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TUSK
TUSK
By doctor-zeus, nbumgardner, Agent p and KCTomB
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | | | 32 | |
| Fun | | | 32 | |
| Innovation | | | 32 | |
| Theme | | | 32 | |
| Graphics | | | 32 | |
| Audio | | | 30 | |
| Humor | | | 31 | |
| Mood | | | 32 | |
Comments
arla
2024-10-22 08:25
Arla.png
The art is wonderful and full of details. The 'Little guy' are great, the frog is my favorite. I had a lot of fun with this one (Please see my L attached above)
All of the voice acting and sound effects were charming. There was a lot of little detail I appreciated like the dice rolling when you mouse over the re-roll button.
The overall interface could be tidy a little, but was otherwise was easy to understand.
I have played games with similar game play, but I would say that this one compare favorably. The way that the 'super effective system' interacts with recruitment and upgrade adds more deeps than I would have expected.
Having played the easy and then the extreme difficulty I more appreciated the harder end of the scale.
Overall a cute game with loads of character and characters. Will likely return to play again.
It's easy to operate and easy to get the hang of, the excellent tutorial made me understand the gameplay immediately. However, I got stuck at Level 1 on the lowest difficulty, I'm not sure if it's my luck problem. I love the art design of the elephant cart.4703f1864ed6cbbdfb3965d9b27451d.png
danoka
2024-10-22 10:52
Capture d'écran 2024-10-22 125108.png What a blast this was very fun , the art is very cool i cant play at the moment im writting but i will surely try my luck in hard mode next time congrats !!!!
jcourt
2024-10-22 11:56
This is really good!
The tutorial is particularly helpful, and the art looks really nice, and consistent. I didn't tend to find the game too hard, but I think I may have gotten a little lucky. The variety of upgrades and characters is really great.
This is nitpicky, but my only real complaint is that the Yahtzee style "save the dice you like and reroll the others" seems like a good idea, but I think it could have been a little more fun - right now, there's not much strategy to which dice you reroll, because you just always want to lock anything that matches the barrier's weakness, and reroll the rest (this may just be a result of the upgrades I chose. Not a lot of variation in how much each action was worth). I think it might be a little more fun if each barrier had, for example a Strength, in addition to its weakness. Actions matching its strength would do little to no damage. That way, you'd still always want to reroll anything bad, but there would be a middle ground where you'd have to decide whether to take the risk of rolling something worse, in exchange for the reward of maybe getting something better.
Overall though, I really enjoyed this game, and I think you should be proud of it.
EDIT: I did also want to mention that the UI sound (like when you close a popup) - I found it a little amusing. It seems like it's a normal little UI noise, made verbally, but I keep hearing it as "you up?".
Thank you all for the detailed feedback! I am glad the mechanics we fit into the game jam play nicely together.
@ruiqianzhang thanks for showing that tough start! In the future maybe we should guarantee the first enemy is weaker. When the enemy is stronger you, charging still breaks through at the expense of some health, in your screenshot it would be 8 - 5 = 3 health.
knatt
2024-10-22 13:28
Wow I had a lot of fun with this entry! Mad Max meets The Frog and the Toad, I'd buy a 1.0 if you all polished it up!
The art is very charming and the music fits well. The voice acting is charming but the audio was a bit high in terms of mixing and I felt it peeked in some spots.
The puzzle aspects kept me engaged. I loved the upgrade system, it was simple and effective. I would be very conservative with my money and loose with fuel usage. I'd save upgrading until I absolutely needed it AND I had the correct rolls to overcome the wall. otherwise Id take the hit and that seemed to work out eventually.
I'd love a quick and temporary way to get your numbers up. maybe a small bonus at the cost of fuel, but the bonus only stays around for X walls. possibly cheaper mercs that are only hired for so many walls.
You guys should be proud of this one. Its a great game!
lance110
2024-10-22 13:44
I really like the gameplay, it's a change from the other games I've played.
Great entry! Really lovely art style, fancy small transitions and animations everywhere. Cool characters. And interesting game mechanics.
The presentation on how to play it, both reading before starting and then looking through the tutorials (Impressive to have that many and interactive tutorials!!) made it look very complex and scary. While in fact it was rather simple and straight forward once I had started playing. It would be hard to do something about that within the time constraints of the jam of course. But I could see myself skipping and not playing the game because of that first impression and that would have been a pity.
I opted for the small adventure, to have some challenge but also because by the descriptions and from how far I got by each tower in the tutorials they seemed like rather long challenges already from the smallest one. It was a reasonable length though, but I don't think I would have wanted it any longer than what it was either. And this was mainly because of balancing and progression.
Starting with 2 characters it was a real challenge not to take damage on the early towers and it felt a bit hectic while learning the ropes, but in a fun way, to take a bit damage and do some panic upgrades when I really wanted another hire. Such things.
But after the first couple, the actually difficulty dropped substantially by just hiring as many as possible as fast as possible. When I ended I had full health, 10 fuel, and over 80 coins because I hadn't needed to do anything but pressing next / going on attack directly. So why bother with upgrades and why re-roll when you already succeed.
That could have been helped a lot by just having higher target values later in the campaign even on the easier difficulties so that the player needs to play the game. Perhaps some towers also could have nothing that they are sensitive against or even some things they are resistant towards.
All in all though, a really good entry.
carraka
2024-10-22 16:04
I was suspicious at first when I encountered so many tutorials, but once I had gone through them all, I was surprised that they had worked as intended and that I instantly understood the game's mechanics and strategy. With both Small and Difficult, after a while I was cruising through the second half without having to buy any new upgrades. Extreme felt more challenging at the beginning, though maybe it's just because I really wasn't treating Health as a resource as well until the end--even though I never encountered a Game Over screen, it was still an enjoyably tense experience that felt like a challenge.
The animals saying stuff when they are upgraded is so cute! Really loved the art! I do wish they stood out a bit more from the background--it took me a bit of hunting to find them.
Nice! Like the feel and visuals. The UI is really overwhelming for a newbie. If you wish to continue with this project, teaching the mechanics to new players will be a major stake. Anyway good job!
ratly
2024-10-22 16:52
Very nice art! I liked amassing a team of little animals.
Wow, what a well-realized game. The art is great, the voice acting and sound effects are awesome, and the game play is really fun. I appreciated the detailed tutorials. I had no trouble with easy and small. Difficult was really challenging for me and took a few tries. But once I got rolling after the first region, it got really easy until the last two or three towers. I didn't try extreme. Maybe could use a little balancing, but that is nitpicking. Really solid work on a wonderfully fun game.
Of the games I played so far from this jam, I loved this the most (and played it the longest). It is so well done, and you managed to make the choices and strategy interesting. Good job! :)
dhim
2024-10-22 20:47
674 Commits! Wow I thought I made some commits but you went all out on this one!
@jcourt Thank you for the review! I appreciate you digging into the game design with your feedback.
I also think that the strategic tension of the rerolling gameplay is somewhat lighter than I'd like. The Yahtzee comparison is apt (we talked about it & King of Tokyo when discussing early design ideas) but there's a really important part of Yahtzee that our game lacks. In Yahtzee, there's a lot of gameplay tension caused by strict category requirements. For example, it's important to score a Straight sequence at some point in the game, but it's rare to have an initial roll that has good chances to "build" toward it. Even better is how the prospect of scoring a straight changes your evaluation of the dice - a 2 isn't great for many categories, but it's essential to build a 5-length straight.
Basically, Yahtzee often puts you in positions where something that's ordinarily bad is good (and vice versa). It has "synergy" within certain dice combinations, sort of like how you'll find cool combinations of cards in Slay the Spire & end up pursuing an unexpected strategy.
So, in summary, I think I'm thinking along the same lines as you. If we were to add another strategic wrinkle to the gameplay, I'd want to create special conditions where getting an ordinarily "bad" result can be the key to getting some big payoff.
We had a few ideas during development along these lines: * special "quest" conditions that grant rewards when satisifed (have 3 chainsaw actions at the end of the round to get more rewards, or all odd numbers gives +X power, etc.) * unique "leader" abilities for your crew that could conditionally trigger. Leader abilities would change the way you evaluate dice, like "+X power for every pair of matching numbers"
I wasn't confident enough in these ideas to commit time to developing them, though. The game's core mechanics of scaling threats & upgrading characters made it difficult for me to estimate what kinds of numbers the player would actually have on their "dice," a problem that Yahtzee didn't have :laughing:
Related to your idea about having something "extra" for barriers, I also had the thought that it'd be nice to periodically have "boss" or "special" barriers arrive, to give some more spikes of strategic variety. Special abilities like a barrier's power increasing every time you reroll, having resistances, or even having a beneficial one that spews extra rewards for every point of overpower you deal.
There's lots of possibilities to explore, which is exciting!
I think there are some fundamental features of the design that I haven't fully thought through, though. Lots of "hm, I bet this will be fine for the jam" kinds of thoughts from me during development - there was just too much dang UI and information communication to worry about. Probably good to re-examine the fundamentals before really going wild with adding more.
Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Thanks again for the review and feedback thoughts, I'm glad we were able to share this game with you!
Thanks for the review, @knatt!
Also, "Mad Max meets Frog and Toad" is the perfect description :laughing:
The strategy you described was definitely a pattern I visualized during planning & early development - making choices about how to spend health to conserve fuel & coins for the situations that need them is a kind of tension I enjoy.
I really like your idea about temporary bonuses. Some way to temporarily exceed your crew's limits would let us more safely play around with difficulty spikes, and having the effect stick around could give you some fun variety to react to in subsequent, rather than requiring the player to always proactively decide if they need to trigger a bonus effect.
Side thing, I also had the thought that it'd be fun if you could spend fuel for other purposes too - maybe fuel (or a different alternative resource) could be exchanged for T.U.S.K. upgrades related to max crew size, health, fuel usage, etc. Exciting stuff!
Thanks for playing, I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
@local-minimum Thanks for the feedback!
I've definitely implemented various flavors of "no tutorial, I hope you can figure it out" in past jams, so I decided ahead of time that I'd really like to do better this time. I'm quite happy that I managed to make time for it in this one!
That said, I totally get what you're saying about the intimidation factor. I think that having one interactive tutorial scenario that gradually introduces UI and gameplay elements would be better - something that gives you the feeling that you're playing as you go, rather than just receiving instruction passively.
For this particular game, I knew the UI was jam-packed with info so I was really worried about under-doing the explanations. I'm glad that you played through and got to have fun with the game too!
As far as balancing goes, I also have the feeling that the current difficulty curve isn't exactly right. The actual mechanics of beating any particular barrier is fairly light, so if you outscale the barriers the game won't have much to engage with.
I think presenting a bigger challenge at the end of easier difficulties could be a good solution, though (especially for a jam) it's hard to anticipate what difficulty will be appropriate for folks.
Maybe a "safe" alternative would be to have the T.U.S.K automatically smash through barriers if your initial roll is already sufficient to beat it - you'd do an exciting three-barrier-break combo & get more quickly pushed into a later region that can scale barriers to be a more appropriate challenge.
I rambled about some other design considerations in comments above too, but so I'll refrain from repeating them. I could talk about this kind of stuff aaaaall day :smile:
Thanks again for your review & feedback, I'm happy to have shared this game with you!
@dhim it was a looooong three weeks - I've got a lotta sleep to catch up, that's for sure :smile:
Thanks for making this fun game. Reminds me of super auto pets, or dicey dungeon. I think the art style is really appealing, and I like looking inside of the trojan elephant to scope out my crew. The crew is super cool.
The game is incredibly unique! Especially the art style, although the balance, in my opinion, requires a little refinement. But otherwise a great project!
this is the best game I played during this game jam
lindote
2024-10-24 18:03
Didudidudiduridaa...poWWWWWWW.... ahahahahaha Dying soul verry accurate ahahaha Nice game. It was very fun. Authough I must confess that I got lost trying to quit from the tutorial, back to the main page. I couldn't see the button... I gave up and refresh the page instead.
This is a really cool system! I'm a tabletop creator which made this even MORE my kind of game, and I had a blast with it. I'm also blown away you made such great tutorials and even four difficulty modes for the game in this single weekend, that was epic!
metriko
2024-10-25 01:20
Hello! I'm a UX guy from the stream :D
Finally found some time to play your game. Let me just say it straight.. the concept is fantastic and the execution is just awesome! The entire art style and the mood it creates is just top tier! This is extremally high quality entry, period.
What impressed me the most is how well balanced this game is.. every turn and every decision matters! That's not an easy thing to pull off, especially in such complicated game like yours! There are variables everywhere and it still.. just works like a charm. Also I love how every crew member has its one character embodied by the art, animal it represents, voice and even by gameplay mechanics!
The tutorial is a great addition and explained the game really well and absolutely fulfilled its purpose. I didn't have problems to understand gameplay rules thanks to that feature.
Ok, that's it.. I will not spend any more time on praising this game, people above me already did that and you already know your game is awesome :D Instead (like I promised) I will give you some thoughts on the UI/UX because I think in this field the game is lacking the most. I split it into 2 parts: tutorial and interactive HUD.
Tutorial
Let's start with the tutorial. It's implemented really well and definitely works however it takes too long to complete. Seeing multiple categories and so much text just in the "tutorial" section can create such first impression that game is extremally complicated, which in fact it's not. You can lose potential players because by this screen alone.
There is a lot of things in the tutorial that could be simplified making it much shorter. For example you can reduce text by avoiding things like "*The top of the panel contains...*", you already have arrows for that ^^ And when it comes to arrows.. it's a small thing but I would change arrow color to the same like tutorial panel to create visual connection between those two UI elements. Everything on the interactive HUD is mostly black and white already so it would create a good contrast between gameplay elements.
Another nice trick to reduce tutorial length.. don't explain UI components (players don't need that information) and always explain UX instead. Here is a simple example, instead text like "*On the left, we can see buttons, each with a picture of a crew member*" you can just say "*Here are your crew members. You can click them to see more details.*"
Interactive HUD
Now it's time for the interactive HUD itself, so all the dark panels that are the core of the gameplay. The HUD in the current state works well enough so I don't have many issues with that when it comes to UX. That said there are few things I was able to think about that could slightly improve the overall experience. So I will just share it with you in bullet points:
* I would replace current status panel (with "current actions") and crew panel with just one panel. It creates too much data redundancy. For design I would try something like long horizontal line with portraits with current action below it and if you hover on the portrait, above could be displayed all possible actions for specific crew member. So it would be like that:
``` [1. action] [2. action] + small visual cue which shows this is a current action [3. action] [portrait][portrait][portrait(hovered)] [curr. a.][curr. a.][curr. a.] ```
* You can display amount of upgrades of the crew member in classic "level" style (something like small circle with number in the corner of the portrait).
* The general rule for good UX is to reduce amount of actions to get somewhere/do something. In this game most of the time actions are just one click away.. except hiring and upgrading. To reduce amount of clicks required to hire/upgrade unit I would allow players to press "Current applications" label to open hiring menu or get to upgrade window directly by pressing unit level icon (mentioned in previous point).
Ok, that's it. I hit character limit xD I had fun playing it! Absolutely a 5 star game!
@metriko Thank you so much for the comprehensive review & recommendations!
Your notes on the tutorial make a ton of sense. It's easy for me to see ways to tighten it up now, and I can definitely apply this kind of thinking for future projects too!
It's nice and intuitive to me now, but I don't think I would've stumbled into this understanding by accident. Thank you so much for breaking it down in such an easy-to-understand way.
The suggestions you have for the HUD are very helpful as well. The main "actions" hud (the whole outdoors, really) was a big challenge for me, so I'm eager to experiment with the layout you described. All really great stuff!
There are lots of aspects of LD & game-jamming that I enjoy, but I especially love getting to discuss the games and learn from friendly folks like you! Thanks again for your time, and I hope our game-making paths cross again in the future :smile:
kctomb
2024-10-25 14:46
Great feedback. I did the art for this one, and I wanted people to know that art is a combined effort for all those involved. The programming, composition of each screen, voice acting, and making everything work and move correctly was outstanding, and I want to congratulate the rest of the team on that. It was a lot to do in a short time frame, and I'm so proud of what you all achieved.
For those that are curious about the art, we did a brain storming session at the beginning. When we decided to focus in on the Trojan Horse idea with small creatures involved, we broke down the major pieces of art that we would need. Then it was really up to me to start putting together the art while the rest of the team focused on how to make it work.
I did pencil, inked over it, and then water color. To finalize I used lightroom with Photoshop for a lot of things, and then Pixel as well. Where the magic happens is when these other great guys do the voices, music, program the game to be "fun", and then play off all the images and scenery to make it all even better and work together! There were a few more art pieces to make and add at the end because we discovered even more things we wanted to do.
There were 4 of us working on this, and I'm so proud of all of you putting in late nights and effort when you have work, family, personal engagements to work around, school, etc. Great job!