I published this last Thursday, but it still doesn't show up anywhere

Nice game with interesting stylization and fine sound effects.

I did found the combat system to be somewhat confusing and the AI's weren't doing much of anything so I mostly got use from them when my current character died. I made it to Wave 3, it got better once I started using shield a bit more.

Good job!

Cool stuff! Weird that LD won't let you post links!

Thank you for finding your way to the page! Yes, I was going max effort for a week and a half to try to get it in early enough to get feedback, so it's disappointing that it's being excluded from the entries.

@sicosiber RESOLVED:

If anyone else has this issue, reach out to Mike Kasprzak on bluesky. I didn't want to go to his personal account, but that worked after a week of no fix (and most of the time no reply) from:

LDjam website posts

LD discord, reddit, twitter and bluesky accounts

emails: mikekasprzak@gmail.com, support@ldjam.com

and trying to create a new account to reupload.

So I hope that helps someone avoid frustration in the future.

I've played the web version. the audio-visual aspect is very high quality. Unique style, the retro aesthetic. All the sprites, animations. ui and menu illustrations are really good, especially for a jam game, and the audio pairs well (though besides the really good main menu music, I missed the soundtrack in the actual gameplay) The movement and combat felt a little clunky to me, especially using the shield, which felt very inconsistent, though maybe it was due to me playing the web version. Also the character level would reset after death (which I assume was intended), but the indicator on screen would still show the level I died at, which kind of confused me at first. The reset in exp would also make gaining it back pretty frustrating, and when I died in Layer 2 fighting the Balrog-looking boss, it was gg. He would just scale himself so much faster and regaining my lvl was straight-up impossible with even the basic orc posing a great challenge capable of one-shotting me. Though maybe that was the intention, it definitely made the game more chanllenging, but combined with the clunky movement it sometimes felt unfair. I've also experienced a bug where some enemies were invisible, though that was at a point where, the performance-wise the game was struggling, so again, perhaps it's the fault of me playing the web version. But despite these things I did like the overall idea for the combat system here, and with more polish and added complexity in enemy types, and maybe various weapons etc. I think it could work really well. It reminded me a little bit of the Crypt of the NecroDancer, though without the rhythmic element. Nonetheless, the game has a high production quality and it's impressive what you've cooked up here.

Nice game! I had an issue where new enemies didn't appear after I played for a while

@pauldee427 Thank you for the kind words! Yes, I wonder if making the enemies level up and your own level reset on death was a mistake. When I was developing it, the only way to come back at that point was luring an orc to the edge of the cliff and kicking him in, which instantly gave like 5 level ups. Thank you for the feedback on the UI not resetting the level on death. Crypt of the Necrodancer looks interesting!

@geometer Thank you! Do you recall what layer/wave you were at when the enemies stopped spawning? Was it the html5 build or the downloadable .exe?

Great visuals and plodding feel to this! I found it a bit tedious to traverse large distances, but I like the intentional aspect of positioning to attack. Cool stuff!

@irwatts Thank you! If I develop this more, I'll definitely need to smooth out the movements, at least from the player's perspective. They're locked to the center of 128x128px tiles, so that's a bit choppy. Maybe a "hold shift to run" or something would help if you miss an enemy a far way off, or just make bigger waves spawn independent of how many enemies are alive so the player is more hemmed in?

I found the font quite hard to read, and the web version is a bit small. Is there a way that you can add a fullscreen button? If the LD site doesn't allow fullscreen button you can post the game on itch.io.

I like the animations and it feels good to hit an enemy, though I wish I could move a bit faster (or maybe move without snapping to the grid)

So, the graphics were really nice. I didn't like being stuck to the grid so much, but that's a design choice I guess. I liked the sound effects and the overall vibe, would definitely like to see this developed more!

I also spent a while killing guys and leveling up, then noticed that on the bottom near my sword it said kills: 0

Then I realized the guys I was killing weren't attacking me, and I'm pretty sure I got to like level 9 off of friendly fire killing my AI teammates, since they didn't seem to be attacking me either? Then I went towards the different looking people on the map and suddenly they were attacking me. So... oops?

The boss kicked my butt because I'm not used to use my shield :laughing:

@almost I agree, I went with a free medieval looking font but at smaller screen sizes it's hard to read. The itch.io site and the .exe Windows build let you go fullscreen, but I'll see about getting a separate button in for the LD embedded version. Thank you for the feedback!

@rubixnoob13 Thank you for the nice feedback! My brother-in-law did the same friendly fire thing lol - I made their outlines blue and the orcs outlines red, but I should probably take out friendly fire for the good guys altogether. I was thinking that I want the player to never get stuck if surrounded by allies, but maybe a pass-through mechanic could solve that.

@transkuja I'm glad you made it to the boss, it can be punishing! Going toe-to-toe with him is not recommended, to guarantee a win you can let him go for your allies and get behind him or stay on a diagonal tile from him and hit him while he is moving to an adjacent tile.

@static-leap-studios Ahh, that makes sense. I don't think you explained anywhere (that I saw anyway) that the different colors meant something. I thought they were all bad guys, maybe just blue were weaker, orange were stronger.

At the very least, I should probably lose EXP for killing allies instead of gaining EXP, unless that's a design choice :rofl:

Pass through allies would probably be the cleanest solution, just disable collision on allies, leave it on bad guys. Still, good job again! :smile:

I really like the aesthetic of this game, the animations and sounds really made it feel smooth. I couldn't get the shield to work, not sure if I was just doing it wrong but if so it doesn't feel very intuitive. Unfortunately couldn't get past the boss because every time it killed me my max hp reset and it's went up. Still really fun though. Great job!

@pegasys Thank you for the feedback! The idea is that you can raise your shield as they attack, and if you see the enemy axe icon - that is where their attack will come from, so if you put the shield icon up on the same side of your character it should block all damage (although I haven't reliably recreated this bug, I've had other actions like turning, moving, or prepping an attack negate the shield even though the icon is showing). I overlooked the boss scaling out of control after killing the player. I should really just make him level up from going deeper into the abyss and not gain xp from kills.

The game goes hard, I liked the gameplay, my strategy was to be aggressive and start with a kick before slashing away. Gamplay goes hard, music goes hard, even the animations feel really fluid how did you even do them? Overall this was fun. I did have some difficulty reading text though.

@0x-void-x0 Thank you for the feedback! I modeled and animated the characters in blender, then rendered them and edited them in Gimp to appear as much like hand drawn sprites as I could. I initially thought I'd do a gun-game style upgrade system from peasant through knight, but the limited characters I had took a long time to get right so I went with level ups increasing a gold glowing effect.

Thanks for dropping the link in my stream! Was fun playing.
Although the artstyle wasn't really my thing, it really was a fun game.

@alvaron It was very good feedback to watch you play it live, thank you for doing that!

Nice I managed to kill a lots of "oRcs". Game played fine in my browser..
Began a bit repetitive at some point.

Good luck for getting the next rating!

Nice to see you have used github during the development process of the game. I have starred and added your repository to a list of ld57 compo : https://github.com/stars/dhmmasson/lists/ludum-dare-57-compo

I have created badges for the readme that you can use:
```
```

Consider using these **topics** to make your Ludum Dare entry more discoverable:
- `game`
- `game-development`
- `ludum-dare`
- `ludumdare`
- `ludumdare57`
- `ludum-dare-57`
- `ld57`

@dhim You got us over 20 ratings, thank you! Appreciate the github tips. Do you remember how far you were when it started feeling repetitive? I had the boss arrive at wave 7 of each layer but probably could accelerate that.

I think I was at wave 6...

Wow, what a cool game. The character animation is also so smooth, did you do it in 3D? My only piece of feedback is the font, found it a bit difficult to read and thats about it. Music is great and the game plays well, I really like this entry. I would def buy a game with these sort of mechanics

@angry-fridge Thank you for the praise, when smthngclvr busted out that music I knew I had to work hard! Yes I will def change the font with the next iteration, this one was the first free medieval style font I came across. I was thinking of putting touchscreen controls so a buddy of mine with no computer can play. Yes, the characters are originally 3d, modeled and animated in blender, then rendered in 2d and edited in Gimp to try to mimic retro sprites. Feel free to follow the github or itch.io if you want a heads up on updates

The slashing sfx is satisfying. Love the animation as well!

I've just wanted to write the same as @aizomon.

Love it! Music is awesome, the retro graphic is so cool! Its so much Diablo vibe! The control feels strange but maybe its just a game design idea.

I have played&rated your game, don't have time to write long review, things I liked:



+unique art style

+moving on tiles gives some Warcraft 1 vibes

+also game itself like dark souls or diablo atmosphere

+gaining control of other people when respawn.

+overall lot of interesting things implemented: cutting stones, sparta kick to pits, blocking, boss, leveling up, procedural endless corridor


Things works not so well for me:

-collider of block is for front wall, so you cant go above it or squeeze corner;

-smoothing of camera is nice but tiresome after a while when I begin to move more aggresively and faster, because it aligns to tiles

-idea of block is cool, but its positioned on side of body and turning just before block is very hard

-kick is too instantaneous, giving too small time to react, looking almost like teleporting.

-leveling up feels like you become unstoppable at some point (on other hand, boss could kill you too easily and you now weak again)

-sometimes its difficult to discern between ally and enemy, particular because of light - for example sometimes soldier is golden, but when he raises hand he got shadow (?) and looks almost like orc.

P.S. minor undestandable jam things: at some point I just rushed forward, and sprites were visible oustide of play field in the void, also I think cutting 3 stones in front is too powerful for sword.

(At this point you may wonder if that's my short review what long is...)


Ideas I propose:

+dash action, also for enemies, for more tactical surrounding and backstabs

+some ally teamwork, may be action to call for help, for example place banner

+objects or points of interest, like chests, idols, some unique rooms, to do something else from slashing

Keep up good work! Good luck figuring how to transform this idea to full game, may be some dancing-rythm mechanics



p.s. after watching someone stream, I realized I missed descending on next layer and played only 1st.

@aizomon @okuar @gdman Thank you for all the great feedback! The camera/movement should be smoothed out, there are touchscreen controls now if that is more intuitive, and the friendly fire exploit/boss doom-spiral bugs are fixed. Also, the unreadable font was reverted to standard letters. Love the suggestions, and your positive feedback motivated me to start on some of them!