Zynite by broken-matrix 2017-08-01T22:56:17Z
@broken-matrix first of all congratulations for what you were able to do in 48 hours. Don't get discouraged by the harsh critiques above :smile:
I think that turn based games in general are quite difficult to balance and get them feeling "right", and your choice of doing one in 48h was surely quite ambitious, especially using 3d graphics and trying to get an AI in.
I think that you did a good work for a 48 hours game, and the result is surely not the too bad for a ludum dare game.
A few notes: I tried downloading the **windows version**, and it seems to be one of your **previous ludum dare game**... (Recheck your links! :link:) I actually played a bit that game too, and I have overall a few comments that somehow apply to both submissions (old and new one :D): - For LD games take into account that people trying out the games won't spend more than 10 minutes / half an hour with it. Keep all the game mechanics simple! In this game, for example, there's too much to learn! - It's much better to use a bit of time for a graphic introduction/tutorial than the wall of text to read (give small bits of information on how things work along with at least some pictures if not a tutorial to show how it works - even some screenshots with descriptions are fine!). - keep UI to a minimum, and... - .. if you REALLY need UI (as in strategy/turn based games), then know that it's much more important than graphics. I noticed that you probably spent a bit of time on the 3d models and textures... which nobody up paid much attention to. The UI instead felt very rushed, with some bad alignment and bad usabilty. Try dedicate less time to graphics - e.g. plain green color for the grass would have worked the same way - a yellow cube with a triangle on top, call it "house" and it would have still been fine. - BUT instead you didn't want spend 5 minutes to make the green/red square at the top look nice - it covers a lot of screen, and looks very ugly - something as simple as a transparency from the top would have improved the feeling of it quite a lot, with very small effort!. - the tech tree is probably overkill for a LD game, remove it (or just make the "first time" cost of the buildings high if you need it for balancing) as it only complicates things. Focus on getting the gameplay right instead. (the structure selection menu would instead really need some :heart:) - Try to reserve 5-6 hours to do some polishing of the game!. All the "small things" and "minor imperfections" are actually very very important for the feeling that you get from a game. On my game I spent around 10 hours doing balancing, menus, tutorial etc. It makes a difference - If on the main menu you are only going to put "play game / exit" it's much better to IMHO save the time spent there on something else and avoid the menu entirely. - I felt quite lost at the beginning on the role that each structure plays, too.
On the gameplay side: - I liked the mechanics around the use of roads to make the units move (gives some unique constraints to the movement of units) - I didn't like the mechanics around the use of roads (:smile:) because (with enough resources) you can build them directly to the enemy base, and build directly the soldier inside the enemy base. The road also should probably be usable by both players and shouldn't count as "structure", to prevent people from building soldiers directly into the enemy base (in a single turn you can possibly build a road up until enemy base, create a few soldiers there and attack immediately! :O ).
**TL;DR**: The game feels a bit rushed, but if you could spend another day or two polishing the UI and rebalancing the roads IMHO it could actually be a very nice and enjoyable game. For next games do LESS features and more quality improvements!