Pigeon Brigade by Iqoribou
1916 - Your platoon got ambushed, losing many of your troop and losing all communication methods. You must rely on your trusty pigeons to order your brigade around and make it out of enemy territory alive.
Content :
- 2 Different playable unit
- 2 Different enemy type
- 6 Levels
- Lots and lots of pigeons
Controls :
- Left Click - Place down points for pigeon path
- Right Click - Remove last point or cancel pigeon path
- Space - Start a new pigeon path or send the current pigeon
- 1 to 6 - Change the current banner type
Summary :
This is a very crude attempt to a Delayed-Real Time Strategy Game, where you communicate instructions to your different units using pigeons. You must be careful as pigeons can be lost on the way and get taken out by enemy force.
Due to the lack of time it turned a bit more into a puzzle game then an RTS, but I would like to eventually take some more time to explore this idea further, all feedback is welcome.
Note :
I'm an highschool teacher and helped some of my students take part in the Ludum Dare for the first time, after trying my game go and give theirs a shot please, they could really use some feedback and enrouraging words : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/pizza-race-1!
Ratings
| Overall | 189th | 3.58⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 285th | 3.06⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 52th | 3.94⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 191th | 3.9⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 111th | 3.885⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 295th | 2.364⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 312th | 2.86⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 26🗨️ |
The game has potential and looks nice. Good work.
Overall, it's a really cool game, and I enjoyed playing it. Good job!
Other than that, the game is pretty polished. Liked the amount of gameplay there was. well done!
It is quite challenging timing the pigeons, since the player cannot see the route and speed of the enemies. Therefore I couldn't design the path clearly by measuring the length of the route. It turned out that I need some luck to pass the level.
I know that I can send new pigeon before the last one returns, yet it is much harder for me to master.
It's still a good game after all. Nice work!
Btw it sounds really nice that you help your students take part in the jam. They have a good teacher! ^^
This is a really unique mechanic that is done very well! Inherent to the mechanic, however, the game-play loop is fairly slow, but it does allow room for mastery once one learns how to send multiple pigeons off. Maybe a way to incentivize the faster paced game-play style could be to do a calculation while planning that will tell you if a pigeon will hit something on its path (that could be a fair bit of work, I'm just spitballing here)? that aside, the graphics are clean and satisfying and I managed to pick up the relatively complex mechanic quite quickly, without having to read a novel worth of tutorial text.
The pigeons graphics are so cute, and I'm so fascinated by the potential a "delayed RTS".
I'm curious if the simple design change of "send pigeons" when left click would lead to a faster gameplay loop, where you can send out multiple pigeons quickly!
I would say that it's a pity that there is no background music, even a simple royalty free music would have added a lot to the atmosphere.
I also regret the absence of a restart button, the last 2 levels are hardcore!
Congratz on the submission !
Also, the moment the game introduce enemies it gets really hard. Some enemies are almost impossible for me to predict their movement, especially when they stop moving.
I hate when they are obstacles that moves but have barely anything to "read" them.
Also as I mentionned in a comment above you can reset by pressing ESC, think I'll add that to the itch page. Thank you for playing :)
- Add an anti-mechanical unit: it can destroy tanks but is vulnerable to enemy infantry
- Add a programmable pause time before the pigeon comes back to prevent it from being killed on the way back.
- Added capture of a pigeon loft or a unit where pigeons can take off and return. This unit can only be controlled from the initial loft. This will allow for more complex puzzles.
I hope this will be useful. I really enjoyed the game and would love to see what a "Delayed-Real Time Strategy Game" would look like with more development time!