FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → No Heroes Belong Here

No Heroes Belong Here

By shasaur

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3633.7737
Fun3283.7237
Innovation2553.7536
Theme4073.8936
Graphics6113.7037
Humor5143.1433
Mood7133.4436

Comments

adamag 2024-04-16 01:41

Placing cards felt super satisfying! I really liked the game concept

shasaur 2024-04-16 02:06

Thanks! I wish I had more time to polish that; wanted to add screen-shake and some cool shaders :)

jeremydi 2024-04-16 02:16

Hi I played this and had a lot of fun! It's a cool concept! I also really like the pixel art for the monsters!

sybert 2024-04-16 02:24

I had a lot of fun playing this. The music was set up quite nicely, and the enemy icons were just great. I had an issue were sometimes the hero would just teleport to another room? I assume this is due to the "Hero cannot enter a room he has already been in" clause. And the gnolls move? It would be great to see a short summary of what the monster does when you hover over the card maybe. From what I gather, the spider poisons the hero, the gargoyle stuns them, and the goblin just attacks. Overall though, very good work. Thanks for making a fun game!

drgcandle 2024-04-16 02:44

Hey buddy, I'm now eating while playing your game. It's a real challenge not to choke on my food laughing. Your game is fantastic – the difficulty is spot-on and it all comes together so well. Looks like our team has loads to learn from you. Cheers to that, my friend.

shasaur 2024-04-16 11:39

@jeremydi Thanks a lot! I really enjoyed making the cards, I might do some more of those in my free time going forwards :)

@sybert Thank you for the feedback! Indeed, the teleportation is both due to that rule, and the following rule "The hero will return to a previously unexplored room if he cannot progress". If I didn't waste so much time, I wanted to actually animate the movement of the hero (and gnoll) walking from room to room to make that more obvious. And yes, you got all of those monster special abilities correct! :) I'm glad you enjoyed it!

@drgcandle Thanks for such positive feedback! :D

ruslana 2024-04-16 15:37

Music is a good choice. takes me back to good times of fights for who plays Sega. Game looks finished and neat with cute pixel art.

Monsters are cool and I like the different perspective where we have to kill human hero invaders who are there just for loot. Dungeons are much more than just that and we are there to protect!

(I would love to control the map only with a mouse because using keyboard needs more energy:)

erlioniel 2024-04-16 16:53

This mechanic is actually pretty promising. It might be not perfectly implemented (for me for example the guy went into a dead-end room and then casually jumped a few rooms away), but in general as a potential game - I do like it. It needs some love etc, but you can scale it up & it will work.

Nice submission, mate!

zippry 2024-04-16 19:19

Solid game! it all comes together well. The simple art and layout is prefect. I got pretty far, it has a lot of potential for adding more complex elements. I think it would have been nice if on each monster card it stated what ability they had. I didn't realize they had different abilities right away. But real fun overall!

coleslaughter 2024-04-16 22:42

Very neat idea! I played for longer than I expected. :slight_smile:

It took a while for me to understand what each of the monsters did, as well as the impact of status effects and whatnot, but after a few rounds, I felt like I was able to get the gist of it!

Is there an ending to this game? Or does the hero's health just keep expanding to an upper limit? I got to about 11 hearts and then decided to tap out since it didn't really feel like I was getting any stronger or the game was getting any harder (and I couldn't tell if the maps were repeating or not).

Regardless, super impressive you were able to put together such a polished experience as a solo dev! Awesome job. :thumbsup:

dywanix 2024-04-17 00:15

Very cool idea for a dungeon crawler. I really like playing as a opposite. However I got annoyed that I can't move my camera with mouse :(

dreamscale 2024-04-17 05:31

Interesting idea! The mechanics could use some polishing, but there's a nice risk/reward loop going on with tracking the hero's movement and also trying to gamble where they will go next. I could see a more fleshed out version being really fun!

sarafilipa 2024-04-17 07:37

Veeery fun and the graphics also give a cosy vibe. Honestly, a really solid entry. The only thing is that I wish that I could have a bit more control over zooming in/out of the game screen but other than that, it's amazing! Really great entry, especially being made by just one person!

goofte 2024-04-17 08:44

I liked it! It's a very simple concept but has a lot of possibilities to it; With some polish and quality of life upgrades I can see it being an amazing puzzle game. Here's a couple of thoughts:

- Would be nice if rooms that the hero visited already were darkened, it might make it easier at first but on huge maps it's hard to keep track of it. Could be a difficulty toggle. - I don't know what the spider does (maybe I didn't pay enough attention), but same goes with the Gnoll, would be nice to have a way to know how these interact (i.e. Gnoll always tries to move -> , v , <- , ^ , so you can plan around it better)

shasaur 2024-04-17 22:09

Thank you for all the great feedback guys, I appreciate it! :D

@ruslana @zippry @coleslaughter @dywanix @goofte Great suggestions! It motivated me to do a small update with a couple of quality of life things (mouse camera movement and little card descriptions). Of course, I've uploaded that as a separate link, so players can still rate the original.

@coleslaughter No ending yet, the mass of 8 billion humans stands ready to replace their fallen comrades and take revenge :D Though if I do a bigger version of the game, it would be really fun to add a story :)

chiara-sanviti 2024-04-18 21:51

Beautiful game, the mechanics are very simple, but effective. Not knowing where the hero will go allows you to create interesting strategies

romulo-developer 2024-04-19 00:34

The mechanic of summoning the enemies to kill the player is really fun. It adds a luck factor from the hero Ai that I think I can compare to the Dealer in Buckshot Roulette. And the music really sets up the mood. Very A-Nice

senso 2024-04-19 01:56

This game shows promise; with some attention, it could evolve into a standout puzzle experience. The art and music are already commendable, and with refined gameplay and additional polish, it could reach new heights. Great game !

player04 2024-04-19 03:50

cool game, satisfying placement. would like to see even more beast mechanics.

guitarbro 2024-04-19 04:14

Really dig the minimalism of this game. Graphics were simple but clear, and the mechanics were quick to pick up. I did run into a couple cases where I got a game over due to pure bad RNG (literally did everything optimally but the hero took the most efficient path, the knolls moved to the wrong rooms). Not sure how you can handle those cases, but it works surprisingly well most of the time. It would be nice if the scroll wheel zoom wasn't all-or-nothing, but that's a pretty minor gripe. Well done, overall!

amberfall92 2024-04-20 17:14

I crashed the game eventually crashedCardGame.png but it was a neat concept and I like the pixel art. I wasn't too sure what the differences were with the monsters I placed and what the different color hearts and such meant on the hero. Also it felt like my only choice was where to place the monster, because I got one card per turn. I think it would have been really fun if maybe you drew 2 cards per turn but could only place one. And maybe if it mattered what class of hero and what types of enemies you place.

sodagummy 2024-04-21 08:50

Interesting concept and cute artwork! Sometimes the hero seemed to skip a tile and move two steps, avoiding one of the monsters I summoned. Overall it was a really fun game!! Great work!

johnnysix 2024-05-01 21:58

Pretty fun, liked that there was a varied selection of monsters, if there was the possibility to place more than one monster in the bigger rooms, that'd be cool, or maybe , if you had two Goblin cards etc., if you placed them both in the same room, you'd just get a buffed version of the goblin.

hawkin 2024-05-03 13:39

I really like this idea!! It has a lot of potential. There was a bit of emergent strategy at times, either because there was really only one path the 'hero' could take or because there were too many. Sometimes there were a few options for the 'hero' and I had to plan ahead a bit.

I did like that the monsters had some behaviors, such as moving to new rooms. That made the dungeon start to feel dynamic. I would lean into that more! If you keep working on this, I would recommend to look for ways to increase the strategy even more. Maybe in addition to monsters, you could add "trap" cards that either slow the hero down or block his way, so that you can force a path.

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If the 'hero' jumping to another room once they blocked themselves in (due to the "no backtracking" rule) was not a deliberate choice to avoid soft-locking, then it was a fortunate oversight :D