5 Stars in everything!
It's safe to say this is my favorite game out of all games I tried this game jam.
For a first project, it's especially great. The mechanics, the art, the music wow!
But the most important part is the balancing! It was very challenging, but always felt possible! I enjoyed it and finished the night level.
I would suggest continuing this game for a release.
For improvement I got a few main points:
1. The moment between starting the game and the horde coming in is awkward, the story is still shown on the screen and the orcs start coming in.
2. The animation for placing a weapon is not clear, half of the time I thought I couldn't place a weapon because of the color.
3. Maybe have an option to replace or upgrade the current weapons? Or it's part of the challenge when this is not possible?
Cheers
Viewing post in Crystal Defender jam comments
Thank you for your feedback!
- I'm quite new to game development overall, and this was my first time working with user interfaces. Since the initial release (and even before), I've been actively trying to fix UI-related bugs. I thought I had addressed everything, but apparently, I haven't. I'll look into that and release a patch as soon as possible. 😊
- I'm not entirely sure I understand what you meant here.
- This was actually a deliberate design decision. By making both gold and tower placement decisions more significant, players are encouraged to carefully consider their choices before placing a tower.
I guess that's what I mean, to me personally it felt like the weapon was unavailable.
It could be a matter of taste, I think even changing the shade of green could help.
If I'm not looking directly at the selected weapon but rather at the screen it's really hard to differentiate the selected weapon from the other unavailable ones.
I think using a lighter color and doing something like highlighting the selected weapon with a perimeter like the orcs have around them is a good idea.