Infestation by aurelwuensch
somewhat unfinished entry which mixes strategy elements with card game elements and a typing game.
Changelog: Originally we uploaded a Windows build as WebGL had some platform specific bugs and 12 Hours after the Deadline we added a working WebGL build.
| HTML5 (web) | https://aurelwu.itch.io/ld41-infested-the-gathering |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/infestation |
Ratings
| Given | 10🗳️ | 2🗨️ |
I still like the idea (and love everything with hexagons in it) so don't hesitate to poke if you finish / update it :)
1) need to refresh is a stupid bug (we set timescale to 0 once lost and forgot that that is a global state which does not reset on scene/level change.), I'll fix that today.
2) Graying out the too expensive card is a very good idea.
3) Clicking a card to select and then be in "card cast mode" to select a target (like in hearthstone) probably is way better than the current state.
4) yep 3 games in one definitely was over ambitious and next game jam we need to reduce the scope to get what we have a bit more finished.
5) we also like hexagons
6) yep more words would be good, we ran out of time and barely made the deadline.
Thanks for your positivity. It's so tempting to improve a lot of the unfinished things but the jam is over and aside from tiny timescale bug fix I think it would be unfair to make any change to the submission during the rating stage. (We might continue work at it or pick a few things from it and build something else though)
The gameplay was also just as equally confusing as I kept getting told that I had reached the bronze, then silver levels, but the infestation was spreading, and it ultimately would lead to me losing the game. None of the cards seemed to have any effect on anything, so I was forced to let the infestation happen inevitably. The typing game component was the better executed of the blend of genres, though there didn't seem to be many words available to type and the game's response to the keys was highly sensitive. Sometimes, after finishing a word, the game would still think that I was holding down the letter to that key and then flash through a whole bunch of different words because they were all supposedly inaccurate to what I was "typing". That being said, for the few words you did have in the game, they were all varied in length and typing difficulty, which I liked.
There seemed to be a lot of variety in the tracks that play, and I like how the music is randomized, even when you replay a stage. Or so it seems, anyway. Some of the tracks were borderline irritating (the one with the constant pounding bass, although it did capture the feeling of "doom" pretty well, would have worked better in a shorter stage rather than in an entire level) while others actually were very nice. Most of them worked for the type of game you're going for, so overall, good job on that.
As a whole, the game does feel unfinished and a lot of my frustration comes from not being sure if my misunderstandings were due to a bug or insufficient explanations. But hey, making a game in 72 hours is hard. You got the typing game aspect down pretty well, and I like the idea of combining that with strategy and card games. It was ambitious of you to try and combine three different types of games together, so nice job taking on that risk.
1) The typing game. It's annoying that I fail if I accidentally hit one wrong button. This is unnecessarily harsh in my opinion. Just remove letter if I hit the right one and don't do anything if I fail. Also, instead of removing a letter when I've typed it, just colorize it instead. It's annoying that the word keeps moving around as it gets smaller, and people generally feel satisfied when their inputs make stuff turn green.
2) The words list is too small. If I were to guess you have an array of strings that you pick randomly from. For my game this Ludum Dare I needed random male and female names, and what I did was find a list online of names and put them in a text file and make Unity pick a random one from the text file. The code when working with external files is a bit different if you've only worked in Unity, but I'm sure you can find some tutorial on it. If you did that you could add a whole dictionary of words in seconds!
3) Visual feedback is important! When I select a unit I need to know that the game registered my click and that I have a unit selected. Just change the color of the material slightly if you don't have time to add an outline or another indicator. It makes such a big difference!
Anyway, I think the game has potential if you keep working on it. Good luck on the game, and good luck next game jam! :)