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Curse of Mana.'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation (visuals) | #47 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Overall | #62 | 2.976 | 2.976 |
| Cursed (theme) | #71 | 2.643 | 2.643 |
| Concept (gameplay) | #75 | 2.786 | 2.786 |
Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
+ Nice idea
+ Good use of assets
+ Large world to explore
- Combat is a bit difficult
- Sometimes you don't pick up mana when you walk over it
- Some sounds and music would be nice
- There needs to be some feedback when you hit an enemy, or the enemy hits you
I like it, nice job! Just try to adjust the attack, sometimes I couldn't hit the moving enemies, even I was pretty close from them.
First of all, there are many things I liked, which are:
the overall idea of restoring color as you collect potions
the ai, which is simple but doesn't look trivial
the map is quite varied and fun to explore
the fact that living beings only drop potions that you are missing (very neat).
But still, I played your game to the end because I felt like it needed a wise rating. If I was playing it for fun, I would have stopped. I think this is because your game has short-term goals (killing enemies, chopping trees etc.) and long term goals (collecting all potions). The first ones can get repetitive quickly, while the latter can feel distant and not engaging. So I think you should add some mid-term goals, something like getting to a destination for any reason (and collecting potions in the meantime) or collecting a small amount of potions to get a reward like a more powerful sword.
Something like this would give more meaning to the short-term goals and make the long-term one feel less daunting and more like "I will get there while doing these other tasks".
So I think it has a great potential and you should definetely work more on it, it could be really good.
I see in other comments that it was deeper than it looked to me, like you could avoid killing humans and chopping trees to have a better karma. You should make it clearer, because it's an interesting concept and it's a shame that it can easily pass by and be ignored
I really love all critical feedback and reviews! its really helped guide me in what to think about during dev processes for jams and overall what is fun for the player. Somehow this project ended up being super fun and simple enough for me to expand on that I think I might.
seeing other stuff that people created in the short amount of time also gives me a better idea what to consolidate. one of the things I thought about after I finished was "my world was way to big, and the short term goals are few and far behind that the player could get bored." and this was something I really did not consider when coming up with the idea for the jam. I think if i would have broken the game down into small zones where you had to collect to continue to a particular zone, it would make that short term goal of killing and harvesting a bit more fun. then of course progressively building up amour, weapons act or whatever I decide to expand on.
thanks again for playing and for the feedback!
Just wanted to say this is really well thought out feedback and mirrored things I felt but didn't know I thought. Thank you!
I enjoyed the ambiance of the game, visuals, sounds and music. I got a bunch of different potions, but I felt like I lacked a clear objective besides the slaughter of many monsters to accumulate said potions. I would have liked more direction or tasks to give some reason for my mayhem. Even if it was arbitrary like 'collect 10 red potions', it would help me seek out how I get red potions and teach me about the game. The controls were decent, I found it sometimes difficult to pick up potions and would have liked them to be a little 'tighter'? Like more responsive when I expected them to be responsive.
All in all, great work though I didn't see any bugs and it was fun killing my way through legions of these strange creatures.
thanks for the feedback!
Yeah I could have explained that part better. and I wasn't sure how to do it without spoilers. If you kill the villagers early you will get the "Gold Mana" but doing so your "killing your friends". you can find yellow potions within the 4 dungeons to avoid killing your friends completely.
Green potions come from trees as you discovered. but by chopping the trees down your adding to "trees killed" so instead you can collect "patch's of grass" which is one of the secret harvestable items. so by harvesting grass and the life .
once you have collected green and gold mana, the enemies will then start drooping blue and red mana. Additionally destroying the tents and houses will gain you red mana without any negative effects.
I think I'm going to come back to this one and maybe develop the story more.
I wanted to have "Mother of Mana" thanking you for restoring the land of mana, then explaining what sacrifices you made to restore the land. i want the player to first play going through and destroying everything without merest, then come to the end and make them go back and do it again with a better outcome.
Definitely something I could play around with multiple endings with.
Ah, that's really cool! Haha I didn't realize there were villagers, I was just killing everything! I really like the idea of multiple endings, and the endings telling you part of the story and hinting at other ways to play or check out.
I really love the shadows and look of this game! The controls are a bit difficult though.