crotonyl-alcohol 2026-10-20 17:50 ♥ 1
Nice visual! Got to level 10 and not sure what to do next, but the idea of using ASCII is great
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → MiniRPG
By zathnic
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 15 | |||||
| Fun | 15 | |||||
| Innovation | 15 | |||||
| Theme | 15 | |||||
| Graphics | 15 | |||||
| Audio | 15 | |||||
| Humor | 13 | |||||
| Mood | 14 | |||||
Nice visual! Got to level 10 and not sure what to do next, but the idea of using ASCII is great
I’m a big fan of ASCII-based games like CDDA, though, honestly, I can’t single out any one that’s truly outstanding. Still, the idea of representing creatures as 2x2 blocks of symbols is really cool. You can tell right away that you shouldn’t mess with a level 15 dragon. It would also be great to have a way to see what’s around you.
A really cool ascii game. I wasn't really sure what I was doing at first but enjoyed just exploring a bit, made it to level 10 and killed a dragon. Nice!
Pretty cool game. the ASCII style was a cool idea. I was a little confused by the attacking. Sometimes my hits would register and others it would take a really long time to get a hit.
What a cool game! I had a lot of fun with its simplicity!
I kept wondering how I was going to defeat Trainer99—I actually thought it was a real enemy! :D
Was the goal of the game to defeat the Warlock? I spent a long time wandering around the environment looking for new paths or secret passages, but I didn't find anything. It doesn't really matter, though—it was a very fun game to play.
I really liked the music, although I felt the sound effects could have been more in line with a retro experience—like sounds from an old PC or something in a chiptune style. But that’s just a small observation.
Thanks so much for the experience!
Awesome entry! The game was simple, but super addictive and VERY fun.
I liked the mechanics and the overall progression in the game. I thought it was cool that at some point you just have to be brave and attack things outside your level. Eventually becoming a bit reckless with the fights you take.
I played until I hit what I thought was the end of the game. I defeated the one Warlock in the area with all the dragons. I tried returning to the area that's a circle of trees and flowers, with 2 trees in the middle? Hoping that'd be like, the place you return after you kill the warlock, and it would somehow lead to an ending? But no luck. I don't know why I thought it would but hey, the area looked significant enough.
Is there an official "end" condition for the game?
I like the art style a lot. It takes my brain a bit too long to really parse what I'm seeing but once I saw it I really began to appreciate the colors and characters you chose. The only one that I couldn't fully identify what it was supposed to be was the cave. I thought maybe it was desert/sand. I also appreciated the level design. Do you make a mapmaking tool to design such a huge world? I've been doing that more recently, gotten really good at whipping up a quick one and a quick UI for placing down tiles.
Places of interest I really appreciated:
The one room with the one Cyclops, and a bunch of rats and goblins.
The small detailed tree/water/flower/water section in the Trainer area. (also, almost lost my cool when I first saw their stats!)
There's a tree out of reach north of the dragon mountain area I thought was cool.
In the cyclops zone, there are 2 cyclopses that can't be reached, and one completely blocked off Warlock.
Other things : I really liked the rhythm of attacking. I didn't know how to attack at first but I got there eventually. Also, aggro mechanics seem pretty fair overall. The only issue I had is that enemies don't know how to chase you down a hallway if they aren't vertically/horizontally aligned. But that's a nitpick.
Then I saw the command for the developer tools, and went exploring. I like the stuff that's just kind of dumped in the top right corner. I went all the way to the bottom right of the allowed world. I appreciate that I couldn't crash the game by trying to put something out of bounds. I was a little sad that there wasn't any Easter Egg hidden in the bottom right, or actually any corner. A little "elephant in the room" would have been hilarious to find out of bounds.
Honestly, the game base seems perfect for putting secrets in the game. Little quirks of tiles and areas and formations to cluegive on secret spaces that might hold hidden items/passages.
Anyways, enough rambling from me. Great work! Looking forward to seeing what you make in the next LD!
I found this really interesting! The world design I think is very nice, and the ASCII representation of everything is very unique in a great way! I do think the game could mainly benefit from a balancing pass and more things to do in the world besides combat. Expanding on these more in bullet-point form:
+ I like the overall layout of the world, it complements the simple enemy AI a lot + Each area of the world is also quite distinct, which makes it feel easy to mentally navigate between areas + I really like the placement of the Warlock early on that's also trapped, it builds anticipation a lot for what could be out there! + From an old tech perspective, I think you nail this one. Everything is ASCII, but encoding detail in color and getting across the level and name of something with just a level number and two letters works really, really well! - I wish there were more things to do besides combat (a world with interactable elements in it I think would help this a lot) - I think the game would benefit from enemies being able to attack you even if you aren't attacking them (but are attacking someone else). This way, places like the horde of rats and generally high-numbers of enemies become much more of an interesting threat, especially when the player is underleveled. - Things feel pretty lopsided towards the player. I found myself pretty easily winning fights against a dragon at level 7, and with how fast regeneration is, I'm very incentivized to keep doing it to get xp very rapidly.
Loved the mood with the somber music combined with ASCII graphics. The 2x2 display of creatures along with their level was a nice way to present that info; much less cryptic than the traditional roguelike "D for Dragon" approach.
I did find the 2-full-tile at a time camera movement pretty jarring for a game where you move so much. Maybe you could add a little new tech to make that smoother.
I've never seen ASCII done quite like this, with the 2x2 tiles. Everyone seems to just do one glyph per thing. But this is great! I like how you drew the little trees and things with it.
At first I was confused because I thought combat would be turn-based, because ASCII, but again, why should it be? This ain't Rogue.
I enjoyed the music, too.
Didn't find an ending, and since you said "for the lategame when you run out of enemies" I kinda took that to mean there wasn't an ending, so I just closed the game when I'd had my fill. Hope I didn't miss anything.
It's fun to make your own editor but maybe if you wanted to have more time to add loot and stuff, you could use a premade editor like Tiled? Even if you're doing something unusual like ASCII, you can write some code to generate a tileset that looks like your ASCII tiles, then build the map with those. Of course, if you like making editors, there's nothing wrong with that either. Just mentioning it since you said you ran out of time.
Anyway, I had fun! Thanks for making this.
I really like the idea!! ASCII graphics are always a cool way to take an RPG. It took me a few minutes to understand what everything meant, but generally I think it's clear and a cool way to interpret the theme. The music also perfectly fits the vibe. Great work!! :)
Very cool entry! I love your implementation of the theme. Would love to see perhaps bigger entities (like 3x3 or 4x4) to represent boss fights or whatever. This has a lot of potential! Good job.
That was enjoyable. Shame there doesn't seem to be any kind of ending, unless I missed something. I didn't realise how to attack at first, holding the direction was not particularly clear as just pressing didn't work.
I murdered my way through the entire ecosystem, only a few Cy's and a Wa escaped my wrath by hiding in inaccessible locations. The Tr's I didn't bother with. They would take far too long to beat. Beating the Wa's was mainly an exercise in waiting for health to regenerate. I was level 17 at the end. Nice work.
Pretty good take on the theme. The World had some variety and I really enjoyed the level editing when you press Home. The game was a bit too easy though. The only enemy that I found hard were the trainers. The game also could use a lower resolution honestly and the combat could do with a bit more interaction. Having the player press a button for attacking in the last direction you were moving could have made the combat slightly more enjoyable.
Great interpretation of the theme and it was surprising to see ASCII graphics. Great job!