Loopy Dungeon by SpaceGuinea Productions
A tower defense where you are stuck on a loop!
| Youtube | https://happynessisgames.itch.io/loopy-dungeon |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/loopy-dungeon |
Ratings
| Overall | 1592th | 2.673⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1553th | 2.442⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1001th | 3.154⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1017th | 3.404⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1081th | 1.981⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1221th | 1.857⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1519th | 2.14⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 10🗨️ |
The planting of traps was nice, and the stuck in a look was done in a unique manner.
The audio effects were a bit loud, I ended up muting the game after a while.
Also I would've loved to have seen bullet animation, as I couldn't tell that the shooting mechanic was actually working.
I take it you place traps, then once the wave comes you just move along the same track you initially move in? I couldn't truly tell if I was shooting correctly or not as there were no visible bullets. I eventually figured out the pickups that appear can be used to repair, but it took a little while.
I only made it to the third round in a handful of attempts. What kept happening was that I'd still be fixing traps, then the round would start and my loop's starting point was just where the skeletons appear and I'd quickly die after I appeared at the loop's start. Kind of wish there was a grace period there between trap placement and the round beginning.
I do quite like the art style, nice palette as well. Like mentioned before me, the audio was on the loud side.
Good start, though, and like I said, a neat idea.
I think the concept here has a lot of potential but it wasn't explored too well. Let's go through the positives first:
1) The art is pretty good. It's not just 'servicable' or programmer art, but like it works well and it's nice! The sound design could use more work to blend with the art style but as a whole, I'd say it's nice!
2) A relatively innovative take on the stuck-in-a-loop, by being absolutely direct and literal about it. Haha.
It's an interesting mechanic, almost like a tower defense but you're stuck in a minecart. I think with much more polish, this would definitely be great.
Speaking of polish, this leads to my major qualms about the game:
1) I think the lack of bullets is very dentrimental. You can continue to have raycast shooting but the lack of visual feedback to the player that you're shooting (or missing) quite strongly detracts from the experience.
2) I think you have a very dispersed focus on this game. On one hand, you say it's a tower defense but the only 'towers' you put are the traps. And you also have a guy that takes active control during the battle.
I think if you narrowed down your focus/scope a bit more to pinpoint accuracy, you'd be able to deliver a more focused/cohesive experience. In my head, if you removed the entire trap-setting mechanic, and focused your design around the tracing-your-own-path mechanic. You'd be able to create something much more interesting and fun to play around.
Having talked to you, I can see understand what you mean by what you said about your game. But nevertheless, as a hardcore-optimist myself, I do see potential in this. It just definitely needs **a lot** a work to make good. It doesn't change the fact that this idea is not bad, the execution simply needed more work.
And hey, maybe next game around, you'll make a way better game then!
I liked the concept generally, but the game feedback leave something to be desired...
I found the hotkeys didn't feel super intuitive to me, especially with having to use the mouse as well, but that might just be me being a bad gamer.