jo-bettaque 2025-10-07 14:16
Fun game! The difficulty curve is a bit surprising tho - i felt like i was super OP, then the knights broke my ego in one turn^^
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD58 → Dragons Hoard
By binarydiv, luna-smol and Aurora_Bee
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 293 | 3.63 | 36 | |
| Fun | 271 | 3.52 | 36 | |
| Innovation | 449 | 3.16 | 36 | |
| Theme | 530 | 3.43 | 35 | |
| Graphics | 358 | 3.75 | 36 | |
| Audio | 270 | 3.48 | 36 | |
| Humor | 533 | 2.63 | 35 | |
| Mood | 496 | 3.38 | 36 |
Fun game! The difficulty curve is a bit surprising tho - i felt like i was super OP, then the knights broke my ego in one turn^^
That was a nice quick little adventure! For some reason it gave me mystery dungeon vibes! THe only thing I can say is that spamming AP training is kinda op haha
Very good game with a really nice style!
Honestly I'm not sure what happened, I killed a knight, hit end turn, and then it said game over? I assume the knights must have killed me instantly but I never saw them attack.
I agree with the the other comments about the balancing but all the bones are there! I enjoyed leveling up and adventuring around. I lost to the knights at the end so so maybe i didn't see what the hoard points were used for. Overall great job!
Yeah, yeah, AP's pretty good, but have you tried just throwing rubber duckies at the knights?!
This is a fun little adventure. I'd say it has enough systems/stats/items and in general depth to it that I wouldn't mind if it were 3 or 4 weeks instead of 1, with different, stronger enemies at the end of each week, just to really get a feel for all the possibilities. Nice work!
Very cool and cozy little game, it reminded me a lot of the game "He is Coming". Didn't expect the final battle to be so hard although I barely managed to beat it on my first try thanks to my trusty ducks. I liked the hoard score mechanic, it gives the player a nice challenge.
The graphics and sound are really good but I'm a bit confused on how the game should turn out
The art, music and sound effects all work so well together and create this amazing adventurous vibe! Really enjoyed playing this<3
You made a really polished retro game here, and with your own engine, right? That is really empressive :O Everything felt very cohesive to the retro style, with the art, sound effects and also the gameplay. One small nitpick I have is that it was a bit unclear what was happening during fights due to the lack of feedback. I think I mostly understood due to playing other retro games before, but in the final fight with the knights I received way less damage than I thought I would.
That said, really well done! I enjoyed it a lot :D
It's a good roguelike. I first messed up AP and HP, I thought that enemies punch me 1 hp at a time when I attack but then I get it, I didn't give enemy even a chance to hit me back :) Final 4 knights were not super hard to me, as I killed two of them instantly with two ducks, casted defense and armor from items and rushed one of them to 1 hp. They hit me ~10 hp, I killed one of two left and a single knight was like a joke. I had 5 AP (increased at levels and via bonfires) and it's literally overpowered. I wish there could be visuals when an opponent hits you, so you know how much it damaged you. And a settings menu with volume slider Thank you for the game, it looks good!
Found a +10 dagger. Killed everything. Didn't die when I thought I would. It was fun. Impressive job!
The game could definitely use some balancing and feedback.
cool graphics and interesting concept!
retro aesthetic is wonderful, and gameplay was pretty fun, well done
Hm... Re-skin "He is Coming" ?
ss_a443f394bed8e7c3b02fa8e4382ec59dc7575b32.600x338.jpg
Cool concept, I played twice because the loop of prep->fighting the big enemy was really engaging! I think there was a lot of rng, specifically in which kind of items you got. In my second playthru I got >6 consumables and had to forfeit a bunch while still not having any additional armor or weapons equipped. I don't think there would've been anything wrong with keeping the rewards static and expecting that players play thru a few times to learn the exact right sequencing. Being efficient with pathing and picking items and stuff was a very fun part of it! Overall really nice work, I had a lot of fun!
Really cool concept! Good combat and rpg elements, the power gain was definitely noticeable as you progressed.
Screenshot 2025-10-08 at 12.54.19 AM.png
I must have forgotten to hoard things.
Gonna write up a review for this cool entry.
The great:
Programming something like this in a weekend is no small feat. I can see the work that went into this and am super impressed, it would lend itself well to some procedural generation (not in a weekend) but for the future for sure if you guys aren't too burnt out. You could create varying maps and encounters with some simple rooms-and-corridors generation algorithms.
I am most impressed by the inventory and equipment systems. Those are also pretty difficult to wrap your head around, but I liked the implementation, simple for what was needed for the game loop.
The improves:
For me when I played it seemed that no enemies attacked me. I was able to just faceroll through every enemy and even the knights just let me beat them down. I did stack a ton of armor so maybe I was just too tanky? Not too sure.
I play a ton of classic roguelikes so the UI and working with the game came second nature to me, but perhaps a little tutorial blurb wether in the game or on the LD post page or itch would be helpful.
My team also had the idea of a dragon collecting things prior to a coming hero invasion so its cool to see that great minds think alike.
Something to think about:
The bones are already set up to take this to a next step, add in some procedurally generated maps, some more options in dealing with foes (magic, fire breathing, etc) and maybe baby animations on attacks, you've got one hell of a short-turnaround-roguelike.
Thanks for making !
Feel free to hit me up to talk games in the future, hope to see you guys out there.
Great game where you have to develop your character within a limited time. I liked the gameplay loop and graphics, but repetitive trees during movement are bad looking( Good result!
Fun game but the knights really surprised me lol
@jpgfg Thank you for the detailed feedback! We definitely hope to finish it up a bit after the jam.
The idea was to have it work around there being more/stronger knights at the end depending on how many things you collect but overall there wasn't enough time for balancing so they might have very well been too weak.
As a fun aside, it does use procedural generation but just a very simple miner based algorithm making the path and scattering the encounters on every junktion
Really great retro games! Love the vibe and the collecting, especially collecting the ducks. Though like others mentioned, the final battle was a bit confusing since I didn't understand why I lost after my turn ended. Still, great job!
Really cool vibe and gameplay!! wish there was more!
Noice game, do in fully!!
Cool adventure game!
Even a kind of stripped down RPG is an ambitious option for a LD. I love the retro aesthetic and think it mostly works pretty well, maybe the enemy sprites in combat looked a bit less coherent with the rest of the style, but its a minor thing. I guess main points is the lack of feedback about whats going on during combat, in terms of enemy turns would help alot. Also it was unclear what was going to happen when the time ran out so the knights rocking up and wiping me out in one turn was a bit of a shock. Love the ambition and concept just felt it was missing a bit of essential polishy stuff. Music was nice too and like that it kept the retro theme. Was disappointed the full screen button didn't really work, its nice to be able to properly appreciate the pixel art.
I failed on my first run learning the ropes etc. However on my second run I did it better and killed everything in my path including the knights which kicked my ass in my first run. Yeah!! Anyways, nice short RPG. I don't get the hoard point as it doesn't affect gameplay at all. But for the theme, let's say that I played as an XP collector.
@bloodbane about the theme: you hoard/collect items, the more valuable items are in your hoard the bigger your high score at the end if you get to keep them and survive; but the higher value items also means more and higher level soldiers will come to hunt you down to try to get your loot, so you have to figure out how big of a collection you can handle :D (look at the "party size" value at the top and how the "dread value" on items increase it when you choose an item with a high value to it ^^)
Fun game. But suddenly I was surrounded by knight and died ^^'. Not sure how I triggered these situation. :D
Woa this is SO good, and you only made it in a couple days?? I really like the scanline effect! There is so much to this, all of the different items and events! It must've taken so long to hand-craft them all!