hard enough herding the undead to the spot at time of impact, I don't think the Fireball itself needs a random placement. Loved the customisations, nicely done in the LD time limit.