Looking for Group by pandepic

You are the cleric!
Press the number keys to select your spell from the list in the top left of the screen, then click on a target to cast.
Spells will cast after a timer which is shown next to each spell in the list.
Keep your party alive as they fight through a magical forest to hunt down a dragon. Cast spells to heal and protect your allies or disrupt the enemies.
Changelog: Fixed mac and linux builds.
Ratings
| Overall | 1204th | 3.5⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1603th | 3.135⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1491th | 3.149⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1417th | 3.568⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1323th | 3.553⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1514th | 2.588⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 982th | 3.5⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 41🗨️ |
I really like the art style for the game, the hand drawn aspect of each sprite made for a really unique vibe. The animations were quite simple but they made the game feel so much more alive, the particle effects for the spells were great as well :)
The balance is pretty good, I found myself switching between every spell pretty equally, there's no one spell that I thought was overpowered or underpowered.
I wish there were a little bit more visuals in terms of UI though. Things like health bars for player HP, icons for attacks, just things to reduce the amount of reading the player has to do in game would be really great.
I also think a 'queue' system would work great for this game, where you can line up multiple spells to cast in succession instead of waiting for a spell to finish and then rapidly clicking so you don't waste time idling. Maybe even just buffering one spell beyond the current one would help the gameplay feel a lot more fluid.
Overall, I thought the game was very enjoyable, great work! :)
Edit: Found the issue and update the builds.
I made it through to wave 9 before someone died. I'm not exactly sure who it was though because it happened pretty quick. Eventually I couldn't keep up with all the damage that was coming in.
I found the controls to be a little confusing. I thought that I was playing as all the party members at first but I figured it out quickly. I eventually settled into a rhythm that worked for me, but it did require me to completely ignore the enemies. I would occasionally throw a silence their way.
So constructive feedback:
- It was sometimes difficult to tell what was happening because there was a lot going on at once.
- The single sound for my healing was a good touch so I could easily tell when I could cast again.
- Make the targetting more clear. There were multiple times I would click on my cleric and I must have hit the hitbox of the mage because he got my heal. That might have been what actually killed me in the end.
Very nicely done!
For the targeting, you can see who you hover when their name changes to yellow (It's hard to notice and we only added that at the end.).
It's was a bit hard to understand that I had to click the characters to cast my spells (I know the tutorial tried to tell me) but since there was to feed back and I didn't get at first that I was playing as the cleric I just saw that stuff was happening, so I thought I just had to hover over the character I wanted to cast on.
@simex thanks for playing our game, your feedback definitely makes sense and it might have been good to highlight which character the player is at the beginning somehow
I found it very poetic, the music is nice and the characters are lovely ! I really found it nice to play.
I take some time to understand how the spells are working during the fight but it's ok because I had time to get it ^^
During gameplay, at first I didn't understand the fact that spells took time to cast, that you could only cast one spell at a time, that you had to type the number every time, and that you had to click your target after you selected your spell. It may have helped if, say, your cursor changed when you selected a spell, and changed again when you were hovering over a legal target. I also couldn't tell what every spell did (how long did the silence effect last?).
Also, your decision to make spells cast at the end of the cooldown, rather than the beginning, was one I didn't understand. Since you have to choose your target at the beginning of the timer, you have to predict who is likely to be the most injured by the time the spell completes; but because unit injuries are based on random enemy actions, there's no way to know who will need healing, other than guessing.
One more thought: The wizard, archer, and knight did a lot of actions (defend! poison arrow! barrier!) but it felt like none of those actions actually influenced my decisions of what to do. You could consider cutting all that stuff from the game, and just make it the enemies that have special abilities.
Sorry for being so nitpicky. This was a fun game, and you all should be very proud!
It is a nice take on the theme.
If you happened to miss me playing the game, you can go to this spreadsheet to find what timestamp I played your game
https://tinyurl.com/yau8hjzn
And then look in my latest videos and find your game being play (after the current stream ends)
https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
@rhoka Yeah, we did the UI really fast. There actually was a hover indicator, but it's hard to see (the names turn yellow.). We added the yellow hover ~30 minutes before the end of the jam. :D
Nice game! The concept is pretty clear. Maybe the most obvious thing to imporve would be better UI feedback, and allowing the player to select targets by clicking the name rather than the graphics (which seemed a bit unreliable). Also could use some actual casting animation rather than just the small countdown above the cleric's head.
I'm surprised at how similar it looks.