INFLATION KILLED MY DRAGON (Super cute concept and the room was sooo cute. Gameplay-wise, it was weirdly brutally difficult for me, but I lowkey love that disconnect between how cute it is and my dragon constantly being on the brink of death, especially in light of the theme, plus my reaction time is slow as molasses and I missed a ton of coin drops.)
fruitsdancer
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I LOVE this kind of hectic tower defense game, and the visuals are STUNNING. I don't know if my game bugged out or something, but as soon as I finally figured out how to play and actually buy minions, all of the enemies got stuck beyond the left side of the screen... which was a shame because if there's one thing I want to do in this game, it's see everything in its beautifully animated lighting engine pixelated glory! All this needs is some balance tweaks and fixing that bug and this game is perfect to me. Super impressive.
As I'm sure you already know, the actual gameplay was on the simple/easy side, but you absolutely NAILED it with the ambience and art and I LOVE the comic intro--so unique, well-executed, and super cool. In my opinion, the actual gameplay concept is there too (and suits the narrative wonderfully)--with a little more time to design and balance and a little extra juice, this would be absolutely perfect. I really loved it!
AMAZING concept and presentation. I wanted to play this with someone else since from the comments it seemed like the enemy AI was on the easy side, but multiplayer didn't seem to work (setting P2 to "Human" still resulted in them being controlled by a computer). P4 doesn't seem to work in general either (starting a 4-player game results in a 3-player game). But this was really fun and super polished, and the UX is FLAWLESS. Seriously impressive work. (Finally... I hate to be this person, but I believe it's "real estate"... just in case it wasn't intentional...!)
Dodge'Ems and Dragons jam comments · Replied to matthew-marmalade in Dodge'Ems and Dragons jam comments
I actually did die the first time I played, and it does become challenging if you stay on a floor for a long time--I think what it is is that the exist cost is low so you can keep ducking out with a decent amount of profit and keep upgrading until you become nigh invincible. I LOVE your idea with the amount of gold as a win state, since that would really make you have to weigh the pros of staying in the cave to get more money while the difficulty also increases vs escaping, getting upgrades (but setting you back against the win state) and knowing that future failure is more costly since the exit cost increases with every attempt (I can't remember off the top of my head if this was already the case or not, but the starting difficulty gradually ramping up as you attempt more times would also highly incentivize risking staying on a floor a long time and somewhat counteract your upgrades too). I think you 100% have the right idea with that!! I actually liked robbing the same dragon in the same dungeon again and again, kinda explains why it gets harder to exit + any difficulty increase every time. The dragon is getting tired of your greedy butt :)
This is REALLY good. The core gameplay loop of hoarding kernels, and the difficulty rising as the risk of your broodmates eating your kernels goes up proportionally with how greedy you are, was really thoughtful and well-designed. And the art, animations, and narrative conceit were all impeccable. Super fun and polished game!
Fun game with a solid core mechanic and cute art. I especially liked swiping the coins right in front of the big dragon at the end; it made me feel very greedy!! It was a bit on the easy side for me (I only actually got hit once at the very beginning and only even triggered the fireball one other time near the end) but to be fair, that is probably good in a jam game (and subjective besides). Well-designed, polished, and a satisfying, engaging little experience. Great job!
After so many failed attempts I finally managed to clear without hitting any rocks and got 31!! (Not very impressive, I know...) Fun, addicting little game that makes excellent use of the limitation. LOVE the atmosphere as the dragon creeps closer and closer and it gets harder and harder to see the rocks in front of you... For me personally (since I'm greedy and bad at the game), I think I would have preferred if rocks just made you lose a set amount of gold instead of making you go back down to zero, but I understand if that was intentional for the theming. If that's the case, a restart button would be amazing because I was just refreshing whenever I hit a rock anyway. Great work!
I had a huge pile of emeralds and sapphires and even a few rubies on my head, was carefully making my way back to the hoard, and then I spaced out, moved the wrong way, and screamed so loudly as all my jewels fell to the floor that I scared my dog. 10/10 would (try to) balance again
In all seriousness, this is a great concept with spot-on theming and amazing art. The central balancing mechanic was really fun and strategic. It'd be neat if you got some sort of chain bonus for depositing stacks of jewels into your hoard at once. Great job!
I really love this game. I love the brutal difficulty curve, the risky HP = resources system, the weird SFX, everything about it honestly. There's a bug where once you game over the text disappears, and if you restart to try again then the timer continues from before. I failed my first few tries from not understanding the controls, but once I got the hang of it, I looked at the timer, saw 7:30, and thought oh, this is a cakewalk and I closed the tab thinking it was another jam game balanced on the too-easy side and it would be impossible to game over. Then I read the comments, realized that wasn't the case, and set out to try again... only to keep getting obliterated before the 7 minute mark.
I had no idea what I did that previous time and how I was so good until I realized, it must have been from the timer continuing after a game over! It was really probably only a few minutes into that run. (Yes I can't tell time.) Anyway, this game is super satisfying, really fun, and really addicting--it's hard to resist wanting to keep trying!
Super cute art and good concept. I love the roguelite elements and the tradeoff between health and money. There could be some balance tweaks (it is really, really hard to die which makes the pace of the game very slow) and I'm not 100% sure what the objective is (getting as far as possible? But it's not super clear which floor you're on--I know the exit cost goes up the further you're in but a clear floor indicator would be great for measuring progress). But all in all this is a great basis with a lot of potential to build on and makes excellent use of the limitation.
I played this for an hour during work... seriously SO good, from the intentionally janky controls that actually feel super good and fluid when you're playing correctly, to the hideous dragons (I mean that in the best way possible; the designs are impeccable and so unexpected), to the balance of having to come up for air vs getting blasted by fire, the progression tradeoff as you get bigger as it becomes easier to collect gems but harder not to get burned alive, the spot-on theming (I failed MANY runs from being greedy...), the difficulty curve. No notes except extremely minor presentation/audio stuff. Super fun game.
Loved to see a deckbuilder in the jam entries :) Really solid core gameplay loop with the risk/reward ratio of angering the dragon and stealing money (as well as being perfectly on theme!) while juggling guarding and defusing anger. I think I liked that the dragon only attacks every other turn so you can focus on going all out in your thievery one turn and then focus on guarding the next.
There were some balance issues (unavoidable in a game of this complexity for a 3-day jam)--namely that, at least from my experience, it was extremely easy to play it safe and block damage entirely while slowly raising your money and managing anger so the dragon never does more than 5 damage. This made the overall pace of the game extremely slow while I was playing.
That being said, I really commend the ambition and know that with just a few tweaks the excellent concept could really shine. Good work! I got 220 coins in my run.
Fun and simple endless runner with amazing theming! The stocks are hilarious and work super well from both a narrative and gameplay perspective; I love how later on it becomes super hard to see through them in addition to being hard to avoid them. And those animations are SMOOTH. Great work! (I forgot the exact number, but my high score after a few attempts was ~18k. And my favorite monkeys were the ones that looked like Mojo Jojo.)
AMAZING art and character designs and palettes. Every frame of the game was so lovely, even when I was getting melted alive or bodied by archers. Loved the music and SFX too. I really love the fast-paced sort-of-real-time sort-of-turn-based roguelite-ish SRPG gameplay. The design choice of incentivizing taking your time (via being greedy and getting better upgrades) while simultaneously penalizing it through increasing lethal stage hazards the longer you take was well-thought-out and compelling.
I did encounter a few issues while playing (apologies for the wall of text; I figure it would potentially be helpful for bug testing):
I beat the game on my first try just running straight at enemies (probably got lucky) and picking max HP upgrades since they heal you a bit. When I clicked Retry after the successful escape screen, I still had my stats and gems from before (if this is intentional, I like it, but it would probably be good to be able to start a new game too) and wanted to make an OP greedy dragon. But when I picked the flight upgrade, it didn't do anything and I still couldn't move over the small lava tiles.
I also got softlocked by lava a few times (retrying a few times fixed it) and once I got softlocked because my dragon spawned at the bottom of a one-tile column in between the lava and the void, where the only way to the right was several tiles above me so I couldn't make it there in time. I don't remember how I fixed this actually but I did manage to progress after a bit. Probably game overing enough times.
I am not completely sure what the offense upgrade does as all the enemies seemed to die in one hit. I'm also not sure what the left click does since nothing seemed interactable while I was playing (don't underestimate how bad I am at games so these all could 100% be me).
All in all I played through several times (and game overed just as many times); there's something therapeutic about these bite-sized levels :) Great work!
Hilarious concept and presentation--loved the animation of the knight on the side, though sadly I rarely got to see him actually dance (because I'm terrible, but seeing him flail around was very cute as well). I like rhythm games a lot (though I'm not particularly good at them), but I struggled a lot. I feel like the timing may be a little desynced (it felt like the game wanted inputs too early). Def way out of the scope of a jam game but offset adjustment would be amazing in case it's something on my end (that isn't just a skill issue :P). Finally, I think there's a bug with the high score (assuming your gold is your score?), since mine stayed at zero no matter how many times I tried... but to be fair that's a pretty accurate assessment of my skill level :) Good job and I would love to see where this goes!
Surradia: An Art Retrospective (Demo) comments · Posted in Surradia: An Art Retrospective (Demo) comments
Tightly designed puzzles with compelling writing and themes--I'm impressed by how clearly each character was conveyed in only a handful of pictures and notes. The difficulty curve was just right for me, with each Solve screen being "uhh, WTF" at first glance but then gradually realizing I actually can fill the entire thing out. I only felt like I had to brute force one answer, juvpu jnf Enlzbaq orvat fhecevfrq ol gur sveroveq. V zvtug unir zvffrq fbzrguvat ohg V jnfa'g fher ubj gb gryy vg jnf Enlzbaq naq abg nal bs gur bgure zra.
My only point of critique is that it wasn't immediately obvious to me which was on and off in the settings, though I could just be bad at understanding UI lol. Naq znlor gung Nznln'f unaqjevgvat vf fbeg bs uneq gb ernq, rfcrpvnyyl tvira ubj zhpu grkg vf va ure tevzbver. Loved the touch of each character having unique handwriting and art styles though, great from both a gameplay and narrative perspective.
Really looking forward to the full version! And I can't wait to see the analog art.
The conceit of this is super cool and I love the art and vibe. I love how you incorporated the jam theme too and I want to keep trying to get a better ending! Unfortunately, I had an issue with saving—when I tried, I got some kind of runtime error and it crashed. But great idea, great execution, and a really interesting premise.