cupofmilk7 2026-04-21 11:41
very interesting game, I’d love to see more upgrades and towers :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD59 → Fellowship of the Signal Fire
By ottobroccoli
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 209 | 3.87 | 70 | |
| Fun | 276 | 3.60 | 71 | |
| Innovation | 274 | 3.61 | 70 | |
| Theme | 106 | 4.27 | 71 | |
| Graphics | 258 | 4.05 | 74 | |
| Audio | 235 | 3.72 | 69 | |
| Mood | 234 | 3.94 | 69 |
very interesting game, I’d love to see more upgrades and towers :)
Hello ! I Played the game until the end. I had a lot of fun playing it, very cool concept and the art looks amazing. Bravo
The hand-drawn parchment aesthetic is absolutely stunning! It feels like I'm looking at a real ancient map, and it adds so much immersion to the strategy gameplay.The world map is vast and beautiful! For future updates, adding some small random events or hidden treasures in the 'empty' areas (like the Central Plains) could encourage more exploration.
This was one of our candidates when brainstorming ideas so it's great being able to play it. The tutorial and instructions were clear to guide you through the early stages of the game. Really like what you have done with the game assets as well like the background map. I hope you enjoyed building this.
Nice concept, I'd love to see an expended version with more tower types, and maybe more "hubs" in addition to the citadel.
Very good introduction to the gameplay. The overall look is very nice and the UI is very clear to read. I like the map design a lot.
I also liked finishing the game, but the core gameplay felt a little flat. Adding more mechanics could be useful, but I guess it was already enough work for a game jam to implement the signal system, which worked well by the way. :)
as a lover of LOTR, when I saw this game I had to help Gondor call for aid! its good fun and easy to jump into. it would be cool to see a little more form upgrades or a slight puzzle aspect like the over the mountain beacon all in all fun game
The game is great, with a very atmospheric feel and pleasant graphics.
Really enjoyed that one! Gives of a great mood, and the gameplay is simple but very relaxing and fun. The tutarial at the beginning was also nicely integrated
When brainstorming at the start of the jam, I had a very similar idea, but couldn't come to a plan to execute it, ultimately our team went with another idea. But it's great to see this idea implemented. In the web version using brave browser i had some troubles while scrolling the map as the itch page scrolled as well, so it was hart to track where my network was being attacked, but great art style and very good fitting music!
Gondor calls for aid! Yes! I love the concept here and the aesthetic is perfect. Are the music and SFX yours, or from libraries?
Gameplay feels flat - the enemy never seems to present a real challenge when gold production scales so quickly. Maybe if the enemies had a way to steal your gold too?
I really like the game's concept and style!! As a big fan, I appreciated the Lord of the Rings references and it was nice to be in that atmosphere!
The only thing is, the troop battle animations are a bit out of place and look a little odd, but that's a minor detail.
Really enjoyed this game!
It's a brilliant concept that treats communication itself as the core resource. I really enjoyed seeing how the network allowed you to transmit more than just danger warnings, making the map feel vital and interconnected. The feeling of slowly building out that crucial lifeline across the vast map is highly satisfying.
Call The Eagles! Good Game!
but, I haven't the "Close botton" in the upgrads tree: Снимок экрана 2026-04-20 144156.png
Good start for the game with clear tutorial but I don't know if I won or not as I managed to create individual signal lines from the initial tower to all others. Just the visual style that I like!
Loved the look and the mood... I think I need a little more hand holding on what I needed to do... keep working on it!
It was very interesting to play, and I can tell there is a clever system behind the network building. I had some trouble understanding the logic of the connections though. Some cities allowed me to place two different towers and create separate networks, while others only allowed one.
I also opened the game in fullscreen right away, and during the tutorial the arrow that should point to the upgrade tab in the lower-left corner appeared in a random place on the map. Because of that, I was confused for a while. I also was not sure when upgrades became available, since even with enough money I could not buy the Twins tower for quite some time.
These are only small issues. I think a slightly more detailed tutorial would help a lot, because the core idea seems really interesting and I would love to understand it better and fully enjoy the game.
Cool, I really liked it! The idea is simply brilliant.
Gameplay was so clean and addictive! The art style of the game was also beautiful and unique. Well done! :thumbsup_tone1:
I loved this game; it's a great use of the theme. I wish it had more levels so I could keep playing.
This game was addictive; it was so satisfying watching the signal propagate from tower to tower. A fantastic interpretation of the theme.
I was a little surprised that signals could only be sent from the main citadel, and that you couldn't chain cities together--but that did add an interesting layer of difficulty.
Cute game. Sometimes the linking got a little cluttered
Great visuals, like this medieval style.I have stucked with connections (they connected to other towers, making loops than needs to resolve manually).
It's a really interesting concept for a game. The gameplay isn't too demanding. Overall, it was fun to play.
fun game !!!
I had some trouble where the game got confused and constantly reconfigured my network faster than I could place towers, but I really like the vibe of this game!
This is so good, I'd love to see this expanded into more. 5/5 Great job! :)
Nice strategy puzzle, i like the aesthetics!
I love the concept (those fire towers were one of the first things I thought of when I saw the theme, but I didn't think of a good way to gamify it). Also the map is beautiful.
I was a bit confused about how to actually hook everything up -- it seemed like I wasn't able to connect e.g. three towns in a line or something. I had a military -> merchant -> citadel chain, and it was hard to see if it was working (I didn't see anything indicating that I was making money, and the military often didn't send troops, so I think something was wrong). The individual connections seemed good, but I wasn't sure if there was a bug or if I was just missing something. Looking at the other comments, it sounds like everything needed to be connected to the citadel.
I liked the tutorial, I just think the game needs a bit more discoverability on those features. I think it'd be fun to do more with something like this, esp w/ procedurally-generated maps!
- LotR References - Yes - Beautiful Graphics - Yes - Interesting Take on Theme - Yes - Great Music - Yes
Great game, the only things I'd improve on are making it easier to see which cities you have left, or delving deeper into exploration with fog of war, and procedural maps. In addition, it could be juiced up, and the enemies could present more of a challenge. (Maybe besieging cities, and definitely not giving gold back when destroying towers). You could also go further in with the communication ideas by looking at, for example, diplomacy with other civilisations, such as the elves or dwarfs. Overall, a 4.5 star game from me. :)
As a fan of LoTR I loved this game, from concept to execution! Thank you so much for sharing it with us!
During our brainstorming in the first hour of the jam, we discussed a similar idea and I'm so happy to have found someone who has executed the idea so flawlessly! Congratulations on your game, its unique concept and the consistently good art direction.
Super polished, great game, easy to expand! You nailed it! Reminds me of that League of Legends minigame where you gotta defend your cities. Congrats
Enjoyed the game mechanic and the way you presented it. I had it in full-screen mode and wish that the various tower builds were triggerable via a single key-press (say 1-3 or something) rather than having to move the mouse to the lower corner to click the build button every time. More levels would also be nice, but one can only do so much in a game jam. Nice work.
Very very cool. The concept is super unique, and I initially figured this would be more interesting from a conceptual perspective, but the execution is really tight as well! I had a lot of fun playing through the game, and the length was just about right. On my first playthrough I thought the game was too easy, but then suddenly found a critical chain of towers destroyed at an inopportune time, and watched a lot of the game crash down relatively quickly. It was cool to see the game humble me so quickly because of a small mistake.
There were a few small things I found myself consistently wishing for: either a hotkey to press to place a tower of a certain sort, or for the game to keep the tower selected after placing one. Moving the mouse down after every tower built to go select the tower button again was a bit onerous for longer chains of towers. I also often wished I could keep the view open that shows all tower connections - it was a bit difficult at times to quickly determine if there was a gap in my defenses.
These are tiny complaints though - overall this game was extremely well put together, lots of polish, and thoroughly thought out. The art is nice, the map in particular. The sounds work well. The tutorial is simple but gets the job done. Most importantly, it's quite fun!
Interesting concept! Love the art style and the sound design. Was a bit of an issue when reorganising the network, where a twin-tower and two single towers would form a loop, meaning I had to destroy and rebuild another tower to get the network back -- not sure if this is a bug or a deliberate feature (but smells like a bug to me).
Excellent work -- very well done!
Loved the graphics, and the lotr aesthetic, beautiful. Good job
Really loved the old world paper map visual style, really well pulled off as well! I did find it a bit tricky to figure out how to effectively route the towers, but the game's interesting enough to make me want to figure it out, so to some extent that's just part of the game. I also sometimes found it difficult to tell where exactly the breaks in the signals were. Overall though, looks great and was good fun to play!
The style is on-point and references to Tolkien is a nice touch!
UI in fullscreen is almost unreadable; I recommend to check the canvas scaler and set it to scale based on screen height, that often fixes this issue!
Balancing of such a game is demanding to avoid breaking existing features/levels. Therefore Id consider of separating the game in different scenarios so the impact of creating something too difficult is reduced to single level only.
Well done!
This was lovely! I finished it. This is a bit of a nitpick since it's so short, but I did find the tutorial a bit silly and heavy-handed. You don't have to hold my hand and make me click in specific spots, the player can poke around the UI and learn themselves!
Simple mechanism but quite satisfying! Same idea about Gondor came to my head during brainstorming the theme!
Really neat take on the theme and I absolutely love the visuals. I think it's time to rewatch the LoTR movies again.
I like the concept of this game. Thanks for the hints at the beginning!
Really cool idea! Loved it!
Классная игра, здорово что есть обучение в начале. Очень понравился арт.
Super fun -- and of course, even better for the LoTR reference!
Really fun game! It’s very satisfying to play, and the LOTR atmosphere fits it really well, great job! :clap: