I really love the fog of war effect! I did have some performance problems on the web version, though. It also seems like the audio sometimes plays multiple times instead of just once when a ship moves.

Same as @spaceman with performance in webGL but I found myself playing until the end anyway because it was fun :D
No major bugs found.
Great work

Hey I played your game! I really like the concept and the cute graphics (although it looks better on the main menu). The music totally works too haha. Was a bit confused as to why the enemy base was a sponge(?) and the attacks look like they only fire one square when they actually fire two, also it would be nice to see which boat I've selected in the list on the left, but these are only minor quabbles (and you probably would've been resolved with a bit more time anyway).

Nice game, congrats! :)

Btw, did you manage to finish my game?

I liked that you did a tactics game for the jam. I'd be pretty overwhelmed doing a genre like that!

I didn't realize I could attack from certain distances until after my sponge was under siege, but otherwise, the theme was really neat.

If you have time, you might want to `chmod a+x ./SudsOfWar-rc1-Linux-Universal*` for the Linux binaries, as their user permissions are not set to initially run on first unzip.

Turn based strategy are genre I normally don't play a lot but I liked this because its scaled down and not overly complex. Graphics were neat, the only suggestion I would make is the ship sound during movement phase seems a little loud, maybe a more comical sound would suit?

But overall, nice work, well done.

I liked the music, but the moving sounds played like 50x every time I tried to move and controls where quite fiddely. The idea for the theme is something new, liked it!

Really impressive you've managed to create a movement system and basic A.I. in such a short time! I liked the graphics and the gameplay, but the controls were a bit fiddly, and the performance dropped at random moments.

Really like the cute theme!

Well done!

liked it, played it longer than expected :)

Rated

@xavier-indie-gamedev Thanks for the feedback! Regarding the attacks, we spent A LOT of time trying to get it to work right to fire the two squares accurately. The math should have worked, but for some reason, sometimes they would shoot way up in the air or backwards, so we decided to fix it to one angle which meant one hex. You are correct that if we had more time, we could have made it work. We never even thought about adding the selection indicator on the left, thanks for that!

I have not won your game, but did provide feedback and a rating last night.

@danbolt Thanks for the tip. I don't currently have a Linux installation, so I may have to create a Linux VM and chmod away.

@drtizzle Thanks. The AI is truly basic, but it does sometimes win (one of my kids hasn't won a game yet). The basic AI works well due to the scaled down nature of the game. For the record, the AI also has suds of war and does not cheat. It will only attack what it sees.

@coderdozer @teekeks Thanks for the feedback on the sounds. We tried to balance the sounds, but focused our effort on the firing sound which used to be VERY loud. @coderdozer, I like the idea of a comical sound. We may change it after voting is over.

@la-mecanique-du-plastique Thanks for playing and rating. I'll look for your game.

Very funny take on the theme. Everything worked well, but the AI destroying me in one go without me even having a chance to fire back was a bit disheartening. The move and attack sounds (especially for the enemy) was far too loud and didn't fit with the lullaby music in the background.

Thanks!

Seems like the winner will be the one to get the first kill in. A straight rush to the enemy base seems to be the best tactic.

Ok, so - REALLY enjoyed this game :) Great and interesting implementation of the theme, and whilst the mechanics and UI were simple (i see this as a positive by the way), the gameplay was fun and innovative.

**Things i thought worked well:** Fog of War (this was great), ship respawning, pathing, graphics in general and the sponges as bases made me chuckle.

**Things i thought could use improvement:** Sounds levels - I actually liked the soothing tune in the background and the firing/moving noises were suitable but the levels were off in places. Given the short space of time these games are created in, it feels harsh to point out things like this (heaven knows i had similar issues in my own entry), but i like to be constructive. It felt somewhat easy to win BUT this would easily rectified with updates/expansions. The graphic on the firing seemed off - only looked like it was shooting 1 square, but was shooting 2.

All minor things and ultimately, even when noticing these things, i found myself still playing. Very impressed, great first entry into LD, great job guys :)

@geeitsomelaldy That may actually be correct. My tactic is always trying to find the enemy's base, but to avoid its ships on my way there. We thought about adding some randomness to the respawn delay which maybe could address that.

@nathan Thank you so much. I do not think what you said was harsh at all. I think part of the point of the jam is to also provide focus for what to do next. The more we do this, the quicker we will get, and we need to know for next jam when we have some time left over, where does the focus get placed? Or, if moving forward to create a viable commercial game, what needs the most work? I did mention in a previous comment why the firing was only one hex. That was due to a bug that we did not have time to track down, so we did a fix where it at least shot in the right direction. Also, had not thought about the juxtaposition of the types of sounds. Perhaps softer movement and shooting sounds would have fit better in our theme. (And by softer, I don't mean volume, although that point is well taken as well.)

@kosmo That is also a possibility that the AI faces as both sides have suds of war that are equal. The AI was not given any advantage in that regard, but point well taken. Thanks for the feedback.

Very fun, has a sort of puzzle-like quality to it.

Great effort to make working tactical game in 72 hours. Nice graphics and fun theme.

Love the idea! Cute graphics

Wow! A hex tactical game! Didn't expect to see one in a ludum dare! I'm impresed! The game is simple, but I think that the task of making a tactical game is already quite complex!

Great job on succeding on such a dauting task!

Keep up the hard work!

Nice work - it feels like you're on the right path to a pretty solid RTS. I like how you've done the fog of war, and movement/attacking felt pretty good. A few things that might help out:
- It was tricky to figure out the stats of the selected unit. They all look the same, so I couldn't figure out if I had a low-hp unit selected or not. Highlighting the selected unit in the UI might help out here.
- After moving, the unit would de-select right away, even if it still had points left. It's safe to assume that i'm going to keep moving until all my action points are gone, so you don't need to deselect until the points are exhausted, otherwise i'm just doing extra clicks to reselect it.
- The water shader (i think) was totally destroying my GPU, and it was lagging pretty bad. You could probably get away with using a cheaper approximation instead of a full on realistic water effect.

Amazing work for a first-time jam entry!

It was a great idea, but it could've used a bit more polish. The music was nice. Although, it wasn't very clear that I could attack from 2 spaces away.

The idea is cute :) Graphics, Sound etc. really good. Not my kind of game mechanics, but great job anyways :)

Wow, very good. I really liked the fact that it was turned based and not real time, the graphics were all good only the UI needed a bit more work. I wish there was a bit more balance to make it more difficult to win (like having your base take damage, skips a turn for your ships that are spawning) because It felt really easy after I found the enemy sponge.
Really cute game overall, I wish I could make games with my Dad too. Good job guys.

Awesome! This is the first turn-based strategy game that I've come across this time. Nice! I love these, this is like a very small-scale X-Com... not galactic in scope, just the bathtub.

I'm going to echo the comments above about the controls, though. Maybe this and a quick UI cleanup would be nice post-jam polishes!

Interesting reimagination of tactic games! I think the camera could be more kinetic though. The enemy ships don't seem to attack my sponge.

@akirassassin They will. First, they have to find it by removing the AI's suds of war where they can see it. Then, the AI has a priority system that, in many cases, will place ships at a higher priority than your sponge. Otherwise, you would just float over and destroy the ship attacking your sponge.

This is a cool twist on the theme! It's similar to the game of @quill18, but as a strategy game instead of a twinstick shooter. The game is quite hard and I got rekt by the enemy ships ganging up on me. The graphics are nice and I like the cute little clouds. The water refraction is a bit nausiating and the sound of the boats is a bit loud. The music is good and fits the childhood theme with its lullaby sound. Maybe you could have put segements in the bars for hp and actions, so that one can see more easily how many points are left. It would also be nice if after moving the ship would stay selected. Then it would be easier to continue exploring. Overall, a well executed game - nice job!

Really like the theming here, presentation was pretty good and though I'm not great at turned based strategy games I quite enjoyed this. Bubbles as fog of war is pretty genius. I think I would have like better visual feedback on what was going on (firing range, HP indicator above units etc.) but it's pretty impressive for a jam entry.

@everyone Thanks for all the comments. Sorry that I can't keep responding to each one individually as I have been busy (with life, you know) and when I have spare time, I've been trying to review and leave feedback for others.

@wheerd I blogged about the similarity to @quill18's game (although I did not mention him by name at the time). After developing the idea and coding for 3-4 hours, my son went upstairs to grab a sandwich, and I flipped over to watch Quill on Twitch for a few minutes. I was quite surprised to see a bathtub, a toy boat, and a rubber duck in his game. It did become quickly apparent to us, though, that his game was action based where ours was turn-based. We did keep an eye on him occasionally, though, as Quill has been known to completely change directions in the middle of a jam. (He did it during LD37.) His game is also very good, though, and I also enjoy playing it.

Just spent a bit of time with this and I really like the visual style. Suds as fog of war was a great idea and having floating rubber ducks as obstacles was neat too.

I'm pretty impressed that you were able to code (even basic) AI along with the rest of the game in only 72 hours, so that's definitely an achievement.

The music was also perfect for the setting as well, just a nice relaxing little tune.

If I had to give a few things I didn't like so much I'd say your movement sound was a bit of an issue. It sounded like it played constantly as you moved when maybe it should have only played once per square. The firing animation was a bit off but that was easy enough to work around.

A solid LD entry nonetheless! Nice work to you and your son!

The graphical theme is cute and the assets themselves simple and effective. The audio doesn't work for me at all, had to turn it off pretty much immediately.

Played one round against the AI. I moved my ships cautiously in the mist. The enemy got to us after a few turns, but not quite to attacking distance. Next turn I sank two of their ships winning us the war right there. They didn't even shoot back!

I think that last bit is the biggest problem here, the massive bonus to attacking. Usually in light strategy titles, for instance Advance Wars and its freeware sibling Battalion: Vengeance, the defender also gets to attack with a diminished force. To offset the attackers advantage even more long range artillery units can be strategically placed to deter rushing.

Ok job in all. With some tweaking this could be pretty darn fine.

Very relaxing :droplet: :duck: :ship:

HAS A BOOBOO oh my gosh XD

I wanted to like this game, because I really like games that try to turn children's play, for example, bath toys, into an epic war game. And there are parts here that I think work. The 3D art is a good choice for turning simple toys into an epic premise. I like the visuals in the titlescreen. The music and sound effects are simple but fitting. There are also some creative choices, what with incorporating duckies, boats, bathsuds and sponges.

However:

- The game's performance seems to be overall choppy in both the download (Windows) and the browser. The browser version yes, was laggy throughout, but in the download, at least the titlescreen worked like a charm.
- There isn't enough...automated action(?) to make the game feel more fluid. For instance, when all three of my boats make a move, I can't move them anymore for the rest of my turn, and yet I still have to click the "End turn" button for the enemy to proceed. Unless I'm missing something that can be done after my boats move, why not automatically proceed to the enemy's turn?
- When I lose all my boats, I'm basically a sitting duck (haha), waiting tons of turns for my ships to respawn and I have to click "End turn" each time waiting for my inevitable demise. I feel like the sponge could also have some sort of attack of its own - maybe not as strong as the boats, but something that you still have control over so that when it dies, that's the end of the game (but you can do something at a great disadvantage regardless). Otherwise, when all my boats are down and I'm waiting, say, nine turns for my boats to be respawned, I'm probably going to die and there isn't anything I can really do except forfeit.
- I love the idea of having suds in the battlefield and uncovering the ducks as one moves along. But I don't like how the enemy base also seems to be concealed in the mist as well, and that enemies can't uncover that mist as they move along. Quite frankly, it might have been a bit more strategising to allow the enemies to uncover the mist as well, such that the only mysteries are the ducks. The AI can already see the enemy, and it just...I dunno, feels a bit unfairly balanced to have it be able to see you but you can accidentally stumble upon an enemy while finding its base and thus you end up dying as a result.

Overall, there are some great ideas being explored here, but it just feels a bit slow overall. I dunno, maybe it's not really my type of game.

@random-storykeeper Thanks for the feedback. To clarify, the enemy ships cannot see your base unless it has found it. The game is completely fair in what can be seen, but what the enemy can see is not visualized for the player as then that would be unfair. I can assure you, however, that the enemy tracks its own suds of war and does not use information that would not be available to a human player with the same uncovered parts of the board.

As for performance, we did not see performance issues in the web or downloads, and neither of us have extremely great machines. Were you downloading for Windows, Mac, or Linux?

@james-dunlap Ah so it's purely just both sides trying to guess each other out until they find each other?

I played the web version and that was pretty choppy, but downloaded the Windows build after and it was slightly better. Like, the titlescreen in the download performed fine, but the game itself seemed like a slideshow, and I'm not sure if it was supposed to be like that.

the main menu of this game looks nice, but the rest of it, not so much. the concept is good, but the execution lacks a lot of details. lot of polish needed and perhaps rethink the approach. but @james-dunlap gets extra points for Klingon warbird in his profile picture :smiley:

Nice water effects! I really liked the unique concept. I think the sponge bases should have been different colors. There could have also been an hourglass or waiting icon displayed whenever the AI is processing its move.

Nice game and he water effects were really cool but a bit laggy on the web version. I died early but didn't know how to spawn my ships :(

The idea is good, but I need a tutorial to understand some of the game mechanics.