LudumData

No fun at all; feedback needed

[raw] LD34LD #34 12. Dec 2015 · 21:51 UTC · 45 hours after compo start by fragileannihilator · 1

NoFun

Hello everyone, I’ve been messing around with my game for the last few hours. The idea behind it looked promising on paper but turned out to be NOT FUN AT ALL in reality. So I don’t know what to do next. There are still 28 hours left, so I could try to make something different from scratch… What do you think, is there anything that could make this one actually fun to play?

Description:

You are trapped in some sort of magic dungeon/labyrinth. You goal is to make it to the room 9,x (you start at 0,0). There are 2 doors in each  room. One of them will take you to a higher level room, the other one will bring you back to a random room of a lower level. Your goal is to find the way to room 9.x before you run out of lantern fuel. (FYI, All the assets are placeholders)

PLAY

 

Comments

commodoreKid
12. Dec 2015 · 21:56 UTC
I think you should just add more content and try to make it less random where you end up. Or it could be random but then this randomness shouldn’t make you lose. As content there could be some encounters with some characters or objects in every room.
12. Dec 2015 · 21:58 UTC
I think it doesn’t feel fun because it’s too random, the player doesn’t actually have any interesting decisions to make at all. I think if you were going to stick with it then you’d have to make it less random. Maybe offer some info about the choice of each door/route. Like one way extra lamp oil but might have a monster? I’m not sure though, you’d have to put in some form of conflict, although you wouldn’t necessarily need a combat system (maybe each thing you encountered take a certain amount of health?). You may not want to do any combat at all though. Some other form of resource other than lamp oil would be good, then you could maybe make trade-offs in the route you took? Hope my ramblings were of some help!
12. Dec 2015 · 21:59 UTC
it feels kind of random if I make progress or not by going through the left or right door. Maybe if you wrote a bunch of semi-cryptic puzzles that could be written on the walls as a way to hint players in the right direction? If my math is right, you’ve got about 50 rooms, and there are no shortage of riddles you can pull from the internet (Dungeons and Dragons players use riddles drawn on walls pretty often) to tickle players’ brains as they work their way forward.

If you have time after that, I’d say to try decorating each room a little bit. Just make like a couple torch assets, maybe a table, a skeleton depending on how creepy you want to be, and throw a couple into each room so they each feel a bit more unique.
chriiis88
12. Dec 2015 · 22:08 UTC
The reason for your game not (yet) being fun is that there is no real challenge. Guessing the right door isn’t much fun either. First of all I wouldn’t put the player back more than 1 or 2 levels or it quickly becomes frustrating. Then you could give hints at what the right door is (some sort of rune system? Walking through a door activates the rune printed on the wall next to it, three runes of a kind activate a spell?). The lantern is of no use at the moment, because it’s light as day in your labyrinth. Maybe do something with darkness. Or even think about doing something with the second theme of “growing”.
12. Dec 2015 · 22:27 UTC
I’ve tried your game, and your base idea is interesting. I like how I can move fast inside the labyrinth by just hitting left or right arrows. However, in its current state, the game is way too random to be challenging.