crushedsummers 2024-04-16 08:29
Even though the game is so polished, with the graphics and audio working really well together, The controls are really confusing, even though they are already written.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Crypt Decrypt
By madness, storythreaderfox, Uclane, whatiswhat and CamsterDragon
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1016 | 3.15 | 24 | |
| Fun | 1035 | 2.93 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 754 | 3.19 | 23 | |
| Theme | 415 | 3.88 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 407 | 3.95 | 24 | |
| Humor | 879 | 2.50 | 21 | |
| Mood | 660 | 3.47 | 24 |
Even though the game is so polished, with the graphics and audio working really well together, The controls are really confusing, even though they are already written.
I liked the idea and art! However I encountered some issues with the camera and controls that made it difficult to progress far. For instance, the camera can become permanently locked on the skelly, forcing me to restart.
I feel I am doing something wrong in here.
chrome_xVgS5eLZtZ.gif
Hey @velvetlobster it's a puzzle, you need to summon a skeleton to solve. Sorry that wasn't clear in the game description. Use the UI on the right to select the skeleton you want to summon.
Hey @stanthesoupking sorry it wasn't clearly put in the game description but you can lock the camera back on the player by pressing Left Shift.
got it! @madness now I see! thanks
Screenshot 2024-04-17 161417.png
Pixel art and music are really good and set a nice vibe. But the gameplay and UI feels unfinished, e.g. when you push the box it moves just a tiny bit. I feel like you should either be able to push the box or not at all. The level restart is lagging a little, and the music restarting with the level is a bit annoying. I missed some kind of indication that you can only summon close to your character, took me some time to figure that out. Some summon animation or even sound effect would be nice. Also puzzle games usually need a tutorial with easy first stages, so that the player knows how the mechanics work. Looks like it could have been a great game, but maybe too big of a project for a jam weekend.
@matheus-leite funny enough that's what we were trying to do, not let the player move the box at all so the skeles had some more function but getting that physics to work correctly in Unity was a huge pain so we tried the best we could haha. I appreciate the feedback though. We planned on having more vfx and ui for the game but unfortunately we ran out of time :(
Fun puzzle, your screen transitions look polished. Tip for folks playing after me, the summon HUD button is offscreen until you fullscreen on the itch webgl build.
@ultrarat good point
Hello there,
Played through y'all's game, here are some things I noticed:
So first I will say that the art, theming, concept, and music are really good. Very much put me in the mood of someone trying to get through some ancient crypt. All of the various elements within the soundtrack, and even things like the UI looked really good!
That said though, I unfortunately saw a few issues when playing the game. First thing would be that (and this is either a UX problem or a tech problem, not entirely certain) but 9/10 times whenever I would try to bring up the menu to command my skeletons, it just wouldn't work. Could be due to some bug/lack of signifier around the skeleton showing where specifically to click. Additionally, when I would make a skeleton do something, it seemed like it never did specifically what I wanted? Again, could be a UX or technical issue, not sure. I was only able to make it through the first level before the issues with the command system weren't working at all.
Two other things I had noticed were an issue with the signifiers and affordances of the game itself as well as the UX of the HUD in this game. Puzzle design kind of lives and dies on signifiers, so when I would encounter things like a box on a ledge next to a pressure plate looking object, I think to push the box onto the pressure plate/command the skeleton to push the box. At least for me, this was not the case, and I just had the skeleton step on the pressure plate, and everything was fine. As far as the HUD though, it's a very quick fix. When you darken the icon whenever you select one of your summons, it might be a lot nicer of an experience for the player if it darkened and stayed darkened until the player used the spell. This could possibly lead to other issues with the UX, but I think that would be a great start to streamlining the process.
Overall I will give this game a 5/10, but most of the issues I saw are relatively easy fixes. I don't see any of the game needing to be redone, so if those bugs + UX problems are solved later in the process, this could easily be a 7/10, maybe an 8!
Thanks a ton, I hope too see this game again :)
A super nice idea ... ruined by a confusing UI and buggy code, that's too bad!
I really tried hard to solve the first level, spent 20 minutes trying to understand the controls, the game mechanics, going back and forth to the README ... but I never got to the point where I could make sense of this : "LEFT CLICK your summoned skeletons to have them perform actions (Like moving, stacking, or boarding the catapult)". I could never manage to move a skeleton, except by pushing it using the main character.
That's a shame, because the idea behind this puzzle game seems really promising! Please fix, so we can enjoy it!
It's cool! I got stuck unfortunately, and I see I'm not the only one :( I did make it past level one, but level two stumped me. I tried all sorts...
1.PNG 2.PNG 3.PNG
Would be great to get a hint on how to get further.
Regardless, I'll rate what I did get to experience so far! Nice musi. I see you mentioned a menu musician and someone on sound effects in the description, but did you not make the level music and is that why you opted out of the audio category? I like it all anyhow.
There's a nice sombre mood to the whole thing with the music and the purples. Really nice sprites. Cute skeletons! Neat animations.
Like others have said, the mechanics felt a little janky. Difficult to get skeletons where you wanted, weird that the player character can push the crates at all but barely (but I saw in the comments that was because you were struggling with the physics). The icons/buttons to focus on spawned skeletons stuck around after they despawned?
I did run into some weird bug on the first level and had to restart the game because the button to open the gate didn't work after I respawned at the checkpoint. I also randomly got 5 bones a single time but it never happened again 😅
I really did like what little I was able to play however, and I never got far enough to see the catapult in action, so it would be great if I could get a hint/explanation of level two and figure it out!
Some issues, but there's definitely a lot of nice stuff here :)
Loved the artstyle in this game :)
Very cool! I love the art, animations and music, and great to see a puzzle game. The UX made it a little bit hard - the buttons are tiny, and I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to issue commands to skeletons (sometimes the commands popped up, sometimes they didn't). Nice work putting together a pretty polished game so quickly.
Cool concept but I agree with all the other comments about the lack of clarity and the awkward mechanics. I thought I was cheating by moving the box a millimeter at a time, but it seems thats the only way to progress. The UI is very tiny and difficult to read and only visible when fullscreened, and the instructions said I could pick up and place skeletons with right click but I couldn't get that to work, it just opened what looked like a little context menu with no items. Clicking the skeletons also didn't make them do anything.
I know bugs are inevitable in Ludum Dare, but I feel like they really hindered the game in this case and made it almost unplayable. The graphics, audio, and concept are great, but the execution is what brings it down. I feel like you guys were so close to creating an awesome little puzzle game, but it needed just a bit more time in the oven
Very strong on the concept , the design and the music. It'd be great to have a little more solidity to the UI whether it be with some sort of path/particle overlay to suggest actions for the skeleton , or for simpler actions for each skeleton type.
The concept is great though, with more polish on the UI it'd be a great mobile puzzle game