robowarrior1982 2024-04-16 12:29
I think used the shift key in the control is a bad idea because that active remanent touch, or other combinaison in web navigator etc (like alt etc..). The game is pretty confuse to use.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Midnight Mage
By sparkydoc07 and QuantoProgrammer
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 2.40 | 7 | ||
| Fun | 2.20 | 7 | ||
| Innovation | 2.40 | 7 | ||
| Theme | 2.60 | 7 | ||
| Graphics | 2.20 | 7 | ||
| Mood | 2.40 | 7 |
I think used the shift key in the control is a bad idea because that active remanent touch, or other combinaison in web navigator etc (like alt etc..). The game is pretty confuse to use.
@robowarrior1982 Thank you for the feedback! I hadn't considered the fact that certain keys (escape, shift, etc) are problematic on browser builds.
I have changed the keybinds for WebGL and am exporting the project. Thank you once again!
When I press 1, 2, 3, 4 the screen appears and I can't hide it back. In the end, I don't understand how to play the game.
@dmitry-mozgin you can click escape to exit the spell screen. I apologise for not including it in the game description
Oh, I see, the problem was that the escape key is closing the fullscreen mode in a browser.
I tried the game again, but I still don't understand how to use spells. The spell screen appears I can move the rectangle, but that it is all. I only managed to cast a spell on E, like fire on the ground. The wolf are also strange, because they can't kill you and the spell points increase by their deaths.
@dmitry-mozgin lighting fires on the ground (using E) in different shapes will allow you to cast different spells. For example, the Fireball spell at hotkey 1 needs a 1x1 square whereas the Wall spell at hotkey 2 needs a 2x2 square. Spells 3 and 4 have their unique shapes as well, which is represented by the grey rectangle that spawns upon a spell cast.
I would have included a tutorial section in the game if I had slightly more time, but for now I will be including these points in the game description. Thank you for bringing this up!
I agree with the shift key. Other than that I had a lot of fun!
Thank you, I finally understood how to cast a spell. You need to place a rectangle on tiles with fire.
I'm being attacked by wolves all the time, nothing is being set, I don't understand what to do
i'm having similar issues as the other players, i don't understand how to cast spells. i press a number key, then "e", and nothing seems to happen, whether i'm in the top down view or the first person view.
Interesting idea! You form shapes on the ground with magical fire, and those shapes can be used to summon effects. I summoned a square of traps that blocked everything from reaching me, and I thought I was safe until those viking enemies showed up and destroyed them. I think it would be nice to have a sound effect play when you successfully place a magical fire, because sometimes I couldn't tell if I'd placed one or not.
The idea is great!
Some sticking points for me were:
- pressing "e" sometimes doesn't start a fire even when on an empty cell. Was expecting that you could run around and spam "e" to start lots of fire and cast cool spells but couldn't get that to work. - I wanted to change the spell i'm casting while in the top-down view but couldn't without exiting back to the game and pressing another spell key - being able to stand in the fire and creatures walking through the fire feels strange... in games usually fire = bad - using the spells could be much more satisfying!
I do like the general idea though of a survival-strategy-magic game!
@lexi89 thanks for the feedback! I will keep these points in mind. Although regarding the spell casting, the issue of spamming spells was fixed using a mana system. Mana regenerates over time, with killing creatures further boosting mana. Perhaps that was why pressing E was not casting spells?
very interesting play experience though I struggle a little trying to figure out how to cast fire (press E doesnt seem to work for me, i can only do it with shift), the difficulty is incresing after i beat more wolves so that i cannot only rely on the basic fire ball, i need to build fences or stronger things, which is quite nice. could add an indicator to the right side bar showing how much is needed for one fire made. Also i cant switch my choice when i enter one of them(like I cannot switch to fences directly from fireball)
Good overall concept. Quite similar to my submission in fact. I do feel like there are a few problems that let it down. I won't list them all here but I will say the most actionable ones. - You could try to add some sort of objective like surviving a certain amount of time or killing a certain amount of enemies. - I think some gameplay mechanics could have had some explanation and I wasn't sure why I would need to use the other three spells when the first spell worked just fine. - I also feel like some music / SFX could have been nice, even if it was just royalty free stuff off the internet.
I felt like it had some potential but it lacked a lot that would be needed to make it shine.
The spikes were really cool, if things were communicated a little more clearly then it would have been easier to pick up. Either way, very creative idea, I like the purple particles a lot
The controls were a bit difficult for me. My mouse didn't lock to the center of the screen, and getting out of the spell casting mode was a bit weird while in full screen. I really liked the feel of the play once I was able to get the fires going and stuff, but getting there was a bit difficult.
Neat concept! For some reason the game wouldn't full screen for me and my mouse would leave the game window, preventing me from being able to fully turn around haha. I still played a bit and once I figured out how the magic works, I quite like the idea here, it's an interesting take on a survival game like this!
Pretty interesting idea of using the plains (grid) to conjure spells and kill the enemies that way. I personally found the web build to be a bit hard to play, namely that turning around was difficult because my cursor didn't focus in the game, and trying to press 1/2/3/4 and Esc and E back to back was tricky. The expensive spells didn't feel super helpful either since for me, the recharge time on setting the magic fires felt too slow.
Another thing that would also help is an in-game tutorial, as I had to keep reminding myself what the keys were by scrolling down to the controls in the description. It could use more polish, but the base foundation is pretty neat, so I'd love to see this expanded based on the feedback here so far.
It was difficult to understand how to control the game, there were a lot of controls that were difficult to discover via trial and error. Now perhaps I should’ve read your game page, but it’s best to have your controls be taught in game too, and to walk the player through the mechanics in a more interactive way. One thing that I think would’ve added a lot to this game is sounds for the enemies, so that you could hear them sneaking up behind you, getting louder and perhaps even being louder in the left / right ear to imply direction. I felt I was often taking damage to enemies whom I didn’t know were behind me. There was also an apparent balancing problem of the persistent spikes vs the single use spells, which you can see in the stream vod, I hope this feedback helps! :heart:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2129902300