itch.io

Hi, thanks for playing. I played and commented your game. Please check.

Hi, thanks for playing the game and reading the text tutorial. And thanks for pointing out which part of the tutorial was unclear. I will make some change to it.

About 90% of the art was drawn by our artist and 10% was drawn by me mimicking the art style lol.

We have already been aware of the dragging bug during the jam, but due to priority issues, our team decided not to rewrite the whole drag & drop, so some weird problem still happens. I kinda fixed it on my end, but as per the rule of the jam, unfortunately I can’t update the build since it is not a game-breaking issue.

Hi, congrats you won this time, but remember: The house always wins. We joined many jams on itch throughout the years, and every time people just don’t bother to spend 1 minute or 2 to read. I must admit that an in-game tutorial is needed for a game, but just not in the scope of a game jam. Our team’s primary purpose of joining a jam is to do a POC of a concept that may have potential for us to further develop, so having a well-polished game is not our main goal, sorry fellow jammers.

Being a fast-paced game is not our original intention, tho (as in the jam’s title, “Calm”). Considering people won’t play the game for too long, we kinda compressed the time of a playthrough.

Hi, thanks for playing, and I am glad you enjoyed the game.

We agree with the rest of the comments as well, but that’s not the priority - the priority was, obviously, to make the game more complete in terms of playability. Overscoping has always been our team’s spirit. Why make a tutorial if the game is not even playable? In-game tutorials are for the weak and unambitious teams /jk.

We are aware of the dragging bug; I was irritated by the bug as well. It seems like I really need to blame the one who wrote it.

Other jammers have already stated some good points that should work. For a more “utilitarian” approach to receive more high-quality feedback, when you are browsing the submitted games, you should look into the review section and see:

1. Any reviewer that provides in-depth feedback on the game
2. Whether the developer replies to their reviewers with self-reflection
3. People that do both (You can click into their profiles and see their comment history)

If you play and give deep feedback to their games, these kinds of people will likely do the same to yours.

I finally have time to play through your game haha. Here are my opinions:

Presentation

Great aesthetics in the game - a consistent color palette, camera movement of the screen, and low-poly models with a minimalistic “stage” holding the city. Also having fish swimming in the sea and wind blowing - all contribute to an outstanding level of presentation despite the fact that it is just a 7-day game jam.

The BGM also provides a “dangerous ocean” vibe and creates an immersive and intense atmosphere for the player.

UX

Generally speaking, I think the UX is well done despite some of the other players thinking it is not. IMO it is quite intuitive. After reading the help section, I am able to quickly memorize the shortcuts to switch to different modes, select buildings, and understand what I need to do.

I like the hovering effects of the buildings. It was fun to just hover around.

I also like the “damage indicator” on a grid when a hazard event hit that grid; the warning sign shows up when the health of the building is below the threshold. These visual aids really help guide players in identifying which grid they need to repair.

Adding Shift/Ctrl + left click key combinations for survivor assignments so that players can add/remove 5/10 survivors at a time. Every time I build a building I have to quickly click 10-20 times to reassign survivors but I have already missed 1-2 ticks of production which is quite vital in your game.

Locking the survivor assignment buttons during the hazard event would be a good improvement. Don’t know whether it is intentional: when I was crazily clicking on the building to repair, I always accidentally clicked on the assignment buttons.

Contents

As a game jam game, the content is fairly enough for the core game loop. It has a relatively balanced economy overall.

As other people have mentioned, the survivor slot of the town hall is a trap. I thought it will speed up the recruiting process of new survivors. Maybe it is your initial thoughts on the functionality of the town hall? If not, I think it would be a good idea to gain new survivors based on the survivor assignment of the town hall, instead of gaining it in a fixed time interval.

Progression

I understand the game is meant to be hard. But IMO it is too hard for a game jam game, in which most of the jammers are too busy to play your game multiple times. I bet there are 1/4 of the players are patient enough to reach the maelstrom (i.e. Day 10 00:00).

I myself can’t get through the maelstrom since I am not able to level up my town hall to lv. 3. I think I did quite ok in terms of utilizing space and resources:

• Stage 1 : 3 logging + 3 mines + 1 storage
• Stage 2 : (Expansion 1) 5 logging + 3 mines + 1 storage
• Stage 3 : (Expansion 1, Town lv2) 5 logging (2 lv2) + 5 mines (1 lv2) + 2 tungs + 2 storage
• Stage 4: (Expansion 1, Town lv2) 5 logging (4 lv2, 1 lv3) + 5 mines (5 lv2) + 2 tungs + 2 storage (1 lv2)
• Stage 5: Almost the same as stage 4, with more lv3s and stocked resources.

Then I got rekted by the maelstrom within a few seconds and all my stocked resources turn to negative numbers somehow. I can’t repair my town hall or do anything besides watching my city being torn apart. I know it is intentional because players are expected to upgrade the town hall to lv3 and build the anti-shock buildings. I am just venting haha. Don’t know whether I am in the right direction for beating the game.

I built more logging than mines since the town hall requires more wood than stones to upgrade.

I think the difference between town hall lv1 and lv2 is too huge. Leveling the resource building need a very small amount of tung but it enhances productivity a lot, but there is no way to get any tung besides waiting for sufficient resources to level up the town hall.

I think the tips you have mentioned on the game page would not be applicable to most of the players (like me) because I just can’t find a way to upgrade my town hall fast enough. Also expanding the border to max seems a bit pointless for me since I don’t have that many survivors and resources to utilize in new spaces.

RNG

I found that the sea rise event is the easiest to deal with since it involves the least RNG. I just need to repair all buildings, as for other events, sometimes it will somehow hit the same building multiple times within a small interval, so the building will be destroyed and I lost all the survivors inside it.

Currently, the replayability of the game is relatively low since the hazard events seem to be the only random element.

Conclusion

It is the most all-rounded impressive game I have played in a game jam. And it is made by 2 people only! What a talented team! Hope to see your team again in the next jams!

P.S. This game reminds me of my cursed Frostpunk playthrough in which I didn’t upgrade any of my houses but ended up overcoming the great blizzard, and won the game with most of my citizens becoming disabled lol.

Hi, thank you for providing in-depth feedback, I really appreciate it. A non-English native speaker like me would spend more time writing feedback, than actually playing the game, lol.

As the player progresses, they gain a surplus of resources, making it too easy to spam buildings and win. I would recommend adding more enemy types and reducing the number of resources gained to make the game more challenging.

It is definitely true that the game becomes way too easy after the first 1 minute. I suck at maths so I just can’t figure out how to balance the productivity and the enemy strength as the game progresses. Plus, game jams never have enough time for us to do a lot of testing and adjustment. But like my team and your team who still doing strategy games for the sake of challenge and diversity will understand, a game jam is an event to jump out of the comfort zone :).

As of now, to produce 1 unit of resource, the formula was just 2 seconds×0.9ⁿ, where n is the sum of the level of the resource buildings.(e.g. 1 farm will speed up the production to 1.8s, 2 farms will be 1.62s).

Maybe we should further slow down the initial speed production speed and reconsider the whole resource gaining formula.

Additionally, managing mines and farms can become tedious as the game progresses, so it might be helpful to give players the option to upgrade these structures instead of having to build new ones. Increasing the price of each building over time could also help balance the game.

Actually in case you didn’t notice, we provide leveling up options. Once your buildings are destroyed or you are defeated, they will become ruins. Then you can build things on top of the ruins to level up the buildings. On the other hand, we do agree that we should consider an alternative for players to level up buildings proactively instead of passively waiting them to be destroyed.

Increasing the price overtime would be a nice idea however we will need to think how to implement the inflation mechanism intuitively into the current gameplay. Essentially the players will need to kind of foresee or be informed when and how the game progression affect the price.

We have a hidden potential deck-building system where players could gain stronger cards at a certain point in time. Although there is a deck system, but the “deck-building” part is not implemented. Maybe it can become a good starting point to improve the current game play.

Finally, during the mid-to-late game, it can be challenging to keep track of where enemies are attacking. Adding a visual indicator would greatly enhance the player’s experience.

We haven’t think about the mid-late game yet tbh, but I think it is indeed a good suggestion as well.

Thanks again!

Hi, thanks for playing. FYI, there is a building deck that is composited of 10 cards. You can choose from the top 2 revealed cards from the top of the deck. When you build either one, the built one will go into the discard pile, and a new building card will be revealed in place of the built one. When the deck has run out of cards, the discard pile will be reshuffled into the deck.

And… the cost of each building is missing on the UI atm. That was the problem I guess.

Well, You are right. I totally get your point. The game should have more types of buildings…. if we have extra time. It is kinda sad that most of the people in a 2-7 days jam would rather make a complete but non-expandable game, than a “lack-of-content” but highly expandable game. Generally, I tell new jammers to be in-scope in a game jam. But my team doesn’t do that here lol.

Hi, thanks for playing. Actually, you have to pay for the buildings but we forgot to add the cost text alongside the building card. It is true that the balance is an issue at the moment, tho. What we focus on in a game jam is challenging myself to create a mechanic that is highly expendable in the future, therefore it was a pity that we did not focus on the balance.

Hi, thanks for playing. Would you mind elaborating more on your opinion about the theme, why it did not fit well / what are your suggestions?

Hi, thanks for trying our game. It's a pity that we can't provide enough guides inside the game. Now we are setting up the game page so feel free to raise questions and we will be adding them to the page description.

Hi, thanks for all these in-depth reviews. 

At first, we have the "step on the grass" sound triggered somewhere in the code, but when we are trying to add the sound effect of sigils (attack tiles) triggering at the last minute, I found that the(my) corresponding code logic didn't simply allow me to switch different cases :((

Regarding the DFD part, it doesn't exactly mean "Face Down". Initially, we are using the so-called "DFD" design to emphasize "interact with the environment": 

1. The bottom face activates the sigils (it's like the magnetic stripe on your credit card).
2. The face that faces the enemy "rolls" into the enemy as you move to the corresponding direction and will then become the bottom face.
3. (haven't implemented in the jam) The sigils can appear on the surface of stone walls, and the die face that touches it will trigger the effect with the face value (i.e. not the bottom face in this case).

You can see that (1) and (2) eventually utilize the bottom face, but (3) does not. We ended up calling it DFD because we only have (1) and (2) at the moment. What we can improve is to add more visual aid to preview each corresponding face after rolling.

Your feedback is very helpful, glad you enjoy playing our game!

Really appreciate the free UX consulting session, haha. That explains why most of those isometric games in the jam map top-right movement to W. I will definitely look into more grid-based isometric games :D

Hi, thanks for the comments. We agree that our UX is being not intuitive enough to let user know whether top left or top right is mapped onto the W key.

However, at this moment we believe that isometric is a better representation then others. Please have a read at our game page FAQ for the reason, in case you haven't read it.

You can also see a considerable amount of games in the jam also use isometric + WASD combo. What they are doing better then us is that they have an "isometric" picture of WASD printed on the UI, indicating the W direction. It helps a lot if one keep forgetting which side is W.

On the other hand, clicking on the ground may not work nicely, because it seems difficult for user to click on the exact grid as there are many things blocking the UI/Raycast. What are your suggestions on providing a user-friendly mouse control? (Like a huge transparent overlay of wasd button to click?)

Hi, thanks for the comments. You are right. We are thinking about how to improve the strategy element while preserving the randomness within the player's ability to control/maintain the number of different resources/enemies on the map.

Hi, thanks for the comments.  The reason why we stated that one can play causally is that the UX now is not so good, therefore not every average game jam enjoyer would spend time calculating the other side of the die face and foreseeing 10 steps after. Although it is a strategy game, we don't want players to get too overwhelmed with different things that could be improved.

One of the lessons we learned this time is like what you have mentioned - make easier levels or maps to let the players get familiar with the core mechanics first. Next time we would put this a higher priority.

As for the scope part, our primary goal of a game jam is not really about finishing all parts - it is about ideating good mechanics (and better within the scope). Sure we can make another Sokoban clone with a die rolling instead of the box, which will likely take us 1-2 hours to complete and polish into a 2A game level with the remaining time; But we don't do that here. Maybe objectively speaking it is too ambitious for 48 hours, but it is why we join the game jam :)

And it didn't cost money, It seemed can be used at anytime.

I understand that as we didn't have time for UX too, haha. I believe it will be better if there are some supplement instructions in the description in case someone run into trouble.

As for the Push issue, you can reproduce it after the game starts but you may want to wait for few turns to before reproducing it to feel the power of pushing.  Just click on the Push icon and then repeatedly click on the grid map, you can see enemies fading.

Very cool and underrated strategy game here. I played quite a lot of strategy games and I can really feel your base game mechanics are quite well-considered - players can somewhat control a group of enemies to crush them into themselves while avoiding them moving to the towers. 

Generally, the UX is OK, the direction of enemy movement can be foreseen through the tab key and players can know what will be the next face value after they press WASD. The only complaint is that the "buying structure" options don't seem clear to me because there is no feedback when I select a structure to buy, initially I don't know whether I need to press/drag the icon or some other gestures. But overall it is good. I suggest you add "You need to click on the building icon/desc and then click on the valid space on the board to build." to your game's page.

A minor bug: I can literally use "Push" infinitely with no cost and push enemies into oblivion.

Advertisement: Please try our game too, we have a turn-based strategy experience as well and would like you to give some comments about it :)

Hi, thanks for the comments, glad you like it!

Hi, thanks for the comments. You are right and it is a problem. If we had extra time, we would balance the spawning types of enemies to make sure the RNG doesn't always spawn enemies/friendly animals.

Hi, thanks for the comments. I agree with you that the randomness is a bit too much for a strategy game. We noticed that and did add a feature of showing the count-down timer for each portal to give time for players to prepare. Maybe we should also show the type of the spawning creature and also balance the amount of each spawn type(friendly/hostile) over time.

Hi, thanks for the comments. Glad to be the first game you played in the jam! Hope you enjoy it!

Hi,  thanks for the comments.  we appreciate you played and commented on our game more than once! Well done that you used the perfect way to restart our game!

Hi,  thanks for the comments.  we appreciate you played and commented on our game more than once! Well done that you used the perfect way to restart our game!

Hi, thanks for the comments. I think you can guess why we don't have the restart button, it's pretty simple - I put the tutorial panels and the game over panel just before building the game, to meet the deadline :) (You know at that time everyone is panicking and no one knows when will be the actual deadline)

Great graphics and well-polished game.

I think the control is ok, as one plays multiple times and will eventually get familiar with the control.
I haven't played higher difficulties because I can barely pass beginner haha.

What I would suggest is that you can increase the control difficulty gradually as the game difficulty increases. For example, at the beginner level, the spacecraft will automatically keep rotating and shooting toward the boss to let the player focus on dodging the attacks instead of multi-tasking. In the next level, the player needs to press to shoot, etc.

You can add multiple dice in a "God" level to increase the difficulty along with an activatable player skill with 1s iFrame and 10s cooldown, to avoid hitting by inevitable laser attacks.

I defeated the two animals who look weaker but did not manage to defeat the humanoid swordman because it is healing 1-6 each turn which makes me difficult to overpower them with 2/6 damage (with the knife). I then restarted the game to see other enemies as well, I think the difference between 1 die and 2 dice (used by the weapon) is quite huge. I understand the time issue so I am not really complaining about the balancing, haha.

I appreciate your design decision to not make the damage dealt directly related to the dice faces, which makes it much more balanced. I think a temporary shield instead of healing may work.

You can also generate weapons with different random bonuses and trigger conditions to enhance replayability.

The rng has a great influence on the game, making the player has lesser control (or nearly no) over the strategy. Maybe generating an "atypical" die (e.g. die with 3 faces of 1 and 3 faces of 6) would reinforce the strategy elements.

I saw your comment below, I agree that a typical measurement of a successful game jam project is to finish it, but I also believe one of the intentions of these jams is to ideate a good game idea. Don't be ashamed that you didn't finish all parts of the game - you now have a good mechanism thus you can always continue to work on it yourself and release a better version later.

Great art btw. Please try our game :)

The isometric view was the best angle I can think of, without any other visual aid. If you took a look at the FAQ you could understand why: You can calculate the value of the other side in isometric view.

I am not saying you are wrong. I completely understand your situation. I hope you on the other hand understand that visual aids and UX improvements are the lower priority in Game Jams. We should have added it if we have extra time!

Anyways, thanks for your suggestion, we will look into other similar games to find better ways to represent this. Have a nice day :)

Gameover haha

It has the potential to become a great puzzle game (e.g. has a limited step restriction and more effects)

Overall a nice minigame and I love the sound effects.  I think maybe you can add some ways to let the player get a certain level of control of the die face generation. 

I have a random thought: the player can press a key to roll the die after the die is cast into the air. So as long as the die is in the air, the player can keep rolling it (Up to x times).

Hi, thanks for your comment. I understand your point of the game is not very fast pace. Originally, we want to ensure the animation is fully played before entering the next state(e.g. player's turn -> enemy's turn, vice versa) therefore the input is disabled during the animations.

Hi, thanks for the comment. Initially, we are experimenting with QWAS as it may make more sense than WASD, but we decided to change it back to WASD because QWAS is a bit awkward to press on. Do you have other suggestions?

Yeah, schoolwork sucks... Anyways, if you are a beginner, I really suggest you to do non-physics game to learn fundermentals. For instance you can try to code Sokoban only with code logic and UI updates.

Why I say this is because many beginners are always watching tutorials and doing platformers in Unity. IMO, this is not good for practicing the actual code skill. You will need to study OOP and other coding stuff. They are fundermentals. When you are going to make games with larger scale (e.g. customized weapon, enemy variety), you need to deal with coding patterns.

Hi, thanks for playing. Actually, we worked on the game for about 3 full days (and not finished obviously) because the majority of us has to work full time. Do you have difficulties finishing your game in 7 days? What are they?

Hi, thanks for playing.

The game is supposed to be ended after the player beats the horseman. Tbh the game end scene has not been implemented in the game atm.