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I made a silly little gameplay critique video on Barn Battles!

Very nice little game jam roguelite, very polished and juicy. I love the transitions, how the world forms with the overshooting bounce tweening at a random delay for each isometric tile, all the particles, etc. Very fleshed-out and fully featured, with no discernible bugs for me; awesome work!

The gameplay was a little difficult to understand and had several strange quirks that felt random, inconsistent, and punishing. After extensive play and testing, I figured out that the player round ends whenever any player character runs out of actions (I think), leaving my other characters unable to act even though they had action points left, which was really confusing and felt really bad. It was very difficult to predict the enemy behavior; I didn't know why some moved on some turns but not on other turns or the logic to it. Sometimes they'd move closer and attack, other times they'd move closer and not attack, and I was never sure of my recourse. Missing attacks as the enemies dodged felt really bad and very frustrating, since I didn't have much of any information as to why that was the case, or strategic options to avoid this without cover or ranged attacks, etc. It felt like just a test of luck, walking up to the enemies and slapping each other until one of us died. I would look to games like Firaxis's XCOM, Fire EmblemMario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, and Into The Breach for good examples for how to fix these problems.

There are also many quality-of-life changes I'd really love to see, like one of my units being selected by default when the player turn starts, etc.

Overall, this game is really excellent. For a 7 day roguelite, this is top-tier. Wonderful work, Tim, you should be very proud!

(+1)

Dude thank you so much for playing!! And thank you for the video and feedback!!

So the game was designed to only move one piece at a time like chess...That's why the enemy only moved once, you move 1 character than they do. 

 The whole game you were exploiting a bug that allowed you to use action points from more than one character if you didn't right click to end turn 😂😂


BUTTTT we were just discussing on discord that we should probably just change it to allow you to use all characters action points and then have all the enemies do the same. It's more tactical that way.

Also the game doesn't do a good job of letting you know that each unit has a unique movement pattern and combat pattern...and you can click on them to see it...so the duck for example you were confused why he didn't attack...it was because he could only attack from the sides.

This video was TREMENDOUSLY HELPFUL!!! Thank you for making it! It's super clear to me now what's confusing and what's intuitive. Really appreciate you making it.