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Oasis Dawn
Oasis Dawn
By pickens-inc
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 743 | 3.06 | 27 | |
| Fun | 466 | 3.34 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 847 | 2.30 | 28 | |
| Theme | 868 | 1.76 | 28 | |
| Graphics | 549 | 3.42 | 28 | |
| Audio | 416 | 3.24 | 27 | |
| Humor | | 2.58 | 8 | |
| Mood | 639 | 3.22 | 27 | |
Comments
I respect the ambition, enemy AI like this is is quite challenging to create and props to you for going for it over a jam weekend. I'd say you mostly pulled it off as well! The enemies functioned well and the game was perfectly playable. I did find it a bit hard to tell exactly when the enemies were attacking, but managed to land a few parries regardless.
I loved the prologue as well, great little touch. Lots of animation work on this one too, I loved the big dudes with the swords, they were properly intimidating.
Overall an impressive entry, especially for a single person!
Oh, nice water shader btw lol
Nicely done)
dandee
2025-04-09 09:16
Combat was epic! Chained combo attacks in a game jam game is insane! Very pretty also!
raees
2025-04-09 09:19
This is cool. Iss a nice vibe. While the art assets that existed were pretty, unfortunately it felt like there wasnt enough of them. Movement and combat felt nice. Parrying is a hella cool mechanic. Overall solid stuff!
510
2025-04-09 18:34
I got jumped by a gang of angry large dudes =(
desert.png
Pretty ambitious to make a 3D game as a solo dev! The graphics have a "Lego" vibe, pretty cool =)
What are the crystals for? I thought maybe you could heal?
On a side note, I don't know if I'm the only one, but the game was reaaally stuttering (and no, I'm not running it on a potato haha). It would be great to have a way to tone down the VFX, maybe it would help?
@510 Thanks for playing! Yes, as I wrote in the instructions, performing a riposte next to one will heal you 20% of your HP!
Thanks for letting me know about the lag. I know a lot about UE5 but the one thing I don't know is how to make packaged builds more performant. There is actually zero VFX this time around, and I implemented all my normal procedures for making the game less intense. Alas, I have a beefy PC so testing this is tricky. I'll see if I can figure it out. Thanks again for playing!
nice combat, i just miss some feedbacks and vfx
milkiway
2025-04-09 19:32
I beat the mobs, the mobs beat me. Solid, action-packed gameplay.
fragskye
2025-04-10 05:32
Nice little wave-based fighter, very impressive for a solo submission! The only thing I really felt was missing was more feedback on when attacks hit and the area they affect. Made it to day 4 wave 2, game ran fine on my RTX 3070 btw.
510
2025-04-10 18:56
@pickens-inc my bad for not reading the instructions carefully enough =)
Btw, I tried again on a more powerful computer and it was way more enjoyable! Timing these parries is really hard though haha
@510 thank you for trying again! Actually I was going to ask too, the version you played was one I released this morning which I realised should be a lot more performant. Turns out UE5.1.1 had a bug which was fixed in later versions @_@ thanks for playing again! :)
7uc4s
2025-04-10 20:32
Very well made and impressive! Graphics, audio, all nicely polished.
Otherwise, only made it to the first gang of giants :sweat_smile:
very cool ngl :)
Wow, well done! modeling rigging and animating a 3rd person character for a jam is super ambitious! And then you went and did that with a bunch of enemies too! The art style is very cohesive, and you know I love a good voice over!! <3
Gameplay was snappy, and punishes you if you mindlessly button mash. Combat had a nice level of depth that rewarded you for learning the moves, and practicing timing against various enemies.
One bit of polish I love is when you skip the dialogue (after listening to the whole thing the first run of course) you just say "very well then" hahaha, that was hilarious.
Great entry! Love the models!
@cameronpenner Thank you very much! Indeed, a lot of it was just finding the workflow and toolset that worked for me and enabled me to churn them out quickly, and I'm sure you definitely appreciate that with a bit of planning you can make systems modular enough to quickly add new stuff :laughing: I had only one enemy type until like, the last 4 hours of the jam! The third enemy's model I think I put together in literally 15 minutes.
Thank you for playing! And for recognising the details, paritcularly the way the I tried to make the combat reward intelligent play and punish spamming buttons :D
Super impressive for one person! Very well-developed combat system, solid 3d graphics, and generally something I might come back to later (which isn't something I say about a lot of game jam games!). Also a rare 3D jam game that actually runs on my laptop.
I really like your combat mechanics. They're simple but effective, and I enjoyed the way different mechanics interlinked and encouraged certain playstyles - for example, the combo system discouraging spamming, parrying allowing for both more attack capabilities and healing, and the vanishing healing crystal encouraging moving around the space. I gave it two attempts and almost beat Day 3 - it gets a lot harder when those larger enemies start appearing!
In terms of critique, mainly, I think you could tighten the gameplay more. The game could do with a bit more juice - not just for game feel, but for responsiveness. The player should really feel when they or the enemy land an attack, or when things like parrying/healing are successful (parrying can be super satisfying in games, but here I never nailed the timing). That could include things like more impactful SFX, bigger/snappier animations, screen effects, stuff like that. I would also have appreciated a target button to lock the camera onto enemies - I was playing on controller, and I found myself wheeling my camera around more than actually fighting.
Overall, one of my favourites so far! Super addictive.
rhoka
2025-04-12 00:24
Nice job on your entry! Very impressive to get an animated character in and it felt pretty smooth to play. The intro cutscene was very well done although the crystal kinda invaded the camera view a bit during it. I didn't actually realize there was a riposte mechanic but it felt like I could kinda just stunlock the enemies by swinging at them fast. I accidentally closed the game a couple times by pressing esc expecting a pause menu where I could adjust volume, but I totally understand there's only so much 1 person can do in a weekend. I had a good time fighting through several waves though and you made the art nice and cohesive. ( By the way is that the default unreal landscape scene is see as the mountains in the background haha ;) ) Also when I wandered out the edge of the playable space I noticed the sand texture on the terrain expanse was quite small scale so you might just want to scale that up a fair bit so it feels the right size relative to the player. Anyway good job!
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2431006955?t=00h45m53s)
Fortunately, I was able to overcome my skill issue and actually learn how to parry :sweat_smile:
It's super impressive that you managed to put this all together solo. Crazy impressive job!
@sam-gorman Thank you for your detailed feedback, sorry for the delay in my reply. I'm really glad it runs well, that's something I've had to imrpove on a lot sicne switching to urneal. All of your feedback is noted! Luckily I have a VFX artist friend who I can hopefully trick into adding all the feedback I want. That should hopefully help telegraph the open for the parry timing too. A lock on camera is an interesting idea, gamepad controls were definitely an afterthought that will need more care. Thanks!
@rhoka Thank you very much for the lovely comment! Sorry about not having time for a pause button ahaha. unfortunately yeah the animation cancelling you can peform on enemies is a little too powerful, that will be fixed ;) and that is absolutely just the regular ole UE5 open world level ahaha. Thanks for playing!
What a cool game, it reminds me of two games that I personally find very cool. Mainly "Overgrowth" which had very fluid 3rd person combat, it's the super smooth animations that you created that makes you just feel cool while you are playing. But it is also scratching that Mordhau itch with precise timings for things like parrying and dodge rolling.
It took me quite a while before I was able to become a murdermachine, one of the things I personally found very useful was to start rolling into combat, rather than just rolling away. This makes you able to gap-close quickly and allows you to get a few hits in before the enemies have a chance to react.
In the end I perished on day 4, but I was super close to beating that wave, and whould have only had 1 more wave after that to reach a new day. 42cf5f8be21bd97f8ceae1b683709c15.jpg
I wish I could have made it further, it was so cool to see the new ranged enemy which appeared on day 4, I think that one is the coolest of them all, such an amazing animation to go from a creepy crawling spider to standing up and shooting.
In short, cool action gameplay. Gorgeous visually (love the shine on the sword and the smooth animations), fun with voice acting in the start and overall just a fantastic entry!
An incredible amount of work done for a single dev!!! As a DMC/Souls enjoyer, I couldn't miss an opportunity to play this game :D
Surprisingly, many things already work. For example, I successfully parried on the first attempt. The timing appeared to be very close to the same in souls :)
Nevertheless it's a very good attempt of implementing a 3D action game for the JAM there are a couple of things that distance it from a solid experience: 1 - is the overall lack of clarity. In most cases, it's quite hard to tell in what exact state the game is: Did I get damage? Did I damage an enemy? Is an enemy in stun lock still, or is he ready to fight back? 2 - Instability of mechanics. The parry sometimes works really great and is very conservative for the player. However, sometimes it doesn't work, even if the player is properly facing an enemy. I tried to find out why this happens, but I didn't succeed in identifying any pattern. 3 - Whirlwind Riposte is less reliable and useful than a regular parry. I've been damaged several times during the execution of this move. So I stopped using it completely, what is upsetting since the visuals is great!
P.S. Hahah, parry and attack moves are still working after your death! It reminds me of a Jojo episode :D Oasis.gif
Overall, a very nice entry, I hope to see your further games!
I could not beat it but I had a good time, I like that the tie in with depth was literally just the exposition at the beginning, I say count it! Had fun rolling around dodging the big guys huge sword swings, which look as impactful visually as they are damaging to my poor player's hp. For the life of me I couldn't heal on purpose but I did manage to do it accidentally a couple of times, parrying proved to be quite difficult or at least I couldn't seem to get the timing right. Overall I liked it even if the theme is only there in spirit lol
https://www.youtube.com/live/UsbxyfIYWuc?si=rovzazszjm1ez9mW&t=6741
Those projectile shooting dudes are my bane. I don't think I ever beat day 4 wave 1, ha!
In any case, I love the 3D models of everything here! The player animations are great, and the big dudes with swords have absolutely perfect indication when they are bout to attack! I just can't figure out what I was doing wrong with the projectile guys.
My recording is a bit sloppy, as it was in untrawide cropped to 4:3, so the healthbar is missing in the video (definitely intentional on my part to add suspense.)
Anyway, here's the video. I hope it provides some good feedback!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtx9eNGOAO4