thisisspy 2025-04-07 07:41
A fun game, I like it. Played on LVL 4 difficulty and got far but I don't know how far because the turn counter was beyond the screen bounds (at least on the Windows version, don't know about web)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD57 → DungeonDescent
By thisyc
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 171 | 3.38 | 64 | |
| Fun | 78 | 3.60 | 62 | |
| Innovation | 177 | 3.17 | 63 | |
| Theme | 280 | 2.43 | 63 | |
| Graphics | 280 | 2.59 | 63 | |
| Audio | 219 | 2.61 | 62 | |
| Humor | 203 | 2.37 | 56 | |
| Mood | 254 | 2.78 | 59 |
A fun game, I like it. Played on LVL 4 difficulty and got far but I don't know how far because the turn counter was beyond the screen bounds (at least on the Windows version, don't know about web)
I had fun with this! At first the resolution of the game was so large that it barely fit, and shrinking the window caused some text to go off screen. Though once I got into the game and started drawing lines it clicked. I managed to beat the game after understanding the skill system.
Some visual glitches happened where different symbols filled the same tile, though it only registered as one specific type. Getting the synergy of the chests and upgrades to work with the skills was a fun strategy to figure out. By the end I had the border skill refreshing itself with enemy kills, a super power hard earned!
Great job!
Fun little game, I liked the mechanic and it was easily replayable/kept me hooked. A few small quality of life changes made it a bit harder (the UI is a bit difficult to interpret/faded/overlapping incorrectly sometimes, you can keep connected even when "paused") but overall a fun experience.
I liked it! Nice little matcher. Appreciate the build-making opportunities. I thought the rounds took a bit too long though, and there is no pressure once the enemies are cleared.
Sucker for matching games and rogue-lites. The thing that make viral games such as balatro and binding of isaac so popular is the aspect of creating overpowered builds. Well done ! A few points of critique though, the resolution isn't consistent (as mentioned above by @toppervideogames ), which causes some parts of the UI to be not visible. The difficulty also plateau's when the enemies are gone, which can be by design, but I'm not sure it is fit for this type of game ^-^ Well done !
At first I thought this was a match-3 in the normal sense of moving gems around, so it took me awhile to figure out the concept and I initially thought it was bugged. A little demonstration animation at the beginning taking control of the mouse cursor and showing it drawing a line through gems to picking them up would help with this. The only other big criticisms I have are that I couldn't figure out how to restart so I just quit the game and started it back up every time I died; and I encountered what I assume is a bug where gems got stuck on top of each other in one spot. This didn't break the game but was annoying.
In any case, after I got the hang of it and figured out how to kill enemies, it became really fun and I spent a solid 15 minutes playing through to round 100. Really addictive gameplay/upgrade loop, nicely done!
Thank you all so much for playing! @thisisspy I am sorry about the UI bug. I had a hotfix that addressed this issue. It was due to my incorrect build settings. And I'm glad you liked it and got far in a higher difficulty! @toppervideogames Sorry about the display issue! I had a hotfix that addressed both resolution and tiles overlapping issues. I'm happy you had fun with this and congrats on the OP build! @chiyeon Thanks for playing! As mentioned before the UI bugs have been hotfixed. @sypiac Thank you! I do intend to keep working on this in the future and turn up the difficulty a notch. @javasaurus Thank you for mentioning Balatro and Binding of Isaac, both my absolute favorites. The UI bug has been hotfixed. I completely agree that difficulty should be more tuned, but that is in the future. Have a good time! @polymathld Thank you for the suggestion on tutorials! I agree, what you said is exactly what I planned on doing if had more time. Too bad I was panicking and just tried to get everything submitted near the end ( The tiles getting stuck on top of each other bug has been hotfixed. Thanks for spending time playing through the whole game! Have a good time!
This is really well done! It took me awhile to understand (I'm definitely more of a learn by doing person than a reader) but once I did it felt tight. The lines are satisfying to draw and the system feedback is good. Very fun & strategic game, good job.
It's Dungeon Raid! Loved that game!
I finished this game on the hardest. UI is a bit rough, sizes of tooltips and stuff like that, but nothing game breaking. Only feedback is balance, but still an amazing job for 2 days, core gameplay is perfect. I ended with 173 base damage, no enemy stands a chance with that :) I honestly would have kept playing longer, but seems 100 is a hard end. Thank you! This was super fun!
Matching a huge chain is very satisfying. I like the idea of pairing it with a roguelike. The balance probably needs work - I didn't really concentrate on learning the mechanics (just picked things at random) and actually found it pretty hard to lose; I was healing more than I was getting hurt, without really trying. I think the skulls strength should grow a lot more over time.
I also did not remember the briefing screen and couldn't understand a lot of mechanics, for example, I never figured out which of the skull's numbers was their health and their damage. Tooltips would be good.
Great work for 2 days.
The game leaves a positive impression thanks to its creative and engaging concept, which definitely stands out. However, at this stage, the gameplay feels overly dependent on randomness. In my playthrough, I was unlucky twice and ended up without enough swords to progress, which led to some frustration and a sense of unfairness.
It would be great to see more skill-based gameplay, with room for tactical decisions and strategic planning. These elements could add depth and make the experience more rewarding. The core idea has a lot of potential — with some refinement and a better balance between chance and player agency, this could become a really solid game.
really fun idea!
Super fun core loop – once it clicked, I was hooked. Loved pulling off those broken builds (had one where kills kept refreshing skills, felt illegal 😂). UI was a bit wonky on my setup (some text off-screen, no idea how many turns I had left lol), and the balance goes from "survival horror" to "god mode" kinda fast. Still, crazy impressive for a jam game – would totally keep playing if it went beyond 100!
Nice game, interesting idea. Thank you!
@googlypoo thanks for liking it and all the kind words! I do plan on iterating the tutorials a bit, maybe a demonstration animation at the beginning.
@sharploaded I'm glad you also loved Dungeon Raid! I've always wanted to create my own version, more builds and mechanics I didn't see in the original. Congrats on finishing highest difficulty! Yeah there was just no time to tune the difficulty for the duration of the Compo, but definitely I will make the game harder and add more stuff, probably make it endless! Have a good time!
@matt-giuca Thank you for playing! I completely agree that balance needs work, and skull's progression should be better over time. I think once it gets done, players will be forced to try to understand how mechanics and synergies work or they just lose the game. Thanks for the feedback!
@gdmage Thank you for playing and the feedback! Yup, while randomness is a core part to roguelike games, I do want player actions to be meaningful and that they have to be contemplating each move to do well. I will be tuning difficulty, randomness and add more skill-based builds in the future. Have a good time!
@dywanix Thank you so much!
@psychomonster Thanks so much for playing and congrats on breaking my game with your broken builds! Balance definitely needs work, I see that you guys want some real challenge. I appreciate that you want to play beyond 100 turns, I will keep working on this and make endless mode. Sorry about the wonky UI, do you mind letting me know which build you were running and what your screen resolution was?
@jtap Thanks for playing and liking it!
After getting to know the mechanics, I gave the hardest difficulty a couple of tries. Once you get past the early game curve and get a few useful abilities, you can get ahead, and once you do, the game becomes pretty smooth sailing until turn 100. I like that there's some variety in the 4 abilities you can pick. I think the current win condition of reaching turn 100 is a bit too much, a victory is probably decided way sooner. But still, pretty fun and satisfying to play :D good job!
Very cool game! I found it addicting haha. Speaking of broken builds, mine got really crazy at the end: Crystal Ball + a high level border made it so I could spam the hell out of the border ability, because each kill would grant me a cooldown refresh, granting lots of gold/exp/keys as long as there was at least one enemy on the border. After farming for a bit, I killed the enemies manually, since using border doesn't pass the turn.
The visuals are simple, but the gameplay is very solid!
I can definitely see a game like this being expanded into a full version. Great job!
@frib Thanks for giving it a couple of tries. I really appreciate it. Regarding win conditions, I didn't have a lot of time to playtest and tune the difficulty (there's the Compo for you), but I do plan to design the curve better in the future, so that the pressure is kept on for as long as it can, and player actions in later turns will still be meaningful. I'm glad you found it satisfying to play, have a good time!
@conradoclark Thanks so much for playing and giving feedback! Congrats on breaking my game with your build. Crystal Ball will definitely get nerfed in the next gameplay patch, so enjoy it while it lasts :) And yes I will keep working on this, designing more skills, synergies and elite enemies! Have a good time!
Nice one! i was expecting candy crush gameplay (swap 2 to match 3), and then when i understood i need to make the conenctions, i thought it had to be in a line, only to realize you can do huge combos:
dungeondescent.png
so that definitely felt good!
So the concept is definitely interesting and new enough. I do wish the overall presentation (polish, visuals etc) was a bit cleaner, but that's still a solid entry!
@thomas-bringer Thank you so much for playing and congrats on your huge combos! I'm glad you found it interesting and felt good. As for presentation stuff, it is mainly a Compo time limit and me not being an artist thing. It is my first time doing the Compo and I had to push myself to create all the visuals stuff in such a short time. In any case I do plan to polish the game quite a bit in the future. Thanks again for playing and your honest review!
@thisyc Oh well for a first Compo ever you did a really awesome job! (i kindof assumed you must be somewhat experienced as the game felt solid overall!)
@thomas-bringer Thanks! I mean I do have experience with Unity engine and game developing in general yes, but the Compo format is completely new territory for me and I'm glad I did it and shared with all of you! You can (and should) rate the game as it is. Have a good time!
good job, i enjoyed playing very much, but kind of got nowhere near the 100 rounds. Huge Combos seem to be the way to go, hope you intended that, it is not really explained.
Снимок.PNG Very good game, like
I've played the game you took the gameplay from, and I was happy too see it again for a bit. But after a handful of plays I'm not sure your additions to the game are that enjoyable. Some of the spells are interesting, but the trinkets trivialize a lot of the game.
All of this in 48 hours is still amazing, so major kudos.
@johncoffee Thanks for playing! Yes the enemies grow stronger by the turn so players should definitely aim for huge combos (get as much resource in a turn as they can). I do agree that the current tutorial is lacking a lot of the details, it was a very last minute addition as I was running out of time. I am glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the honest review!
@onngd Thanks for playing and congrats on beating the game!
@gargantuan-janitor Thank you! Yes like I mentioned I always wanted to create my own version of that game. I think Ludum Dare Compo is a great way of pushing me to do it and get some feedback. Thanks for the honest review. I will keep working on this project and aim for more depth. Have a good time!
I like this a lot, the mechanics are fun and interesting, you really just need the pizzazz. I'd like to see a post-jam version of this looking fancier and neater, and even more importantly: with a restart button.
This is incredibly satisfying, btw.
Screenshot_20250409_012629.png
@catusfelony Thanks for playing and liking it! Nice chain you got there! I will keep working on this and you can follow me on itch for when I release an updated version, which will look nicer and have even more mechanics, skills, elite enemies and so on! Sorry about forgetting to add a restart button haha. I was panicking too much near the end of 48 hours that I forgot to make one. Have a good time!
Great game! I'm a little addicted, haha. I tried a bunch different skill combinations by playing multiple times and it's really satisfying to make a full screen match. Look forward to seeing how this game can develop visually in the future.
Also I'm proud to announce that I have successfully leveled up my ATK to 249 in LV5. :yum: Screenshot 2025-04-09 at 00.38.08.png
@michellef Thanks for playing multiple times! Oof, and congrats on the broken stats. I will keep working on this project, both content-wise and visually, stay tuned! Have a good time!
Goddamn I used to LOVE this game back in the day and you made it so much better with the levelup and items system. Awesome job, I would pay to play a polished version of this.
"and a mobile game I played over 10 years ago." haha these are the best inspirations
actually loved this, the "mm" sound effects are etched into my brain now. the gameplay loop is very addicting and surprisingly balanced (although my first runs ended quite quickly lol), which is tough to achieve in such a short dev period. the ui and font choice could use some work, and I wish you could hover over passives/trinkets after you open them from the chest to see their effects. you could definitely polish this up a little and release it as a full game, the juice and base idea is incredible - spent most on this than any other game so far. nice job!
You could definitely keep working on this after the jam, it's very fun!
came back and absolutely broke it. coin scaling is nuts, like hundreds of level ups per round lol imagel.png
@freamdev I also loved that game back in the day and what you are saying means a lot to me. Thank you, I will definitely keep working on this and polish it up. Have a good time!
@busisen Thank you for playing! Yeah definitely I will work on the presentation stuff more, and now that I realized you made that crab game - one of the first games I tried in this event and I kept coming back to it - I loved that game! It was too hard for me though so I kept restarting for a good start :) Anyways thanks again for playing and the feedback. Have a good time! Oof and congrats on breaking my game! Some of the broken builds may get fixed in the future and some may not. I mean that's part of the fun with roguelikes right?
@whateverdat Thank you for playing, and I definitely will! Have a good time!
@busisen The "mm" sound was my own voice recorded with laptop mic and processed in Audacity. Seemed like the quickest solution. I'm glad you enjoyed it haha.
Fun game! It definitely has the potential to break, though (mechanically, not meaning a crash). I first beat the game at level 0, then went ahead and played on level 5. By the end of the game, I was gaining 55 coins per tile and my base damage was nearly 100 (I could've went further, but I was avoiding collecting coins at the end of the game so I didn't have to choose so many upgrades). Enemies spawned so much, that I had fully leveled my skills within the first half of the game and never needed swords ever again. Skills were: world, lottery, collect coins, double coins. Activate lottery -> double coins -> world -> collect coins to collect the full board, followed by two full boards of doubled coins, followed by one final board of normal coins. I feel like enemies may not scale quickly enough, maximum coin values should be capped at a certain point, or perhaps the required coins for improvements should scale over the course of the game. Regardless, I had a good time, thanks for making this! Edit: Oh, additionally, I feel like diagonal connections are way too strong without being behind an upgrade, but that could just be me.
@talif-moor Thanks for playing, and congrats on being the first one (I think) to finish the coins build! In terms of enemy scaling, it definitely needs more tuning, and I do plan on adding elite enemies in the future. Regardless, no scaling curve will be able to catch up with your build, congratulations! As I said, I made this keeping in mind that part of the fun in roguelikes is broken builds. There will always be some in my game, I may delete a few, tune a few, add a few more, but if you successfully pulled one off, break the game and enjoy your well-deserved victory. That being said, 55 coins per tile does seem too much and I'm pretty sure I will be adjusting this. Thank you so so much for spending time playing and the feedback. As always, have a good time!
2025-04-10_16-01.png Good job, very cool take on a match game. I wasn't expecting to like it from the screenshots but I played until level 100. I found it a bit easy, but I didn't try the harder difficulties so I'm sure that would help. The biggest let down is probably the art. It would be OK but it looks like you don't have linear texture filtering enabled, so the pixels don't appear very sharp.
Its a tough one! Good entry tho, especially for a compo
Difficult to understand everyting happening in this game. But the idea seem fun, and I did have fun trying the game.
Very fun gameplay with a lot of content. Impressive work for a compo game, I could play a full version of this.
Nice little matching game. I really liked that you could deselect items again when hovering back over them
@oxnh Thanks for playing and beating the game! Yeah harder difficulties would help, and difficulty is going to be a long term tuning thing (as I add more content) that I just couldn't finish within the Compo. Thank you for the tips on art side of things. I'm no artist and the Compo is the first time where I had to create all the visuals elements in such a short time, so I appreciate the advice!
@blue-pin-studio Wow thank you! I really loved your game!
@vladimperator Thank you for playing! I will keep working on this and release the full version when I'm done. Stay tuned, and have a good time!
@grid96 Thank you for playing, and for acknowleding the small quality of life thing! Have a good time!
Loved this and breezed through it on the starting difficulty, I'm going to have to have another go now on a harder difficulty. Great entry.
@wisstopher Thanks so much for playing my game! I'm not 100% happy with a lot of the difficulty/balancing stuff in this jam version, will definitely keep iterating in the future! Have a good time!
Very nice game! Reminded me of the old game Puzzle Quest. Also I obtained some artifact that drops cooldown of one of my spell to the zero when I kill the skull, and then i had this Earth spell that clears entire room. Artifact and spell make imba combo ^_^
Oh, my friend, also I tryed to make some music for you. If you want, you can use it however you want, its totaly free ^_^
This is music that I made in Ultraabox: https://tinyurl.com/2yo6qlb6
@xpoho Thanks for playing and breaking my game with your imba combo! Haha I found out about this one a day after submission. It will get fixed in the future, but there will be more imba combos to come! I will allow them, just make them harder to achieve, because that's part of the fun! OMG thank you for the music, it is so fire. I never would have thought, and I'm a little speechless.. I will find a place in my game for it. It is such an amazing gesture, thank you my friend. I hope you also keep working on your game! Include more sections of the novel and keep up that humor! Have a good time!
Extremely addicting game :D I came across a few really broken combos, and that is FUN. Obviously it's really hard to balance all these effects well in a short jam, and I'm glad you erred on the side of "possibly overpowered" rather than being too stingy. Seeing big numbers and breaking everything is way more fun :) Took some time to figure out it wasn't match-3 but rather draw a line between the tiles. But then it was smooth sailing. Overall visual presentation is a bit messy, but works just fine. On a few occasions I unlocked so many things at once that dialogs overlapped weird and wasn't sure which one to click first. Anyway, super fun, thanks for the experience!
@nyxkn Thanks so much for playing! Congrats on breaking my game! I made this keeping in mind that part of the fun in roguelikes, and what made games like balatro, binding of Isaac outstanding, is broken builds. There will always be some in my game. I may tune them in the sense that they become harder to complete, but if you pulled one off, break the game all you want and enjoy a well-deserved victory. I apologize for the UI experience, I do intend to keep working on presentation stuff and release this game later! Have a good time!
It's been a while since I played one of these games! Well done! When I thought it was just about connecting things I started getting spells that changed gameplay for the better. Hope you are planning to keep working on it :D
@notnasiul Thanks so much for playing! Yes I will keep working on this project :D
This game is simple great fun
Very enjoyable game, feeling that it can be played endlessly.
@holysparks Thank you for playing!
@gdman Thank you! There will definitely be an endless mode in the future.
I have played longer for extended feedback. On hardest difficulty. From what I see, if you survive first 4-5 rounds (due to luck when there be enough connections between skulls and swords) game is pretty easy. Basically you can take mostly +maxhp upgrades which conveniently heals you too, and when it's safe (0-1 skulls on board) take something else. Also it's pretty easy to keep damage bonuses so you need only 1-2 sword to kill any skull even when they go into 7+ power.
On a side note, that would be good to show dynamically how much damage you gonna deal, because it's not obvious to know if you wasting swords or underdamaging.
There is very potent combo World + item that has chance to reset abilities cooldown (Crystal ball). Probably it should be one chance per turn, not per kill, because now its allow spam World every turn. Also powerful combined with item adding +maxhp per kill (Berserker chain). Basically making you unstoppable (and UI doesn't expect you can go over 999/999 hp)
There is slight issue with popups. All 3 windows can pop together (lvlup upgrade, chest item, shop 4 items), so sometimes I accidentally buy full-heal because it appears as I was clicking something else. And descriptions somewhat overlaps (yeah my game has same problem, sigh). Also, item inventory doesn't expect to show more than 5x5 items (and world+crystall fills that by 60 turn). Edit: and I think if Gold progress (not keys) filled more than 1 bar, first shop choices lost and overwritten by second. And what happens if you click World before collected all rewards? Edit: after stacking many Gold rings, shop popup constantly reopens because you're overwhelmed by massive gold income. So you can't reach playfield, and World skill is your main option. Also I've noticed picking Gold ring increases your gold score immediately, not for future collecting.
Maybe I missed somewhere, but I didn't see description of what Magic potion do. (I've checked now, but it could be difficult to discover)
I know cancellation of move is hard in this type of game. On PC you can cancel with right-click, but on touch that's not very feasible. Something like, moving finger out of playfield, or moving two tiles along illegal combination, could cancel path (actually better not cancel, but greyout, to give chance for player to restore it moving finger back).
P.S. Oh and it would be great for some way to reset or swap skills on long run.
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Sorry for lenghtly rant, I wish you good luck and to release this great game! It can be expanded with lots of ideas, like locked tiles on field, various enemies, etc etc.
I like the aesthetic of the game. It felt a little hard. I died quiet quickly because I faced a lot of skulls and not enough swords. But it still feels very pleasant to connect stuff and open chests :)
@gdman I want to begin by saying absolutely no need to apologize, as I very much appreciate you taking the time writing the feedback helping me make the game better! Now, the short answer is I might've overscoped for Compo (always the case), and left no time to tune balance/difficulty stuff. I do acknowledge a lot of the stuff you are saying, specifically: 1. default upgrade option is too strong, agreed 2. dynamic damage display: yes I will do it, I mean I already have it in the code to display that 'X' overlay on skulls, I don't know why I didn't do it lol 3. World + Crystal Ball breaks the game, yes Crystal Ball definitely will be nerfed. 4. popups: I will have to look into those and probably rewrite the control flow, ugh 5. There is no explicit description for what magic potions do, mainly to avoid lengthy skill description 6. You can cancel your move by backtracking, hovering one tile back at a time. I believe it is an ideal solution for on touch?
Again, thanks so much for writing this, and for making valid points. Have a good time!
@mamboman Thanks for playing! I'm sorry there weren't enough swords for you. I'm pretty sure I will adjust the tiles generation algorithm :D
Good combo of candy crush and rogue-lite and it has deep potential.
good compo Снимок экрана от 2025-04-19 08-40-33.png
@oeuegha Thanks for playing!
@egor-iv Thanks! I really like the art on your game!
I like this one quite a bit, though I will admit I didn't have the patience to go all the way to round 100. I got into the 30s on the easiest and hardest difficulties. Even the hardest setting still feels too easy, even if my HP did get low at one point. I really like that you can make a chain going around the whole screen. I wonder if an overabundance of enemies makes it easy to clear them all out in one turn, whereas fewer, stronger enemies might be harder to deal with. Some food for thought.
@dovodx Thanks for playing! I agree that difficulty and enemy spawning both could use some tuning. I do plan to add elite enemies in the future so that kind of aligns with 'fewer, stronger enemies' you mentioned. Have a good time!