A Tale of Two Kings by Ango 2018-04-23T02:13:38Z
Nice artwork. It reminds me of Dr. Seuss.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Alans Antics
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Category | Score | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🥈 | 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Life Simulator 9000 | compo | Humor | 4.47 |
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 41 | Combine 2 Incompatible Genres | Life Simulator 9000 | compo | 268 | 3.50 | 3.78 | 2.85 | 3.21 | 2.45 | 4.47 | 3.09 |
Nice artwork. It reminds me of Dr. Seuss.
I found a way to cheese the game. Since none of the enemies stay on defense, I just shuttle-rushed 3 units to the enemy fortress for a quick victory. The only level it didn't work on was level 3.
Superb graphics. If I could change one thing, it would be to improve the camera - show more of the ground and less of the sky when your ship is the air.
Oh, and I found a minor bug: It can say "victory" after it says "defeat".
Overall, nice job!
That is an impressively polished game for 48 hours!
It seems like the difficulty level depends a lot on the camera. If you can't see far because of the camera, then enemies can pop up and get close to you. If you can see enemies far away, then you can snipe them without them even moving.
I'm amazed that you had time to spare to make animated destructible trees.
My antivirus was very suspicious of your game.
This concept definitely has potential. If you decide to expand on it later, do some playtesting with friends. Find out what works, and what's fun, and focus on that. It sounds to me like you tried to add complexity before you had the basics fully figured out.
One thing that isn't immediately clear, is that the zombies will keep attacking you until you lose. In most tower defense games, if enemies reach the end, they hurt you then leave. Your method is in some ways superior, but you should probably mention in your instructions how important it is to put a turret near the counter. You may also want to reduce the size of the zone that zombies can attack, so there aren't any off to the side where you might not hit them.
Another thing that was not obvious is where the zombies would walk. The first time I played they walked through the center, which I didn't realize they would do. So next time I put all my turrets in the center, and then on wave 2 some walked on the left side.
I feel like you could have done more with the cooking mechanic. At the moment, cooking feels functionally equivalent to clicking a buy button, except with extra steps. One option would be for enemies to drop ingredients instead of money. I'm sure there's lots of good possibilities to make the cooking mechanic more relevant to the gameplay.
So the game isn't perfect, but you got a LOT done in one weekend. Even just having multiple tower types puts you ahead of the other tower defense games I've seen here. Overall, I'm impressed.
I know it's been discussed already, but definitely leave towers placed on retry. That will make the game feel even more fun.
I wouldn't really call this game tower defense, but it does make a compelling and satisfying puzzle game.
The 7 levels I played were quite good, but easy. I haven't seen a level yet that proves this concept can be challenging. But I believe it can be. More complex tower types might do it for you.
Putter towers not triggering is what made me retry the most. Giving them a slightly bigger trigger area would probably fix that.
I'm not sure how well it fits the "incompatible genres" theme, but I could see this being made into a commercial game in the $5-20 range. Nice job.
I finally won! Simple rules that make an interesting game.
One thing that was a little unclear is which card followed you when you moved from a center edge into the middle.
I love the idea of a racing CCG. I just wish the race and the cards were a bit more interesting.
If you have all those stats, you're going to need to explain what they do.
An Idle RPG is actually a pretty cool idea. Honestly, that sounds more interesting than half the RPGs I've seen.
It looks like you didn't have the time to make very much content in terms of gameplay or story. If you want this idea to be a compelling game, you'll need both.
The difficulty level is really high. 15 seconds into the game you get to a portion where you need to simultaneously shoot enemies, dodge bullets, do precision platform jumping, and be fast enough to not get crushed by the walls.
If the control scheme was perfect, and this challenge appeared near in a late level, that would work. But the controls feel a bit loose, and this is 15 seconds in, so definitely too hard.
If you tighten up the controls a bit, and make it a little easier (or at least the beginning), I think this would be a fun game.
Pretty much all interactions are in need of a little improvement: fighting, capturing, casting, moving. I think your sword has to hit to do damage, which in my experience happens about a third of the time. Maybe make the spells auto-target, since there's no crosshair to help you aim. When trying to capture, I frequently found myself draining all my mana, because it was so hard to predict when the killing blow would be. Something as simple as making capture mode toggle would make a big difference.
Oh, and make dying not erase all your progress. It's an RPG!
But other than the issues I had with the controls, the game really does feel like an immersive RPG. I would totally play an RPG where you roll around in ball. Plus I chuckled at the name "Roll Playing Game".
My ball got stuck in the upper-left corner of the screen. :-(
It's a little annoying that Space types into the textbox, but it's good that having an extra space at the end of your word doesn't cause it to be rejected.
You may have succeeding in finding 2 genres that are truly incompatible. A lot of people here have theories on how to make the game better, but I'm not sure if there's a single way to make it a compelling game. Kudos for doing about as well as is probably possible.
I had fun, and beat the game. It was enjoyable, though it did feel a bit like a tutorial that never got to the real game.
If you want to take the game beyond Ludum Dare, you might need to rethink the gameplay a bit. In its current state, the game feels mostly like a basic shooter where your actions are limited by your typing speed. The one time it felt like something new to me was when I tried typing "right aim up", which felt badass.
Maybe it could be more of a puzzle game? Or maybe limit your actions with a cooldown instead of simply by how fast you can type?
By the way, I found a small bug. I tried typing "shoot 7" and went to the next level because it had a 7 in it.
But overall, nicely done.
I was getting my butt kicked until I realized this was a real-time game, and not turn-based. I guess I should have suspected, given it's a racing game.
My poor laptop was getting about 3 frames per second. But I'm impressed you were able to make this in just 48 hours.
I didn't know it was possible, but this one-button game is actually too complex. It's very difficult to figure out what will happen if you don't press Space, and what will happen if you do. Plus the game gives you very little time to react to incoming fires. And when I lose, I don't want to go through the tutorial every time.
Definitely the presentation of this game is the best part. In particular, the graphics are quite nice.
Very cool concept.
I don't think there's any reason to make players click to draw cards. Just put cards into their hand automatically when they're available.
One thing to consider is whether it's balanced to split your upgrades between all your towers, and upgrading 1 tower every time. Tower defense games typically make upgrades more get expensive, discouraging you from upgrading just 1 tower every time.
Possible bug: I'm pretty sure I saw one of my towers decide to shoot an enemy halfway down the path and ignore one almost to the exit.
This game has potential, but right now, it's too basic to be much fun. Tower defense games don't really come together until you have advanced enemies that need to be dealt with in a certain way. Plus the cards in the deck didn't feel very interesting or exciting. A few card ideas: cards that affect 1 or more enemies, upgrade cards with more diverse effects, temporary tower buffs
@Number6406 I didn't have any extra time for easter eggs, sorry. Glad you liked it though!
The presentation is great. I just wish the control scheme was better. I found it incredibly hard to move, even just going down the beach in the starting area. Pressing "up" always seemed to jump me backwards. My best attempt was jabbing "right" 9 times per second kind while randomly pressing 1, 2, 3, or 4.
I think difficulty should come from gameplay, not from the control scheme.
But if you figure that out, I think the game will work. Tetris blocks as people is a theme that should amuse plenty of people.
Nice graphics, and cool music.
An nice and easy game. I wouldn't play it for more than 3 minutes, but that's how long it lasted, so perfect.
I had a lot of problems with the mouse. It was going really fast, and sometimes my out-of-game mouse cursor would show up, and since that cursor can't go off the edge of the screen, it would stop me from spinning around.
One quirk I noticed was that the UI for a character talking would show up before the camera finished moving, giving the appearance that the UI window was hovering in-game instead of being an overlay.
The gameplay isn't that interesting in its current state, but the theme is great. A necromancer on a date is a theme that could definitely make it into a commercial game.