Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD56 → Tiny Tails
By francoisvn, zoeagxn, Riocide, My4sthma and GeoT
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 446 | 3.64 | 26 | |
| Fun | 566 | 3.37 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 306 | 3.58 | 26 | |
| Theme | 571 | 3.64 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 290 | 4.06 | 26 | |
| Humor | 804 | 2.50 | 21 | |
| Mood | 577 | 3.47 | 25 |
None of the other games I've played so far have made me feel small - this one manages it. Gorgeous art that makes me feel for the little animals up against it with these giant wolves. Satisfying puzzle and lovely to look at
Love the artwork and animations! The way the tail wags, how bard plays and pikemen hit... I can't get enough of it, I wish for more content!
Really liked the concept and size difference of the creatures. The sound effect and animations were cute. I liked to strategize where to put units. But I couldn't tell how many units were left or why I lost. Might have to give it another try to explore the synergyes. Great work!
The wolf looks awesome!! It took me trying to fail to realise you have a limited amount of units. I wasn't quite sure how the line of 3 pikemen were aiming... or how anyone was aiming. I assume there was no aim and everyone just always hit. I like the game!!
Very interesting idea accompanied by lovely art. I very much had to strategize. I do think I'd appreciate a better indicator of how many troops I have left and what troop is next (maybe a preview on the tile I'm hovering on). Just so I don't have to look at the bottom left of the screen all the time. Overall, my favorite so far!
Well executed tactical game, great mechanics with different units, last level was pretty hard.endo.png
Really enjoyed it, well done.
Oh, chapter 4 was too difficult for me. Great job! The game is very interesting and exciting. The strategy of placing units is very addictive. I made 4 attempts at chapter 4, but apparently my leadership skills leave much to be desired. I think I'll return to the game a little later) Excellent drawing and of course the implementation. P.S. I'm waiting for crossbow bolts in the first update =)
I think the puzzle aspect is great, and it works with the theme as many tiny creatures forming up against Shadowfang. Love the unit artwork.
Very interesting puzzle, I'm undecided about a few aspects of it, but it's not something seen before and that's rad :) - Not being able to tell which units are coming up feels bad. Though I understand that if you could predict next unit it would be too easy. Maybe something in between like knowing what remains "in the bag", like this were a bag builder and you know what's in your bag so that you know there are still pikemen left but no archers left, for example. - And bagbuilding I guess would be how meta progression could be handled? Though the design would have to be much more fleshed out to become like a deckbuilder with the levels offering different challenges to bagbuild around. Which sounds cool :) - No longer knowing what units already placed does is annoying, like I still don't know what 3 pikemen end up doing lol, so I think a mouse over to see what they do is needed. - Went back to see what pikemen does and "attack next 3 cells" doesn't make sense to me. Does that mean to the right? - Don't understand what a yellow outline of a space means? - Preview of results of placement would be nice - Music is perfect for this :) - Art is beautiful :)
Yeah I'm sure a lot of my complaints would be because you ran out of time. This is a crazy good amount of work for a jam!
Cool game, took me time to realize I had a limited number of units. Great job !
Very cool tactical game! The art is great, and the music is superb - they both fit together very well and create a nice atmosphere. Really superb job.
The difficulty spike between chapter 3 and 4 is too big, in my opinion. Till then, there is a nice progression, but here there's a sudden jump. The pikemen are not very intuitive - it's not immediately obvious what "3 next cells" mean and placing them to form a vertical ram feels bad (as the second guy, or even 1st and 2nd, placed will do nothing), even though it is most often the most effective way to use them. Setting your pikeman in the vertical ram, with archers in a rectangle and bard or two in the middle is actually the only way I found to win level IV.
But apart from that little complaint, I enjoyed the game very much! Great jam job!
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First off, the visuals and sound in this are great and really sell the scenario. I also liked the story elements and how the many vs one aspect came out in both gameplay and narrative.
As for the mechanics, while they're interesting, I definitely got frustrated. As others have mentioned, not knowing what guy is coming next messed up my ability to strategise. At some point in Chapter IV, I started placing guys with the sole intention of getting the next archer in the right spot, but then I'd sometimes just get another pikeman, and the only spot that would have given me the right placement for the next archer is taken and I'm entirely screwed.
To that point, up to the last chapter, it felt like all the units were kind of useful, but that was mostly because I didn't entirely understand how the archers worked. With the difficulty spike in that last chapter, I finally figured out that I could do blocks (not just lines) to massively increase their damage. Which was great, except that it essentially made me disappointed and/or annoyed every time I got a pikeman or bard. They just felt like a waste of time and a way to mess up my placement of the archers, who were the only ones capable of doing real damage.
I think my problems with the pikemen are that they're capped at 6 damage, have very strict placement requirements (compared to archers who can just shoot from anywhere), and two of them have to just sit around and do nothing until all three are in place. The bard's ability, while useful, can be emulated (and improved) by just placing more archers, since it lets everyone shoot once again with greater damage.
I finally, after many attempts, managed to beat the last chapter, but the only way I managed was by placing all my archers in one block, and using the bards and pikemen purely as ways to set up the next archer (except where I could actually get a benefit as well), which is presumably not the intended way to play.
Overall, an aesthetically nice game that played pretty well before the difficulty spike, where the luck factor got turned up a lot, and made it hard to feel like I was in control.
I've never been very comfortable with tactical games, which is probably why I haven't managed to get through chapter 4 yet :) However, I found your game very well realized. The narrative sections are well written and immerse us in the atmosphere of an impending battle. I found the difficulty to be very progressive, having to restart chapters 2 and 3, but each time I found it to be a challenge I could cope with. The music and graphics fit the story perfectly. Thank you very much for this game! I had a great time despite my lack of tactical talent :sweat_smile:
Any way you could upload an executable? The browser version won't load for me, for some reason...
Tough but fun! Love the idea
Got stuck on Round 4. Merging the units together into more powerful versions was definitely cool and well executed. Loved that each unit had distinct art, and I really like the hand-drawn art style aesthetic. Using units as a finite resource was an interesting design mechanic. I felt a little confused as to why I could or couldn't place units on the map. As in, I wasn't sure what determined where I could place my next unit. The system felt arbitrary.
One thing that might help flesh this game out more going forward (if you want to), would be to have the big units spawn little guys as well. Overall, pretty well executed strategy game!
This was really interesting! Had a lot of fun figuring out how different units impacted each other. I wasn't really sure how the tile placement worked or why some tiles could be used and others could not. I love the art and animation btw! Very very cool, and the music suited it well