Dragon, the collector by Aleksey Salion

[raw]
made by Aleksey Salion for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

3.jpg

Explore the lands and gather resources to confront the nemesis of kings: the Dragon.

Click the King for Help. Can’t see a certain action? That means you don’t have enough resources. The game is inspired by medieval aesthetics, but don’t expect any music or sound effects. I barely had time to polish the game and don’t have experience creating sounds.

Thank you for playing!

Post-jam fixes: 8/10/2025: fixed UI issues that make the game hard to play

Ratings

Overall 448th 3.444⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Fun 316th 3.471⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 197th 3.588⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Theme 610th 3.242⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 240th 4.029⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Humor 469th 2.793⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Mood 290th 3.721⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Given 33🗳️ 51🗨️

Feedback

MaxineY
Oct 06th · 20:20 UTC
The art and ideas are amazing!
Ulziton
Oct 06th · 20:29 UTC
Amazing game!
LDJam user 148539
Oct 06th · 20:42 UTC
Very cool game, only issue I ran into is when clicking on the king for help, I couldn't find anyway to close the help menu
Blaizi
Oct 06th · 20:44 UTC
When I click on the king for help, I can't hide this tooltip, but I really liked the game)
Baluj
Oct 06th · 20:45 UTC
I liked the idea and the art. I would have liked there to be more variability, like another boss or something like that because it seemed short to me.
alpaca-041
Oct 06th · 20:55 UTC
Good idea for collecting resources against a collector. How about consider sparing some time collecting bgm and sfx from open website? They may help a lot to make your game more immersive.
🎤 Aleksey Salion
Oct 06th · 21:09 UTC
@gat @blaizi I've fixed the issue and also added tooltips for better understanding of possible actions. Thanks for feedback :)
🎤 Aleksey Salion
Oct 06th · 21:12 UTC
@alpaca-041 I had to cut so many features just to make the jam's deadline (
alpaca-041
Oct 06th · 21:17 UTC
Always a tough choice to trade off feature against time
kantona
Oct 06th · 21:23 UTC
I really like the concept, had some issues understanding the UI at first but eventually i got the production running and could get a steady stream of swordsmen to beat the dragon. Thanks for sharing!
JohnCoffee
Oct 06th · 22:36 UTC
Nice Strategy interpretation, hard to understand, good job altogether, sad that you missed compo deadline iirc. keep making stuff.
Threeli
Oct 07th · 00:58 UTC
@kantona already said what I might've, the UI feels a little convoluted, but as soon as I figured it out I was off to the races. Love your visual theming, and the game itself was pretty cool. Any plans to continue working on it?
Helen
Oct 07th · 09:53 UTC
I love the art style, it's fun to play and pretty stressful when the dragon is on the field :D - well done!
chuckeles
Oct 07th · 17:56 UTC
![CleanShot 2025-10-07 at 19.55.26@2x.png](///raw/f53/8/z/6eb6e.png)

Unfortunately I think I broke it and I did not figure out what to do. 🙁
atsh
Oct 07th · 17:59 UTC
![Screenshot 2025-10-07 205428.png](///raw/827/36/z/6eb6d.png)

I really like digital board games, and it took me some time to figure this one out, but once I did - the idea here seem really good

The main issue I had was with the controls - The clicking felt not very responsive for me, sometimes I couldn't get the mill pop up to show. I also wasn't able to close menus if I wanted to do something else. I think that in general that clicking on the peasents is not needed as you need them for everything - just click on what you want to activate. Also text was a little small on my end


Having said that, the art is very nice, and with some work this can become very fun
INGVIILD
Oct 07th · 20:16 UTC
The graphics are beautiful! It's a really cool idea to use the style of medieval illustrations!
The only problem is that I still don't understand how to play... The character only moves through open cells and it's not clear how to open new ones.
🎤 Aleksey Salion
Oct 07th · 22:15 UTC
@chuckeles @atsh @ingviild thank you for feedback and sorry for the bad experience. I’ve just reuploaded the build and fixed the issues you faced. I hope you’ll give it another shot
FNG_TrashCat
Oct 07th · 23:00 UTC
This is a fantastic board game!! Digital felt really satisfying, but I'd also love to see a physical version if you ever want to try that!

My thoughts - Not sure if it was my screen, but the resource icons in the action tooltips were rather small and I often mixed up the food and wood. They're not bad icons by any means, just seemed like a scaling issue. I'll try it again on my bigger screen to see if it's more my computer than your art xD

It also took me a while to realize the swordsman was not just a statue LOL I originally thought I had to build something to fight the swordsman and almost threw my attempt. Turns out clicking the king is VERY HELPFUL :joy: Still won tho :muscle: I think the king's tips would make a perfect tutorial popup for a first time play if you update this after the jam ratings!

o7 for a fantastic medieval game! Next time I play I'm gonna have bardcore in the bg! :star2: :100:
Jordan Neff
Oct 08th · 03:36 UTC
Really cool concept, I love a good strategy game! The art style is well done and fits the games theme splendidly.

I don't know if it was just me (probably was haha) but I struggled to understand some of the mechanics early on. Once I figured out peasant placement and I was able to harvest grain and make mills though! But for the life of me I could not figure out how to get iron and make a swordsman. And +1 to what @fng-trashcat said about the icons, they're a little hard to distinguish from each other when playing embedded. A little color coding might help solve this.

Side note: On my 2nd playthrough I think I softlocked myself somehow with no grain and after turn 3 I never got any more peasants to place :joy:

All in all still a good entry! Some bardcore would go hard with this one 📯
Eugenik
Oct 09th · 04:57 UTC
This game is fun I liked it a lot :D.
salm
Oct 09th · 12:37 UTC
Cool art and gameplay, nice work.
LDJam user 372012
Oct 09th · 13:39 UTC
Hey nice to see vibes and idea similar to our game! Love the art style you chose. Reminds me of Potion Craft

![sabx6V1rkuXqO1zT2Y-aSo0lwuxyuQVEKK9_Ba1a1B3HuViv4T5aoPg68_sMOxAlzhjo6xjqFg_6WCDLrd2T1rTT.jpg](///raw/c2d/a5/z/6f156.jpg)
loco
Oct 09th · 14:31 UTC
cool arts and fun to play. Goodjob!
nassshie
Oct 11th · 20:39 UTC
cool art style! visuals are amazing!
Jiaming Shang
Oct 11th · 20:43 UTC
It's a very cool game, The art and the ideas are both very good. But there is still room for improvement in terms of resource acquisition. In the early stages, the speed of obtaining resources was relatively slow. Or, for the knight that required three resources to be produced, there were simply too few workers. So, as the game progressed, it was only possible for three buildings to continuously obtain resources. In the second round, the knight was produced, and then the knight was used to wait until the resources of another knight were collected. This lacked some of the fun elements.

![Screenshot 2025-10-11 133732.png](///raw/fd5/46/z/6f478.png)
ruruie
Oct 12th · 05:09 UTC
The looks and presentation is fantastic! But definitely the UI and gameplay confused me a couple rounds.
stefaink
Oct 12th · 05:38 UTC
In love with graphs
Mackelvin
Oct 12th · 10:01 UTC
Really Cool Game !! Love the overall aspect. In the end, I was hoping for a second level so I could continue enjoying the game.
Great submission !!
anaticula
Oct 13th · 02:11 UTC
Absolutely loved the visual style and turn-based concept. Took me sometime to figure out what to do because somehow I didn't see the options for peasants to discover new areas and chop wood. I tried several times but the dragon beat me, should try one more time to see what help clicking on king provides(which I forgot until read about in comments). Really great job!
xpoho
Oct 15th · 05:31 UTC
![изображение_2025-10-15_123035763.png](///raw/d14/a3/z/6f65e.png)

Really nice turn-based game! I would like to see some more gameplay in the future ^_^
ColeSlaughter
Oct 20th · 18:56 UTC
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2589159756?t=01h39m54s)

I think with some improvements to the UX, this could be expanded into a pretty neat little turn-based strategy game. :slight_smile:
oller125
Oct 24th · 19:18 UTC
Love the art style. Some of the text is a bit difficult to read though