pschichtel 2025-10-06 23:56
Hexagons are the Bestagons! Love the visuals. The AI needs some work, but otherwise a very nice entry.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → Blood and Bounty
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 180 | 3.81 | 35 | |
| Fun | 173 | 3.70 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 376 | 3.27 | 33 | |
| Theme | 664 | 3.09 | 33 | |
| Graphics | 269 | 3.95 | 34 | |
| Audio | 144 | 3.79 | 34 | |
| Humor | 486 | 2.75 | 29 | |
| Mood | 299 | 3.71 | 33 |
Hexagons are the Bestagons! Love the visuals. The AI needs some work, but otherwise a very nice entry.
The game look already very polished and I like the art style! The skill tree kinda confused me, because I couldn't see what I already purchased and how many levels are purchasable.
@pschichtel Yesss, exactly! It was a hassle to get the map generation to work properly but after that it made everything much nicer and evener if theres such a word. And haha yess it definitely does right now it only tries to go in a relativly straight line and thats it. Thanks for the kind words!!!
@thierry Yeah, skill tree was a last day addition and couldn't get it to be as smooth as the other thing. Thanks for your comment!!!
Love the art style and hex map, plus the controls are very intuitive. A very relaxing strategy game, even if I keep dying haha!
It's a quite interesting little game, and I like this kind of simple sense of strategy！
I'm not a fan of turn-based games, but I got totally hooked on this one. The animation is beautiful. The sound design really creates that classic Wild West movie atmosphere. I would add more levels with a saloon and some cover mechanics.
Very nice game, I love the level start animation where all the tiles fall from the sky. Other than what you've already said you had planned as future additions there's not much I can add, the only thing is that on later levels where there are like 10-15 enemies I would have liked a setting to make them all move at once rather than waiting for each one to move sequentially.
Great music and art! Gameplay got me hooked for 20 minutes :sweat_smile:
i love the concept and the overall game is great!!
This was really cool!! I love turn based combat and wild west! Loved the wind sfx and cozy desert vibes.
- Could be nice if the range was shown on board - Took me a while to realize how using the gun and knife works - I think I found a bug? Two enemies stood next to each other, and both showed exclamation marks, and when I planned to use the knife against one of them, the other's exclamation mark disappeared as if he'd cancel his attack for some reason? Anyhow I ended up dying. - Not sure if it's intended, but the enemy AI could be a bit less random.
@void4 hahaha wouldn't have thought anyone would make it that far but yes that's definitely a good idea to add
@aviv-levy Hmm, interesting bug thanks for mentioning it, we'll definitely look into that as that sounds like quite a weird artifact.
Yeah the enemy AI right now is almost fully random, meaning that they prioratize moving in a somewhat straight line but that is it for right now as for the 3 days we didn't have time to make the enemies any smarter but that is definitely something that's coming later down the line.
Aaah that ennio music!! :heart:
I thought the game was great! The world assembling looks really nice and the music was just 10/10.
It was a bit hard to find the skill tree and they didn't apply until next round. I think the screen could come up before leaving the map and forced the player to pick a skill before starting next level, that would solve all that. Some indicator on the unlocked skills would be good also, maybe just a thicker border around skills unlocked.
I think the range of the bandits and player would be nice to display on the grid, way just give tiles in sight a slight tint. It was a bit hard to keep track of player range since you upgraded it and also bandit range.
It felt a little bit I couldn't die unless I screwed up. Maybe you could up the urgency by have the bandit AI to always try to step one or two steps towards the player before wandering. That way the player would get encircled over time and would have to strategize a lot more.
Once again, great game!
This game is really fun. I’ve spent a long time playing it, and taking down enemies one by one to collect coins is incredibly satisfying. I hope a full version is released — the pixel style and other details are also very well done.
@bjornstenlund Thank youu we tried so hard to get that ennio feel for the music so this means a lot:) And also yeah the skill tree and enemy AI was a bit rushed, well everything was but very nice ideas for improvements so thank you and we'll definitely write them down to work on them later.
Hexagons is very nostalgic! I remember Heroes of Might and Magic III
@dm1tr11 Omg that was my favourite game growing up I remember always begging my dad to let me play it haha. So I am fluttered that you mention that.
@torami I have the same story bro :D My father also taught me to play Warcraft 3
The concept of collecting bounties is fantastic, bummed that didn't occur to me during my brainstorming session. Very fun idea.
The blood when they die kind of detracts from the beauty of the board since they just look very static compared to the rest. If you reduce the opacity on the blood pool, it might give a nice "ground-staining" effect and blend it in.
I didn't really feel very threatened by the enemies, they mostly just ran away from the VERY long arm of my revolver. Would have been interesting to have more HP for us and the enemies and having to exchange shots/stabs more back and forth.
I wish there was a way to cancel a single action, like if I click to move but decide not to, the only way out is to cancel and remake the moves. Right click may be a good solution for canceling.
I second the request for enemies to move together, at least for the ones that aren't attacking or something else of importance. I pushed 20 enemies and it became a real chore to wait for them all.
Saw the skill tree was last minute and the game definitely needed it, it adds a good sense of progression and power growth. That being said, it was very tricky to realize what had already been purchased. I had a similar crunch for the Request system in my game, it may be a little underbaked, but it's functional and that's what matters.
The character designs are so cute, I love it, and the level "generation" animation is peak. UI and font really fit the aesthetic. Great job.
Toward the end with 20+ enemies I actually got to make good use of the melee attack to stay out of danger. I played until I got properly ambushed. blood_and_bounty.png
Thank you for the nurishment :scream_cat:.
Great game. Love the art and the mechanics. Didn't get very far as a I struggle with these kind of puzzle games. Great work, Hex art and movement can be difficult so far play! Love it
Awesome game! Some game-feedback would be great for getting skill points cause I spotted that button rather late. I really loved the level creation-animation and the characters are great. Also I think you've made some very good choices scope-wise.
Great work guys! If you decide to polish this game up, I recommend adding some more juicy feedback to the actions. For example, adding a little more crunch to the footsteps and having the screen zoom in a little when characters attack. Reinforcing the interactions like that can make the click-to-click gameplay more engaging. Very fun game, and I hope to see you again next Ludum Dare :D
I love a turn-based RPG - great concept. The level build animation is fun, so is the overall vibe.
As an audio guy, I really appreciate the clearly DIY nature of your score. You've got some technical issues with clipping/mix but I think it's so cool that you decided to record the sounds yourself and build a western soundtrack, rather than just relying on pre-made music.
Great job!
I had a lot of fun with this! I *loved* the animation as the level started, having the cacti and little details fall in at the end was such a nice little touch, and added so much charm to the game :)
I did have a very hard time understanding the range of my pistol at the start - It might have been helpful to show its range on the grid when you hovered over it while it was disabled, so that it was clear why an enemy was or wasn't in range. I eventually figured it out, so it wasn't a huge deal, but I definitely played a few rounds knife-only because I just didn't understand how to use my gun.
Overall though, really well done, and a very cool game! Great job! :)
@hap thank you so much, yeah we always struggle with setting an achievable scope and finally we also felt like we nailed it.
@phobos001 Oh woww yes did not even cross our minds to add that kind of feedback but that is definitely a great idea and should be easy enough to add. And seeing what kind of experience you got from your profile, we're extremely fluttered that you say that, see you again next LD as well:))
@bobap Wow, thank you for such a thourough comment. The suggestion for the blood stain I actually really like as it would be hard to animate that so it doesn't look weird so that is a great idea.
Multiple HP yes we have at first definitely planned on doing that, however after we realised just how long this whole thing would take even with the bandits being so simple we thought, we wouldn't complicate the game further, however yes it was definitely planned and if we decide to develop this further will definitely do it.
The right-click cancel and enemies moving together are both around one line to implement it so will definitely do those soon:))
And thank you so much for playing our game.
I really liked how polished your game looks - how the tiles fill in at the start of the level, how the grass moves on the tiles. The shooting sound is just awesome.
The gameplay is interesting, though I didn't immediately realize you can buy upgrades in the skill tab. Maybe if the shop was shown to me after the first level, I would've understood about the upgrades right away :)
The whistling background music is very interesting, and the gameplay is quite novel!
It involves step and turn calculations and relies somewhat on luck, but the 'cannot be killed' attribute doesn't seem very effective! I can still be taken out by a single bullet, causing a restart.
Graphics, sound, and music are quite nice (although I would have appreciated volume settings after the game starts)
Enemy AI, well, ... Is it just random? I only had them start shooting me once there were about fifteen of them on the map. Some more purposeful enemies would definitely improve the game a lot!
I did like the map generation though.
There are some really cool strategic vibes in this game! I just wish the gun had a few more limitations, like only 6 shots per level or something similar. It’s got huge potential to grow into a more complete experience!
Thank you @loiclegrosfrere, the original idea was that you get only a single shot and you have to use it to kill one of the bandits holding "The Bounty". But yeah, we reworked that, cus it was too hard to with :D
Love a good spaghetti western!
Graphics were very pleasant and soundtrack was very fitting.
It did get to be too easy once I was fully upgraded and did not know how many levels were left
Really good strategy! Don't stop, my friend ^_^
That's a really nice game! It's simple, but does everything its supposed to. It has a clear basic gameplay, visual and sound design. At the moment, AI isn't very smart, but I think that can be developed into a really strong thinking-stategical game.
oh that was cool! I put on my headphones and put them on high volume, that music is very good! As in: I would play this in the car levels of good!
The gameplay was pleasant too. It was very intuitive and there was lots of polishing. I found one little bug: sometimes the screen was too small for the level. I could not click the "move" icon, because it was out of bounds when I spawned in level 4. Luckaly there was a guy right next to me, so I could stabbystab him, thus moving one ~~square~~ bestagon and then I could reach the moveicon. I had lots of fun playing your game!
The enemies sometimes would shuffle around a bit, they did not feel dangerous. That could have been a bit better I think :-) Is that random? Or do they use some algorithm? Also, I did not really 'feel' the theme in this one. Sure: I collect bounty. But it was also used for upgrades. It felt like a normal game mechanic dressed up as collecting. Maybe each enemy could drop somekind of precious item. Like a golden tooth or a ring; thus collecting loot?
P.s. it took me a while until I found out about the skilltree :sweat_smile: Maybe the button could light up when a new skill is available?
Sorry, normally I have bullet points for my feedback. I like your game very much and I had fun playing it. These are some random thoughts that popped into my head.
@wouter52 Ahh thank youu so much we were also pretty proud of the music we managed to put together in such a short amount of time so that means a lot.
The bestagon movement was hard to put together but definitely worth it:))
And yes the enemies now are almost completely random, the only thing is that they prioritize moving in a straight line however other than that, they just move randomly and shoot if they are able to. Our plan is to introduce more enemy types and 'smarter' enemies, however we sadly did not have time for it in the 3 days.
The theme, well yes, right now the game integrates the theme very mildly as yes the concept is to 'collect bounties'. The original plan and the plan moving forward is and was that one or a few enemies will have a star on them and the player only has to kill those bandits rather than all however the others are still there to make the game harder - also with this mechanic the idea was that the player only has a certain amount of ammo so able to fire each round maybe like twice or the number of bounty times. However sadly we did not have enough time to implement this either so for now and for LD we just stuck with needing to kill every enemy.
Thank you so much for your comment and for bringing up so many points.