locksmitharmy 2024-04-15 23:55
Thats some fantastic art. wow
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Orion
By ben-toosey
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 698 | 3.47 | 54 | |
| Fun | 955 | 3.06 | 54 | |
| Innovation | 103 | 3.96 | 54 | |
| Theme | 222 | 4.12 | 54 | |
| Graphics | 148 | 4.36 | 55 | |
| Humor | 974 | 2.29 | 48 | |
| Mood | 744 | 3.41 | 52 |
Thats some fantastic art. wow
I think this is a really promising concept! First of all loving the art style, would look great with more animation if you ever get time to develop further. My favourite concept is the star constellation summoning. I think its a super neat idea, would be great to see how that can be taken further if you had more time. It wasn't clear to me if there was a strategy to it, something based on distance I think, any way great job
Amazing use of the theme! Very fun to experiment with different combinations of stars.
Fantastic art!!!!! The idea of summoning with constellations is also impressive.
Your artstyle is the best so far - such a mood and I love the idea
I can tell that you didn't really have time to finish off the game, but the concept is 5/5.
Nice concept, would like to see this expanded more. Love the artstyle!
Got to level 8.
orion.png
@locksmitharmy @spudsef @bx007 Thanks everyone for the feedback so far!
@lovefromtom To make a constellation, each star has to be within a certain distance to your last selected one to work, yes! And a strategy I find works well is to loop constellations back onto themselves to summon some pretty high-level minions!
@bananplyte Thanks a lot! Didn't have nearly enough time to add everything I wanted. Drawing lines between stars within a constellation and a proper difficulty curve would've gone a really long way!
@skullpaca That's the highest I've seen so far!
The art of the game is fantastic, I really love the pixelated art style. I wasn't too sure what I was doing when drawing the constellations but in general the style of the game is very nice. It would be nice to know a bit more about what a specific drawn constellation would do before summoning or being able to withdraw a constellation to get something else. Maybe I'm just not good enough at this game. I think you did a great job on this game and I would love to see this idea worked out even further! I think adding some ambient sounds at twinkeling sound of stars would explode the feel of this game. Overall, very beautiful entry, good luck on your future projects!
The art is incredible, I love this mountains. The concept is very interesting though I didn't know what to do at first. With more juice, I think this game has a lot of potential.
This game is gorgeous, well done. I wasn't sure if I could summon different kind of minions, and I tried several types of combinations, and it wasn't clear what the selection of the stars affect. The stars could be a bit bigger too :) But this is really neat. Congrats!
Pixel art in this is absolutely gorgeous! That mountain background paired with the colourful starry night is so lovely. Don't think I really have anything to add aside from the bits you've already mentioned on the itch page.
Definitely satisfying when it clicks how all the summoning bits work!
Simple but very impressive. Game looks lovely! Perhaps stars will be able to give abilities to characters. For example, red ones have a certain chance of dealing critical damage. Also if the character wins, the stars can be upgraded. And in the future it will be possible to create stronger characters from high level stars. Your game has excited my imagination, thanks!
the art is incredible! i liked the idea of having to draw constellations, however i felt like having a way to know which color does what could be cool, because most of the time i ended up selecting stars at random. i understand you can't do everything you want during a game jam, so if you continue working on this project, i'll be very happy to come at it later and have an even better experience!
Would benefit from a bit more feedbacks but a solid idea anyway and clean art style.
Can I use more than 3 stars?
Love the idea, gonna steal it
Thanks for so much feedback so early on in the review process everyone!
@ashketchdem If I had time I'd have loved to add a preview for what each constellation would give you! I just ran out of time to add everything I wanted to, including sounds and twinkling lights unfortunately!
@julienlussiez thanks! I can see how it can be confusing for people seeing it for the first time. A tutorial is definitely something I'd want to add moving forward!
@aviv-levy Thanks for the feedback! For this game jam there's only one type of minion you can summon, only the stats change depending on the stars :)
@jhax Thanks, glad you enjoyed!
@bloketta You and I are on the exact same wavelength! :) I have so many ideas on how to improve the game with abilities, even events like lunar eclipses, meteor showers and auroras giving bonuses to certain types of minions. I feel like there's a lot of potential for mechanics!
@amarokczukay A preview for a given constellation is one of the first things I'd like to add!
@alkemiste I agree, more feedback is necessary, especially when making the constellations!
@godknows You can use as many stars as you have available. You can even decide not to make any constellations on any given round to save up more for the next!
@enad96 haha thanks, you're gonna have to race me though!
I really love the art style and the core idea is also very nice. I personally would love to see stars more "clearly", like, bigger when I select them for the summoning. On my large monitor every round I have to do some pixel hunting. It's not annoying, but would be easier if selection would have some kind of visual feedback (think circle around the star, lines connecting them within the constellation). Also I can see how you can extend that idea and make a pretty neat game if you ever want to. Good job!
Everything has already been said. But the game is very cute graphically, I love the mountain!
Fantastic art in this game. Awesome summoning mechanic.
Very nice art, I was confused at the start but the mechanics kinda clicked after a while. Couldn't get past wave 8 though :(
This is so cool, the art is amazing and the gameplay works well. I love that summoning by stars thingy !
It’s hard to imagine that you completed this work alone! Exquisite graphics and unconstrained gameplay! So far I have played the game that best meets my expectations for this theme! I'm already looking forward to this game being released on Steam! Well done!
Overall a very nice game! It was quite hard to stay alive for long. I really liked using stars to summon and figuring out how the colors worked and that I could not reuse them afterwards. Would be interesting to see where this game could go!
@0x0961h I agree, I have plans to highlight stars and constellations better in the future, but I think that's what's holding back accessibility the most at the moment.
@d0vid Seems like lots of people are coming across the level 8 hurdle (myself included)!
@patrick-pang That's unbelievably kind of you, thank you! From the feedback I've received so far, I'll definitely be looking into remaking it into a proper project :)
I love this, so much unrealized potential though! This is a really cool and original idea.
There can't be enough praise for the art style; absolutely gorgeous. 6/5.
I read about what you didn't manage to finish, and it is a bummer, but what you have achieved alone is very commendable anyway. Heads up! What you planned to do sounds great, especially the lines creating constellations. People in the comments are throwing cool ideas too. I wish you enough motivation to finish and polish your game :)
I have some feedback for the auto-battling part though. The way it is resolved right now doesn't enhance what I thought would be desirable player behavior of building specialized units using different-colored stars (tanks with blue, and damage dealers with red) and reshuffling their position on the board.
It doesn't happen for two reasons:
1) Given a 2 vs 1 scenario, the unit in the 2nd position won't ever attack until the unit in the 1st position is alive. So if I manage to create a 2/8 attacker, it won't have a chance to shine until an 8/2 tank dies, and then it dies too because it has low HP.
2) Given a 2 vs 1 scenario again, the enemy will be able to attack twice, so again, having a 'glass cannon' attacker at the back doesn't work.
Personally, I would see that each unit, starting from the center, attacks once the closest to them enemy until everyone made its move, then repeat until only one side is alive.
Good luck!
Very cool idea! My team and I had a similar thing in mind with our game before we decided to change directions, so it's nice to see it realized! I found it confusing at first, thinking the game froze when I clicked the star map button. The stars are kind of too small and not enough pronounced, they still felt like a background element. Maybe if you made them sparkle or shine once the star map button was pressed you could draw player's attention to them. Some sound wouldve also been neat, but I can understand why it's absent, I can see so much work going into this by just one person. Well done!
Really neat concept. Some sfx would have taken the game to the next level but still a solid entry! Love the simple art style (my toxic trait thinks I can make art like this)
I was looking for more synergy between the units and generally more unit types, but I understand the time constraints. Love the fact you can choose not to spend all the points and store them for later. If you plan to expend the idea: maybe the power of unit you summon also depends on the distance between the stars? But you cannot make intersections. This can introduce some interesting choices I think.
@haayaargh thanks so much for the super useful feedback! I completely agree, I knew when submitting it that the combat needed a lot of work. And that'll all get looked at with time, I've already started working on a better version :)
@sodoj interesting, care to share what idea you guys were originally planning on doing? Is it similar in terms of being an auto-battler, or had it do with constellation forming? A lot of tiny QoL changes and feedback with lights/SFX would've added a whole load to the game, I agree!
@nick-blackwood I've considered the distance between stars as an idea for the future! I like the idea of having intersections as it would help player-made constellations resemble real life ones, but there could definitely be a bonus if you actively build a run with no intersections in mind!
Our game was originally meant to be an incremental game, similar to cookie clicker, adventure capitalist and many other. The player was "cookie-clicking" the main circle that contained a basic, predefined melody. Each click granted player a currency in form of stars which player would've used to build other circles with faster and more complex melodies by forming constellations around the main circle. We downgraded the idea to a basic rhythm game because it was too difficult to balance properly and frankly because it not that fun to play.
Clean art and cool concept !
More visual feedback (Circle around star before selection,...) and sound would really help your to game make us understand what's happening on screen. And an in-game tutorial would be a plus
A very good game. I love the pixel art and the simple game-play mechanics. Yes, it would have been great to have music as well. Even so, one of the better games here, and very imaginative. I like especially the idea of incorporating the stars into the game — I haven’t seen that before. Nice work.
Very nice game. Love the art design. Great concept, and would be immensely improved by showing connections between stars. Excellent work!
The minimalist pixel art is especially pretty. I managed to get to round 6 before losing, then round 7 spawned in monsters and I couldn't do anything. The starmap wouldn't show up, so not sure what happened there. Up to that point, I felt like I got trapped in a loop where I had to summon a 2 red star minion every time because that was the only way to have enough attack to get past the opponents. Was hoping I'd be able to at least get 1 extra star each round or something, felt really difficult to keep up.
There's definitely potential here. Some animation on the stars twinkling would really help, as well as an in-game glossary of how the stars affect summons. Sound and simple music (something ambient and really reverby) could take the vibe up a level.
Solid entry, especially for a solo dev!
I thought the art was beautiful. How sad that there is no sound.
I understood what I had to do, but I found the difficulty disproportionate. I couldn't get very far, because I couldn't get anything to recover my energy lost in battles and I always summoned warriors with the same skill. I lost badly. With balance this game will be very interesting.
Congratulations for the game