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A jam submission

HypnoknightView game page

Hypnotize enemies to fight each other!
Submitted by Squabix — 1 hour, 33 minutes before the deadline
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Play hypnotizer

Hypnoknight's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#17633.4443.444
Creativity#18943.4443.444
Overall#21063.2223.222
Enjoyment#27412.7782.778

Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
Instead of fighting enemies, you hypnotize enemies to fight each other

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam

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Comments

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Good first attempt at a turn-based strategy game! Also really like hypnotizing mechanics in any game, so already went into this with a good impression.

Some small improvements that I think you can make, I noticed that even when hypnotizing an enemy, they'll still take their turn anyway afterwards. I think consuming their turn by hypnotizing them could add more strategic debt to your game. Also, some potential UI improvements include keeping buttons at generally the same place. For example, the fact that the okay button shifts sometimes when there is more text makes it harder for me as I keep having to move my mouse. In addition, I have misclicked heal so many times when I actually intended to click attack because attack is usually the first button.

Some larger improvements to consider if you intend to improve this game, or for future games, it is generally always better to keep mouse movement to a minimum to make things easier to navigate to. e.g. if you want to keep mouse clicking to selecting targets, tying the selection of actions to keyboard buttons instead (e.g. 1 to attack, 2 to do nothing) could make the gameplay more streamlined.

As for bigger gameplay changes, I understand that this is a game jam entry, so content-wise you would be very limited due to time, but having more unique enemies, with differently acting moves would make the whole hypnotizing mechanic much more enticing. The healing enemy is a good example of this, and others could include enemies with AOE effects, buffs, debuffs, etc. That way, the choice of who to hypnotize again adds more strategic debt. I also find the choice to do nothing a bit useless currently, I cannot think of any scenario where I would do nothing for the current state of the game. An interesting way to incorporate it if you really want to keep doing nothing, which honestly could be an interesting choice, could be e.g. a bomb enemy that explodes within a certain number of turns, and doing nothing restores more turns to when it will explode.

All in all, the fact that you got me thinking of so many potential things for your game definitely shows that you are onto something here with what you currently have, at least in my opinion.

Developer(+1)

That’s an amazing amount of feedback!

In my original idea, hypnotizing enemies DID take up their turn, but I forgot to implement it in the actual game :/ Oh well, I’ll write it down next time.

I totally agree with everything you said about the buttons (number keys, shifted positions, etc), as well as adding more unique enemies (though I wasn’t able to because most of my time was focused on figuring out how to make a turn based game on my own). 

Thank you so much!

Submitted(+1)

A fun idea and very juicy! Having to click every single time an action happened was very tedious and I would suggest using the spacebar for stuff like that. Also, the mouse moving the camera was a little dizzying at times. The premise is cool and has a lot of potential for expansion. I think with some other abilities and variety this game could be really great! Well done with this!

Developer

Thank you so much for all the feedback! I totally agree with you about all of the clicking and the spacebar idea. I probably also should have added a setting to disable mouse movement

Submitted(+1)

It was a great play, maybe you can work more on it to make it a small game, i think I could buy it.

Developer

Thank you so much 

Submitted(+1)

good twist on the turn-based formula!

I especially like the branches of decisions you have available when multiple types of enemies are present. If you have a tank, healer and brawler, you can use the brawler to kill the tank, but that means you need the brawler alive which means you take more damage, and also if you don't kill the healer first you get heals later but you might also delay the tank's death.

I will piggy back off the comment below and say that the way you interact with the controls could indeed be a bit easier on the mouse. Maybe the bit of the action log where the enemies do their stuff could be displayed sequentially without the need to click to jump to the next line/step. Also, the camera moving together with the mouse is an interesting bit of juice but it can be a bit dizzying at times

Good stuff for a firt attempt at turn-based combat though! I believe you should push this idea forward and see where it gets

Developer(+1)

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to give me so much amazing feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked it. It looks like a game I would pay money for if it was a bit longer and more complex.

I hate the non-stop mouse-clicking. Please, add keyboard controls !

Developer

Thank you for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

A fun game :) the music is really nice and i like the style. a unique idea too!

Developer

Thank you so much!

Submitted(+1)

Took me a second to figure it out but a neat game!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you! Enjoyed your stream, and the game you guys made :)

Submitted(+1)

Really like the game, great visuals and the combat system is very unique and funny. I like how you can hypnotize enemies and make them kill themselves, didn't expect that to work xD Great job and good luck in the jam!

Developer

Thank you so much for the amazing feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I Love The Graphics And The Game... It Is A Bit Slow But I Don't Mind. Good Job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you so much!

Submitted(+1)

Loved the graphic and the idea behind the game. My only criticism is for the fact that moving the mouse you move the scene, a fact that at first looked very cool, but after some minutes of play was a bit distracting. Except that, very good job guys!

Developer

Thank you so much for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Overall, this is a pretty good entry. I agree that the menus are a bit annoying to navigate. I also found that there wasn't too much strategy going on in the battles, making them just feel tedious; there was a little more in those with healers, but even they were mostly effortless to complete. This is a really good concept, though, and I think if you expanded on it a bit more you could make a great game out of it!

Developer

Thank you so much :)

(+1)

Well made for the time given. A nice improvement would be to change mouse menuing during combat to something more fluid and faster using the arrow keys

Developer

Thank you, I greatly appreciate the feedback.

Well made for the time given. A nice improvement would be to change mouse menuing during combat to something more fluid and faster using the arrow keys

Submitted(+1)

the idea is good but the game is kinda boring and tedious

Developer

Sorry you didn’t enjoy it, but thank you for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Really nice game with great graphics and a interesting take on the theme.
Having to Ok all of the actions can be a bit tedious in the later fights though.

Developer

Thank you! I'll make sure to change that after the rating period