Loot Goblin by Tudvari
About
Legend says that beneath the dungeon lies a hidden temple
with a treasury beyond a goblin's imagination!
- Eadric Falsegold
*A merchant tasked you, the loot goblin, with looting the nearby dungeon in order to fulfill the needs of some filthy adventurers. *
*The dungeon is filled with poisonus gas... but it's also full of LOOT! *
As soon as you enter, the door closes behind you. But across all that loot, there is a ladder.
Loot goblins' goal is to reach the treasury and to get as much gold on the way as possible. So their name may shine at the top of the Hall of Wealth. (leaderboard)
Features
Reach the deepest level of the dungeon (the 4th) and claim your destiny!
Each turn, you have to make a decision about an item...
.. and you also take some damage. So you are constantly drinking your health potions!
You can either leave or take the item, and you can also make space in your inventory.
If you run out of potions, you permanently die and you have to start over.
If you survive a level, the merchant buys your items, allowing you to buy and refill potions!
The deeper you go, the stronger the poison!
On the last two levels, your inventory slows you down, causing your even more damage!
Reach the top of the leaderboard!
(Controls and planned features are down below)
Controls
Left mouse button to click around.
Up and Down arrows to change the volume.
Features, that didn't make it?
Diablo-like inventory grid, because everybody loves inventory tetris.
Multiple item types, and for every run, a type is randomly selected to provide you extra gold at the merchant.
Items with images and random affixes, which increase or decrease their value.
Buying upgrades, like additional potion slots, inventory space, armor, etc.
Various usable items both in the shop and in the dungeon.
Different paths within a level.
Intro sequence. (At least a text based one)
Better user interface.
Background info
My personal challenge for LD54 was learning a new engine. I chose Godot! :)
Feel free to follow me on YouTube where I'm planning to make a video about my submission! :)
| Link | https://tudvari.itch.io/loot-goblin |
| Link | https://tudvari.itch.io/loot-goblin |
| Link | https://tudvari.itch.io/loot-goblin |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/loot-goblin |
Ratings
| Overall | 184th | 3.552⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 251th | 3.19⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 184th | 3.393⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 205th | 3.552⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 213th | 3.379⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 89th | 3.621⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 107th | 3.167⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 75th | 3.759⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
As for the game: gameplay misses a purpose. There is no risk and reward, as you can just keep going for expeditions over and over again to get as much gold as you can. After a while the game became a button clicking simulator. I can't think of a simple solution for this, but I don't think you will want to turn this into the next AAA steam release anyway.
Also, I found a bug: after an expedition text seems to be covering the button, so you have to press around it for the click to register
Good luck with the new engine
And yes, you are so right about the issue that a player could just grind the lowest level till they have their slots full of the best potions. And then easily finish the game. Players will always find the least resistant path for sure, and optimize the fun out the game. :smile:
But now that I think about it... you can do this in ARPG-s and in lots of other games as well, right? You can always fight bit underlevelled monsters to grind XP. It's slower, more tidious, less fun, boring, but you can easily and very safely beat the final boss after that grind. Hmm, now I can't stop thinking about, thanks! :smiley: And thanks again for playing my game, can't wait to try yours. :)
Good job releasing a game while learning a new engine! P.S. Why is the game 100mb?
@markus-sihler Thanks for the kind words! Yes, I could implement only the bare minimum sadly. If it would have a grid/tetris inventory and/or some small objectives, it would be more fun I guess! Thanks for the feedback. :slight_smile:
@alexclay Thanks, good to hear! :) I didn't look at ES things during the jam, but now that you mentioned it, it resembles a bit Morrowind. But maybe just due to the art. Hmm... Yeah, about that: There are 2 ambience tracks, one has 2 versions in the project, the other one 3. They end up taking 60 MB. :D
@berin Well, you don't have to be so nice, the visuals aren't really immersive for sure! :D I mean I even forgot to at least make the background of the dungeon scene at least a *bit* darker. :smile: Yep, that's what I figured out sadly too late: you don't have to check the items until your inventory is full. I would live to try the planned version as well, to see if it's worth working on it more. Maybe I will work on it a bit more. But I feel like the game's idea is maybe too risky to work on it for months and be released publicly. But who knows. Thanks for the great feedback, cheer! :smile:
Started out being a bit confused about mu health only being the potions. But nice text telling me "you are not going without a health potion are you?" guided me in the right direction.
Very nice graphics, and color picking ;) Moody music. All round a very nice work :thumbsup:
Got to the end on my forth try. As soon as you figure out what's going on, it gets a lot easier :)
Nice job :thumbsup:
You leave the dungeon when there are no more items on the level, so it's indicated by the "X loot in front of you" text. I tried telling this by this text: "But across all that loot, there is a ladder."
Regarding the weight limit: it's a just a limit. There isn't a rule that you should have x kg of items in your inventory. You just *should have** because why waste the space when it's limited? I mean there could be loot there! :D
Thanks for the feedback, cheers! :)
The music was very chill and fitting and I liked the simple artstyle.
Also it was nice, that you prevented the player from going into the dungeon without purchasing anything at first.
Overall very nice entry, I enjoyed it a lot. Hope you had fun during the jam and maybe give my game a try if you haven't yet. I haven't made it to 20 votes yet either <3
@im-not-a-robot Woah, that's a lot of praise, undeserved for sure, but thanks! :) Yep, I planned to have some other, special effect potions, which could be bought before the adventure, or found during one.
Thanks for playing and glad to hear that you finished it! :) Sure, I'll give it a go! :)
I think being able to replay the same level over and over again kind of breaks the game, since you can get an arbitrarily high score that way even when just mashing "take" and ignoring the value and weight of all the items. I didn't "get" the gameplay until after I voluntarily limited myself to one go at each level. Once I did that, it felt much more balanced.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM2FmQK-ELs
@commanderstitch Thanks, Commander! :) Thanks for playing, congrats!
@bangkerpow Thanks for the kind comments! :) Thanks for describing your learning curve, it was helpful. I guess we'll see what the ratings say about this idea, but I'm glad that at least you liked it, thanks for playing! :)
Yes, different backgrounds in the dungeon and things like that would be good, but I didn't really miss them. Sound and graphics are perfectly nice!
@prakkus Thanks for the feedback! Yep, the player could have a bit more control on the outcome I guess. What do you mean by the last part? Could you elaborate a bit? Thanks in advance! :slight_smile:
Well, I anticipated a bit better score in some of the categories, but it ain't bad I guess. My first 2 LDs were relatively pretty bad, and since then I always managed to get a persistent kind-of-good rating. Which is good but also kind of sad because it means that I'm not improving. :laughing: