Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Mana Tactics
By argensis
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 193 | 3.40 | 33 | |
| Fun | 259 | 3.03 | 33 | |
| Innovation | 226 | 3.12 | 33 | |
| Theme | 81 | 4.00 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 298 | 2.72 | 33 | |
| Humor | 245 | 2.39 | 30 | |
| Mood | 280 | 2.84 | 31 |
ah .. too bad that it isn't actual multiplayer .. i love multiplayer games .. i started another session but it was it's own. Maybe you can put the players a bit closer .. a lot of moves. I like the switching between the players. well done!
Really appreciate local coop games! Map a liitle bit too big. I waited too long to come and start a fight. Liked it. Still lacks something for me
theres a lot to unpack here. love the local multiplayer. needs more polish, but its great for a jam. You should be proud.
Would love to play this with a friend! You should make the map smaller so the action starts a bit quicker! Great jam game that could be cool to keep iterating on ♥ Good job!
Echoing everyone else that the map is a bit too big, at least for a jam game. It feels really slow-paced, but everything worked really well. Reminds me of a few board games I like.
A little clearer indication on which units still have available actions would be a welcome addition as the transparency works better for some units than others. The living tree in particular was hard for me to tell if it has used its actions or not.
Yeah, it's clear that the movement speed to map size is off. I had a balance phase near the end of the time, but focused more on how messed up the unit economy was in the prior revision. Thanks for the feedback everyone :)
This was fantastic. I have an ongoing epic battle with my son, and much trash talk ensues. This is great fun. Thank you.
I spent some time confused with the info button depressed and thought the game was broken
Nice TBS, my friend! I would suggest to think about making player to analyze the landscape more. For example, you can add chains of obstacles on the map that player will have to get around. Also, you can add more complex summoning conditions. For example, you can create a much more stronger golem, if you stand not on one mountain tile, but on a mountain which is surrounded with some number of additional mountains on sides. Or if you stand on a tile which is surrounded from one side with water and on another side with lava - you get a very strong obsidian golem :sweat_smile:. Good luck on this project!
Interesting concept! Seconding that the map feels way too big. And yeah, pure multiplayer games are always risky for game jams, but kudos for creating it! Next to adding AI, I think some QoL polishing also wouldn't hurt, like automatically cycling through units that still have an action available. That should help speeding up turns and makes it easier to not forget units.
The core game looks pretty solid to me. Good job :D
> I spent some time confused with the info button depressed and thought the game was broken
@netguy204 Yeah, a magnifying glass cursor to show you can click on tiles was a feature I wanted to add but ran out of time!
> Also, you can add more complex summoning conditions. For example, you can create a much more stronger golem, if you stand not on one mountain tile, but on a mountain which is surrounded with some number of additional mountains on sides. Or if you stand on a tile which is surrounded from one side with water and on another side with lava - you get a very strong obsidian golem sweat_smile. Good luck on this project!
@asatrain Yeah, my original notes had the idea of different combo of elements, so originally Poseidon was going to be water + lightning or similar. But I decreased the number to save on time doing art and having to come up with so many unit distinctions.
Nice! Another tactics game. I'm just leaving a comment here so I can try this later with a friend.
Really solid concept and nicely put together - great work!
You're hitting all the right notes for a tactics games design IMO; terrain types affecting movement speed, units with unique strengths/weaknesses, it's easy to see how a meta might develop as the pieces move slowly around the map. It IS a bit slow moving given the map size, but I respect the ambition - I cam imagine a map full of units where density of units matters.
I'd have loved to see some simply AI, even if it's something silly like "take random actions", but I can understand why this might be a rabbit hole of scope creep! I could have also really used a mana sink, because I quickly maxed out 2 units per turn after capturing only a couple resources.
Game is easy to learn and easy play, which is rarer than you'd think! The "info mode" is particularly important to this - so all in all, great job!
Really impressive to be able to make a tactics game for the compo. The units are varied and the artwork simple but effective.
Hello fellow Godot enjoyer! The programmer art is strong with this one but it's a cool concept! The info in the top bar is clear, info mode would have been a lower priority for me. For the UI I'd suggest using right-click to move a unit, and have some hotkeys for the different spells. Unit-wise I think it would be nice to have some variety in the costs of units (mixed resources) but I like the different strengths of the units that you have.
The game could be nice for a bot programming contest :)
Nice turn by turn game well done ! I've just tested it player both players and it feels great (just had a little bit of time to understand how controls work)
Nice game! The mechanic is neat, I think it could make for a great strategy game. I didn't have anyone to play with at the moment, but was still able to appreciate the game. I think you made a pretty good job with the UI to explain quickly a relatively complex game. Good job!
I think the idea is good here but it's really ambitious idea for a short game jam, so it just needs a lot more polish. Smaller map size, more animations to keep the player entertained and so on.
Great game submission! very simple to understand yet there is a lot of variety you can do with your strategies! Nice to have a game comp that I can play with friends :) Art style was quite simple but charming.
Overall good work!
Pretty fun! I played with a friend. Sadly the spawns were not very fair, so I gained quite an army before she got her first tree!
That's a challenging genre for a compo, great job! I liked that after my first playthrough I had a sense for some tactics that would work well. Moving towards the enemy while summoning fast creatures to capture mana so I could summon slower/stronger creates once I was close enough to use them. There's a nice amount of complexity from just a few simple creature types. That's really good scoping.
Interesting concept! It was cool that the creatures I summon could also help control resources on the map. I think the only thing it needed was just a smaller map. A real competitive game would take a very long time. Of course a bot for single player would have been nice, but I understand there's only so much time in a weekend!
Cool game!
Great job - a full blown strategy game is a real stretch for a game jam and you've delivered! As others have said the map size was a bit unbalanced, and there were some other "quality of life" things that might have been nice, for instance shortcut keys for moving between units that still had actions available.
Nice idea, it reminds me of an old internet game whit a similar concept as this one, the strategy part is hard to do for a jam but you guys made it happen well done guys. the map might've been a bit bigger and there are some quality of life improvement that could improve the game, already listed above wont repeat those. good job
Love this idea. Feels like a turn-based-tactics take on Magic The Gathering. Pace was quite slow and the map quite large, but the bones are good. This could be really fun with some more time put into it. A strategy game is an ambitious two day project!
It was very hard to get going, but I enjoy the genre and bold choice! Especially for a compo submission, good stuff!
- I like the idea, it's interesting and ambitious, probably too ambitious for a jam - I really don't like that left and right click confirm actions like movement, you should use one for confirm and the other for cancel - I liked the info mode, but I feel it would be better if it was mapped to one of the mouse buttons when nothing is selected instead of having to switch in and out of it. - I feel like you could give a map size selection, the map is really too big and it makes feel most places not important. Also I feel the spawning locations matter a lot, whoever gets first to a resource will be able to snowball faster and therefore win (at least that's what I feel like) - It would be nice to have even a simple AI that moves towards the player, summons/attack if it can and try to end it's turn on a resource. (I know the time constraint isn't great, but you have 4 unit types, maybe it should have been cut down?) - I think summoning a unit on a resource should also capture the resource. - I'd like the lake and spring to maybe be a different color, make them more distinguishable. Also you could make the terrain resemble the movement cost more, like the forest seems pretty dense, and mountains near impassable.
Interesting concept :smile: It wasn't very fun just playing against myself, but I did a whole round to see how the gameplay loop went! I think with some AI and further work you could have an interesting game here. Keep on making games!