I did not partake in the game jam, but still testing a bit! :)
Small review / Semi on-the-fly comments:
- I love the cute wizard, as seen on the thumbnail.
- One question: which tool did you use to create the game? :)
- I notice the keys are independent on the keyboard layout (I use an AZERTY keyboard). :) But why did you choose A and W (which are Q and Z for me), instead of two keys side by side?
- Since you say you did not put sounds because of lack of time, I guess you might not have had time for this either, but I think adding interpolation to the movement (ie showing the transitions smoothly) would had both to readability and visual pleasure.
- I like that each enemy has its own turn counter, it sounds like an original idea! I think most of the time, such turn-based games tend to use a global/synchronous counter.
- At first, I did not see the EXIT tile in the first level, because an enemy was covering it. X)
- Level 2.
- "Thank you so much! It's 'loosely' based on the Chip's Challenge games."
Aaaaah, I discovered Chip’s Challenge only very recently (through a French video game channel/school called Gamecodeur), and since said game was said to have icy tiles as a mechanic, yours made me think of it! Glad I managed to get that. :)
The concept is remotely (?) reminiscent of Fire ’n Ice, too; I never played it and know only little about the game, but it also uses tile-based creating and destroying of ice blocks. - I would advise writing the Space command on the game page, I realized I did not know which key and fortunately figured it out!
- Lost while testing a bit; oh, sent back to level 1! :o (This is fine here because it is reasonable time-wise to get back where you were, but I guess adding a ‘checkpoint’ at the beginning of each level would be a good idea otherwise.)
- Nice, you can apparently push LINES of enemies using gust! :) I have not tried seeing if that caused a bug near the border of the screen… Maybe you know!
- I wonder how the AI works! Is it totally random or not?
- Level 3; still not had to use ice and sun before!
- I like level 3, some planning ahead is necessary. :) Also, you have to use the sun spell; in particular, if you go through an icy line with EXIT, you just go through without winning!
- "It took me longer than I wanted to get the mechanics down, so I didn't get to make many actual puzzles."
I noticed I never really needed the ice spell (and never used it, actually!), which is certainly linked to this. I think level 2 demonstrates how the gust spell is useful, while level 3 demonstrates how the sun spell is. Another level based on the ice spell would have been great to show all the mechanics! I wonder if you can send the enemies into trouble by getting them upon spikes, by the way… - Nice small detail: clever to have differentiated the grass tiles using various shades of green (instead of displaying a mere outline grid)! :D I think you could have done the same for the ice. Both useful to see the tiles and visually pleasing.
Takeaway: the concept is great and totally fits the theme. Some details are a bit rough out of lack of time (non-interpolating movement and no sound), but all of this is non-vital and should be implementable easily. Also, this is clearly an extendable game, both in the number of levels and in its mechanics (more enemy types, more tile types, etc.)!
A good prototype basis for a puzzle game, nice work. :)