Pyres by flynn
Programmer: Fan Ling
Artist: Sidan Fan
Designer: Hao Tian
We are three students from Northeastern Game Science and Design graduate program and decide to team up and participate in Ludum Dare 43. Special shout out to Sonya who came up with the name!
Description: This is an RTS game base on a fantasy world similar to ancient Europe. The player is the general of the country called Goetilandia. The country was invaded by an unknown enemy at night and 5 cities were under attack. The remaining troops in each city are defending their cities and waiting for your reinforcement. Without your help, all cities will be lost.
Players need to retrieve all five cities from the enemy. The key elements of this game are: - Players can move their armies using right clicks. - During the battles in the city, players can choose an attack mode
There are 4 options for players: - Heavy Attack: The heavy attack will speed up the battle causing both you and your enemy lose battle faster. - Normal Attack: Default attack pace. - Defense: Lose less amount of your armies and more likely to survive from a battle, but it will take a longer time to defeat the enemy. - Retreat: Retreat from a city with your remaining army in the city with penalties and you will lose the city.
The goal is to retrieve as many cities and as you can and have as many kills as you can.
Play Environment Suggestion: - Windows: WIn10 64bits - resolution 1920*1080 - Mac: resolutuon 2048 * 1280
| Windows | https://troyprag816gmailcom.itch.io/pyres |
| macOS | https://troyprag816gmailcom.itch.io/pyres |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/pryes |
Ratings
| Overall | 732th | 3.161⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 924th | 2.629⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 500th | 3.177⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 770th | 3.081⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 548th | 3.452⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 758th | 2.328⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 433th | 3.419⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
In terms of gameplay, I didn't really see any reason why I should just be "Heavy Attacking" the entire time. More often than not, my troop number vastly outnumbered the enemy troop number, and I didn't see any feedback telling me that defending was doing anything significant. Perhaps some more visual feedback would be helpful so the player understands what's going on?
This seems like a pretty neat prototype, though! I like your guys' style, and hope to see more from y'all in the future! :)
Again, Thanks for playing!
- This was a walk in the park difficulty-wise. Got a little impatient waiting for the battles to conclude, so I tried Cheat Engine (which didn't seem to work :P )
- Tried playing around with A/D, lost 90% of my troops, never pressed it again :P
- I feel like Attack modes (Heavy/Normal/Defense) was poorly fitting. Your time would be better spent in adding another feature that went well with the gameplay.
- Other than that it was pretty interesting. The mood (graphics+audio) and the clear goal kept me interested on finishing.
But we really learned a lot. Thanks for playing our game!
The game itself is pretty boring, though... the battle is basically a matter of defending, waiting and then switching to heavy attack if you're impatient. I think it could work better if the battles were done in big sweeps(like tens of seconds of battle at once) and the player had to decide a strategy while the enemy could do the same (and so the game would have more of a rock-paper-scissor scheme of tactics).
The game is missing an element to make the combat sections interesting. Now it's just waiting around with no communicated reason not to just hack away on heavy attack.
When playing it felt a bit too easy without very clear different choices. I saw no reason to something else than 'heavy attack'. A speed up for the fights would also have been nice :)
The events and map statuses were cool, but did not impede me much. Would be nice to have a choice with some of them ('lose X soldiers, or lose X days?')
But in the end I liberated Goetilandia, and all was well.
Ideas to tweak:
- Give opponents and defender attack positions too, and show them on the map. This would indicate that some might hold off longer than others
- Make the enemy more numerous, so you really have to prioritize
- Speed up button (for fights)
My main beef is how long it takes to fight, and that there is no time acceleration option. Even on heavy attack, it takes a long time and on defense (which from what I saw does give a much better k/d ratio, but I'm not sure) it takes forever. In fact, the defense of my third city is being fought as I write this, and it shows no signs of stopping :p
I'd add a time-accelrator option (which of course also increases the losses in your other cities), combined with a bit more insight on what the effect of the various settings actually are.
But still a very original concept. A post-jam version with rebalanced combat and insight has good potential.
- Great music
- Interesting map
- Blood effect is interesting
- Like the aesthetic background changes and "messages"
- Good speed mechanic. Not sure why you'd want to slow down in this game. But the
bar is not very intuitive
Improvements
- Map overview is very strange way to play. Normally in games you enter places
from the map e.g. maybe something akin to fire emblem
- Difficult to read all text. Could have different font and also wrap around in black.
- Non-engaging battle system. Not much to do other than wait.
- Little point in defence and retreat
- Too easy
Overall
- In terms of sacrifice, it doesn't really seem like this element is here
other than it obviously being about war. Overall, a great mix of music, and medieval
overtones have really set a great atmosphere to the game and it does feel "bloody".
- At the end of the game there is no feeling of winning or wanting to play again. You
could have some sample scores to beat or something.
- There is a sense of accomplishment when cities are captured. But the battle system
within this conquest could be improved. I think that's a major area of focus.
Overall, interesting stuff and keep it up! :)
Battles could perhaps be made a little bit more interesting, now it is just numbers going down. I think the phasing would be improved if the armies were smaller and walking across the map was sped up a bit, then you could make more events on the map where certain events not only decrease or increase your armies quantity but also increases morale to make them fight better next time or increase their defense etc.
Overall you have a great sense of polish and good mechanical promise here, well done!