cryfish 2025-04-08 19:08
The concepte is basic but works well. The theme however isn't well respected, which is sad as it could have been done with some graphics ideas.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → The Undead
By j-rara, Deep Patel and Lightning Lord
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 823 | 2.80 | 25 | |
| Fun | 544 | 3.21 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 862 | 2.17 | 25 | |
| Theme | 871 | 1.67 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 767 | 2.58 | 25 | |
| Audio | 565 | 1.46 | 18 | |
| Humor | 669 | 2.05 | 21 | |
| Mood | 847 | 2.45 | 22 |
The concepte is basic but works well. The theme however isn't well respected, which is sad as it could have been done with some graphics ideas.
Interesting concept. Yet, need much more balancing and polish. As previous commentor mentioned, theme is kinda almost ignored
Fun game with nices sprites!
I was really missing some music and sounds tough and you should make it so that the projectiles and coins can't collide.
The basic action of dodging is pretty fun. The balance is way off, When I learned that I can build turrets at 15 Depth, I just build myself an autobattler :)
Okay, the basic action is fun, i liked the graphics and the gameplay felt smooth, although here's a couple of basic points to make it better:
- turrets are waaay too imbalanced; because the heroes spawn always in the same spots, I could easily build turrets around those spots which turn the game into an "idle-game"; to make them more balanced you can - increase the cost - restrict the range - it would be great to be able to remove a turret because you can get yourself blocked by placing them unfortunately - any audio always makes the game seem more polished, even some bleeps and bloops add a lot of feedback to player
Anyway it's a lot to be done within the LD event, congrats!
A good start but needs to be polished a little bit and this is for the moment way to easy to survive !
Cool game! I love the genre and I think that spawning waves of the player is a great game jam game, we want small scope! :smile: I also think the environment art with just white blocks was good. Time is the most valuable resource in game jams and the environment you got communicates what you mean. Communication is key.
I really think you need more feedback. Especially when somethings happen that the player should react to. And usually (always?) sound is the way to go! Prio 1: taking damage, spawning coins, enemies firing arrow, new wave. Prio 2: Dead enemy, hitting enemy (which sort of the same as missing enemy), picking up coins, shooting, dying. Prio 3: ambience, grunts, hitting walls. The more games I make, especially game jam games, the more I think that feedback and non confusing controls is the most important things!
I also think that it's a good thing to sort of force the game to end eventually. A narrative game have a factual ending - here I think you should spawn more enemies every wave. That would make it harder the longer I was playing and I would die before I felt it was time to move on. And as a bonus, if everything comes together right, the player will want to play another game. And, at least for me, that is sort of an automatic extra star on the overall score.
One small thing is that I'd would have want the pickup radius to be bigger, maybe at least 3 times the size of the player character. It satisfying to see the battlefield getting more and more cluttered with loot, but having to actually go over the coin is also a bit annoying. If you're aiming for the battlefield filled with loot, I think you should just spawn the send the coins further away from the kill.
Please don't take this to critically, the time to make them is short and the game isn't a buggy mess :stuck_out_tongue: And it's nice to kill some heroes once in a while
Nice sprites! yeaaa the turrets are way to powerful/cheap, making the game pretty easy. but i still like what you were going for :) (also the sprite of the scythe is actually a gun? fun little detail hahah)
Very interesting game concept, cool sprites and I think if the game is not abandoned and finalized, it will be a fun game to spend a lot of time in)))
While the concept is simple and not too innovative I think this idea could be developed further.
I'm sure most of the things I'm about to mention are either mentioned by someone else already or were things you would have more or less done had there been more time.
**Coins** - Since you get a lot of coins, at some point you are unable to keep up with collecting them all which starts slowing down the game. They could be on a despawn timer and/or the player could have a larger hitbox for collecting coins to make collecting them easier.
**Turrets** - Since there are a lot of coins to be collected there could be some sort of limitation on turrets. Maybe they only last for a certain amount of time or maybe you could only place a certain number of turrets. - I both like and dislike the idea for having the turrets block the players movement. I like it because I feel like it could add a level of complexity to the game since you'd have to consider where you place them to be able to still move around without too much issues. I dislike it because currently you can simultaneously move and build turrets so as I was running around and placed a turret I just stopped which felt bad. The "feel bad" moment could be removed by for example making it so that when you place a turret it takes a little bit of time for it to get built and during that time the player could be stopped because they need to spent time to build the turret. This would also make it so that you'd have to be more mindful of when you build the turrets.
**Sprites** - I found the sprites to be cute and they worked well together
Since there was a very limited amount of time to make the game it's understandable that there are a lot of things to polish since you are mostly trying to make a working game. So, while my thoughts may sound overly critical I did have fun messing around with the game you'd made :)
Screenshot 2025-04-16 at 21-07-51 The Undead ldjam.com Ludum Dare game jam.png
Fun game, looks like I can attack them freely from the water
love that you merged the genres of shooter and tower defence. It's a lot of fun and would be even more if the difficulty increased. Different levels/maps would be cool
Others have given some great feedback about how to improve this entry, but I want to call out two things in particular: 1) The gameplay that's here is solid. It's fun to move around and shoot and it's fun to build turrets. This isn't nothing! There aren't any major bugs with control and everything works reliably, which is important! 2) There isn't enough pressure on the player. You need something to be changing up the player's actions regularly. Either spawning more enemies, spawning them from more places, or giving the player some kind of other objective to be fulfilling that pushes them into danger. What you've got here is a good base to build off of, it just needs a bit more. In my opinion, this is the most important element that's missing from your entry.
Cool idea, I just wish the waves got harder or spawns were random. Put up turrets around the spawn and since the gold out scaled the enemies in round 1 there was nothing left for me to do. Love the graphics of the projectiles. So cool!