Great job! It's fun being a little loot goblin running around a dangerous dungeon! It would be cool to be able to carry more knives but the game is good as it is! The resolution doesn't seem quite right on my computer, 1920x1080 display, but I was able to read all the words in the game if I got close enough to them
soclosesam
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I really enjoyed this game! What I first thought looked like minecraft with guns quickly hooked me. The skill unlocks you chose fit very well into the game to give the player something to make progress with, and the variety of plants and enemies combined with letting the player choose what enemies to go up against next was a really interesting choice! I also liked the weeds concept which forces the game to become more difficult as you unlock more areas even if you don't plant something in an unlocked patch.
Love the art style and the way you end up with 3 different panels in big mode that you can use to navigate, it felt like playing a comic book. It was also incredibly difficult to avoid stepping on people. I like that smallmode is a second game, not just the reverse of big mode, it's really difficult to get away from that cat!
Nicely done game! I really liked that although I didn't immediately understand how to play I was able to just start a new game right away and try again. It took me a while to understand and test out the different abilities, it might be nice to add in a brief tutorial option for new players and/or include the controls in the game itself. The game feels very thematically consistent and the audio fit nicely. I liked that the game tracked high scores so I had a goal to beat.
Thanks for playing and sharing feedback! I like the target practice idea! I initially had some plans for downtime activities but had to cut scope because life got in the way. Unfortunately that means the game ended up feeling slow with big gaps between waves and nothing really to do in between.
The guards are intended to be used to kill an ogre that gets past you if you notice it in time. The map is helpful in keeping track of that, as it shows an overhead view of the area and any ogres, but it seems like some players haven't figured out the map either. Did you unlock it and did it work/make sense to you?
Thanks for playing and reviewing, I'm glad you had fun. Do you remember what level you reached or how many ogres you killed? Purchasing the map should have spawned a live overhead view on the back wall, and purchasing guards unlocks a new action cube that can be used to sound an alarm. The guard states represent the number of guards you have ready, active, and recovering, in that order.
Good background music. I played without a mouse so that might have made the small mode more difficult, but I found it pretty challenging to encircle the right pieces before they moved away.
Arrow keys instead of words for big mode would be an improvement I think.
Maybe there could be more of a connection between big and small modes in the actual gameplay as well?
This is fantastic! Great creative use of theme, I really liked that the game actually needs you to switch between modes to solves puzzles. I ended up playing much longer than I planned to.
Initially the game froze up playing in browser but after that I only got minor hiccups when switching between modes.
Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed the machine gun crossbow!
Level 10 was the end of the game for quite a while during development so way to go on reaching that point!
The map gives an overhead view of the surrounding area so you can see where ogres are approaching from, and the guards allow you to sound an alarm to kill any ogres that get past you before they get to the village.
In theory you can transition to a different mode of play later in the game by investing heavily in guards after unlocking the map and using them to kill all of the ogres instead of using the crossbow. It's very challenging to get to that point though.
Thanks for playing and reviewing, I think I'll end up expanding the game after the jam to address some things players bring up in these reviews and add some more things I hoped to include initially. If you're interested in trying future changes follow my itch profile and I'll keep you informed.
I didn't explicitly explain some of the game mechanics to create more discovery in game, but since you asked about the map and guards here's some info:
The map shows an overhead view of the tower you're in and the surrounding area so you can keep an eye out for approaching ogres.
The guards allow you to sound an alarm to kill and ogre that gets past you before it gets to the village.
The submitted game was stuck on a black screen so I played the non-submission link.
What I liked:
- The background music was excellent and created a good "spy" feeling.
- The intro was cute
- The character picker for deciding your outfit is a nice concept
What I didn't like or think could be improved:
- the "alert" noise that played sometimes was very jarring and I'm not completely sure what caused it.
- the text was very hard to read, some of the characters were ambiguous.
- I can't tell if the game was designed for a small or full screen experience. I wasn't able to read much of the text on fullscreen, but aspects of the game were pushed offscreen in a smaller window.
- The intro took too long and I found myself checking the clock, I didn't want to skip past anything important, but I didn't want to wait for the text to scroll in either, I think it would be better to just display each chunk of text right away and have a 'next' button.
- I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do when actually in the room. I ended up following what I thought was the "mode" and trying to stand on top of them, but then when the time ran out and it was shopping time I couldn't even remember what clothing to pick.
- As a product of some of the earlier points, I have no idea what kind of score I got or whether I was doing well or not.
Somehow after shopping in the first round I ended up with a naked avatar even though I thought I had picked different clothes. Not what I was going for but I got a quick laugh from that as I went streaking through a crowd of bewildered onlookers.
Recommendation for the future: Get a working build of your game early on and check your changes from time to time to make sure you still have something that works. That way you won't get to the end of the jam when you want to submit and have to deal with debugging a broken build and having to do a late upload.
Wasn't immediately clear what the game objective was so round 1 was more difficult.
Camera moved around faster than I would have liked, I'm not sure you really need camera movement at all and could just do the quiz with input of key presses 1-4 instead.
Could be improve with some audio and/or visual queues if you answer right/wrong, I wasn't very confident in any of my answers and had to check my remaining lives at the start of each level.
Good game! I played it for 30+ minutes and eventually made it to day 30 where it suddenly became much harder. Some friendly constructive critique with maybe some spoilers for anyone who hasn't played yet (be warned). It seems like the best strategy is to just invest fully in cannons, at least for a long time. Eventually I was able to upgrade the moat one time and start building farms. I definitely like that aspect of balancing eco vs def but from what I experience it needs some tweaking. By the time I could afford to forego defensive structures and finally invest in HP regen I was down to about 1/2 health, which is fine but the incoming enemies after that point prevented me from ever getting my health back up meaningfully. In order to get to the point where I could actually place an alligator, I had to already stack cannons in the place I would put an alligator and demolishing them feels counterproductive. On one hand I'm a fan of the discover the game as you play kind of thing, but on the other I think you're narrowing your audience a lot by not explaining things in game more. It would also be nice to play towers during combat so you don't just get stuck, and I wish there was a way to know what was coming in the next wave, even if it was just a headcount, so you could know where to place new towers before the next wave. As it is its a bit of a guessing game which feels less strategic.
Great concept! The game is simple and easy to learn, but incredibly hard to master. Seems very arcade-like with its fast pace, kind of made me feel like I should have a stack of quarters on hand, and maybe 3 lives so I don't feel like I'm losing quite so fast. It becomes really difficult really fast and I think it would be a good idea to tune that down a little so players can feel like they're progressing instead of just immediately being thrown into the deep-end. But of course that depends on what kind of game you're trying to make. Thanks for sharing it.