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Dodge'Ems and Dragons's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of the Limitation | #18 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
| Concept | #29 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Overall | #31 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Presentation | #34 | 3.444 | 3.444 |
| Enjoyment | #37 | 2.889 | 2.889 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team members
Matthew Marsland, Jordan Reece
Software used
Godot 3, Procreate
Use of the limitation
Collecting gold is the goal of the game; however much like greed, picking up coins also harms you, and greed can lead you to take on dangerous risks.
Cookies eaten
22
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Comments
Cool concept with losing health to get money. I loved getting upgrades and getting faster and stronger. Wish it had more of an endgame but other than that I really enjoyed the game lol :p
Really fun concept! I like the risk/reward factor of the game. And how nice of the dragon to heal us sometimes too :)
Clever title and charming art style. I like the characters and shopkeeper designs. I wish there were some sounds to go along with the game!
At first I didn't realize the green fireballs were healing & yellow were coins. I went in blind without reading anything. I think if they were a little more obviously coins (coin flipping animation) & healing (health + signs or hearts? maybe particles trailing it?) to distinguish it from the red damage fireballs, then it would be extremely clear and need no instructions. Once I got that concept, the game became really interesting!
Although the health projectiles did make it easy at times, it also made for some interesting pathing through the threats. I could tank some fireballs to get a bunch of coins if I knew there were health in the way too that would keep me alive. Again, sounds were desired here to give some feedback as a player.
I enjoyed the upgrade shop. The speed and magic upgrades felt nice and noticeable. I didn't really have much need for the health. Even when I'd enter the dungeon with 5/50 HP, I could just bank on the healing spells getting me healed up before I risk gathering any gold. After a few rounds, I stopped playing since it didn't feel like there was much changing in the levels, and it was getting a bit easy at that point.
But I had a great time playing and getting my squad nice and upgraded! Nice job on the concept and art direction.
Super cute art and good concept. I love the roguelite elements and the tradeoff between health and money. There could be some balance tweaks (it is really, really hard to die which makes the pace of the game very slow) and I'm not 100% sure what the objective is (getting as far as possible? But it's not super clear which floor you're on--I know the exit cost goes up the further you're in but a clear floor indicator would be great for measuring progress). But all in all this is a great basis with a lot of potential to build on and makes excellent use of the limitation.
Hello! Yeah, a few people have brought up the easy difficulty (what comes of attempting a genre I have no prior proficiency playing I suppose! What seems lightly challenging to me ends up being a walk in the park for a wider audience.)
The game’s objective is definitely to ‘get as far as possible’; though I think it would have improved the game a lot to build on the story hook of ‘adventurers trying to pay off their debts’ mentioned in the description, and use reaching an amount of gold as a win state. As for dungeon floors, we were definitely hoping to make variations on the dragons and dungeons to imply they were different hoards, but there did not end up being art budget for that - so this is in fact the same dragon in the same dungeon every time, that you are just continuously robbing. What can I say; you’re playing some greedy folks!
Thanks a lot for giving it a go, and the kind words! (and I’m in much agreement about the lovely art, all credit to my teammate there!)
I actually did die the first time I played, and it does become challenging if you stay on a floor for a long time--I think what it is is that the exist cost is low so you can keep ducking out with a decent amount of profit and keep upgrading until you become nigh invincible. I LOVE your idea with the amount of gold as a win state, since that would really make you have to weigh the pros of staying in the cave to get more money while the difficulty also increases vs escaping, getting upgrades (but setting you back against the win state) and knowing that future failure is more costly since the exit cost increases with every attempt (I can't remember off the top of my head if this was already the case or not, but the starting difficulty gradually ramping up as you attempt more times would also highly incentivize risking staying on a floor a long time and somewhat counteract your upgrades too). I think you 100% have the right idea with that!! I actually liked robbing the same dragon in the same dungeon again and again, kinda explains why it gets harder to exit + any difficulty increase every time. The dragon is getting tired of your greedy butt :)
The art is great, but it is quite hard to dodge the dragon's fire. It also feels like it isn't really significant to dodge it since you have so much health. Other than those few things, I had fun!
Definitely could have used more playtesting (by someone better at the genre :P) and tuning time to make the fire the desired amount of scary yet dodgeable - t’was a fairly naive implementation; more of a ‘tennis ball purgatory’ than a ‘bullet hell’ I suppose! Glad you had fun anyway, and thanks for giving it a try!
This game's art is great! But a couple of thing I would do to this game is add SFX and Music, the menu's logo is super cool so I would make that your games cover. But overall the game is pretty cool.
Thanks for giving it a try! Making the title logo the cover was good advice, and all credit to my teammate for it (and all the excellent art). Still very much in a learning phase at the moment with respect to integrating music and sounds… but I could definitely do with my next game not being completely silent :P