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Barugi's itch.io pageJudge feedback
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- Fantastic pixel art style! Barui, the magic cannon, is adorable, and I really love the animations. The gameplay is intriguing, and the abilities are extremely interesting. One feature that would be great to add is a discard function—especially for higher-cost cards that might not be useful in a particular run. I found myself avoiding the 5-cost electric card for an entire run because the 1- and 3-cost cards felt more practical. Also, the ranged enemies were a bit tough to deal with. A slight rebalance—like making them shoot from 1 tile away instead of 2—could make encounters feel a bit more fair. While you mentioned that you had to use pre-existing music due to communication issues, I think the current soundtrack still fits the theme well, so it wasn’t a problem at all. The GDD is absolutely fantastic, though adding more images—especially GIFs showcasing mechanics—could enhance it further. Overall, this was an amazing game, and I’d love to see more levels and enemies in the future. Keep up the great work!
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11DxOIuf1n2aQ54icRxnihwYTozI9kAosFgjIELSx13w/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarise your game!
Barugi is a Turn-based strategy game. Magical cannon Barugi needs your help to defend city from horde of goblins and werewolves.
Meticulously choose your spells with unique abilities to find the best possible outcome. Fire, Ice, Lighting, Metal combine them all!
Endless waves are randomly generated for maximum replayability!
Please explain how your game fits the theme:
Player is depicted as a magical cannon.
You're used as weapon for exterminating the enemy army.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Original musical composer didn't managed to finish music on time for unknown reasons, and stays unresponsive last 12h before deadline. I used one of my previously created music, which isn't perfectly fitting to the game.
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Comments
This is a very nice defence game which I haven't seen yet in the jam! I had quite some fun with it, and managed to get a small highscore of 37 points, probably not too good but I'll take it. The turn-based mechanics are very nicely designed, and the graphics are very cute too. I especially like how each spell works differently with stuff like push-back, penetrating, etc. I would wish there existed some kind of damage over time spell as well, but hey it's already quite a lot with what we've got now. Well done!
I'd say the enemies spawned in very quickly, especially when you get over 20 points, which basically means you're never going to use spells that are not 1 mana, and that's a shame given that there is this system allowing you to choose the next spell. It's also a shame this game lacks a landing page, but I mean time is never enough in a jam so this is understandable.
Anyway, this is very well done! You should be proud of yourselves!
There is actually a Damage over time spell, the fire spell 3 actually does that, you can see the hearts of the Monster turn into a burning heart, indicating It'll lose 1 HP in the next turn
I had fun with this game. I enjoyed using all the different spells and abilities each turn but the enemies spawned too fast in later waves for me to deal with them. The ignoring of armor, and push-back effects were a nice touch. But those ranged units were too overpowered and need to be nerfed!! 🤣🤣I got hit by those the most. Overall, a sweet little game with fun re-playability. Impressive submission!!
Thank you! Game is actually balanced (mostly) but the problem is that I expect player to have my level of strategy knowledge. If it was full game the difficulty curve would be stretched so player wouldn't get overwhelmed.
Here's some tricks I use
Just incredible. Such a simple gameplay loop but so addictive. The overall presentation is also really nice! Love the graphics and sounds.
Wow this game is super clever! I really loved this gameplay loop. Especially trying to make sure I killed the enemies to get some spell energy back. The art and animations are awesome as well as all the SFX. The music went really well. As a whole it just kinda worked. I never felt like the costs of spells was too costly. I liked how all your abilities cycled so you didn't know what was coming next. The freeze spells pushing back like a block of ice and the fire spells burning were nice touches. As well as lightning ignoring armor. I think maybe a few spells like Lightning 5 and bullet 5 were a bit lackluster? But... eh. Oh well.
Super fun game!
Thank you for playing my game! I'm glad you liked it. I agree 5 bullet and especially lighting 5 were much weaker than fire and ice, this is something I figured it few days after deadline through playtesting,
Also cool insight in game's development, in start , there was no mechanics of enemies carrying mana crystal, but then I figured out there is no way for player to get stronger while enemies keep sending stronger and stronger units. Mana crystals was the quick solution, which worked super well in the end.
It is a really well made game that has a simple gameplay loop. The art and animations look really nice, and the concept of a magical cannon on a castle matches really well with the spells. The music was fine, but sound effects are really good. I only managed to make it to wave 60, I’m not too sure what the intended wave was to reach as sort of an average baseline.
There is no settings option for the music or sound effects, which would be great as the music was a little loud.
The spells are a little costly, as you only get 1 energy (I shall call it energy as I’m not sure what the name is) per round. With some spells costing 3 or 5, they can be quite hard to save up to with the amount of enemies that spawn.
I like that some enemies are randomized to give you 1 energy as sort of a way to deal with the energy problems, but I still feel there is a lack of it. Some 5 cost spells seem really bad for certain runs, like the 5 cost lightning’s attack only was in a diagonal pattern, so unless there are a number of enemies, especially those that give you back energy in that pattern, it seems quite useless.
I like the unique types of spells, lightning goes through armor, the bullet pierces, fire burns, ice pushes back and freezes. But currently, I feel fire seems way too strong, while the ice seems a little weak. In later waves when there are enemies on every lane, the ice doesn’t push them back all the way, and with the freeze only being 1 round long, and the enemies knowing to switch lanes, it makes it quite weak. Whereas the fire spells seem a little strong, especially with the burn and large area. The lightning spell seems to only be good for armored targets or sniping targets behind, but the bullet does better in every other scenario. So far, the spell I use the most to push waves, were fire for damage, bullet to get some cheap energy, lightning to clear armored targets and ice if I have no other option.
If possible, spells should also include a short tooltip or description when you hover over them, such as the damage, how long fire burns, ice freezes, that lightning goes through armor etc.
You mentioned endless waves that were randomly generated for maximum replayability, but I feel some sort of permanent upgrade so players can push further and further would be great. Manually created boss waves, at maybe every 10 waves, or 50 waves could also be really good.
I’m not sure if the game is going to be updated further, but currently it stands pretty well as a complete minigame. It does have potential for more content, and perhaps some balancing tweaks to deal with the hordes in later waves, but it is really great work for a 2 week jam!
Thank you for playing my game and for thoughtful review. I'm glad you liked the SFX because it wall really rushed.
First about endless replaybility, this was something I was hoping to achieve although gameplay can be repetative, although it doesn't become too quickly. If game gets updated, Inwould followed the pvz1 formula with campaign levels with deckbuilding options and mini game levels with special rules .
Because of such lack of variety (which is justifed due to game jam limit) usually there is one dominant strategy.
For overpriced spells, I must not to agree, the costs are perfectly balanced, but there are two flaws which make you believe so, first because I never teach player the complexity of strategy you need to do to battle effectively, practically people who played more games like chess would understand it better , the second reason is because lighting 5 and bullet 5 are too much weaker than fire 5 and ice 5 which are over powered. This makes game unfairly luck based, sometimes I get only strong spells and for that reason I reached wave 120+.
About tool tips, I tried to follow pvz1 formula, where you get thrown with random plants and zombies, and you need to figure out what are their powers. The better solution would be if I focused more on showing visually burning or breaking armor (I think ice is clear enough, npi).
My strategy is to never attack unless enemy are going to attack next round or they break formation which is good for effective damage dealing. Also often I sacrfice health for better attack efficiency. Ice1 is very useful against units like elite knights (9/4 one) as you can ignore them for many rounds just to delay them back and use aoe spells on them + others in back.
I'm a big fan of Barugi! The art is gorgeous, and the gameplay is fun and intuitive. Chaining together enemy kills with big, destructive spells felt great. I would love to see this developed into a larger project.
Really fun game! :-) When I got the hang of it, it really pulled me in! Also, I really like the pixel art style.
I really enjoy that kind of game! really well done, cool power and really fun game play!
Good job! Will play again!
It's a fun strategy game
Very cool aesthetics, specially the graphics, but really sets the jolly strategy mood. Game-play was also fun & varied enough. Can see how this could expanded a lot, excellent work on it! ^^
Cool pvz type game. I liked the spritework a lot and the different enemy and spell types. Good work!
Great game. Love all the different enemy types. The puzzle element of organizing the enemies into patterns is cleaver. My best was wave 35
This is cool! It's a fun single player pvzh clone I enjoyed seeing what the different cards did. Great work!
its a pretty fun game with a lot of strategy involved. I am unsure if it's rng based or not but sometimes your stuck with a cannon ability you don't want
Yea this is a fun one for sure, love it. The art style is fitting and the theme is on point too. I dont know if I was being as strategic as I couldve, but the spells were randomly given right? Overall was simple to get the hang of and I think I got pretty far too! Doing the field-wide ice was awesome :)
A really well thought-out game with some challenging tactical depth. Could not get past 28, unfortunately. ^^"
The art style is great and the core concept shines in its simplicity. The only gripe I have is that right click also confirms weapon placement. Got me into trouble a couple of times.
I got 34 on my first try! It's really fun! Gives me Plants vs Zombies mini game flashbacks. Would definitely like to see more of this! It also runs on mobile decently, you should make this an app!
That's a really cool concept! i really enjoyed playing it well done~ :3
You can't beat me >:)
Simple design, but still made me think! I had to plan for the future :). Wrangling the random abilities and killing enemies strategically to stretch my limited ammunition as far as possible was really satisfying and challenging. I managed to get a top score of 47.