LudumData

The Homing Crows by fabonacci

[raw]
made by fabonacci for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

A tactical game where you have to move your units between cities. You will need to calculate your move in advance. The aim is to conquer the enemy castle.

The controls are only with a mouse or touch (for phone). You can click on one of you city/castle to select if (it become bigger when selected). Then you can click on any another city/castle to send unit or crow. If you want to deselect you can click again on the selected city/castle You can zoom using the scroll.

The rules are: - You can send units/crow only to castle or cities that are connected to your home castle by a continuous path of roads and cities under your control. If a city is disconnected from your castle you will not be able to send units there. - If you send units from your castle, they will go to the city in n turns equals to the shortest path from your castle. - If you send units from one of your city, you will first send a crow from your castle to the selected city, crow will arrived in a number of turns equal to the shortest path to the city. Then units will go to second city or castled you selected taking also n turns passing by the shortest path. - When sending units, you can only deploy up to half the city units. - Units counter are displayed on the city/castle flag - If you send a crow or unit to a neutral city (white flag) you obtain it, with all units. - If you send a crow or units to a enemy city/castle (red flag), it will subtract the number of units to the city. If the enemy's unit count reaches 0 you obtain it.

I created the game for compo at first, but i didn't get the time to finish it, so i switch to jam. I'm a solo developer using godot. I did all the assets myself using Aseprite, mpc beats and reaper. It's my first turn based game and i encountered some difficulties during development, I know the game is missing hint on what to do and preview of the action but i didn't get the time to do it. I think some bug are still there, i will fix them. Then i will try to create a more complete version with what i missed. I hope you will enjoy it. Any advise will be appreciate !

Thank you and good game !

splash_screen.png

github https://github.com/FabienCont/ldjam_59
Link https://FabienCont.github.io/ldjam_59/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/the-homing-crows

Ratings

Overall 664th 3.2⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 671th 2.95⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 656th 2.975⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 647th 3.225⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 413th 3.775⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 412th 3.316⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 410th 2.806⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 580th 3.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 29🗳️ 15🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 236055
Apr 21st · 11:04 UTC
I kinda get the idea, but I am not sure how exactly I am controlling where they move? Might be good to add instructions, at least in the text description
Emaigualmc2_art
Apr 21st · 16:59 UTC
I found it very difficult to control the direction of attack, or perhaps the response was too delayed. I think the map size isn't well proportioned; a smaller pixel resolution might have worked and looked better. The sounds were the funniest part xD, great job!
LDJam user 423872
Apr 21st · 21:21 UTC
I like this mechanic. I was able to complete the first level, but I still don't understand why there's such a long delay before the move.
Jvdwijk
May 06th · 11:59 UTC
Interesting game! It was fun trying to figure out what the best flow of movement was, you want the neutral cities for the numbers, but you risk getting cut off.
Like IndiePanda says, I was not sure why sometimes my people moved to a city and sometimes they didn't.. I am guessing it has to do with the turn timer, but this made moving from city to city a bit confusing.

I think this would work better if you can set up where you want to go and have a submit/send button to send your people on their way. That way you can have an indicator of "these people move here" and you let the player know when they will move around.

Bonus: A small pause menu to restart the game / level would be nice!
LDJam user 423693
May 06th · 12:07 UTC
Fun little game ! Some little problems with the delay though but it's fine :)
VoiceofTime
May 06th · 14:18 UTC
I like the concept, but the controls were a struggle as others have mentioned. It feels like it took the crow more turns to get to the city than it should of, but that might have been from delay. Or I might have interrupted a crow somehow. Otherwise, the sounds were very pleasing and the graphics were clean!
Wizard
May 06th · 17:49 UTC
Funky idea. I really like the audio and visuals you went for, I did enjoy the crow sounds. I was a bit confused on how unit deployment actually worked, I kind of lucked out once I figured out how to just cut off the enemies by taking the city next to their castle. however I still lost even though I took the enemy castle. I do like the mechanics though, can't wait to play the next iteration.
Tesseract
May 06th · 19:26 UTC
This is a great idea - orders taking time to arrive is something rarely modeled in strategy games. Being able to cut units off from receiving new orders leads to interesting gameplay, I'd like to know how a game between 2 human players goes. Here's a stalemate I managed to reach: ![Screenshot 2026-05-06 at 20-17-18 ldjam_59.png](///raw/935/d2/z/73257.png)

It could do with clearer controls:
- A highlight/circle would be more obvious than just making the selected city slightly bigger. A selected city should look noticeably different from one the mouse is hovering over.
- There should be some feedback when an attempted order is valid/invalid (one way to do this would be to draw an arrow when the mouse is hovering over a valid destination).
- It's not clear exactly when the animation has ended and you can start to issue the next order - it's tempting to click on the first city of the next order early, and there's usually no reason the game should prevent that. The suggestions above would make it more obvious when the first click didn't count because the previous turn hadn't ended.
- It would be nice to have a bit more information on what your units have been ordered to do, e.g. count units moving through a city separately from those staying in the city. On the other hand, you could say that remembering what's happening is part of the game.
Madbarron
May 07th · 02:27 UTC
I had a very difficult time with the controls. It seems like it should have been easy to control because what I want to do is very simple. I think the art is great but unfortunately the gameplay was too clunky for me. Also when I lost it says I won :laughing: But I dig the concept and a tactical game where your orders have to physically get to your units has been on my mind for years and years, so props for executing on it.
Ethan Allwood
May 07th · 03:38 UTC
I found the delay in movement to be interesting, but I often was unsure of when the order would actually arrive due to the lack of visual communication. Clearing up the controls in-game and creating a clear visual indicator of when each movement command would be executed would help a lot for players to properly engage with the fairly interesting game mechanics you have here. Aside from the cool idea, I also liked the music and visuals!
VenomousMouse
May 07th · 08:32 UTC
I like this type of games. Very nice idea with the crow. also good visuals and sound. Good job.
Antoine Bodin
May 07th · 13:38 UTC
I liked this game, but I think it needs oo much time to understand he mechanisms, even with your explanations. Maybe some sort of history visualization of what order we gave during the last rounds could help. Anyway, the raphics and sound is nice! great job and thank you
kayrum
May 07th · 19:58 UTC
Would really benefit from a tutorial but has nice visuals for a conquest game.
zhangzhimu
May 08th · 09:37 UTC
This strategy game is very interestingly designed. The scenes and graphics are also quite rich. It's very difficult to introduce turn-based elements in such a situation, but it's really a remarkable achievement. I really like this concept. However, the gameplay and controls could be simplified a little bit. It feels a bit difficult and hard to control, but overall, it's still very excellent.