bruce-dellinger 2024-04-07 21:17
First
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Child of Ruin
By random-storykeeper, wdelvi, John Peter McGrath, pauls134, qwertywasd17, Jamie Whitmarsh, sangita, petunio, sylvic, Osvaldo, curlyGoblin, dankacles, kristirose88, Nivarian, rick-williams, Bruce Dellinger, Joey Kloepfer, venera-program, soluke22, VioletDreams, torin.denniston, rbakh, MazzleDazz, LoganK, OniLuchador, MistieMaeDae, questionmarc, Constantin Dumitru, Christi Kerr, fiovske, syphorce, aerinova, atombot, PhoenixGaming, theGreenGhost, zerostrike88, Jonathan Chennova and Ej Colina
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1113 | 2.97 | 53 | |
| Fun | 1180 | 2.48 | 52 | |
| Innovation | 1151 | 2.53 | 51 | |
| Theme | 1127 | 2.75 | 52 | |
| Graphics | 778 | 3.44 | 53 | |
| Audio | 407 | 3.52 | 53 | |
| Mood | 792 | 3.37 | 52 |
First
How did I get here?
Seems nice but it kept crashing!
Nice game! I hope I can see the future of this project someday
christ alive this is cool
I kept running into bugs and crashing but this was an ambitious project for a game jam. The music is fire too. I kinda sat on the menu for quite a bit just so I could keep listening.
I loved Ravi!
Hope you get the opportunity to fix the crashes, enjoyed what I saw so far.
I wish I could see my player under the trees. It was hard to tell where I was going. I feel like tilting the camera would help with this, too.
Love the game! so ambitious!! got stuck after combat when talking to a golem named Niko. child-of-ruin-stuck.png
Definitely appreciate everyone taking the time to check out our game! I do apologize for some bugs and crashes but... as you have noticed this was quite an ambitious project. A bunch of us are dedicated to cleaning up as many of the show stopping bugs as possible and getting new builds posted that will hopefully allow for a full play through.
So if you liked what you experienced in the beginning - please check back and see if a new build (with patch notes) was uploaded to Itch!
It was quite a unique experience! You for sure poured a lot of soul into this.
Man you guys did some really impressive work. For 3 days I'm blown away by how much heart and personality and scope you put into this thing. Great job!
Bro
We have: -Booba -Good Gameplay, UI and no inv walls -7 people
You have: -No Booba -Bad gameplay, UI and inv walls -20 people
We are on different levels
Cool game, however sometimes I got lost due to fact that I dunno where to go
This is a very complex game, I see a lot of potential here and obviously with time limits of a game jam there's only so much of polishing that can be done. I would love to see a menu to recap current objectives, battle UI was super confusing, but I really liked the lore, music and character design ideas :) nice one, guys, keep it up!
Always love to see 3D games in a Game Jam! Really liked the polishing, such as the changing camera angle when talking to someone.
If I might add something to the controls: I like the 8-dimensional approach, but certain paths are curved in a way that you have to adjust your direction manually. The curve does not always align with the diagonal movement when pressing two input buttons. Thats a minor thing I found a little annoying sometimes.
But overall that's a very nice game!
It's just a full-blown game. Loved every bit of it.
This game is fantastic! I especially enjoyed the writing-- really well done!!
Another HUGE thank you for everyone playing our game!
We have pushed up an insane number of bug fixes - that should allow for a full play through of the experience (of course with some minor bugs still lingering, but no freezing on NPC interactions).
Enjoy! <3
I feel like participating in a game jam with a team this large is a very substantial challenge in and of itself - so kudos for finishing with a working game! The scope is also quite impressive! I especially like that you added a full story to it. The combat UI was kind of confusing but the system itself seems to have quite some depths to it. Oh and some text boxes were covered by assets ( in the first area I think).
@fargred yes - it is quite remarkable that we got across the finish line, if you consider that this was made by 40+ folks with no pre-existing formal structure or funding. Truly a wonderful experience all around!
impressive world building with the intro and giant landscape to explore. i was "killed" by a game crash when i walked over the edge onto the yet-to-be summoned bright. but overall it was very impressive.
@m0rph1y Geez, rude much? Jam feedback is supposed to be for constructive criticism. And comparing team size is pretty meaningless -- I had _one_ dev (who was also the dialogue writer) and _one_ illustrator (who got sick and lost a day and a half), and my son chipped in a couple of 3D models. And most jams it's just me. That doesn't make my games any better or worse. It's just a different way to participate.
Incredibly ambitious project, I tip my hat to you good Wizards! Lovely work, looks great, sounds great! Overall, Great Work!
@m0rph1y I get what you're saying- there is definitely room for additional polish. Honestly, our goal with this jam was to maximize the efficiency of such a large group, set up functional communication pathways, and not have the project implode from erratic behavior. It was a producer test and a half. We succeeded and are super happy with the end result from such a short production period :D
Wow! This game feels like it was made over the course of a year by a whole game studio. Getting 40ish people to work seamlessly together is no easy feat. I wonder if anyone worked as a project manager!
The graphics, the music, the gameplay, the scenery, the cutscenes, the story, it's all incredible. Kudos.
I think I ran into a bug during combat, though. It looks like these boxes along the bottom are supposed to have something in them, but they were blank. So I got pretty confused. Screenshot 2024-04-18 at 9.24.31 AM.png
I forgot to mention the infographic on this page that explains the story and the characters and stuff. It's like the game manuals that used to come inside game boxes. I used to read those game manuals in the backseat of the car on the way home from the game store, and this one gave me that hit of nostalgia.
@maxflav Hey - are you by chance playing on macOS? I believe this bug was reported by one of our team members but weirdly enough another member using macOS wasn't able to replicate it heh.
I haven't been able to replicate on Windows or Linux - but yes, there should be text there that communicates various combat abilities.
Wow, the sheer scope of this game is insane. Congrats for actually pulling it off! Obviously it's a bit rough around the edges but I can't really complain when the production is of this size. You've got some serious collaboration skills. :grin:
@phoenixgaming yes I am using Chrome on a Mac
It's a nice game concept! But did you create a corporation for this jam? I wonder how you all communicated in such a short time. It's very cool :)
Maybe you could add a combat somewhere closer to the beginning of the game to add more action, or I just got lost in the maze ^_^
@maxflav M series chip or intel chip? We're trying to narrow down the issue heh. So far it seems like the intel chips aren't affected but M series are. Very weird stuff.
@ruslana hahaha no, no corporation - we just coordinated through discord :D
I'm so impressed with the scope! Well done completing so much in a short time with such a big team, that's amazing. I liked the clay animation aesthetics. The controls were a bit rough and the battle system kinda confusing, I do wish the UI was a bit more polished, but it's understandable that it's hard to achieve everything in a jam setting. I am a sucker for lore so it was nice to see bits of lore scattered here and there. Overall I respect such a level of ambition, good job.
Wow, so many people involved in this entry! Explains the ambitious size.
I loved the statue lore, and the old man who sees the beauty in the world. The writing in general is quite evocative.
The musical score is ethereal and jaunty, fits the setting well, though it was a bit strange that it reverts to the exploratory theme when you cross the final bridge? I feel like the badlands music would have fit the mood better for the conversation with your mother.
The combat was a little bit wonky. Ravi died immediately when I started the fight across the first bridge before he had a turn, felt not great, then the second fight across the second bridge I won without the enemy having a turn. Most of the rest wound up with one character out of commission before they got a move in. Kind of a mixed bag.
Movement felt sort of stilted, and the map felt large and empty. I never really felt like I knew where I was going, just wandering and hoping for the best.
Overall really great though! I enjoyed playing through it. It's impressive to wrangle so many people toward a common goal in such a short period of time successfully at all, really, but it was fun in its own right.
Shocked by the amount of participants in this project, coordinating a team this size in such short time is an incredible challenge on it's own. Not to say you guys did such wonderful works on the gameplay, the music, the narrative, EVERYTHING. Great job.
@vivid-hallucination This was some awesome feedback, and very fair criticism! The combat system went through a few iterations due to needing to cut down on scope with such a tight time constraint. That being said, we definitely have some work to do to make it feel better AND be more understandable for the player.
Thank you for taking the time to play through the game and provide us with the feedback <3
A lot of work for a jam, good work though ! Colliders are a bit harsh on the trees. The art is nice. Explanations about the different attacks and the weakness about the enemies seem unclear, could improve that maybe. Nice job.
I became an omniscient fox wizard :3 The audio in this game is sooo good! Especially the bgm and voice acting. This game could use more gameplay though. Maybe some puzzles? The combat system was interesting, but it really lacked in feedback to the player. It wasn't super obvious to tell what was happening, what the state of the fight was at each turn. You could substitute some of the dialogue boxes with vfx to show elemental damage and bonus attack state. It also didn't feel great when a battle started, you can take damage before the camera is set up and the player fully registers they are in a fight.
Love this visual and sounds. Pretty good work!
Very Ambitious! Thanks for sharing!
Love the music, voice acting, narrative (once I figured out what the heck was going on), and world building.
I noticed some inconsistency in the implementation of the dialog. Sometimes the Narrator was in (parentheses), I think it was in [brackets] once, other times it was without either. Some of the spoken dialog had "quotes" when others didn't. Sometimes Ravi was referenced to as "The Player".
I enjoyed the combat quite a bit but it was almost never clear what was actually going on. In the very first combat, Ravi died before the camera was finished moving to center on the combat. I was not sure if that was part of the story and I had accidentally skipped something, or what. I also didn't figure out that I could revive the dragonflies until the last battle, but that might be a me problem.
I think extra time to polish everything up would go a long way. Regardless, this is quite an impressive experience for 72 hours. (I've been collecting my thoughts as I type this with the main menu music playing in the background, it's so good!)
This was very ambitious. It's certainly on the upper end of the amount of content I've ever seen in a jam game before. I could provide critiques of the weaknesses, but the other comments have already said everything I could say, so I'll just say... I feel like you achieved what you set out to do. Well done.
Holy crap this is amazing for a game jam. Cuuldnt' get it to run all that well but from what I played it's really impressive. Love the music! Classic RPG/adventure vibes
@wind1e Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback! All those things are definitely on our radar and things we want to polish as we have time. We really appreciate you playing our game and glad you enjoyed it!
Such a big game scope for a game jam, overall loved it and had a blast playing. The game was very fun and enjoyable for the most part, a little bit of jank here and there but still impressive with the massive project and large amount of people.
Hey team, I played this game on stream! I can’t believe the size of the team and the fact you made anything at all in this time is incredible! I didn’t have much time though, so sorry for the rushed playthrough. You can see what happened here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2130698362
@justcamh Hey thanks for playing our game! The video of your play through it was insightful to watch, and you gave good feedback on your experience.
This was definitely as much of a production and coordination challenge as it was making the mechanics functional and intuitive. We've got a few Quality of Life edits and feature additions we've made to the game, but we're waiting for the actual LD voting to end before we make those public.
Thanks for your feedback and votes!
I won't leave a rating for this as I believe my experience was not indicative of the games quality or design, but I ran into repeated issues with frame rate. It was being incredibly choppy and inconsistent, with input often taking place about a second after initial input. This doesn't seem to be the average impression, but every bug should be logged
Jesus Christ! This is some coordination magic. Hats of to you people for making a pretty damn good game in 3 days.
@hexy Sorry you couldn't experience the game- sometimes 3D WebGL applications cause performance issues and it's a shame. We were aiming for WebGL so the game itself would be as accessible as possible without requiring a download of a zipped .exe
@skvader-418 Thanks for playing! We've made some updates but they'll be made available later next week.
I was able to get past the first bridge without activating it, so it felt a little confusing at first, or like the map was bigger than intended. Nice story and voice acting. Maybe it was a bit unclear, which enemy elemental or golem was which one and what was the meaning behind the three colored lights that I think only showed up at the end boss fight, but the game felt fairly easy and forgiving, so I could just figure those mechanics out by trial and error without failing any fights.
As an audio person, the audio is superb in this game and very nicely implemented. The SFX feels solid and the music is fitting the aesthetic of the game. I wish there was an option menu for setting levels but that' a minor. As other has noted the player movement/camera becomes a bit bewildering when trees and other object are in the line of sight. Overall well done and kudos to the leads for managing 30 peeps.