Summoned to Serve

shanzhai 2024-04-16 15:02

One hell of a beautiful game, love the looks and the setting, very unique. Since it's Unity, you should definitely do a web export and put it here or on itch.io, way more people will play and rate that way.

A few minor criticisms: It took me a few tries to figure out what to do and without reading this page it would've taken even longer. Some kind of tutorial or a few words from a superior or something would greatly help understanding what to do. Or maybe highlight the buttons in the beginning so the player knows he/she first has to choose how to travel before choosing a path. Or make it so you can also first choose a path and then the ways of travel. The feedback provided by the buttons was not enough to make me realize there a new arrow for path-choosing appeared.

Also, I'd look over the placement of that place since it can block the UI:

Unbenannt.png

Those minor criticisms aside, I really dig it, especially the design and sound of it. Again: Consider exporting for web so more people will play it :)

zinkler 2024-04-16 16:48

@shanzhai You know what, we did just that! Thank you for your suggestion, I was afraid of the web version completely messing up the UI, but it stood strong, and the only victims were arrow controls and some performance. Thank you for your kind words, there's definitely a ton of polishing, tutorials included, that we didn't have enough time to complete.

sargonius 2024-04-16 18:57

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Overlapping tooltips are really painful and gamebreaking :(

At the same time - AMAZING concept, I would be happy to play in a full version or a slightly fixed Jam one!

noah-lovelace 2024-04-17 05:29

This was such a unique concept and take on the theme! I have the same issues as the above commenters, as the prompts would get in the way of the routing at times. However, I think the art and sound is incredible and the decision making necessary to fulfill certain tasks made for a great loop. The modifiers in the pathways were a nice touch as well, really made me think about the pathing. Nice work!

memnarch 2024-04-17 07:51

Really liked it. Nice visuals and fitting sound theme. My critisism evolves around previously stated ones only. Hints getting in the way and being a bit lost at first. First I thought I had to send them to specific ones but it was about how they get there and how fast.

bassilij 2024-04-18 16:04

Good game!) I liked the design)

badpiggy 2024-05-01 14:02

This was definitely an interesting entry

I love the ideas here. YEET-ing a civil servant with a catapult was absolutely hilarious lol

The presentation as a whole was pretty cool. Loved the graphical style and the audio. The art as a whole was blocky but in a cute way

I loved the events that popped up. They really did a good layer of strategy to the mix. Having a guy who'd lend a horse meant I had to strategise about whether I should really use a horse to transport a servant, or maybe just have him get a horse along the way. I do feel like these events could've been balanced a little more in terms of the positions that they spawned at though, especially the crowds.

However, I'm not really a fan of how the popups prevent you from clicking in general sometimes. I know you can use the arrow keys instead to plot out the direction that you need to walk on, but still. It's definitely worth noting that is a bit annoying.

I also wished there was a better indicator for when I could actually summon a civil servant or not since I found myself rapidly clicking on the bell sometimes since I couldn't tell if I actually could or not. I'm also not sure if the game was bugged or not, but there was one situation where I just couldn't click anything whatsoever ( the bell or anything else ).

The game really does need a tutorial, but I might just be pig-brained so take it with a grain of salt.

But either way, what's here is pretty damn cool. Solid entry all around

hawkin 2024-05-03 18:51

This has a lot of potential! I really liked the distant perspective on a big city. The art style, even though it was simple, was very effective, and the bowing animations were so cute!

The objective and mechanics had a bit of a learning curve, but I was able to figure it out through trial and error. My main critique is that the UI popups (showing tasks) sometimes blocked the arrows, making it hard to select the final destination.

I think if the UI showed my current number of fails and the limit, with some obvious indicator when I failed something (color and sound), then losing would be less surprising!

cananaman 2024-05-03 22:55

Cool game!