Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Masaru
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | A 6h rush to produce anything | compo | 542 | 2.37 | 2.18 | 3.13 | 2.92 | 2.08 | 1.94 | 1.97 | |||
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | Shoot them down ! | compo | 764 | 2.96 | 2.91 | 2.55 | 2.59 | 3.27 | 2.79 | 2.33 | 2.68 | ||
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | The exit is in ----- | compo | 607 | 2.52 | 2.46 | 2.93 | 2.72 | 2.73 | 1.80 | 2.14 | 2.23 | ||
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | Just A Throw Away | compo | 1077 | 2.21 | 1.92 | 2.68 | 2.47 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.40 |
Masaru leaves an average of 17.8 feedback comments each event.
There are a bit too much stuff to think about at once, and everything seems to reset from time to time for an unknown reason so the game feels super hard, but cool concept and pretty well executed.
Very nice puzzle game ! I didn't see all the level, I'm... bad at puzzles... I got to the 4 birds and 4 bells level, there's something I'm missing, I can't get further, but anyway, very well done ! It's a shame there's no sound...
Not sure the waves would ever be able to deal with one tank and one sniper per second, not sure if it's possible to go further either. Very nicely done in general, the game is really fun. The screenshot was taken there and not on a later wave because the game crashed on wave 18, I played it twice, the first time it went way farther but as I had only automated the minimum amount of ressources for each type of unit I thought "I can do better", well no, the game didn't let me !
Great little game ! Very well done. The only thing that is a bit annoying is the music, but the rest is so polished it's not a problem. Also, I found a little bug : if you're using the repair tool, clicking on a fully repaired building still cost money, at the end of the game I wanted to just have a good looking screenshot with every building repaired and I just randomly moved the mouse while spamming left click until I realized that this was wasting most of my money ! Not a big issue but still a bit annoying, would have loved a "repair all" button for this situation.
The music is amazing, waow. The game... a bit less. Even though it costs life, shooting should have been a bit faster, and enemies are normally killed in one-shot in shoot them ups. These two things, plus the lack of scoring, make it so the player is better off dodging and waiting in a corner rather than fighting, which is a bit weird for this style of game. Overall, for a compo game, it's very well done, there's just a lot of ironing out that would make the experience a bit more fun to me.
The last two levels were oddly satisfying. I never thought I'll say this but I enjoyed playing a colon.
I had never played a text-based adventure game before (not my thing at all), that was a very cool experience. I ended up being a bit lost, just looked at my inventory and used everything left randomly until I got an ending, it was a weird interaction to say the least but man was that a cool entry. Very well done !
How did you the vertical line effect when the building ? It's super cool and my brain can't understand how it works o_O
Very cool entry. I think I sadly found a major bug : my fighter planes always end up trying to go fight an ennemy off screen, and when the fight end, the game crashes. It's weird. Outside of that, very cool, the UI could be a bit better (selecting ships one by one is annoying when you've got a fleet of 10), but very cool overall.
Very interesting game. A bit too hard for me though, the hitbox of the bat / racket is a bit too tiny for my tastes.
The game is a bit simple but the graphics are very good !
*hug* for all the Andrews out there.
The game ran fine on Edge, I ended up getting to a pure white screen, then the noise of an alert started and after a minute, pitch black. Guess I won and then lost ?
On the other hand, at first I had tried it on firefox : the cursors doesn't reappear for the task on the right, so everytime I had to escape full screen, go full screen again, get the cursor, do the task, cursor goes away and repeat next time this task pops up. After 3 or 4 time it just completely glitched out. No clue why.
I'm confused, I wait, shop opens, I buy anything, then either I get another shop but the stuff I bought is worse nothing or bandit comes, ask for milk which I don't have, or 140k+ gold, I tell them I can't pay and they take my items away ? I don't understand what I'm supposed to do.
What this taught me is that my autistic brain is awful at noticing the difference between real and AI quotes. Some AI pictures have artefacts in them, so they're really off, but outside of them, it was a 50/50 every time for me. I ended up getting to the end after seeing 37 faces, I really wanted to get to the end. Very interesting twist on the theme.
I didn't understand what the different building did, built three mages tower, than lost without knowing what was happening. Very cool idea, the game works very well but feels very confusing...
Also, I barely got to the first upgrade. There's something I missed somewhere about how food works I guess, I tried twice, but couldn't get ressources to be generated fast enough.
Bomberman on wheels ! This game is super fun, I'll put it on the side and replay it later, I want to get a good score !
Cool game ! The upgrade menu lacks a speed upgrade, that's the only big complaint I have. Other than that, it was very fun to go through and kill the bugs ! Well done !
To add to what everyone else is saying : spamming dynamite was very fun. I did manage to kill myself on the end screen which was a bit weird, but why not. The lack of music kinda killed the mood for me, which is a shame as the graphics and sound effects are good. It feels like it would have been pretty good had there been one more day to work on it, which is pretty sad.
Pretty original gameplay and very good music. Reading other comments about not doing anything helped me get to the ending, well done.
Probably one of the best compo game this LD ! Really cool FTL-like gameplay, graphics are amazing, the music is really cool, that was a really fun playthrough. I like to add little things that I'll like to see improved but here... more content I guess ? That's pretty much it, very very cool game.
Before saying anything else, I'm used to compo and therefore have no idea as to what I should be expecting from a jam game.
Now that this has been said, this is a pretty cool game. It went on for a bit too long, I think having multiple level rather than one long one would have been better (I started to wonder if it was infinite just before I ran into the boss). For the entire playthourgh up to the boss I thought the flamethrower was bugged as it seemed to not do any damage when I shot it at ennemies, it's just against the boss that I realized that you had to hold the mouse key down, maybe an indication would have helped. Also, icons for which weapons is equiped, and a bit more challenge.
Overall, this is a pretty good base for a little game. The Nuclear Throne / Entre The Gungeon gameplay is a tried and tested formula that's always fun and the universe seems interesting. The music and sfx are also pretty good.
This is so cool ! Lovely game. The graphics are amazing, I loved the art style (in particular the golden phase), the only little thing that makes it a bit less good that it should be is that your sphere texture has obvious seem lines which is a shame as your texture looks amazing (are these procedural ? They look like it at least, which made me love them even more but that's a personal bias ^^). It also seems (based on seems) that you used an actual sphere, maybe a round cube would have made texturing a bit easier. Outside of that, I really am in love with the graphical style, and the gameplay works as well but as it might be clear I was fully focused on "how that's so pretty" while play-testing your game *-*.
It's a bit too red, and the big difficulty spike at the beginning is really weird (the first group of enemies is easy to kill, but then there's that one enemy in a tight space that's super hard to get through, and after this there's basically no challenge). The game is also a bit too short, but that's okay for a compo game. Good basics.
I might have been unlucky but the procedural generation seemed less like a random generation and more like a repetitive pattern, which made the experience a bit less fun once I knew the layouts. Other than that, it's a bit too simple but it works and the art is great.
The ship is too fast, other than that, waow this is very cool challenging game ! I'm going to keep on the side and try to replay to get at least to planet n°2 (so far, my personal best is 39s, felt like I was coming close... but still died).
Can confirm the scaling works fine on the game screen but it doesn't on the other two. The swimming is a bit slow and the game would have needed one more day, but it does work.
1333 ! The robot-only event is brutal and the enemies spawn maybe a bit too fast, also as someone else said healing would have been nice, but overall, that's a very polished and very finished little game, GG !
Really interesting idea and surprising ending ! Really well done !
That was... very ambitious ^^. Couldn't beat the boss, kept on being killed by ennemies I couldn't see and jumping each time, I wanted to see the catken from up close but in the end I couldn't and I taped out. Probably one of the most unique and original art style of all the entries, but sadly the gameplay doesn't really work...
I don't have much to add to the comment above, I just wanted to say that this is a pretty fun game !
Very interesting game. Did you by any chance got the idea last LD and kept it until now ? ^^.
And GG for using BGE, I didn't even know it still was a thing and I'm super happy to see someone using it ! Blender is love, Blender is life.
I'm going to have to be on the "it's too hard" camp. I probably missed something, but I couldn't understand how to not freeze to death and the light doesn't stay for long enough. It seems to be a world worth exploring, there seems to be a lot of NPC that have stuff to say and all, but knowing that it'll be short, dark and lead to having to redo the same path again after kind of broke it for me. Which is very sad because the game is very pretty and seem very interesting. One little thing about the controls : having to spam the arrow keys all the time is a bit annoying, being able to just hold a key would have been better.
Very well done. Impressive graphics, good mood. Little missing things : like many, I couldn't understand at first where to place the mines (for those searching : it's the two big sphere on the wall next to two red marks on the ground), and this kind of game really needs a "delete" button. I ended up my first playthrough with people starving because I didn't notice food (that's on me), restarted, but even while doing things better, there comes a point where you don't need wood or metal and freeing those workers to go into altars would have made the end less of a waiting simulator (which is always the risk with this kind of game). I ended up with 45 workers, 41 hierophants and over a 100 science per day when I decided it'll be a short enough wait to open the door, this took a long time, a lot of raids and a lot of recruitment. Also, being able to unselect the building would have helped, but it wasn't that big of an issue in the end.
Overall, very impressive, amazing graphics, good sounds, very well done.
The concept is really super good. The eye color made intuitive sense to me, the fact that you're going "deeper" by going down didn't, neither did the fact that the red-eyed enemies try to push you up. The enemies spawning on the player is sadly the death sentence for me, the game is already pretty challenging because of how big the ennemies are (might be a resolution issue seeing how other have scaling issues), struggling to get to 8/9 just to get instantly back to 2/9 because of it breaks any desire to keep on trying. Overall, this game is a big "if only there was one more day !" for me, I think I understand what you were trying to do and I find it super cool and interesting, but the end result has a few sharp corners that are a bit too sharp.
For a first LD, it's very impressive, very well done =).
Good game. Lots of littles things here and there that could be improved, the "wall sticking" doesn't seem intentional (you probably don't check to see if there's a wall when you apply the movement do you ?), the musics loops could be a bit longer, the skeleton-man closes his eyes only during the first level with him and I got softlocked at the start of the level with a big red platform to the right (some object fell from the sky through the level and I couldn't move), but the game works pretty well.
Lots of work seems to have done to get more diversity, be it ennemies or music, that's pretty different from every other game I've played today, it's very refreshing ^^.
It's a shame you didn't have time to make better graphics and more level, because the gameplay works super well. Little thing that you could improve : when the level is over, getting to the next level automatically would make more sense than having to press a key.
Cool little game. Two things though : your loading screen is trying to connect to your server right ? If it fails, the game just seems to crash, both the webGL and windows version. I use an addblocker that blocks queries directly if they're blacklisted (pi-hole) and for some reason having it on made your game unplayable. I don't know how this code works but it probably should try to connect and if it fails, just run the game without the highscore feature.
The other thing is more nitpicky, but, there are countries where QWERTY isn't the standard for keyboards layouts and this makes the specific choice of keys to hide a bit less intuitive that it probably should be. Maybe a bit less variation or just a single key would work a bit better for people who use other keyboards layouts.
Other than those two things, the game does work and it's a nice interpretation of the theme, well done.
596m ! The game works very well, the graphism are super good, the sound design is super effective. The only critics I can make are these : the oxygen is a bit hard to keep track of, I couldn't really see how fast it went away, the tentacled-shark forgets a bit too fast (just doing 25m or so, stopping for 10s, then going again is enough to be safe it seems) and when I died the heartbeat wasn't even that strong so it might be because it was behind me, but I stood there a bit confused as to why I died. I were one or two runs away from just booking it as I was nearly out of oxygen anyway, but still.
Overall, very impressive game !
How in the world did you do this in 48h ? o_O It's insane. GG. The game is a bit too hard and the graphics are a bit too "all over the place", but it looks and feels like a NES game. Probably one of the best entries for this LD. It's a shame there's no music, that's the only thing missing !
Good game. I would have liked a bit more vertical capacities and the fishes become hard to see when the game becomes darker (and I got stuck between 100 and 200 light thingys, so it was dark nearly all game for me). Overall, well done.
Really cool game ! The items are a bit too rare for my taste, and the saw's noise is not really nice in particular once you're dead (and it's a shame because the music is super nice !). I played with the standalone version but my score didn't get put into the leaderboard, might be because of something on my end I don't know, here's the screenshot of it : https://nsa40.casimages.com/img/2021/04/26/210426040410274331.png
@peace-of-cake-games : There is a strategy to go farther down I think : aim for empty spaces. It's faster to fall in an empty space than it is to dig the blocks below you, so it seemed to be the good strategy. No clue how far you could go though.
Very interesting concept and top-notch graphism. Very good game.
Little bug during the ending, if you keep the turret on long enough, the blue bar start expanding to the left of the cart (finding out what I was supposed to do took me a bit of time ^^).
Digging is a bit slow, but outside of that, it works. The music, I feel like I've heard something similar elsewhere ? Might be me, I don't know.
Good concept. The movement is a bit slow and the levels a bit too big. The sound is a bit low but that might be based on my taste. Overall, this works, and the angry fish are really cute.œ
Amazing game. The graphics are super good. As someone else said, the sword animation could be a bit faster, and there are a bit too many health potion (but as it's a jam game, that's probably a good thing). I found it really weird that the roll can't go forward, but then again, it's a crab, it makes sense. It's a bit sad that the level transition is as it is, just a tiny animation of the crab jumping down would have added a lot I think. I don't really understand how charging the attack work, why would you hold the button instead of just hitting it when you want to attack, but that might be a unused or not completely implemented feature.
Overall, super good game and really, those graphics are insanely pretty o_o.
Got the same bug of spawning inside a rock on level 5, 9 and 11, decided to stop there, but the game is super good. That's a very neet way to go with the theme, the mechanics work great, the sound design is very good, really cool game. The only thing that I would change is add the possibility to take away the character, it's not necessary most of the time (and playing with the character, trying to nudge the nugget is a plus) but when the nugget gets into a tiny hole and the character has to be on top of it to reach it it can get a bit annoying.
The controls are perfect, the 5 different patterns work well together, some combination are super fun to dodge, the sound effect works very well, really, a super cool game.
The only negative thing is the window size, which is really small. Outside of that, it's just super cool. I died at phase 19. Really fun little game !
Really cool game ! Solved the last level via brut-force (trying every option until one works) cause I couldn't figure out the actual answer, but yeah, was really fun ! I love the design of the enemies, really simple but works really well =)
Seeing it, I expected it to be the kind of game where for some reason you find a pin under a blanket that lets you open a panel that controls a projector that, when moved, gives the perfect lighting to get a code shown in a shadow. But no, it was much simpler (and therefore more fun) than that ! My hairs thank you and so do I for these fun few minutes trying to understand the logic =).
Negatives : The icons being black is kinda weird, the text is too tiny on pc and the beginning of the game is pretty slow. The obvious first goal (a building that would give you more action point) is missing. Also, I don't understand what the rifts do, I let two accumulate at first and it had zero consequence on the game.
Positive : Super cool concept, interesting take on the theme (didn't see any other game doing this) and a very cool game. Was pretty annoyed when I reached the end, I wanted more ! Very well done !
Nice game. Couldn't figure out that the items in the chest were movement and not things to add to the bar without reading it and couldn't pass the third stage (the character just doesn't jump high enough, and sometime just touching the large wooden box kills him for no reason), but really cool concept.
(also... dongeon ? Is that a play on words that I'm not getting or isn't it supposed to be "donjon" ?)
Nicely done ! I got ending 4/6. If you don't mind, I have a question, am curious : every single time I could, I picked "maths", cause I like maths... does it do anything ?
Good game ! The jump is a bit too tiny and the camera is a bit buggy when you hit the ceiling but outside of that, very cool game !
Very cool concept ! Very well done, the only thing that I'll change is the fact that the player keeps moving when you're trying to melt berries, this gets me killed every single time and is very frustrating. Outside of that, very cool game !
One more review for you before you're out of time ! Graphics are good, the time travel thing works, physics are a bit weird, but overall, well done. There's just two big negatives :
1 - I think when it comes to this kind of games, a button to go back is a necessity. What I mean is : I've waited a bit, taken a slab, moved it up, now I'm done, I would like to go back in time to jump on it and not have to wait for the 30s timer to end
2 - I don't really understand what you're supposed to do. Was hitting the power button the ending ? If yes, I did it, but It felt like there might be more and if it is, I missed it, cause I had no clue what to do.
Really cool music, graphics and concept. Colour-shmup have been done before (Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun...), I don't remember one where you didn't have control over your own colour : this control is at the heart of strategy in both of those, and its something I missed in your game, being able to cycle with left and right click would have helped a lot. Also, tan / white wasn't a good idea, three colours was good enough in itself.
Outside of those two, it's an insanely good entry. GG !
Super good concept, music is awesome... but that's a huge difficulty spike (pun intended) ! Level 1 and 2 are easy and suddenly level 3 with the spikes is pretty hard to me, I couldn't clear it. Other than that, super good game.
Very good puzzle game, and procedurally generated ? Waow, very impressive !
Game ran fine on my computer (well, avast went paranoid like with every other ld entry, but outside of that, no issue launching the game). Only problem was : the "loop remaining :" is too far right, the number ends up below the play / stop button and is unreadable. Outside of that, game is good, the way the player rotates is a little weird, but it works very well. Cool interpretation of the theme. I liked it.
Super cool graphism (the death / loading screen is fantastic), mood and sound. Gameplay wise, a map would have helped, also a checkpoint once getting to the boss, and also I didn't understand how to damage the boss, I shot him a lot but nothing happen.
A little thing : there's a missing collider if you go right than up, the right wall isn't solid so you can go through it and out of bound, it doesn't do anything as you can't enter anything from it but it's a little weird.
Interesting game. I don't think the notes shooting you adds a lot, and the background music breaks the "create your own song" aspect of this game, but the concept does work. Based on your comment above : hope you'll be okay, and if your mind really wasn't into this, you can really be proud of the result.
Good take on the theme, very well done, the graphism are super cool, the bullets killing each other is not something I would have thought about even though it makes a lot of sense. Sadly it ended up with me having a path that attacks everywhere the boss could spawn and therefore "actual me" just staying in a corner waiting, but I don't really see how you could have solved that anyway (outside of maybe letting the boss kill the clones ?), so it's more of an issue with the concept that a particular issue of your game.
One of the best game of this LD. The music is super cool, the graphism are really great, the gameplay works super well. Loved it. The only things that I'll change would be making the camera go down faster and making the falling platform stay a bit longer, but other than that, I loved it. Also, the ending was very unexpected (to me she looked like a rocket so I thought "ah ! Classic Spyro-style boss, I'll go around and fire rockets at him"), which confused me for a bit, but it was really funny.
Everybody else commented on the graphics so I won't repeat, just one thing : my fat fingers and lack of skills might be the cause of it, but I found the game very frustrating. I don't like the fact that the plane keeps on turning in the direction you've inputed even once you've let go, it seems counter-intuitive to me, it makes sense but in a game I wouldn't except this.
It's the kind of game I'll play while listening a podcast or music, I like it a lot. If I had to find negative things, it'll be that the train could be slightly faster and the people slightly less flat, but I'm nitpicking. Great game.
Do you just sleep until death or is there more that I've missed ? Also, on screenshots you have a happiness number, but in-game it's just "???", so there's probably something I'm missing but I don't know what...
The textures on the walls and the 3D model of the computer are super good, I love them. I spent a bit of time just looking at the wall from very close I'm a fan of this texture.
Does the { not do anything ? I got stuck trying it on every character until I randomly clicked the computer... outside of that, these of true r/programmerhumour memes. Concept is very cool.
This game is cool, the one big issue it has is the standard pitfall of "passively upgrading stuff" kind of game : just before the start of round 8, I had everything maxed and therefore the last few rounds were just watching the game playing itself and clicking on a button once in a while, which I personally don't find very fun. Outside of that, I don't really understand how rounds work, is the blue car the only one that actually completes laps ? Do they all count and therefore with 2 cars do they each have to do half of the amount of laps required ? Is there just a timer in the background ? That's the thing that quite confused me. Outside of that, I wasn't sold on the sound with only one car, but with 3, the game sounds super good and the graphisms are great. Good job !
Like others have said : great game, looks like a finished game, really amazing work. The only thing I'll change is the respawn noise : I'm awful at physics game and therefore had to respawn a lot and it gets annoying quit quickly. I couldn't pass the one with the wall, I tried different strategy but never found how you're supposed to do it, the noise when hitting the wall is very satisfying and the overall sound design is very good, it's just the respawn sound that annoyed me.
Super interesting concept and very well done. A timer would have added a win con as it seems that once you've reached the full song there's nothing to do outside of just lasting as long as possible. Very interesting to have gone with a musical loop as the interpretation of the theme !
Really fun game ! The door at the beginning stay closed for too long, that's the only negative thing about it. Well done.
Graphism are insanely cute, I love this main character in particular, he's so cute ! Gameplay wise, it's bit slow and as other have said, indicators would have helped. There's just one big critic I'll make : when you launch the game, you're given 4min, I jumped in a snake loop of the wrong colour and died, spawned back, 3min, couldn't kill them all in time, 2min ? If all of the previously killed snakes stayed dead, it might be an interesting mechanic, but the counter goes back to zero and I found new ones that weren't there the previous run through so I don't really understand the point of having less and less time, in particular with the world being that big and the colour mechanic requiring to find both enemies and fruits of the same colour. On the same kind of things : I killed 10 of them, went back to the portal expecting a "partial victory" kind of screen, but the game just tells the player that he's not done, which, when you have 10s left and no clue how many enemy you're missing or where they are is quite frustrating.
Overall, this a gem, the kind of games where I find myself thinking "I wanna see a V2 with more time spent on it". Great job.
I love the concept ! Really well done, very fun to play. I beat the game in 12 attempts after discovering the hidden power of holding down the space key which, with a fully upgraded ship, shred through the enemy waves, it was a very fun play trough, I love it =).
There's one thing that I don't quite understand : there's stats that go up, generation after generation, I went up to something like 8/8/9, let a guy get old, next one was a 1/1/9, this seems a bit too punitive, but even then, I didn't really notice a difference between him and the previous guy. I got an ending while reading the "how to play", no clue what I did or didn't do, but playing normally I couldn't reach an ending... overall, the graphism are insane, the sounds are very cool, the gameplay is fine (rhythm games are always fun !) and it fits the theme perfectly. Great game.
315s and a score of 333 was my best ! Really cool game. As others have said, the mine mechanic is... weird ? I think it could be better if either the bombs could be triggered by the player (kind of doing a bomberman-style game) and/or if the corrosion spread into a pattern, which would mean that you could think about strategies to isolate part of it and let it die by itself for example (just an idea). Also, getting stuck on spawn and having to wait for randomness to deliver you isn't the best, but that also comes from the rest of the possible improvements. Too much randomness is too much.
But I have to say, running into a single block wide tunnel with my mine praying for no block to spawn in front of me to try to kerplode something back there and get some breathing room around spawn was super fun.
That's a lot of fun ! If I wanted to give tips, there's two things : it gets out of hands (to the point where you don't care about money) a little bit too fast and also... when you max stuff, this happens : https://youtu.be/MdxNfspBXcw and it's very cool for the eyes but not so cool for the ears !
There's a little thing that bothered me : the lack of death animation and instant restart of the music loop makes for a somewhat confusing death, and also controls and camera but others have talked about that. Outside of these, good little game ^^.
This hits the feels a little too close to home... really well done. The walk animation in particular is amazing.
I don't know if it's just my brain but the controls were quite confusing, for some reason for me it's counter-intuitive to go down-left. Outside of that, good game !
That music. Outside of it starting back every time you change level, it's just perfection.
Great game. Same as Barney, the only thing I'll say is : the card RNG is unoptimal. I managed to get a lucky roll and play until I got empty cards, I had a lot of prosperity generation (ended the game with 116) but not a single card generating bread without itself consuming bread : I just out-prospered the penality, which doesn't really make sense. Outside of that : it's a great game, I would pretty much like to play a board-game like that with more events, more cards and more everything ! Love the concept.
I'm so jalous of your little sprites, they look amazing ! Gameplay wise, the farmer is a little slow but outside of that, it's a great little game, would have liked to play more level =).
LD50 — Delay the inevitable (1)
The Final Day by Very Bad Bunny Studio 2022-04-05T21:08:37Z ♥ 1
I watched Nebiros play this on his stream and couldn't stop myself : your game is super cool. Sadly it becomes a bit repetitive quite fast, but that's an LD game after all. I started with 10 potions, got lucky enough to only need half of them and grind'd my way to level 24 or something like that. With over 240 defence the boss couldn't hit me, so it was just a question of time before he died.
Overall, while it's very fun, the game feels like it has a weird scaling (again, not something I'll expect anyway from an LD game ^^). I laughed a lot when a spider got me 10k gold while the next one gave me 0. Very well done, and the little dragon warrior is super cute !