I uploaded a post-jam version of the game.
Yes, it is true that the first LD upload didn’t even consider your selected difficulty. I thought about implementing it, but ran out of time. :)
So the QUIVBAB is a part of the compound puzzle, the out-of-level bonus unlocking thing.
The INPUT is usually an existing word to make the game significantly more realistic to beat. E.g. it would be a “DAGGER” instead of “DGRYYR”. The bonus-related unlocks are different as they may involve gibberish. They’re the ultimate challenge and they involve multi-level deciphering (and they unlock bonus levels after that!)
So even if the OUTPUT matches something, what you need to do is to find a correct INPUT, the decoded keyword.
There is a word pool for every level, so re-running the level might give you easier words (relatively speaking). Also keep in mind the in 99% the input word should be a normal English words, like “animal” or “strike”.
Some levels have ambiguity in them that can only be solved via word/letter enumeration (e.g. narrowing down the candidate list) or through the extra powers of “console” (if you already unlocked enough).
If you attach a screenshot I can take a look and maybe there is something sneaky going on.
https://github.com/quasilyte/decipherism-game/Sources
https://github.com/quasilyte/decipherism-game/blob/master/_docs/running_custom_levels.mdThis is an incomplete instruction on how to create a level :D
You can use Tiled to create levels
I am eager to see your levels!Let me know if you have questions
You actually can, although it’s not a convenient feature in this build: ctrl toggles between the movement and rotation. As a side note, rotation takes 1 action point only, so it can be used as a poor man’s “wait” command which can be handy (as opposed to “guard” that would give extra def and flanking resist bonuses, but it will eat up the entire turn).
I’m surprised someone dug that much into a ludum dare game of a noname developer like me. :)
I’ve added a stats info to the game page as I can’t modify the game until Ludum Dare rating period is over. It’s amazing that you figured out what things like CON do xD You literally guessed the exact mechanic.
I thought about adding an event log, so the player could see what happened (this is mostly useful in the beginning), but it wasn’t the highest priority.
I got to the first level featuring Reapers, and killed all enemies, but it keeps giving my units new action points instead of ending the scene, making it impossible to proceed without reloading the game.
This is a bug I was aware before publishing the game, but I failed to reproduce it… Maybe it is connected to reapers somehow? You gave me a hint to look at. :D\
The second item slot reads “Need unit level 5”, but actually needs level 6 to unlock.
Ah, a classic off-by-one mistake from me. The levels are 0-based, so whenever I display a level, I add +1. But sometimes I get confused and require an actual level 6 instead of 5 :D
Do you have your entry for LD57? I would play and rate it
Having itch io players rated #1 in the global leaderboard confirms that it was a good idea to port the newest version of the game to this platform. :D
Keep it up! It makes my day to see a new person claiming some top score.
What is even more inspiring is that they used a “build” that was not considered meta. I kinda see what they did there: they covered many tier 3 recipes, meaning their fleet has a very good late-game potential, although getting evolution points to quickly promote them would be impossible, I think. Perhaps they found out a good trick to play around that. Maybe at some point, they maxed the evolution rate priority (coupled with blue drones that boost it as well)? Interesting…
The sound design and the atmosphere remind me of Inscryption. :D
I’m not sure if you need nitpick-level comments, but it’s very easy to click through the text accidentally, especially the black-screen text. In a game that has good text, it could be an issue. Why it happens? Because the player will tend to zealously skip through the text they’ve already seen (e.g. the “your estimations were…”), but then sometimes there is something new in-between or after the sequence and they end up skipping the new stuff.
I was somewhat confused to read about the compass tool before it was introduced into the game, but it’s probably a jam build limitation.
The different scale shapes confused me a bit at the start. For some reason, I thought that I should draw these triangle-shapes to calculate the distance while I was expected to calculate the total length of a shape. Since it’s possible to lose very early in the jam game, I guess the main game would introduce these new mechanics in a less punishing way.
The compass is quite cool, I liked using it. It wasn’t very convenient to use it from a laptop without a mouse, but otherwise the controls were good enough (although I couldn’t see what RMB does). Maybe it would be cool to have a pen in my other hand to make a mark while holding the compass tool?
I find it quite hard to be spot-on precise (unless you already know the answer). It’s usually +/-5 or so. It’s not a big deal, but some players will want to have a 100% score and I wonder how possible that is with the precision of tools one has. It’s probably much more realistic when you get a compass as it can be used as a ruler tool.
Other than that, it’s an interesting idea for a compass tool. Drawing on a map is also fairly entertaining. Do you know the direction you’re going to extend the game? Will it have more map/route related features? Is it going to be focused on the story (could be challenging without introducing more elements, like the actual character or cutscenes, etc.)
It’s cool that you used your programming skills to aid you! I wonder how much code you had to write to solve it, which libraries were used, etc.
Well, it is possible to solve the puzzles by hand. A “terminal” panel gets upgraded as the story levels are cleared. It gives the player hints about the level that should help in manual hacking. It might require a text document for some levels with ambiguity (there are only a few) so you can track multiple branches.
The game was created for a game jam (although a long and chill-paced one), so the game lacks the polish. The difficulty curve is also all over the place.
The bonus levels are opened if you manage to decipher the compound cipher of associated story levels.
It requires a lot of effort though. :)There is a single hint about the compound cipher in the in-game manual I think.
P.S. - finishing all story levels is an accomplishment as well as the second half of the game requires a good understanding of the game. Nicely done!
Here is myLD56 compo game, and it’s a deeply tactical one. Just how tactical is it, you ask? Well, as deep as Ludum Dare compo games go I guess!
I would make many things differently, if not the time constraints, but at least the combat part is good enough to make me feel proud. Many levels have at least two optimal solutions and it’s also possible to play against an army that is a counter-pick to yours if you’re extra careful.
I would like to know what you think!
And by the way, this game is made withEbitengine. The engine that is, unfortunately, doesn’t even have a tag here. I would really like it to be a first-class engine for itch io, because it hasmany-many games published here.
Thank you for playing and providing the feedback!
The “change units” option was added near the deadline as my friend pointed out that there is a high change of soft-locking the player without it (as they might make a big mistake, forcing them to start the game over again). Since it’s just a little jam game, I though it’s easy for me to allow a 1-level re-roll.
The card selection is awkward. :DThe closest thing to a card re-roll is “surrender” during the battle, “retry” after you won the battle and “continue” after you lost the battle.
Not gonna lie, this is pretty impressive for the first game.
Make animals poop and let the player clean this mess up and you get a Cult of the Lamb lol.
I think the game difficulty is more of less static, this is why I felt overpowered after a few upgrade levels. The main danger is your own army because in the end I was surrounded to submission.
I recorded myself playing the game if you’re into that weird kind of stuff (such as watching other people play your games):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3SVna1wLuM
I got to a second level, but the game crashed when I entered a boss (?) battle.
By the way, I maxed the bomb skill near the beginning of the game and it carried me along up until this crash. It 1-hits everything on the screen and there is no need to ever do anything else during the combat as enemies never get their turn. :)
Oh, this game gives me a lot of retro jrpg games!
It looks quite polished, but it has a few little things that make the experience less exciting.
I stuck at the first screen for some time, pressing Space, Enter, clicking the start button. I’ve read the instructions, but I thought that J was only an in-game thing, like you press E for interactions in games, but you rarely use it to activate a button like “new game”. A text like “Press J to start” would help me out there.
I couldn’t get pass the first zone. I got stuck in the wall after collecting the second key in the first section of the game. :(
I’ll try this game out again to see what else it has to offer, but I’ll continue with my thoughts nonetheless.
I don’t know if we get a new party member after that section or not, but I’m not sure guard action function is clear to the player. In most games, guard is only useful for a party, so a weakened (and focused) party member could survive while the other members are trying to save them. If the game has a single party member, the guard feature may not have an intuitive usage.
The first 10+ battles are quite simple and repetitive. This is not a show stopper for a game of this genre, especially for a game jam, but it would be much easier to handle with a faster battle loop (faster start and finish sequences). I think I managed to beat everyone with a simple shoot-until-they die tactic without using anything else (I don’t think that I reloaded once, even with 3 enemies).
The in-game UI is quite good for a jam game! The only extra touch I was missing is something like a tip saying what you’re hovering above. This would help me to understand the stats, for instance. I don’t need the numbers/etc, but knowing that it’s “power” or “defense” would be helpful. I ended up increasing everything by 1 point because it wasn’t clear what I’m doing here. :D You could partially solve this issue by providing a mini manual on the game page (like list the stats with their icons, names, and mechanics).x
With that being said, I’m going to give it another go because I like RPG games. :D
Also, please describe what was your core idea with this one? It’s hard to design an RPG game, so I’m interested to know what you were trying to build (like what are the main ideas behind the game).
I think I had a couple of issues with the game, like the map being fully discovered from the very beginning. I watched the gameplay video and it should have been filled with the fog of war.
It was hard to understand what to do first due to the lack of any tooltips, but little tutorial text on the game page helped to get me going. I also watched a video after I played the game to make sure I got the things right.
I like the unit evolution idea. The music sounds fitting.It’s always great to see an RTS submission. :D
Hey, this game is nicely polished for a game jam entry.
It’s easier to comment on the visuals as they’re so stunning here.But the game mechanics work quite well too.I haven’t expected this game to have more than one “tool”. :DIt also has way more levels than I would expect.You also used mechanics stacking to some extent, which is always a good thing for a puzzle game.
Good job.
I made it to the end. :)
A simple scoring system with a timer would probably make this game much more game-y with minimal effort. It looks like there is more than one route at times, so players can be motivated to try out different ones to see how it affects their rating. Sometimes it felt that I managed to find an unintended route by running up instead of running to the right, so maybe some paths can contain extra coins for more score.
I created my own XM music player library some time ago.It was pretty easy for me to add something like an event listener to it.
The player emits the Note events every time it’s about to play a note.That Note event includes the note value (an XM note value), its volume, channel, and some other info.
It would also be possible to change the BPM on the fly and add dynamic speed changes to the game, but I ran out of time.
Here is the library itself:https://github.com/quasilyte/xm
I did it! :DIt took me around 10 attempts, but I finally did it.It was crucial to save a lot of time by being very efficient in the first easier half part of the game, so you have some safety bag in the later part. :)
I enjoyed the game in its current state, and it can be even better with a polished controls. Maybe a shift for a “careful step” would be nice, where you can move with 25% speed, but never trigger a bad cell. This feature is needed to align yourself properly for a jump without stepping into a pit just because you pressed a movement key for 1/60 seconds more than you should. :D
