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A jam submission

Barn Battles - Strategy Tactics RogueliteView game page

Battle Your Barnyard And Catch Everything You Can!
Submitted by TimRuswick (@timruswick) — 8 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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Barn Battles - Strategy Tactics Roguelite's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Completeness#962.8284.000
Aesthetics#1092.8284.000
Innovation#1142.1213.000
Scope#1172.1213.000
Fun#1202.1213.000
Overall#1262.3573.333
Roguelikeness#1322.1213.000

Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

  • Excellent game with an impressive amount of polish. I loved how pick up and play this game was, with the mechanics very obvious from the start but with lots of emergence in the possibility space. It only took me a couple of moments to work it out, and the subsequent game of strategy drew me in. There's shades of Into The Breach here, and working out the trade-offs of absorbing damage and acquiring extra units was really distinct but very satisfying. The clear communication of every units capability was key to this. My only issue was the rootin', tootin' soundtrack which drove me up the wall! But aside from that, an excellent game that provided instant fun.
  • I have mixed feelings after playing this game. Initially I was absolutely wowed with the music and graphics - the aesthetics are through the roof, and the game is a sight to behold. One downside for me during playing were the controls. On the first sight, it seems like mouse should be enough, but some things are impossible, or I haven't figured out a way to accomplish, with mouse alone. For example, if I have my unit selected, and then want to check stats on one of the opponents, it seems like I have to use Tab to cancel selection and then click an enemy. I kept right-clicking, Escaping, and what not for a while before I got used to this. Another downside was the enemy AI. It keeps making incomprehensible moves (and I'm not referring to the pieces that have special attack patterns; I'm referring to pigs standing next to me and deciding to skip the attack in favor of that duck at the end of the board making a useless move), and while it certainly makes the game easier, it still feels... wrong. So my overall judgement is that game needs some polish to match the aesthetics level it provides to the player. This is reflected in my rating of 3 for fun. The score of 3 for innovation is due to me having seen similar concepts before (even in this jam), although the barn twist on chess pieces is pretty novel and cool.

Successful or Incomplete?

Success

Did development of the game take place during the 7DRL Challenge week. (If not, please don't submit your game)
Yes

Is your game a roguelike or a roguelite? (If not, please don't submit your game)
Roguelite

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Comments

Submitted

Very fun game, I found myself wanting to catch all the different kinds of animals. The music is really catchy and everything fits together nicely. 

I made a silly little gameplay critique video on Barn Battles!

Very nice little game jam roguelite, very polished and juicy. I love the transitions, how the world forms with the overshooting bounce tweening at a random delay for each isometric tile, all the particles, etc. Very fleshed-out and fully featured, with no discernible bugs for me; awesome work!

The gameplay was a little difficult to understand and had several strange quirks that felt random, inconsistent, and punishing. After extensive play and testing, I figured out that the player round ends whenever any player character runs out of actions (I think), leaving my other characters unable to act even though they had action points left, which was really confusing and felt really bad. It was very difficult to predict the enemy behavior; I didn't know why some moved on some turns but not on other turns or the logic to it. Sometimes they'd move closer and attack, other times they'd move closer and not attack, and I was never sure of my recourse. Missing attacks as the enemies dodged felt really bad and very frustrating, since I didn't have much of any information as to why that was the case, or strategic options to avoid this without cover or ranged attacks, etc. It felt like just a test of luck, walking up to the enemies and slapping each other until one of us died. I would look to games like Firaxis's XCOM, Fire EmblemMario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and Into The Breach for good examples for how to fix these problems.

There are also many quality-of-life changes I'd really love to see, like one of my units being selected by default when the player turn starts, etc.

Overall, this game is really excellent. For a 7 day roguelite, this is top-tier. Wonderful work, Tim, you should be very proud!

Developer(+1)

Dude thank you so much for playing!! And thank you for the video and feedback!!

So the game was designed to only move one piece at a time like chess...That's why the enemy only moved once, you move 1 character than they do. 

 The whole game you were exploiting a bug that allowed you to use action points from more than one character if you didn't right click to end turn 😂😂


BUTTTT we were just discussing on discord that we should probably just change it to allow you to use all characters action points and then have all the enemies do the same. It's more tactical that way.

Also the game doesn't do a good job of letting you know that each unit has a unique movement pattern and combat pattern...and you can click on them to see it...so the duck for example you were confused why he didn't attack...it was because he could only attack from the sides.

This video was TREMENDOUSLY HELPFUL!!! Thank you for making it! It's super clear to me now what's confusing and what's intuitive. Really appreciate you making it.

(+1)

I enjoyed this one 

(+1)

I enjoyed this game and think its very funny.  (^_^)