dooskington 2024-10-07 06:54
Neat game! It is satisfying to grow your imp army. I appreciated the variety of imps to choose from after each level
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Impish Descent
By honey-pony
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 54 | 3.97 | 23 | |
| Fun | 27 | 4.06 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 197 | 3.20 | 24 | |
| Theme | 263 | 3.06 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 229 | 3.15 | 24 | |
| Audio | 151 | 3.25 | 24 | |
| Humor | 164 | 2.97 | 23 | |
| Mood | 124 | 3.54 | 24 |
Neat game! It is satisfying to grow your imp army. I appreciated the variety of imps to choose from after each level
Nice!
Fun combat game! Good variety of imps and relics, but the gameplay is a little repetitive. Great submission with lots of potential!
Managed to beat it with all ascension levels! (it doesn't show them on the win screen but trust me) Asc5.png
I kind of got lucky with the build, but it was super fun by the end - the mages dealt a ton of damage thanks to quarterstaff (and the holy scepter in the end made it even more absurd), the two staff summoners fished for more mages when I was doing well and staff clerics/scythe summoners when I wasn't, and the one scythe summoner made sure nobody really died. By the final level, I could defeat a ghost in one "hit", and revive everyone afterwards. It was great!
Anyway, the fact you managed to make a full-fledged roguelike for the compo is mindblowing! I loved how there was a different mechanic for (almost) every imp/weapon combo, and the relics had some super cool effects. There is a lot of potential for fun builds here. The graphics are a bit simplistic, but the imps were cute and I appreciated how every relic had an icon.
As always in compo games though, the balancing was a bit unpolished. This is mostly an issue in higher ascension levels, but level 1 was the hardest by far for me - you have very little resources and die in one hit. Both when playing it for the first time and my all ascension runs I lost the most times there. Some initial imps can make it almost impossible, even - for example, a staff mage barely deals damage faster than the ghosts regenerate, so you must hit them a large amount of times in a row to defeat even one, while dodging all their attacks and not going near walls (due to a bag, ranged attacks sometimes don't work while near a wall). Brawlers arguably have a harder time since you must enter melee range without getting hit once. I ended up resetting until I got a club mage to beat it (and even there I had to hope for good RNG...). I think starting with a relic or even two imps could help with that.
Also, it felt like the game encouraged you at first to play defensively with the bullet-hell style attacks, but by the end of the game, it time prevented this kind of strategy with a bunch of regenerating enemies in huge groups (even without ascension levels). The fact that staff cleric/summoner stall strategies are extremely powerful didn't help. So I found myself stalling for a very long time in levels, waiting for an opening/ideal attack time which never really happened. In the end, suicide strategies with shields/scythe summoners seemed like the only viable course of action, but they kind of ignored the dodging aspect of the game... Still, these strategies were pretty fun, so it wasn't a huge deal.
Overall though, I really enjoyed this! Again, I don't remember the last time (if any) I saw such a complete roguelike game here, and a very cool one at that! Awesome entry! And glad to see you back :)
Beat it! This is a *fun* game. You give the player interesting choices to make — the essence of a good game. It took me a few tries to finally win, and it was a lot of fun trying out different strategies and different combinations of imps and relics.
At first, I wasn't sure what the tiny blue explosions signified, then I realized they were disappearing imps. I thought at first they were enemy fire. I guess that's one improvement you could make. Also, it would be good to have more variety and detail in the surroundings. These are just suggestions if you want to develop the game. Overall, a solid entry, and the most fun so far. I'm glad to see you've returned after your hiatus.
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@frogman @gamebuilder Thank you for playing and for the great feedback! And I'm very glad to have made it for this compo, it was a very rewarding one to have completed. I have not made a particularly ambitious effort at a compo game since Ludum Dare 49, and it's nice to have finally made another one.
@frogman The point about the first level is interesting as it matches some feedback I received in person. It definitely seems like the first level is a struggle especially for new players and might make the game harder to pick up and enjoy. I definitely agree that a good revision to the game would be to start players off with a better build. (I mean, mathematically--your power level increases by 100% or more between level 1 and level 2, so it definitely makes sense why there's this effect).
The stalling / boring combat is probably my biggest gripe with the game at the moment. I think there is a reasonable-ish variety of levels for some builds, e.g. I think level 4 (the one with 8 ghosts) tests survivability and AoE, while level 5 (the first one with regen) tests burst damage. Level 6 is of course kind of absurd, which is why I sorta made it optional (although nobody will know that going in, of course). I think that more interesting enemy attack patterns are needed to really make the game enjoyable especially for many runs in a row.
(I am very much in "Slay the Spire" brain right now and so much of my game design was inspired by that game. I think that the idea of interesting enemies that test you in different ways is the biggest Slay the Spire-ism that I wanted to implement but didn't quite manage.)
@gamebuilder I definitely agree with your point on unclear animations. I actually think there are several mechanics that are so unclear that they could ruin the game for a few unlucky players--in particular, there's an interaction where "split" imps are unable to be resurrected, which is not communicated by the game at all and could destroy anybody relying on resurrections. (And this, in fact, is why you're seeing the blue fire--the split imps from the slime relic don't leave behind a corpse to be resurrected, instead disappearing in flames.) I may end up making some tweaks to this in the somewhat-near future.
More interesting environments would absolutely be better. I tried to create a small variety of settings using my 3 kinds of floor tiles--I do think that often a small number of tiles can go a surprisingly long way--but for sure having more variety can make things more interesting (and there would be more room for world building and such).
I'm so happy I found this game! I adore dungeon crawlers and this is a great one, with a good take on the theme, while the art and audio set a fabulous mood.
What a fantastic effort making this game, with so many variables to add while you progress which you've put together on your own, absolute legend! The combat made sense immediately and was fun. The regenerating enemies were quite tough on my first go, which encouraged me to try a different build which was great.
Thank you lots for the entry!
Wow, awesome game. Most fun I've had so far in this jam 😊 A fresh take on Vampire Survivors style autoshooters, having the whole team instead of just one guy.
The darkness and music sets a murky mood and there is even some story to go with it.
The mechanics work great and I'm astonished you have this balanced this well in such a short time.
Graphics are simple yet effective. You can easily see what's what even in a complete mayhem of ghost bullets.
I had to play it two times through (with only the first modifier) just to try a different build on second try and it was all worth it! It's nice to get such a beautiful combo of attributes :)
Thanks for making this!
impish.png
imp2.png
I love this art style! The overall vibe of the game is very good
Neat idea! This looks like something you could spend a lot of time playing, which is impressive for a jam game, but I only have so much time for judging. The difficulty curve was a bit awkward the first time I played. I had to replay the first level multiple times because I only had one creature and wasn't used to the game, but then the second level onward were fairly easy with multiple creatures and buffs. But then it got harder again when I got to the level with multiple regenerating ghosts: most of my creatures specialized in melee, and they could hardly get an edge in against the barrage of bullets. And even when they did, the enemy health quickly regenerated as I had to move away quickly.
Amazing compo entry! Also I'm very impressed seeing the variety of combinations in the comments here people managed to beat the game. I thought the imps and item I got on my third or so run was the definite way to go, brawlers and the shield item. But turns out that this is just one of many.
Such a cool game!
Really nice entry! Love me some games with the possibility of different playstyles. Also liked the artifacts, so that you could try to minmax your squad even more. Personally, I found the movement a little bit too flowy, at least with a lot of imps. The music did fit the game pretty well. Overall a nice game!
loved the concept, but got to a point i couldn't beat the healing ghosts with what imps i had, I could get one or two down but it was just such a mass of fire i couldn't get survive
It's impressive that you got a full roguelike progression system into a compo game and had enough content to not make it feel repetitive. I also felt that the current different options already allow some interesting synergies which is a good indicator of good game design.
I thought that the enemies needed more variety because almost all enemies I encountered used either homing bullets or some bullet pattern in their proximity. I would have loved to see some more attack patterns, maybe even different damage types if the time would have allowed. I also encountered some technical difficulties because sometimes an enemy spawning in or shooting bullets froze the game for about 10 seconds.
Still an incredibly impressive entry though!
@soloadventurergames @initialposition Thank you both for playing!
@soloadventurergames This is an interesting point. Originally I planned to make the game permadeath, which would "solve" this problem in that unviable builds would just die and be wiped, but for the game jam I wanted to make it less punishing and give multiple tries at each level. But yeah, that can lead to a problem where certain combos might just not be winnable.
To some degree this is intended--learning more game knowledge and trying again with a new build is sort of the rogue-lite way--but I don't think it quite works out perfectly for a jam game, especially with the level retry system. Thanks for the feedback!
@initialposition The enemy variety is definitely one of the primary weaknesses of the game. Different damage types is not something I considered! Thanks for the suggestions!
Interesting to hear about the lag -- on my integrated GPU Linux laptop where I developed the game, the Web version does have a couple lag spikes on the first level or two, but then plays smoothly thereon. I figured if it worked on my laptop it would hopefully be fine for everyone else, but I don't think I saw any 10 second lag spikes so maybe I was wrong. :sweat_smile:
Beat it on the hardest difficulty! I ended up using a similar strategy to @frogman of combining the holy scepter and summoner to get massive damage and near invulnerability. The "courtyard" level where you're surrounded by ghosts seemed just about impossible with all the other strategies I tried.
impish_descent.png
Some things that frustrated me while playing: - It seems difficult to get melee imps to attack downwards, like the range is much shorter in that direction - Ranged imps near a wall aren't able to shoot because their bullets die instantly - The telegraph for ghost bullets is the same color as the bullet itself, making it difficult to know when it is and isn't safe to touch it at a glance - Ghosts can still fire at you for a brief time after you've defeated them