Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → dasilvacontin
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Summoned Army | jam | 967 | 3.21 | 3.48 | 3.00 | 3.45 | 2.04 | 2.51 | |||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Civilitris | jam | 356 | 3.88 | 3.84 | 3.87 | 3.46 | 3.81 | 3.39 | 2.67 | 3.48 | |
| 2017 | 40 | The more you have, the worse it is | kipos-pico8 | unfinished |
Won on my second try! On the first try I didn't realize I could get those torches until I randomly got one. On my second run, I honestly felt like I was just completely randomly (without memorizing the map, but getting a sense of where the middle was) and randomly stumbling into the books, maybe luckily leaving the keys in the order that had to be left, idk.
Graphically wise, impecable. Audio is good too.
It was fun! Great game!! 🤗
Some feedback that may be tough: it was fun, but it doesn't leave me wanting more of it, once the freshness fades. It was a very interesting experience, and some details of the mechanics were refreshing (like when a heart chain gets cut, and some hearts just lay on the floor, waiting to be recollected).
Good game, good job, thanks for sharing! :)
Jesus, I love hard games, usually good at them, but this was veery hard. I wish it was slightly easier. Maybe I didn't get the "trick" to it. But it was enjoyable to experience. Good job putting it out! :)
Loved the character images and the dialog! Would have personally wished it was more challenging, dropped out after the 3rd level.
Good job! 🤗
Cool game! Was really nice to find the small platforming shortcuts to improve the efficiency. Didn't notice the wall jumps until I saw the score screen!
Didn't know / remember that you would lose with a single dog starving (!police), so tried that and then lost. Also, expected the sun to burn the plants or something, but to my surprise (and comfort) it didn't. I guess it just depleted their water faster? But I'm a speedy boy, so it's k.
Good game, well jammed. :)
I was able to buy everythinggg (not all the disaster upgrades, but did buy the rest). Very cool! :) I feel like I really lucked out on surviving.
Nice mix of clicker + minigames there! Pure clicker games are soft for purposeless (for me).
Tough game, fun because it's challenging! Good job!
@sayumeki Hello! It was late at night and Unity was taking ages to upload – I wanted to be fresh for work next day. I just uploaded it – hope you have fun! :) Super interested in hearing if something in the game turned out to be or work different than expected. Cheers! :)
@solrinn Hey Solrin! The audio is not mine, nor the sound effects. I guess it doesn't make sense to allow people to rate that category? I'm going to disable that as soon as I get a reply from my friend @Elendow.
As for the background music, it's Ketsa - Curious Nature: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/Emotive_Music_Film_and_Radio/Curious_Nature I just added the credit to the description, sorry for the sloppy job on that aspect! 😣
@ryan-harriman Thank you!! I was surprised myself at the richness of interactions that came up. In the beginning I was fearing that it was not enough tile types haha.
I'll make sure to check out yours – thank you for the comment! :)
@beregalto Watching the villagers is one of my favorite parts as well! Wish they didn't bug as much as they do 😬. Had to even add in a check for out-of-the-board to teleport them back.
@arqcenick "I did not understand the bars showing food or wood(or they did not affect gameplay) but still had fun. It can be massively improved upon. Good work!"
How did you even survive? haha. So, because of the graphics and lack of quests, it may not be evident that there's a hut/town-center in the middle, with some villagers. The villagers have to pick up sheep and trees and bring them back to the town center, that's how you gain the resources. It may not be evident if you somehow got the resources without understanding. I added some distressed hungry thoughts to the villagers, but those only pop up if you happen to run very low on food (<25%).
@jonrei "I like it. I noticed tho that nothing happens when you lose"
What do you mean nothing happens when you lose?
@arqcenick Also, what do you mean with "It can be massively improved upon"? Any thoughts?"
@larsi "Interesting spin on a tetris like game. really enjoyed the simple but effective art style".
Thank you! I wish I was able to make a better fire with the basic Unity shapes
@aevek "I love this idea. The idea of the fire spreading was so cool and different and after it ended that run it completely changed how I played the next time. So much depth from such a simple idea, I love it."
I feel you :). I feel one of the nice things in this game is realizing the small nuances/mechanics, and taking advantage of them on the next runs. For example:
meme column:row v2.jpeg
@leetchi-heda "Really nice game, the idea is good, maybe you should add a little bit of feedback. Like, the fire, i didn’t know what it was the first time it appears ! otherwise good job for this one !"
I guess making it look more like actual fire would help 😆. Thank you for your comment!! :)
@khyrgrim "Simple and beautifull. Great work ^^ ! The quests informations took a lot of space on my screen and hide the map a little bit, is it normal ?"
It was not my intention for it to be like that 😅. It helps if you play it in full screen mode.
Thank you for the comment!! :)
@nizwiz0-0 "I really liked the idea behind this game, and everything was really great, but I do have one complaint. I still don’t understand the food/wood bars, and I don’t understand why my huts got on fire. But overall, I had a great time."
Thank you!!
So, for the food/wood bars, your villagers are supposed to manually grab the resources (sheep and trees) and bring them back to a hut. They don't swim, though.
The black-ish tiles with a red/yellow cube on them? That's fire, and it propagates to most things, except for sheep plains, or empty forests.
@joe-bustamante I appreciate the time you've taken in giving all this feedback, thank you!!
"As others have said, I think this is a great concept for a game. You’ve taken resource management and civilization building and combined them with tetris/2048, and it works out really well. I think not having a tutorial/general explanation of what you need to do does hold it back a bit, it took me a couple tries before I actually figured out what was going on. Also, is there a way to hide the quest log? It was a lot harder not being able to see the left side of the world."
Quest log is annoying right now unless you play it on full screen mode, or you are playing on a retina screen (Unity things). Sorry for that! No time. I was hoping to guide the people through some of the stuff to be learnt through the quests, by doing and observing. That can fail if it's hard to understand _why_ are things happening, but I think it's nicer than having to sit through a tutorial. I feel one of the main pains right now is figuring that there's villagers that have to manually grab stuff and bring it back. It doesn't help that it's not so evident that they are people/villagers, and that the thing in the middle is a hut/home. I wanted to add more feedback on the intention of the villagers (more thought clouds/bubbles) and the effects of what they do (adding "+1 Food" / "+1 Wood" when they bring back something, maybe some object goes from the hut towards the stat bars...)
"Besides that though, I loved it. The graphics are simple but great. It’s cool actually seeing your people grabbing resources. I think the core gameplay is really awesome, but just needs some further explanation and some quality-of-life stuff, like maybe being able to see the next tile coming, to really make it something that would be fun to keep replaying and trying to do better (also going with that would be some kind of a score or game over condition). Really nice work!"
Thank you! Hmm, there is a score and game over condition, right? I would love high scores, personally. Thank you again!
@picusbgames "Pretty good! Interesting but not too sure how the wood and sheep meters work, I had both but wood seemed empty a lot of the time lol, not sure if matching them reduces it or what not :) Also fire streaks can be rough (4 fire tiles in a row!? hehe)."
They do not fill up by landing tiles and completing rows/columns. They fill up when the villagers physically grab on stuff (sheep and trees) and bring those back to a hut. Sorry that it's not as obvious! :)
Yeah, whenever it's 4 tiles it gets a bit hard, better hope you made some space by that point 😆.
Thank you!! :)
@deadwave-games "Really interesting - I nearly didn’t realise how good as I didn’t realise that I needed to press Q AND E (I was just using Q) to advance the missions. But once I spotted that, I realised that it was pretty damn clever.
Lots of promise here - well done thanks for sharing!"
Ahhh, that happens to me as well when I play. I think a lot of people forget about the quests. It's a bit hard to take the eyes out of the map, due to the timer that auto-lands the islands.
Glad you liked it! Thank you lots for the comment!! :)
@automatonvx "pretty cool, interesting idea. It took me a while to figure out that full lines of same colour clear. I didn’t understand any other rules though, at some point all my huts were suddenly on fire and i don’t know why. I feel like at the moment it would be pretty difficult to keep lines in a single colour to be able to clear them and keep the game going very long. Presentation was nice simple but clear and effective and the background music was nice and fit well also. I feel like its got potential but wish i knew the rules better…. played one more time, ha i didn’t see half teh quests because i was just one key for rotating so never cleared that quest.. quest should probably just be use Q OR E .. or make them separate quests.. then i was stuck on make an additional hut HOW? ..a and all my huts caught fire again :O"
Thank you!! Yeah, it can be hard to realize that the lines clear, specially if you miss the quest item for that.
There's fire tiles after you clear 3 lines. Fire propagates to neighboring tiles, except for the sheep one, or empty forest (rationale is like.. not enough things to burn there!!).
Additional hut is available when you collect 16 wood. Same as for the food, your villagers have to manually go out and collect those resources, and bring them back to the hut. They can't swim tho!
Sorry for the non-obvious things, and thanks for playing + comment!! 🤗
@mikonow "This game is really addictive. I love it. I will share it and keep it for me too ! <3"
Glad you love it!! 🤗
@jefvel "This was a fun game, I managed to complete all quests after a couple tries. It does rely quite a lot on luck, since you have no idea what blocks come next, and if you get a bunch of fire blocks in a row you’re basically dead. And I noticed sometimes the fire didn’t spread at an even rate, and I died because there was one single wood block not catching fire!
This definitely has potential to be a great game"
Yeah, the not-even rate of fire spread is a killer sometimes, but a saver at others!! Thank you for the comment, glad you enjoyed it!!
@fraanns "Amazing game. Was really enjoying myself. Great game mechanic and good visuals. Good job"
Thank you, great to hear! Glad you enjoyed it!! 🤗
@dmars "Really fun, challenging, and innovative! Seriously, excellent.
Small bug: the game freezes if you simultaneously set your last village on fire and clear the row of fire touching it."
Oh dear, I've run into a similar edge case like that. It was like, moving a piece right before it lands on an invalid position. It's a shame. If I ever polish the game, this will be helpful to know, ty for reporting!
Thank you thank you for the comment, take care! :)
@anchry "Great game overall, was not too fond of the nacho looking fire. Other than that it was very satisfying to play"
Nacho looking fire hahahahaha. Yeah, wish I had been able to do something better there. A lot of people didn't understand that it was fire. Until it burnt something, I guess.
Thank you for playing + comment! :)
@arqcenick "@dasilvacontin Yeah sure, for example different combinations of tiles could give rise to different progress(e.g. two farms and two woodcutters forming a square can form a city.) Also, it can be made such that some tiles are stackable up to a level, so that they can form different terrain, mountains hills etc. Different buildings can spawn based on collected resources etc."
Good food for thought, thank you! My thoughts before asking was to have different types of buildings. I also thought of adding a bit of conflict. Maybe you own half side of a map, and you have to beat an opponent on the other side, and you can create troops, that go towards their bases/villagers, etc. Maybe a good couch/local game, or multiplayer one, even!
Thank you again, take care! :)
@sharks "The graphics were great the game was fun, the quests kept things interesting and the random nature adds replayability. The art was very polish and the game mechanics easy to learn hard to master, overall this is going to be in my ‘play again’ list!"
Glad you enjoyed it!! Thank you for your comment and great summary 🤗
Edit: Oh, you're the dinosaur game peep, sick! :D
@mrleeperry Thank you lots for the words!! Means a lot coming from you! :)
@splitpainter Thank you so much for your words! Glad you enjoyed it :)
re: quests → Nice hearing your impression, glad you appreciated them! Sharing my thoughts: I wanted to guide people through discovering the mechanics that are necessary to progress successfully in the game, but I didn't want to make those mechanics super obvious. More like, I wanted to encourage learning by experience / trial-and-error, which gives you those "ahá!" moments, a bit of puzzle feel. And adds replayability because you have a new strategy/mechanic to take advantage of, and more potential ones to try out.
Btw, how did you land on my game? Because of my ratio of ratings received:given, I would be very surprised if the game is actually appearing on the games list.
Thank you again, and take care! :)
@scott-steffes Hello Scott! Thank you for the feedback!! And you're not alone! It's an issue I've found out through testing, that the quest is not good enough for everybody to understand what it means. But can't update it now, because games are not supposed to be modified after submission.
Completing a row or column of the same type means that, from side to side of the board/map, either vertically or horizontally, you must lay out tiles of the same type (sheep, forest, ...). Once there's a complete (side to side of the board) horizontal or vertical line of tiles of the same type, something happens. :)
It feels like the meaning of a row or a column in the game felt not clear?
Some of the absurd options made me laugh irl 😆. Some of the options are confusing, because they read more like descriptions than actions, e.g. "He says that...". How is that something that I can choose as an action?
Good job! :)
Did You See That Ludicrous Display Last Night?
Fyi, It was not obvious that my reputation was a sum of the reputation of those I was friend with. I thought my reputation would increase over time just by replying to messages, by building up those relationships.
Off, not only you have to register, but apparently you have to download the Core platform app or something? That's a lot of friction, specially if you were expecting it to be a web game
Great graphics, but so hard! That spike gives no chance
@theqiwiboy Hey man! Even though I didn't play the game (I usually only play WebGL ones, since I'm on a Mac), I wanted to give you HUGE HUGE CONGRATS for already being doing things like these!! If you ever need any help or advice, feel free to message me, would be glad to help 🤗
Very confused, didn't understand how it worked. Didn't read, but I don't think it should rely on external text. Didn't vote.
It surprised me that this game was so enjoyable. It's not challenging, but it's an experience that makes you laugh and grin from beginning to end. A must play.
Hats off o7
"I want to play it again!"
May be my favorite game out of 20+ I've played.
Cool concept, nice music, and really good for getting better at summing numbers.
Unfortunately it lacks a "carrot", a reward to make you invested into the game and invested in completing the levels.
This looks beautiful! Might even boot the Windows VM to try it
The strength on my right hand fingers' has increased by 3!! (from hitting keys to skip text on the retries)
Loved the graphics (they are LOVELY), humor, and the innovative take on the theme. The main thing the game is lacking is fun (personally), which is understandable given the constraints of this tool (whose name I don't recall). The ways you came up of using this tool are impressive. You've used it in surprising ways with the inventory and the "world map". Kudos. Loved the small detail inside the house with the self-comment about having to clean it up someday.
Thank you for making it and sharing. <3
The vibes are inspiring, despite the "simple" graphics. I love the fact that you can go out and explore, do what you want. It feels like an "open-world" / sandbox game because of that.
I love the summoning instructions, and how it feels they are going to be UI-less, and just be natural game actions.
The "End the day" action can be triggered tooo far away from the bed. I pressed E wanting to bring up the book, and accidentally ended the day. Maybe you could make it also a button that you have to hold for 2 seconds for it to actually trigger, to avoid accidental triggers.
I also love that there is no time limit, so you can take in the wholesomeness and lore of the game without stress.
I love that the book stays on the page you last used.
Nice touch with the ingredients to pick up in the wild, as a way to add a reason to explore the world every now and then. Nice touch with the door bells that lets you know if anybody came into the shop. It's also an activity to do while the customers arrive, and makes the game feel more alive.
Would be nice if the scroll merchant left your place after you bought everything they had to sell. I guess you lacked time.
I didn't find it super intuitive that you could go to the prev/next page by clicking on the pages, initially. Maybe some sort of cue or affordance would help the player discover that.
Would have also been very cool to see the demon leave the room and leave with the customer. I guess time also played on this.
The UI was very functional and intuitive (except for the page turning thing). I feel having to open the Ingredients drawer is a step that is unnecessary. It could just be open, and when the player starts mixing, it hides away.
Nice humor touches to the dialogue. Dialogues are concise and rewarding enough.
Sometimes I find myself trying to shake the phial... and confused about why I cannot grab it and start shaking it... then I realise that I didn't click the "Start mixing" button first. Seems like there's no reason why I couldn't just grab it and start mixing without having to click the button.
Unfortunately the game runs a bit slow on my browser (wish I could turn shadows off). Making the game slow enough that I don't feel like continuing to play after Day 4. Even if I am curious to know what would happen if I summon Admodeus.
I really like the way we have to summon the demons. I loved having to wait for 15 seconds for Belial, doing nothing.
Standing ovation for Citsua!!! My favorite game this jam. Thank you for sharing 💙
> @lenne Mixing was a fun mechanic, although I think it would be better to click the ingredient tab to open it, rather than it automatically opening when you hover over it. There were a few times I accidentally clicked the top ingredient because of this.
That happened to me too
Loved the graphics and the audio. Also the setting and the humor. Nice vibes.
Gameplay.. after losing once and realising what's important, it got a bit boring, because it was essentially running away from the enemies while waiting for the mana to replenish. Not much risk. There was a bit of skill involved in throwing the portal right in the middle of a group of enemies, as to hit multiple of them with a single animal. But given there was no danger, no risk of dying by that point of the game, it was just a matter of hoping it progressed to the end asap to see what happens.
I also discovered a game breaking bug where if you stand on the edge of a room, but not to the point where you see the enemies spawn... the enemies have actually spawned, but they are invisible. And you can attack them.
It would have been more comfortable if one could use the shift key for the dash (on a trackpad, having to do left click vs right click is meh).
Some ideas for the gameplay: - animals not only consume different amounts of mana, but also have a favourable matchup against the type of enemy - traps on the rooms / floor. something that makes running away from the enemies more challenging and less mindless - a quack button - mana regen as an upgrade option - enemies throw more projectiles, and from further away (as to make it harder in the later part of the game) - maybe enemies with different AI, which you have to escape in a different way - the animals are not just for attacking, but have some other purpose - some type of goal or reward for players who achieve difficult feats (feats beyond surviving). e.g. not getting hit by a single enemy in a room. letting the enemies try to melee you but dodging it. summoning 3 animals of different species (bird+cat+dog) has some type of benefit. creating a portal right on top of an enemy sends the enemy to another dimension. etc. bonus for near miss those projectiles enemies throw. maybe a jump button to dodge those projectiles. enemy projectiles could hit other enemies, which may make it interesting to take some risk and try to squeeze between enemies. things to raise the challenge for skilled players, but that don't raise the challenge for the other players.
Thank you for sharing!! <3
Play this on the phone. Because on the computer, it sometimes doesn't understand your lines/glyphs for some reason. On the phone, I had no issue.
Fun game, great game. Simple to understand, pretty much pick up and go. Some of the VFX when casting the spells were pretty cool.
Maybe you've seen this issue but didn't have time to do anything about it: once you play it on the phone, you can cast spells so fast that you "break" the game. You can perma push enemy units. You can have 20 golems throwing rocks. You can have a complete wall of fire. It's fun to see it for the first time, but if you do achieve that, then the game becomes pointless. A mana gauge could help solve that problem. Or maybe some enemies only get affected by one type of elemental power, or do NOT get affected by one type of elemental power. Meaning you can't spam the same spell again and again, and you DO have to look at what's coming and react to it. There's not much replay value once you know how to break the game.
Great game again, loved getting to experience it.
Fantastic game, likely will be one of the best of the compo.
It took me a while to learn how to incantate. I didn't get that I had to HOLD the keys. I was pressing them. I discovered it by chance. I could have stayed stuck there for a long time (I imagine some people will). I really love the system of how to "draw" the runes, bravo.
I wish I hadn't read the second hint (I stopped reading at that one). But I do get that some people may need them. I'm unsure if I would have figured it out without help, but wish I had attempted to solve it without having that hint.
I think mystery / escape room enthusiasts will love this game, and I can see myself recommending it to them already in this state.
Great everything. Thank you for sharing <3
@ooboob Thank you lots for the feedback! I didn't anticipate someone wishing to use the mouse, so that's a big learning for me 🙏! Glad you enjoyed it!
The levels where the opponent has more portals do get tough. I tuned the game so that there is a chance of winning even when the opponent has 2 more portals – really tough, but the chance is there, which makes you want to accomplish it.
Some of the tuning was that 1) the units do have favourable matchups, rock-paper-scissors like, and 2) I increased the number of summoning portals the players have. 5vs6 is harder than 10vs11. (1 more portal makes a bigger difference when you have less portals).
@meepster @thehumanspooder @vinzbad Thank you lots for sharing your experience, I appreciate it a lot, and it's a big part of what makes it meaningful to participate! 💙 I'm happy to hear that some of the things that I aimed for and tweaked the game for was felt by you. e.g.: - having a few trivial rounds to give you time to try things out and understand the game (but not too many to make it boring / slow) - having to vary your strategy to get through the tougher rounds. Hopefully even requiring you to change your setup during the round itself - shift to mass change - having some tough levels, but beatable (until it becomes too hard)
> @vinzbad: I would like to change the position of my towers to try more strategies
I felt that too! At the very least it should be a game mode or an option. There's a bit of randomness on the starting position of the summoning portals, which randomise every turn... you can sometimes take advantage of that to position one unit in front of another
@galactical Thank you so much for your feedback! I appreciate it lots
> Cool game! I had a hard time strategizing about what exactly I could do to counter my opponents setup, it seemed, to me at least, like the outcomes of battles were fuzzy, and it was hard to see where my setup is wrong. I just sent my soldiers out to battle and hoped for the best, which is still a very fun feeling!
Sorry to hear! I'm not surprised. I've heard it from other people, and I can see how depending on how the rounds go for you, it may have been difficult to spot the advantages and disadvantages that a unit has against another. I was thinking that a campaign mode with "pre-designed puzzles" could help alleviate this, and also provide more content where there is a surmountable amount of challenge. Happy to hear ideas!
(Spoiler about the rock-paper-scissor nature of the units)
By design, the following _should_ be true: - Warriors beat Archers - Archers beat Healers - Healers "beat" Warriors
(Spoiler about the values under the hood driving the units)
- Warriors have 10HP and do 1dmg every 1s. - Archers have 5HP and do 2dmg every 2s. And they take double-damage from Warriors. - Healers have 5HP and heal 1hp every 1s.
(Spoiler about how the rock-paper-scissors takes place in practice)
Warriors take down archers in 3 hits. Archers take warriors down in 5 hits. However, archers can attack at a distance, so they are able to hit the warrior once before the warrior gets to them. Additionally, if there's any ally unit between the archer and the warrior, the warrior will go for that unit... so while warriors beat archers, that is if they can get to the archers.
Healers "beat" warriors in the sense that they can heal as much hp as warriors can damage. Additionally, if you have 2 columns of units, warriors on the column behind the fight can't really contribute to the fight (except pushing). Healers on the 2nd column, behind the fight, _are_ able to heal units in the front line. So it's very difficult or impossible for 2 columns of warriors to beat 2 columns of healers. Also, any damage the warriors take from archers (behind the healers) will not be able to be healed, unless they have healers too.
Archers "beat" healers in the sense that 2 archers beat 3 healers. 2 archers will deal 4 damage to a healer (hopefully they focus on the same one), and then healers have to react and come to heal the unit. However, due to reaction times, they will only be able to heal the unit once before archers are able to strike it again for 4 damage. Meaning that the healer or archer will be gone. It's a different story if the archer is attacking a warrior given they have 10hp, so the reaction time by the healer does not affect much.
> I’d be curious to know how exactly you are handling the collisions between the large number of units. It worked well for the most part, but I often noticed that some enemy units would clip into each other, perfectly overlapping. I imagine this is due to some necessary shortcuts taken for performance, and it wasn’t anything game breaking. Nice work!
Every unit has the following code:
// collisions const closestUnit = getClosestEntity(this, { type: Unit }) if (closestUnit) { const distance = pointToPointDistance(this, closestUnit) if (distance < 19) { const dx = distance/10 * (this.x - closestUnit.x) / distance const dy = distance/10 * (this.y - closestUnit.y) / distance this.x += dx this.y += dy closestUnit.x -= dx closestUnit.y -= dy } }
So it slightly pushes the closest unit (that is <19 distance) away from itself, and it pushes itself a bit away from that unit.
I suspect that by only considering the closest unit for collision, it doesn't work well when too many units are pushing against each other.
So it's not really for performance, rather that's the way I wrote it, and didn't have time / was not a priority to make it better :)
Thank you again for your feedback! <
@lcstark Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it lots!!
> A cool little tug-of-war RTS! Reminded me a lot of cool old Flash games I’ve spent a lot of time playing. :D
💙
> One thing I think it could do better is on the visual presentation style. On one hand, by making the game scale so the game area fills the entire window. Right now everything takes place in this tiny square area in the center, and the units are so small it’s sometimes difficult to figure out what’s going on in small areas of the battle.
I agree. Certainly something that could be improved. For now, one can use the browser zoom feature to zoom in, but that's not obvious to the player.
> Another thing would be some better player feedback, maybe explaining game elements a bit better. For example, I’ve figured out the inside of the unit is it’s health bar (as it dropped on taking damage and got back up when healed by the Healer), but a lot of times it looked to me like the unit didn’t have any HP left, yet it remained on the field, still able to take several more hits before going down.
I agree that may not be intuitive. I think that can be improved by testing what the HP circle looks like with different amounts of HP, and tweaking the minimum size of the circle before the unit dies. Otherwise, like you say, it gets so small that it's hard to tell how much HP is left, or you may be lead to think that there's something buggy / wrong with the game, that the units should be dead (most likely they just have 1 or 2 HP left).
> Also, it looks like units can be selected (as hovering on them puts a thicker border around them), but is there any point to it? You can’t control them, and selecting a unit doesn’t seem to affect its attack or health in any way.
Yeah, good spot! That's because I experimented with allowing the player to hover a unit to heal it (as a special power). However, after playtesting, I felt that it distracted too much from the core of the game, and gave a sense of unfairness, taking away the satisfaction / accomplishment of selecting units well. So I removed the healing power, but forgot to remove the feedback that shows you which unit you'd be selecting. Something to remove for sure.
> Also - did you submit the game in the wrong category by accident? You are using a CC music track from external source, which is allowed in the Jam category, but not in the Compo category.
I've changed the category to the Jam, thank you for pointing it out! It feels unclear currently that it is a requirement for the Jam.
> Overall, it’s a pretty cool entry! The rock/paper/scissors mechanic of units gives it a pretty good tactical depth, and while the game is easy to get into, it gives you enough challenge after a few levels to keep you interested. Well done!
Thank you lots again for playing it and especially for sharing your thoughts!! <3
@lisek-gagatek I 100% agree. The game is mostly only enjoyable when it's challenging, but beatable. And the increase in difficulty by number of portals is too big at a time.
Any ideas?
@dan-allison Thank you for the feedback Dan! It's really interesting to hear about what you felt, thought, tried. I feel the offset in the position of the spawning portals also causes one to maybe pick the ones closest to the enemy side to be used for spawning "front-line" units.
Best wishes 💙
Thank you lots for the ideas and direction, @sam-minh !! Super valuable.
Thank you @maymay @hermitgamesmiths @deltamain for your feedback too, very useful 💙
@lisek-gagatek Those are some great out of the box ideas, thank you so much! 💙
@creeper-nade Thank you for the feedback! :)
I've been making browser-based games using JavaScript (including multiplayer online games) since 2012!!
I heavily recommend using switching on "Toggle incantation" and "Toggle movement", it makes it easier to get the character to do what you want it to do.
This game is GREAT... once you understand how you actually complete a shape. It took me 10 attempts to understand how to do it. I bet that a lot of people quit the game without having passed level 1, because they don't understand how to complete a shape.
(Spoiler about how to complete a shape) You complete a shape by leaving your incantation blue trail on top of the white lines of the shape. A high % of the white lines needs to be covered by the blue trail in order to complete the shape.
There's many things I tried initially, which to add to the confusion, it sometimes felt they worked, and sometimes it felt they didn't work: - Repeat the shape but inside the white lines (not on top of them) - Fill the area inside the white lines with the blue trail
So it took a LONG while to understand 1) when I failed, why, and 2) when I succeeded, why.
I feel like the best way to solve that was to "lead by example". Show us a character doing what you're supposed to be doing. And then we'll imitate.
After I figured how to complete the shapes, I passed all 4? levels in one go.
I feel this game has potential. It feels a bit zen / meditative in a way. The new shapes and their twists add variety. It probably plays nicer with a game controller, using the joystick.
Another issue is lack of clarity when you succeed or fail a pattern. It feels like the only way to know is whether you see the pattern counter go up. That can make it hard to figure out how to successfully complete shapes, because when you don't know if you failed/succeeded, it's harder to reinforce or discard your current approach to "completing the shapes".
Fantastic game, thank you lots for sharing!
My game crashed after beating Computer77.
I like the vibes and the graphics. A tad slow, and also it disappoints when you conclude that it doesn't seem to be more than rock-paper-scissors. Would have been more palatable if you could get through the game faster.
It was not obvious that the food gives you one HP – if there was any feedback, it was not felt.
Thank you for sharing!
Fantastic. I was about to give up on the last room, but I made it. Doesn't fit the theme, but very enjoyable to play and complete. The rules for the blocks were very nice, and 2 times I thought I understood them but didn't, and had to backtrack to play around a while.
Very nice, thank you for sharing!!
I'm not able to run this game in the browser, while I've been able to run other games from the compo.
The difference is that the other ones were uploaded to itch.io. I'd recommend you do that. It looks fantastic!
I felt like I got the hang of it was quite easy specially if I focused. It seems like I was going to be able to go on forever and ever and ever so I just stopped playing.
I feel like for the game to be more interesting it should introduce new mechanics overtime or increase the challenge somehow.
Solid game, great job. Thank you for sharing!!
macOS, just crashed for me. I won't rate, I'd find it somewhat unfair.
It crashed when I clicked "Skip animation". In case that's helpful.
Very on theme, nice humour. Would have loved to finish the game.
It feels a missed opportunity to reward players for their skill by requiring the spellbook to be open to cast a spell. As a consequence, there's no reward for memorising the spells.
It is said that the spear can freeze a whole sea, but only takes half of the HP of the enemy?
Nice little easter egg with the dog to reward players for being adventurous / exploring around.
Being able to stand on top of the bat eye monsters and minotaurs feels unintended and like cheating. Breaks the challenge.
Enemies not being launch into the air by the air spell feels like a missed opportunity. However, nice touch making them fall into the water and drown.
Good job by not making the player have to restart the whole game if they die.
It was satisfying to be able to place 5 winds on the same spot and be launch to space.
It was enjoyable. It leaves you wishing that it had more smart ways of combining the spells, maybe into puzzles. But it was enjoyable enough to leave satisfied.
Thank you for sharing :)
The sound effects and the background music are fantastic – you're so talented!!! I love it when the background music fades out completely, you forget about it, and then it comes back.
The graphics are fantastic as well. Everything looks beautiful. I gasped when I saw the vegetation in the background of the itch.io page match the vegetation in the game (visual continuation). I wonder if there is an alternative design for the souls that looks more like souls. That would make it feel more on theme.
I only played one game, however I can see myself playing it again in the future. Congrats for such a nice game, and thank you for sharing!! 👏
How can we stay in touch with your work, and/or reach out to you if needed?
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I feel like this game would be amongst the top if it had a good learning/difficult curve and there was feedback on when to hit the notes so that you understand why even if you are hitting them they don't seem to be registering.
It looks hilarious, and I've seen that there's some dialogue that looks fun. But it's hard to enjoy when you feel a bit frustrated / like you are wasting time trying to play when it doesn't seem to work.
It's a shame. Please ping us if you do a post-compo version that works!!! dasilvacontin@gmail.com
Thank you lots for sharing, it was a wholesome experience, fantastic art, mood, narration
@meepster Try on itch.io, and if on a mac, try on Safari. (Surprisingly it's the only browser on mac where these games are working for me. However, they only work on the first load!!)
Fun game, would have enjoyed it much more with keyboard control!!
I love the radness of it. A concept with lots of potential
Found the puzzles a bit too tough.
It was not obvious at all to me that the 4th button of the cassette player "commits" the song. It doesn't make sense logically. I totally agree with @karln idea where, hovering a cassette lets you preview (to yourself) a song, and putting into the cassette player and playing it is what "commits" the song.
If the cassette thing had been more obvious, maybe I would have wasted less time on that puzzle, which would have made me able to progress more into the story with the time I was happy to dedicate to it.
Loved pretty much everything else, fantastic job team!! Thank you for sharing
I think I got soft locked, because in one stage I didn't kill an enemy, and there was no way to backtrack or to die. Either the level needs changing or there needs to be a reset button.
Enjoyable to discover and play. Didn't find it too compelling, in the sense that the "newness" from level to level didn't feel much – felt a bit like content filler.
Art and music was nice :)
Thank you for sharing! :)
I liked that it REALLY felt like you were being summoned from place to place. I liked the fact that there's a small minigame to run from one place to another, which further adds to the feeling of having to go from place to place fast.
The minigames themselves were okay. I got the feeling that the cleaning the desk one was impossible. The dropping the book/cloth/toy bugged a few times, and felt impossible to react to dropping the book. Copying and maths were fine. Didn't even get to try to store one.
It was a nice experience, I wouldn't play again because it doesn't leave me curious to see more.
Thank you for sharing!
@iphelf Congrats for making it to the deadline! Some old rules I found say:
Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline. You are asked to highlight the changes you make in your submission (a short change log). You probably wont get a 2nd chance with some players, but at least it wont be a problem for future players.
I could have gone further. But after thinking about it, it's impossible to join up 4 green pigs, correct? (even if you only got pig pieces and had infinite space). Unless I'm missing a "strat". Please enlighten me!
Quite fun, I may have spent... 15min playing? It's been fun to come up with strategies. I don't think I would play more / again, but I've quite enjoyed the mechanic of "the spot you place the piece in a way that combos is where the resulting piece will end". And the mechanic of having the different animals require different shapes.
I found it quite intuitive, like other people point out. Maybe what I didn't find so intuitive is that if you join up more pieces than you need for the combo, it consumes all of them. I was expecting it to only consume the ones that make up the shape, leaving some pieces behind.
Thank you for sharing <3
Screenshot 2024-04-15 at 17.59.05.png
Hahaha, what a concept. I'll have to boot up my Windows VM to try it.
Heads up to others. The itch.io download is Windows only (even if it says Windows/Linux/Mac).
Can you edit that to save people's time?
Have a nice day!
Only worked in Safari macOS for me.
Functionality-wise, you can only move around, correct?
Looks cute and interesting! Good job with your first Godot game! :)
Let me know if you finish it, would love to try 👍
Good job spookyrobloxman999!
I liked the fact that some enemies force you to use the dash ability. So that it's not just an optional ability.
I liked some of the graphics, specially the enemy that looks like a tower and dashes.
I liked that some of the enemies' melee attacks (the blue scratch thing) also repels your projectiles – made it more challenging.
When you die, the level restarts, which makes it easier to attempt to beat your current stage. But makes the game less challenging, less hard to make it through all the levels. Would love it if there was a perma-death option, where you'd have to restart from the beginning, to raise the stakes / challenge.
Thank you for sharing! <3
I liked the mood and theme. I liked seeing the diversity of body parts in the panel.
Unfortunately, the game was not fun to me, as the "optimal strategy" was easy to achieve on the first try without much room for improvement. It was very easy to do exactly what you wanted. There was no challenge.
Doesn't work for me! I have been able to play games uploaded to itch.io however.