kirass 2024-04-16 22:46
I really like this game!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → 9 Hours Till Chaos Comes
By cubanfrog, Acornfey, SweetWizzle, Asinomegat, etwu, Forestpond and smuli
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 992 | 3.18 | 37 | |
| Fun | 1084 | 2.84 | 37 | |
| Innovation | 842 | 3.08 | 37 | |
| Theme | 730 | 3.48 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 459 | 3.89 | 40 | |
| Audio | 315 | 3.64 | 37 | |
| Humor | 545 | 3.07 | 36 | |
| Mood | 814 | 3.33 | 36 |
I really like this game!
Thank you! We had a lot of fun creating it
The rooms are very cool looking, it is unfortunate they are just decoration mostly. The audio is a bit weird, but after all a full and working game. Very nice job!
We had really similar idea on the theme ^^ And we both got into the pitfall of having to balance and present the rules of such a complex system in a limited time! The way it is balanced mean that you often gonna lose by a really small margin and sometimes even while sending all your monster. So it's quite frustrating to have to go through the entire animation while being powerless to change the outcome. Also i love the animation and drawing style
Thanks for your submission! It's great that you managed to submit such a complete game :)
It took me some time to understand what I needed to do and there was a lot of up-front reading. It's a bit of a big ask if we can't even know if the game will work :) And not work it did :( I failed twice, trying to experiment and try to understand what was going on, and the "Q" key only cleared the screen – I was stuck back into the room. The third lost killed my interest as there was no way to retry the combat and I needed to start from scratch :c (web build)
Also, I have the impression the way my camera was set, I couldn't see some of the creatures to the left, as they clipped out (screenshot)
CleanShot 2024-04-26 at 22.14.06@2x.png
Very well thought out game that perfectly fits the theme!
It took me awhile to read the rules, but it was intuitive enough that I never had to look at them again while playing. The game is very complete feature wise, quite a lot of gameplay mechanics were implemented, which is impressive. But the issue always with having many mechanics is that you have to do a lot of balancing, which is the only issue the game had; it was too hard :laughing: . I managed to go to 3 hours left after 4 tries. Also, it is hard to understand the battle system, things were just happening without fully knowing why (all of the monsters got hit at once, I didn't understand how order works). Maybe an extra section in the rules would do the job?
Overall, great job, a neat idea fully realized!
cool arts
I adore the critter art and the sounds you used through this entire project! The random chaos badguy name was nice. I had a lot of trouble with the actual mechanics at first and had to reread over everything again, but that's not your fault, it's mine.
I forgive all the minor inefficiencies, this is a 5 :star: game in my eyes.
Nice job with the art and the music/sound, you had a lot of really good presentation. I had a tough time with this one mechanically though. I like that you can see what the different units are doing, though it was never completely apparent how exactly battle progressed.
It took me several tries to even figure out how to interact with the different rooms and probably a dozen tries before I figured out how to use the summon rooms at all. One problem I think is that when you assign a unit to summon, the "slots" for the items can end up behind units in the battle row and are easy to miss. On top of that there's no indication that summoning won't do anything without items, I think having some sort of "error" popup if you try to summon without items would be crucial. Also items get consumed even if you try to switch to a different item when summoning (select one element item, then try to replace it).
It just took too much experimenting to figure out how the game worked before I could even think about strategy. As abstract as this game is I think a tutorial would go a long way, or even exact instructions on the itch page would be a big help.
Really unique idea, just needs to communicate better to the player.
not bad, I liked the music and sound effects. Sometimes the battle wouldn't load in and the game would just kind of stay there, I think it went ahead after pressing space a second time, but is kind of odd. The game is a good base for a game and is an impressive turn base battle game, just a little confusing on what to do.
Despite the pain of having to read a wall of text to get the hang of it, once you go through the effort to learn how it all works there is a a great game underneath it all. I would even go as far as to say that gameplay-wise this was one of the best entries I have played during the numerous times I have participated in Ludum Dare. Great work on the game design front, although sadly the lack of tutorial makes it all go to waste for many players, as most of them they will likely give up due to not knowing what the different numbers and icons mean and how the different mechanics work.
The game would be fantastic if the instructions on the itch page were explained to the player in a non-intrusive way within the game itself, as ignoring the lack of tutorials everything else is in a great shape. The graphics were extremely charming, loved the designs of the lil freaks, the icons looked really nice and the 3D-aesthetic suited the rooms really well with the minions scaling smaller depending on their "depth". Elements such as the comments that the creatures spit out and the random naming of bosses were all really nice touches that add to the overall charm and mood of the game. Music was also quite nice, and the sound effects were quite suitable too. LD entries rarely work in both mood and humor categories, but this one succeeds in both of them.
A few non-tutorial related issues:
- It's a bit confusing that you have to press enter twice to start the game for the first time (and 3 times to retry). It says press enter and after that there is an empty room with no indication to press enter again.
- I encountered a bug (in the post-jam/fixed version) that if you lose the boss fight and try again then the boss stays on the screen in the subsequent run(s).
- On "narrower" displays with aspect ratios larger than 16:9 (16:10 etc.) the right and left most freaks start to get cut from the view. The camera should keep the gameplay elements in the frame by adjusting the view size based on the display's aspect ratio.
All in all a great game with a lot of potential. Had fun playing it after the initial struggles. Excellent work!
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Tried the original to know what you managed to do in the jam. I also skipped reading the game page and attempted to understand the game during the play and how it conveys it's mechanics and such. Appreciate the information and polish in there, though. A wall of text can scare jam players though due the strict rating period.
I really like the visuals and the audio. The grimoire is a nice reference for mechanics.
Didn't quite understand how the battle worked. The "x/y" stats were slightly confusing me, I wasn't sure what they were and why they were altering. In addition, I would've loved to inspect the opponent to strategize my lineup.
Great work regardless!
Graphics for monsters is amazing, UI is good, backgrounds feel out of place. Music and sounds are playing along nicely. Gameplay is probably good but hard to get into (for a LD game). There is a sense that the team cohesion wasn't great, and perhaps you needed a single game designer to keep things tight.
I kind of think the game would do better with less features. While the issue with most LD games is that surplus features don't get implemented properly, here they are implemented well but are not communicated well enough. Monster and UI graphics, audio and humor shine the most.
Looks like you need one more rating so here you go!
This is a good looking game, I dig that art style, and the audio is pretty strong too with that fun ominous music.
Mechanically speaking I had fun play the game, but it was a little confusing, even with instructions I found it hard to anticipate how battles are going to play out and which monster I should send. It's also unclear how to make the best use of items and rooms in order to have a chance at beating the game, especially since a single bad fight can tank a run.
Overall this a very cool game in terms of aesthetics and mood, congrats!
I loved this game!
As others have said the game does not explain its mechanics clearly and the ui is not the most intuitive. Even with the itch page descriptions it took a while before I had any idea what was going on. I would have liked the exact math of combat to have been spelled out (for those wondering it's attacker's attack - defender's defense, with attack being doubled for opposing elements). Showing the math in the damage numbers or a combat log would be even better. Being able to see the propensities of enemies instead of having to memorize them all would also have helped a lot with learning. There's a bug where using propensity items increases the defense number but doesn't actually increase defense, which made things even more confusing (I played on the HTML version).
Once I got past the learning phase it was very fun. There are some balance issues like training being way better than any other option, making runs heavily RNG dependent. Until the boss you mainly just need 1 or 2 strong minions to win fights, so summoning more than 5 minions wasn't very helpful. I found studying to be nearly useless, since even if you know the elements of the bosses attacks it's hard to get more than 5 strong units. The reason training is so good is based on the design of how defense works. Facing a team of 5/4 enemies, a 4/3 minion is useless while a 6/5 minion is invincible. This means the outcomes of fights swing rapidly with a small amount of training, and a single strong unit is sufficient to take on a team of 5 since weaker units do minimal to no chip damage. The description of training says that body minions only gain defense and soul minions only gain attack, but that would make spirit minions way stronger than the others, so I think the way it actually works in game is better. Balance is very hard to get right in a jam, so it is understandable that it's not perfect.
The boss generally seemed janky/buggy. The timer ticking to 0 is very ominous and great for setting mood so it's sad it stays at 1. Room actions being available but useless during the boss fight was a bit confusing. I had to fight the boss a second time after bringing it down to 0 health. Maybe it was supposed to be a phase 2 but it's health stayed at 0 so it instantly died again. The boss sprite also stays on screen after starting a new run.
Overall the mechanics are fun and deep and the music was great. I wrote a lot of nitpicks but that's only because I liked the game and thought a lot about its mechanics. Great job!
Wow, i like the game a lot! Very cute art and style🤩😍
Game looks nice, but there are some things that could be explained:
- what are the items above - what top row actions does? (only training seems to be doing something) - attacks mechanics are not clear, the shield? double attack? creatures swapping?
This game is really impressive and polished, the graphics and the audio are great, but it's very hard to understand how it works, that was quite annoying, and it's way too hard!
It took me a hot minute to understand the whole thing but i loved it! It feels like a mix between an async battler with pokemon but with undertale vibes. Great work!
I liked the game, it’s polished and well-made, but I found it confusing to understand at first. As some others have mentioned, having to read a lot to understand the gameplay may be a bit counterintuitive for most players. Great entry though!
Couldn't wrap my head around what was happening, or what I was supposed to be doing. Moving things places did things, but it wasn't really clear why, what the lanes meant, why one of my characters was randomly lost to the void gathering, etc. Ended up stopping because I couldn't deduce whether I was even succeeding or not.
First of all great music and visuals, but what stands out the most to me is the gameplay. This game is complex and I mean it very much in a positive way. It was incredibly fun learning and discovering the mechanics and various interactions that result from them. While based on an old and tested counter system reminiscent of Pokemon or even Rock, paper, scissors, the game nonetheless provides a great number of opportunities to strategize and contains some mechanics that to my eye appear unique. I did not manage to beat the boss, but I feel I will come back to this game to try myself again.