Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Atium Addict
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 43 | Sacrifices must be made | 43 and Me | compo | 366 | 3.08 | 2.79 | 3.19 | 2.32 | 2.70 | 2.57 | 1.87 | 2.24 |
I loved the board game aesthetic and the survival strategy approach to the theme! This could make for a great pvp or singleplayer game. Only issue I had was the size of the canvas. It doesn't adjust to the screen and I couldn't see the whole game screen even with fullscreen on 1440p screen: Untitled.png
Wow! The platforming mechanics are some of the most creative I have come across! The controls are slick and intuitive too. Sound needs some work as you mention in your description, but, other than that, it's such a polished game that I wouldn't believe it came out of a game jam.
I would like some more surprises along the way because most of the observations the main character makes about the different rooms were pretty uninteresting. Really solid try though!
Great job! A single player card game would be one of the last kinds of games I would have thought anyone would attempt for a game jam, but you kind of pulled it off. I say "kind of" because I think it needs a lot of tweaks before it's a complete game. One thing that comes to mind is the timer. I don't think the timer serves this game well since there is a lot of text to read and you can't really implement any kind of strategy in 10 seconds at a time with 3 or more cards to choose from.
One of the best tutorial structures I have come across and a great puzzle game overall!
I really liked the whole dungeoncrawler-roguelike vibe! I think moving with the arrow keys would be better, but that may be just me. The enemies were a little too good. I couldn't get away from the chasing enemies and I couldn't avoid the projectiles of the shooting ones.
Great music and the platforming mechanics seem solid! I would prefer it if I didn't have to start from the first level every time I lose, since the difficulty is progressive. Completing the first levels gets boring after the second time.
As the previous commenters wrote, the art is great, and the sound is solid and it contributes amazingly to the atmosphere. I liked the sacrificial management aspect, even though the part where the villagers talked dragged on a bit since their bars are enough to discern their trust and faith. I think one of the two is redundant. Either make the villagers clearly distinguishable and limit the feedback to their word bubbles or let the bars be the only kind of indication of their dispositions. For 10-15 minutes I was trying to sacrifice one villager at the time and I always chose the one with the lowest faith levels. After I saw that nothing would change until I sacrifice all of them I sacrificed the last 4 in one go.
[/Spoilers] And that's what I didn't like. The fact that manipulating you in order to sacrifice all the villagers was the advisor's (druid's?) plan all along should mean that you had the choice not to be manipulated. I sacrificed everyone because the game wouldn't progress otherwise, not because I was manipulated. I played it a second time and sacrificed nobody. After the villagers trust to me tanked, they where talking about useless sacrifices (??) and then they revolted and the advisor became the new jarl and sacrificed me. So, what does that mean? That the advisor wins whatever I do? Or is there a third way? [Spoilers]
Really solid concept gameplay! The default controls are a little unintuitive though.
The flying works fine, but the camera movement could use some work. I think that if you fix the camera and raise flying speed a little this could be a great game. I love the idea of showing the route of the previous bombs!
Great puzzle mechanics, very thoughtful level design and very balanced progression! I really racked my brain to find something to criticize and I couldn't find anything other than the lack of sound, which is understandable given the time constraints and the work you obviously put into the existing game elements. 5/5
First stealth game I have come across in this jam and I think the sacrifice mechanic fits the genre very well. Some next steps could be losing the ability to be silent, to walk on walls, to see the enemies' line of sight etc.
The low poly models are great and the controls are slick. 3 notes: - I think the sacrificial animal type and the bar should be a little closer to the player's line of sight, so that it isn't necessary to constantly look up and down. - The number of animals gets so high after a while, that it becomes a little too easy and mindless. I was at about 90 sacrifices and all I had to do was make 2 steps away from the hole take an animal from the crowd that is gathered around me and sacrifice it. I lost only because I got stuck in the crowd. - It would be cool if the player was something like a Hindu and couldn't sacrifice cows. I think that would counterbalance the falling difficulty issue I just mentioned and would require a certain level of decision making from the player.
@quantumpotato Thanks for the feedback! I raised the difficulty as per your suggestion. I originally put 21 as the upper limit of the numbers that show up, because I thought it would be too difficult otherwise.
@semichaut Thanks a lot for the very substantive comments! The numbers are randomly generated with a range between 1 and 42. When you go forward (subtraction), the minus line becomes the plus line and vice versa. The lines above the second and third number are the indicate how many identical numbers are behind it. The numbers of the first column are generated one by one, the numbers of the second column two by two and the third three by three. So, if you meet a 23 in the third column and it has two lines above it, you will meet 2 more 23s behind it. The fact that this is not clearly conveyed to the player is a failure that I will try to remedy. As for the difficulty, I love your timer suggestion and I will try to put one right now. Thanks again!
Thanks to a suggestion by @semichaut, I added a timer.
@ecgamez You play with WASD or the arrow keys.
@xesenix and @bart-huylebroeck, the timer may indeed take a little bit away from the tactical element of the game, but I think it adds some pressure to the player which can counterbalance the relatively low level of difficulty. I will think about it some more though. As for the number of steps, it's something that would make for a great game with different levels, each with a different particular matrix of numbers. If more people like the game, I will try that. Thanks a lot, guys!
@genervus, when the theme was announced, the first thing that came to mind in relation to sacrifice was subtraction. After I thought through some other subtraction game ideas, I decided to go with this one. To answer your question, the subtractions are the sacrifices. The goal is to sacrifice everything in order to get to 0.
I decided against putting the plus above and the minus below the player because I wanted to convey the concept that the goal is 0 and the goal is usually forward or up. However, since so many people find that unintuitive, that decision seems to have been a short-sighted one and maybe I should just switch the lines to their conventional positions. Thanks a lot for the feedback!
@berkin, yeah, it's probably an issue on your end. Check this out: https://get.webgl.org/. If you can play WebGL games, you should be able to see a spinning cube.
@domixltu2, no, unfortunately, you're probably right. Since I raised the upper limit of the randomly generated numbers to 41, some starting patterns can be impenetrable.
If you go to prison, the prison part lasts a little too long without anything happening. I get that that is appropriate to the situation, but even so.
Other than that, this was the most thoughtful implementation of the theme I have seen so far! Great job!
The controls could be a little more intuitive, but, if they where tweaked accordingly, it could be a pretty fun game.
I would recommend adding two or three more levels. There's still plenty of time and they would make the game feel a little meatier.
Some things I think the game needs: - Some kind of score UI (maybe "Time Alive" or something like that), in order to communicate to the player how well they're doing. - Some simple sound effects for running and the cutting off of limbs would be nice. - Maybe some obstacles that you have to jump over. By the way, I noticed that the fatigue doesn't go down faster when you jump. I think that would be appropriate.
Good job for staying on theme!
The music contributes amazingly to the dark mood of the game! I like that the inescapability of the ending is probably intentional. I felt a sense of accomplishment after the blind level, which was nicely contrasted with the sense of helplessness of the last one. I would really dig a penultimate stage, where you sacrifice one of your legs and you move more slowly. One more suggestion: maybe you could make the orange enemies a little larger so that their higher health can be distinguished during the blind stage.
Great job!
The conflicting goals of staying in the air for as long as possible and landing with a minimum of people and money could make more levels with different aerial threats interesting.
For now, until the deadline, I would suggest adding a pause menu with a resume button and a quit button like the one in your main menu.
Great concept! I don't think him being wounded and his clothes being torn matches with it though.
The voices really are the highlight of game! The flinging could be a little slicker.
Both the praying part and the fighting part are very fun and the AI is pretty balanced. The metal soundtrack was nice too. Two small notes: - The UI placement needs some adjustments. The play button and the timer are a little too high. As a result, they overlap with the title and the stats of player 3 respectively. - I would like the AI opponents more if they used the shield ability. I realize of course that it's impossible to code perfect AI in such a short time. Great job overall!
Pretty genius puzzle mechanic! Definitely one of the best approaches to the theme I've seen, if not the best. You did a great job with the audio feedback for player actions. It would be perfect if you did the same with some visual feedback. Like @zzcalvinzz pointed out, not knowing what part will come off next is a little disorienting. I hope you carry on with the idea and make this a non-jam game with different character component configurations and levels. Good job and good luck, if you decide to do it!
I really liked it! The story is perfect for the theme and the rising difficulty throughout the levels is well-made. Since the spikes disappear when you fall on them, a next level could involve falling on spikes in order to help the villagers to cross to the other side, while protecting them from the enemies. I'm not a big fan with the zoom-in zoom-out when you shoot.
This could make for a great puzzle game! I agree with basically everything @fat-cat wrote. I would disallow the collision between squirrel and snails altogether (when they collided some of them suddenly moved to the middle of the "squircle") Untitled.png
Alternatively, you could make it so that the collision causes the snails to change direction.
I totally agree with @tigerj about the camera. It needs to be further from the player so that you can see the enemies, especially those coming from the bottom.
Good job! It was really fun! I would prefer it if the challenge wasn't so much the button-mashing balance of the characters in the middle, but the navigation between the spikes. I think that if the spikes were a little longer, the focus would be more on agility and reflexes than following the rhythm of the movement.
Good job guys! The gameplay is pretty smooth most of the time. It would be nice if the player speed increased when he isn't shooting, in order to give him some more tactical choices.
This could really trigger some vegans, but I guess you can't avoid this type of game, given the theme. Untitled.png
In order to fix the resolution issue, try adjusting the anchors of your UI elements and setting your canvas scaler to scale with screen size. Take a look at this: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-UIMultiResolution.html
As for the actual game, I didn't understand how exactly I raised god's opinion (by pressing the numbers and sacrificing) and how I lost. At first I tried to balance the resources and periodically sacrifice. Then, I just started buttonmashing.
If you fix the UI anchoring and give a little more feedback for different player inputs (like UI animations), it could be a nice resource management game.
For anyone who can't start the game, the spacebar worked for me. In the east room, I would recommend deleting the nearest wall to the camera. I don't think it adds to the challenge and the difficulty as much as to the frustration of the player. As for the west room, I gave up jumping over the first gap after 3 unsuccessful tries. The music is pretty cool though!