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A jam submission

VortexiaView game page

Turn-based tactical quest on a grid
Submitted by raghunandan — 13 hours, 49 seconds before the deadline
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Vortexia's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall#63.6673.667
Fun#64.0004.000
User Interface (UI/UX)#83.3333.333
Visuals(Graphics)#93.6673.667
Sound/Audio#113.3333.333

Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

DevLog Link
https://raghunandan.itch.io/vortexia/devlog/744542/vortexia-turn-based-tactics-survival-quest

Developer Feedback Questions
Feedback on the tutorial.
Difficulty of the game.
Feedback on the color scheme.
Any other thoughts or suggestions.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

OVERALL
this game is a lot of fun!! i had a great time playing it 

TUTORIAL
- i don't think the tutorial buttons showed for me on my first play through. i only saw the buttons at the top so i just clicked through it there. this made for a really weird experience haha (i'd recommend maybe removing the top buttons.)
- playing through the tutorial properly, the instructions themselves were clear and concise. the tutorial was well paced but could maybe combine a few steps together.

DIFFICULTY
- before i retried the tutorial (and played it properly), i tried playing 5-7 times and lost them all.
- after finishing the tutorial, i won three games easily.
- so i would say it's fine as is or could have more difficult option if you want to add another level.

COLOUR SCEME
- colours are nice but a bit more contrast would be appreciated (especially with text)
- i'd check some colour accessibility sites to make sure it's alright for colourblind people 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and glad you found it fun! Appreciate the detailed feedback.

I'll check for a potential bug with the tutorial (buttons not showing up first time). Good to know the tutorial did the job. I do plan to add difficulty levels. So far the plan was only to add easier levels, but now there's motivation to add more difficult ones too :)

Will work on the color scheme as well.

Thanks again for the thoughtful suggestions. Cheers!

Submitted(+1)

interesting strategy, similar to board games, easy to play without instructions, but difficult to win :). I didn't win 0/4 games.

The colors are nice, but I would add danger and bonus icons on top of the cards. Colored pictograms will give you the opportunity to quickly think through and create an adventure route.

The finish card was not immediately clear. The start and finish can be made in the same color and with explicit Start Finish inscriptions or icons.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

I will work on smoothing the difficulty by adding some levels. Will consider adding icons on the cards as well.

Agreed that the tower may not be very intuitive for finish. As for the Start, I have added a Home icon now. Will see if there are icons that fit these better.

Cheers!

Submitted(+1)

I like the tutorial. The difficulty is a bit too high though. I would make 2 suggestions:

Show what each item and map object does without having to hover over them. For example, if you'll lose all gold on a map cell, then there should be some kind of icon indicating that (for example, a bag of gold with a red X). This way I don't have to hover over everything.

Also, there should be an undo button (if there already is one, I don't think the tutorial covered it) 

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll work on a level system to smooth out the difficulty curve.

Regarding the icons, are you suggesting having this "crossed bag" etc. in addition to the current cell icon, or replace the current icon with something like this? Some cells would have multiple effects though, so that would have to be handled as well. I'll consider this for sure.

Cheers.

Submitted(+1)

Look at how Rebuild 2 does it: the icons show the amount of zombies, if there is food/survivors, and so on.

Developer

This is helpful. Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

This game has a nice concept. I like it.

Tutorial: The tutorial is good. It does a good job to introduce the different mechanics while still offering some gameplay already.

Difficulty: It is way to high! The first level after the tutorial is totally overwhelming. I would suggest that you have a level system with a slow increase of difficulty. Especially I would put much less items, curses, etc. in the first levels.

Graphics: Simple, but nice.

Other: It is not so easy to keep track of the 3 resources (time, energy, and life). I might be helpful to visualize the effect of equipment, consumables & curses on these values. Maybe also show the current effect of a move on these resources, taking into account the effect of all equipments & curses. Or even a "moves left" counter that shows the available moves when nothing changes.

Developer

Thanks for playing and appreciate the detailed response!

Level system makes sense. I'll work on that in future versions.

Agreed that it's difficult to keep track of resources. Not sure what you mean by visualizing the effect of equipment, etc. But yeah, showing some preview of what will happen if you move to a particular cell would be useful. In some cases there's randomness to it, e.g. you don't know whether you'll get energy or gold, etc. Moves left is also a good idea. Thanks again for the helpful suggestions.