Love the graphic effect! The fight against the cannon dude confuses me; is there a timing so the Fire button will work? I never win and it takes forever.
Glad you like it! It's probably not gonna do great in the ratings (for starters, there are 0 sounds, and that's a whole rating category) but I don't care, I've been wanting to make a management game along these lines. I've actually made some improvements already and am thinking of publishing a post-jam update, but I don't want to confuse voters.
Thanks for checking it out! One simple thing (obvious in retrospect) that would make it easier to get into the game would be moving the instructions from the start screen into the game itself. So the start screen would just be the first couple sentences, while the rest are arrows actually pointing at the relevant buttons. oh well something for a post-jam update
I love the cute sprites. The resolution of the graphics was awkward for me: the game's screen was taller than my computer monitor so initially I didn't notice there was narration appearing at the bottom. Then the narration was hard for me to read, because the text was so small.
This was a cool take on the theme. The framing of the text made it sound like this is just the start of a project that'll continue beyond the jam, is that the case?
Theming these rolling balls as "voters" was kinda weird, but the gameplay was cool. I actually would've preferred the upgrades to be smaller, because I quickly got an influence ring that covered basically the entire play area.
I concur that the battery runs out too fast, but otherwise I really do like the concept (worrying about your flashlight running out of power) and the story is appealing
Glad you liked it! For sure I would want this game to be more graphical if I weren't constrained to the jam deadline (and I'm likely to keep working on this post-jam) so thanks for the suggestions.
I like the concept for this theme (racing against your dwindling power) but man I have the worst luck, cause I kept dying immediately to the TIE fighter on the second screen.
Took me a minute to figure out the jars are down along the ground, but after that didn't have trouble figuring out the rest. I would've really appreciated some sort of steering behavior or randomized following for the fireflies so the wouldn't all stack up and I could see a cloud of fireflies following me.
The controls had a great feel, but I totally didn't understand how I'm supposed to summon forces that don't just immediately die to a hail of arrows. I was also seeing a weird graphics glitch on the wizard, with odd white polygons flickering all over him. My first guess is a z-fighting issue from the "behind trees" silhouette.
The graphics were clean and nice and there was a very slick presentation from the start; the intro tutorial is a level of polish I wish I got to with my entry. That said, not a fan of the way the controls worked. It was an interesting idea/experiment, but I kept getting tripped up with the character already standing on Up when I hit Left, stuff like that.
well the losing condition is if everyone dies. Since that happens if you run out of food, that's why the tip says to spend your first few turns just gathering food. On reflection, it is a little too easy to build up plenty of food; in my post-jam update I'll probably make it perishable (like you lose half your stored food each turn).
I do agree with that thinking (introduce players with fewer elements) which is why new blueprints only show up when they become relevant. I was intending to do that with your stats too (ie. the count of different resources only appears when you get some of that resource) but I didn't have time to get to that feature.
y'know that's one influence I hadn't considered (I was thinking about games like A Dark Room) but now I want to add random events, and one is dysentery that kills off a bunch of your followers.
As a programmer I'm going to write custom code, but can I use art I've purchased? And if that's against the rules, how about art generators like these:
woo, glad you made it to the end! btw the "not opening chests to not waste potions" thing is something I noticed myself doing, and why I changed how potions work in the post-jam update. I noticed myself avoiding chests until I got hurt and I didn't like that behavior (I wanted players to always go straight for chests) so now potions are collectibles that you choose when to use.
Mind trying the current state to playtest? (obviously your rating should still be the jam version) I've made the first two updates already, and I'm wondering if that tempers the randomness enough or if I need to do more. The post-jam version is https://tokkitron.itch.io/uliels-post-jam-update (password dcjam)
Mind trying the current state to playtest? (obviously your rating should still be the jam version) I've made the first two updates already, and I'm wondering if that tempers the randomness enough or if I need to do the third update too. The post-jam version is https://tokkitron.itch.io/uliels-post-jam-update (password dcjam)
man I gotta say, strafing feels so good in this game! I was going for a more active gamestyle than is usually associated with turn-based games, so giving players this additional freedom of movement is soo satisfying.
To help reduce the impact of RNG, I have already made two updates for post-jam: the first chest will always contain an orb, and potions are now collectibles to use when you want (instead of always immediate). Given your feedback, I may also modify the chance of orbs based on your current stats, to help even out your stat growth...
Glad you appreciated the simplicity, because that is definitely what I was going for!
Cutting audio was definitely my biggest regret when I was rushing to finish. Strafing is interesting, because I don't personally ever strafe in these sorts of games, but I guess I'll add it to the post-jam update because a lot of other people expect it.
y'know after just reading the controls before playing the game I wasn't sure I would like the movement controls pulling double duty in combat, but actually it felt very natural to just keep using the same keys. The "afterlife" section is a cool mechanic; when I first died I just assumed "whelp time to restart the game" and then it kept going.
I'd be curious on a poll of how many people prefer snap movement (like this game) to smoothly sliding to the next grid space (like my game)
I greatly enjoyed exploration, because the movement controls worked well and the little mini-map drawing as you go was a nice touch (might even add that to my game). Not a fan of the tedious combat though, just a slog with enemies taking so long to go down.
The hands up, holding book and lighter, is a nice conceit, and possibly something I'm going to add to my game's post-jam update. The typing to dispel spirits worked well. I got lost and just went in circles until I died however, is that the point? I couldn't tell if I was missing an actual goal, because I had no idea what I was supposed to do.
I really didn't like the voices; I would've much preferred text dialogs over these creepy text reader voices. My main con out of the way, I really liked everything else. Good graphics, a combat system I enjoyed, bravo!
I really liked the look of this one, and had fun navigating the maze. The combat was so tedious though, mostly because it took so long to chip away at an enemy's health.
I applaud you for experimenting with that sort of bounded free look, but ultimately I wasn't liking it, it just felt like the camera was fighting against the grid-based nature of the game. Hitting P was a much more pleasant experience, so I wished that was the default.
