LudumData

Final Swap by blackmagic

[raw]
made by blackmagic for LD31 (JAM)
Final Swap reloads the concept of final fantasy's active time battle!
Defend your healer, attack the monsters and take advantage of your blackmage to successfully p0wn the final boss!

Your character's actions are automatic, you only have to place the right character in front of the right monster.
Select a character, then move it left or right from his position.
Take care of your gauge as well as your opponent's ones.
Manage your team, and you'll be victorious !

The sun and moon represent the difficulty. At night, monsters are much stronger.
Elements can boost your elemental attacks or defences, but beware that your foe can also take advantage of it.

Thanks you for playing!

Dev: BlackMagic ~ David Elahee
Art: Gyhyom ~ Guillaume Breton
Sound & Music: ElMobo ~ Frédéric Motte

edit : I had to do a new build 5 minutes after submitting to remove god mode...

hints & tips : press & hold the F key to speed the game up !
Web http://blackmagic-home.com/ld31/
Source https://code.google.com/p/blackmagic-ludumdare/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2Fld31
Music https://elmobo.bandcamp.com/album/final-swap-ludum-dare-31
Original URL https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=16703

Ratings

Coolness 76% 2
Overall(Jam) 3.79 102
Audio(Jam) 4.27 7
Fun(Jam) 3.31 306
Graphics(Jam) 4.65 15
Humor(Jam) 2.61 492
Innovation(Jam) 3.74 123
Mood(Jam) 3.65 127
Theme(Jam) 3.86 229

Feedback

Tipyx
08. Dec 2014 · 22:54 UTC
This is so fuckin'awesome and beautiful \o/ !
March
08. Dec 2014 · 22:54 UTC
Nice game. Great graphics.
I had problems at the beinning to figure out how to play.
It takes a little time... :)
gallerdude
08. Dec 2014 · 22:56 UTC
Neat concept!
🎤 blackmagic
08. Dec 2014 · 23:00 UTC
We did not have time to do a tutorial, we were a little too ambitious :)
arzi
08. Dec 2014 · 23:01 UTC
Definitely one of the best looking games I've seen in the LD ever. The gameplay is also a good take on the theme. Very impressive!
rzfmzn
08. Dec 2014 · 23:22 UTC
I saw the game on a post and started to follow you to see when the game was being released. Not disappointed. Amazing graphics, but I am not comfortable with the combat mecanics, IMO it takes too long for actions so only a small balance issue, besides that, I think is an amazing game, great work :)
ryguydavis
08. Dec 2014 · 23:24 UTC
Just as a start, I LOVE Twin Motion Games. It's been a few years since I've seen you guys around. Good memories :)

So I reeeaaallly wanted to like this more than I did. Everything is great, but I was deeply held back by how slow the progress bars were. I actually looked away while things were loading. I think if the speed was double or tripled it would be very engaging. The concept and execution were great. Glad to run into this!
SushiDestroy
09. Dec 2014 · 00:30 UTC
Great work on graphics and sound, nice and smart concept, but the game is a bit slow.
dlowe
09. Dec 2014 · 01:01 UTC
Impressive! Very stylish, and a very cool concept. Thanks for the game :)
Tiago Ling Alexandre
09. Dec 2014 · 01:06 UTC
Awesome game! The active time bar could fill faster, the game would be more dynamic. Very cool, good job guys!
01101101
09. Dec 2014 · 12:31 UTC
As others have mentioned, having a shorter waiting time would probably make the game more dynamic and enjoyable. That said, it's already pretty fun, especially once you've taken the time to figure out how the whole thing works. Graphics and music are great, and the day/night switching is a nice touch (does it impact gameplay btw?)
SwiftIllusion
09. Dec 2014 · 14:55 UTC
Really cool premise and well executed for the time available :)! Even though I didn't understand how the elemental rings were effecting anything or what some of the moves were, the icons helped make some things self-explanatory and it was a bunch of fun, great job :)! The music sound and art are also brilliant.
Elemental Zeal Games Studios
09. Dec 2014 · 22:29 UTC
Quite a neat entry! The wait time between actions was a little so, but other than that nice job!
EvanEGibbs
09. Dec 2014 · 23:46 UTC
What a wonderful concept for the game! That is a really innovative gameplay mechanic!

It takes a really long time for everyone to charge up. If it moved faster it would have been more fun. However it looks and sounds gorgeous and it's a great idea for a game! Great job you guys!!
OpenGL
10. Dec 2014 · 13:06 UTC
Great game!
ncannasse
10. Dec 2014 · 13:14 UTC
Nice game, I would have like to play more BUT it's waayyyyy to sloooow. Please publish a post combo with speed x4 (at least). Also, sometimes it seems that swapping two heroes was not working correctly, not sure why.
Jupitron
10. Dec 2014 · 14:21 UTC
Really cool RPG! Amazing art style!
RadStar
10. Dec 2014 · 15:14 UTC
Really cool music and graph!
Interresting gameplay as well. A bit slow though and I didn't understand what were the elements around
the game for.
Valandre
10. Dec 2014 · 15:24 UTC
A solid entry. Music is really impressive, and graphics too!
LeReveur
10. Dec 2014 · 23:24 UTC
Nice entry, like always. Good graphics, good audio, and good game mechanism. A little slow, but it worth a good old five. :)
sP0CkEr2
11. Dec 2014 · 04:26 UTC
great game - like the game play and i added to my faves
Carduus
11. Dec 2014 · 08:56 UTC
Very nice game concept! GFX are awesome.
The perfect killer app for smartphone (if you put a tutorial :D )
feizenbara
11. Dec 2014 · 09:34 UTC
Looks like a fun core gameplay. It can be good for a mobile "collect tons of characters to beat a map of stages" game.
As other mentioned, main flaws are lack of tuto and slow gauge, but everything else is great!
Namide
11. Dec 2014 · 11:40 UTC
Very good game!
The ambiance is so coherent: Music, sound, universe, graphic design...
And an original concept!
InfectionTeam
11. Dec 2014 · 18:10 UTC
Cool game, :D Love the graphics.
🎤 blackmagic
11. Dec 2014 · 18:45 UTC
Actually, for those who find the game too slow, you can press and keep the F button of the keyboard to make the game faster. Thank you all for the comment!
Hellequin
11. Dec 2014 · 19:05 UTC
Awesome and beautiful game! Nice graphics! I like the gameplay!
FergusonTV
11. Dec 2014 · 19:15 UTC
Very interesting game! Nice graphics and good gameplay!
Yarek
11. Dec 2014 · 19:19 UTC
The game is awesome :) Great job!
Kuupu
11. Dec 2014 · 19:22 UTC
Awesome game, well done artwork, good music, nice gameplay, just a little bit slow.

Nice job! =D
Arkrothe
11. Dec 2014 · 19:28 UTC
The concept was quite cool, and the art style is amazing!!
But I found the colors for selection slightly confusing. Would be a bit better if the selected character stepped forward or something.
Gamepopper
11. Dec 2014 · 19:30 UTC
Oh god those graphics look amazing!
Todnut
11. Dec 2014 · 19:30 UTC
Wow! Nice! Love the style. The mechanics are excellent. Move icons take a while to figure out.
AdventureIslands
11. Dec 2014 · 19:33 UTC
Well done game with lots of potential. Looks and sounds pretty, but the gameplay is waaaaay too slow. And I never understood how the different staff icons worked or how elements were used. Wish the warrior would attack more instead of spending countless or turns blocking attacks.
Verz
11. Dec 2014 · 19:49 UTC
It's an awesome concept, and the graphics are super great! Good luck on future games :D!
puppetmaster
11. Dec 2014 · 20:20 UTC
I love the beautiful end song.
Took me a while to figured out what to do.
Congratz, well made.
runvs
11. Dec 2014 · 20:34 UTC
Very impressive!
You really got the feel of those FF titles! The music is super awesome (I really dig it, thx for offering an extra download!) and graphics and visual effects are also very good.
The battlesystem hast some inherent depth after you get used to it.
One suggestion would be to make units change position by drag&drop, this would feel more natural to me, but does (of course) not affect playability.
The Speedup button is a great advantage!
klianc09
11. Dec 2014 · 21:29 UTC
That speedup button is really essential, some stages of the game can really take ages. I wasn't always sure what a specific action would do (especially with the white mage).
My warrior and black mage died rather quickly (it's a hard game, ok), and only left with my white mage I still managed to advance a couple of waves, she someone just wouldn't die. But she just makes nearly no damage. (Would have liked a restart button right there.)
It seems letting one character die is a helpful stategy, since when all three slots are full, somebody always has to take the hit, but when you only have two, you can dodge them. (just involves a lot of clicking).
jojocanard
11. Dec 2014 · 21:32 UTC
Bravo David
karol
11. Dec 2014 · 22:41 UTC
A really beautiful game. I liked it, but I think I would enjoy it more if the gameplay was a bit faster.
deepnight
11. Dec 2014 · 23:08 UTC
Very good entry, with excellent tracks & visuals! Anyway the gameplay has a few flaws: really too slow & too many shields. This could be easily fixed I guess :)
Good job guys!
Aske
12. Dec 2014 · 18:37 UTC
I was working, then opened the game in a new tab without going to it, but just continiued working. After five minutes I realized that I was listening to some great music, but I was playing it myself.

moral of the story: GREAT FKN MUSIC!!!

then i played it. REALLY GOOD GAME!!!!!!!!
BroCade
13. Dec 2014 · 10:21 UTC
Excellent entry! just needs a bit of tweaking to make the gameplay less slow. Good Job!
wilbefast
13. Dec 2014 · 11:31 UTC
Just beautiful *_* great art, great music, and a really neat gameplay concept. My only really qualm is that the progression is rather slow: there's a lot of waiting for things to happen involved. Things do gradually get more hectic, but you're not really juggling things around until 10-15 minutes in.

That being said I didn't fully understand how the symbols around the outside related to the correspondingly coloured spells... well I sort of understand, but it wasn't 100% clear to me. Now I'm just nick-picking though :P
allurious
13. Dec 2014 · 12:30 UTC
I really like the concept, the graphics and the music - so awesome! The bars take way too long to fill though and since you can't choose your actions, you end up sitting there for a long time.
HotBoxGames
13. Dec 2014 · 16:45 UTC
Sweet graphics! :D
indie4fun
13. Dec 2014 · 22:13 UTC
The game is really beautiful and the idea is great. Perfect battle music for it as well! The only problem is that it takes too long to attack your enemies and to finish a level, so you are most of the time waiting and looking at the bars. I'm actually 'playing' while writting this... waiting until all the enemies are dead :P
Anyway I think you made something really good. Congratulations! :)
ElectricSeagull
13. Dec 2014 · 22:54 UTC
I can't quite work out what I'm supposed to be doing - like why sometimes the bar goes up and they don't attack and what the attacks/ defenses are, but I'm not too familiar with this kind of game. It looks reeeeally nice though.
abdurrahmankh
14. Dec 2014 · 00:58 UTC
this game has a real innovative concept, I got bored fast though; because I did not know what the mage abilities actually does. also I didn't know if the game is endless or what (which is annoying)

I think this game can make much more out of this concept; you just need to decrease the luck-dependency and increase the tactical sense in the game. maybe a story, online dueling... there are just so many ideas. as a fellow Ludum darer I solute you. you've done a great job.
Nikteddy92
14. Dec 2014 · 10:00 UTC
This game is so f*cking epic that I can't even breath!
Omg well done! All is great, music, graphics, mechanics.
WELL DONE GUYS!
Dexyne
14. Dec 2014 · 12:02 UTC
Nice game with beautiful graphics and sounds.
A bit of time is needed to understand the game.

Kill the boss with only the mage!
Think it was not possible.

One of the best game I played on the Ludum Dare.
vidarn
14. Dec 2014 · 19:58 UTC
I love how you managed to distill the final fantasy battles to this extremely simplified version but still keep the complexity and the tactics. Amazing!
The graphics and the music were outstanding and I loved every minute of the game :D
Frump
15. Dec 2014 · 00:06 UTC
Really well done. I didn't quite understand why my guys could be attacked diagonally though when I couldn't attack diagonally. I think block came up as an option far too frequently as well.
SoulGame
16. Dec 2014 · 02:02 UTC
Truly impressive arts, music and well... everything. Kudo guys. The care for details (like the cycle day/night or animations) and the overall polish is astonishing regarding the short amount of time. Concept itself is very interesting and get richer as we progress through the game. Even knowing motions tween, I'm much impressed.

I got one complaint (yeah) : the game starts real slow. Way to slow giving the fact that I needed 15 sec to learn the basics and the first two fight took me several minutes (mostly waiting). Anyway, you clearly nailed it... Wait! What about the theme ? x)
SoulGame
16. Dec 2014 · 02:06 UTC
And here I am, missing the hints on F key...
el-pepi
16. Dec 2014 · 02:16 UTC
Very creative! I like the mechanics, graphics and music!
The first battles should be a little faster in my opinion, those bars take too long to fill up.
zatyka
16. Dec 2014 · 02:26 UTC
This was very nice. The graphics and audio were top notch. The game mechanics were challenging and strategic. My only complaint is how slow the battles are. I think it would be a much more potent experience if you doubled the speed.
SoulGame
16. Dec 2014 · 02:26 UTC
Finished! So my real complaint would be: I would have preferred a swap mechanic using mouse drag&drop, it would be more efficient and intuitive. The "2 clicks to swap" control isn't very convenient after all, especially for quick decisions. I can't figure out why you chose it? Plus I've often been mislead thinking I had a character selected, then tried to swap, and it didn't work cause nothing was actually selected.
P.S : sorry for triple posts
Kaijuu
16. Dec 2014 · 05:11 UTC
So awesome game!
Great graphics and ost
🎤 blackmagic
16. Dec 2014 · 07:45 UTC
Thanks you all for the comments!
>SoulGame, we tought about the drag&drop but we were afraid that we'd lost much time to do it right. It's clearly the thing that we'll do for an extended version... with a x4 timer... and less shield!
T_T ludum....
elvaq
16. Dec 2014 · 08:09 UTC
Pretty nice stuff. Graphics are especially gorgeous! As others have said I would have appreciated some kind of game system intro. Even just a few sentences on the web page where the game is would go a long way.
Overall I felt the game could be quite tedious. This was probably because of my lack of understanding of the game rules but there were many long stretches where I wasn't doing anything but admiring the nice music.
Heheh.. very good effort for a very ambitious game though!
louis.denizet
16. Dec 2014 · 09:35 UTC
Great idea and amazing realisation, great job!!

Maybe I played bad but I thought this was really long sometimes :/ Maybe a button to make the time faster would be even greater ! ^^
spotco
16. Dec 2014 · 09:55 UTC
Really interesting idea, but a couple of pretty killer execution mistakes.
First, was way too slow and had no idea why sometimes the warrior would shield/mage casts random magic. The game I imagine could but a lot more exciting sped up several times.
And second, the swap worked in mysterious way. Does the purple select mean I can swap to them? Also clicking on a hero didn't always create the "purple box". There's no reason that shouldn't have been a more intuitive click+drag kind of thing.
GFM
16. Dec 2014 · 09:57 UTC
Graphics and audio are top notch. It reminded me more Lufia II than FF, though... XD

The 'F' to speed up was a great idea! I was going to complain about that when I read that on the description. :)

And that dumb warrion! Stop defending!! The best defense is the attack!! >__<
SolomaZ
16. Dec 2014 · 10:13 UTC
You got a GREAT start here! You have got some really good content so far and some good feedback above. Mostly I agree with increasing the pace of the game. Also maybe make it so you can skip the current cued ability.
SolomaZ
16. Dec 2014 · 10:26 UTC
Holding 'F' was better, probably too fast. @elvaq nailed it when he said it was 'tedious'. Having control of the pace makes it so. It takes away the tension, for me at least. Still very impressed however!
codeapparat
16. Dec 2014 · 10:49 UTC
Art, Sound and Music are absolutely incredible! The weak point is the core combat mechanic, IMO. Waiting for the desired abilities to queue up is mostly boring. Elements and daytime were seemingly meant to spice it up, but are pretty much meaningless in the end, because you don't have control over abilities and thus have to roll with whatever comes up next anyway. I get that you wanted to do something innovative, but traditional ability selection would have been simply more fun, in my opinion.
zerocreativity1
17. Dec 2014 · 03:12 UTC
It would be awesome if your attacks had hover text or something, so you could see what going to happen next.
lemmily
18. Dec 2014 · 13:01 UTC
I don't really understand how the game works, my guy is in front and has the sword but doesn't do anything? the shield also doesn't seem to do anything. But then the sword worked finally. I have no idea O_o;; It's a cool idea and the art is nice though
Erhune
19. Dec 2014 · 03:55 UTC
Twintails ftw!

I found the selection had some quirks (or maybe it's just my brain not managing to make the difference between hovered and selected), but aside from that the game was very enjoyable, albeit a bit slow in the beginning....
barryrowe
19. Dec 2014 · 12:40 UTC
Good job, guys! This has a combination of good programming, art, and music! Thank god for the "F" key.
alyphen
20. Dec 2014 · 12:34 UTC
This was quite enjoyable for a while, but it was also pretty slow - it took an age to get your white & black mage, and by then I was starting to get bored. It would be nice if this were used as the fight system in an RPG, but since it was just battle and nothing else, it got old quite quickly. Graphics and music were great, and mechanic was definitely fun, it was just repetitive after a while.
Shackhal
22. Dec 2014 · 01:21 UTC
Awesome entry! The graphics are really great, the gameplay is really smart and the music...is now part of my music gallery xD

Overall, one of the best entries so far xD
DDRKirby(ISQ)
25. Dec 2014 · 02:29 UTC
Interesting concept! Think you could have taken it much further if you had time...
PapyPilgrim
29. Dec 2014 · 16:36 UTC
I don't know how the next attack is selected, or if I have a way to influence it, but for the second monster (when you still have only the warrior) I got the shield 5 or 6 times in a row... so I just had nothing to do. Not the best first contact with the game.