This is a really great concept and you executed it very well, even if it is a little unfinished. I love the gfx and I got a real feeling of consequence for each of the strategies I tried. Very well done!

I really like your game! The music and sfx are awesome and fit the game perfectly. I really enjoyed playing your game.

I couldn't really play this game, because I don't have a numpad. But the Idea of the game is very interresting. For little games it is better to provide a single executeable instead of an installer.

@TheStroyer Thanks for the useful input. Next time I will implement adjustable controls. And even though it is too late to add this to this game jam, here is a version that also allows you to move with the Q, E, A, D, Z, (Y for german keyboards) X, C buttons to move and S to skip https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e5iiq7doo9g8du/Crane%20Command%20ver_0_76.exe?dl=0 .

@Firefluid Glad you liked it. I aim to please.

@Darby-Costello Glad to hear that strategy seems to matter because I have hardly any experience with that. And yeah, it is very unfinished (the Game Over screens look... oh well), but if it's still fun then that's ok.

Great concept

Cool little game. Unfortunately it crashed for me and I would suggest distirbuting the game without an installer next time ;)
Really unique genre with the crane game and well executed. Maybe there were too many units at the start because it felt a bit static. Btw is there actually a healer?
Awesome music and presentation!

@Sibi Thanks for the feedback. Can you recall in what situation the crash occurred? The healer exists, but you might not have seen it because the distribution of units is random and in favour of the PC. Or in case you meant whether the unit actually heals, you can hover your mouse over all units to see their status. The healer has an attack of -2, so yeah it exists.

edit: If the beginning is too static and cramped, you could move some units with the crane.

@Hyohane Thanks for the reply. The crash occured when I was accidentally trying to drop my unit on top of a another.
So I was just unlucky not to see the unit :D Thanks for the clarification and the tip with the mouse over. Didn't even think about trying that since the game is controlled with the keyboard ^^

@Sibi How odd, it just bounces back for me when I try to place a unit on another one. But now I know where to look, so thanks a lot ^^

It would have been nice if we were able to see how many hp (oh .. I just saw there is this feature on the screen shot ... I did not think to use the mouse because, on the title screen and in the tutorial, I never have to use it or anything mentioned it ... So maybe you should make it clearer) each unit have. And I think the controls are a little bit odd. Otherwise the idea is cool, the music works well and the graphism too.

Cool game, keep coding !

@Mathiouza Thanks! Next time I will include all features in both the description and tutorial. Moving the units over a field that does not simply consist of squares was a nightmare codeingwise and the controls are sadly a result of that.

Really creative concept. I agree with others that a HP indicator on the guys would be helpful. I don't think your guys should autoattack their own team - it looked like that was happening when I moved one of my guys into another one. Fun idea, I had a good time.

@dob Yeah the health should either have been on the units and the total stats of the active unit should be displayed. Your own units are a valid target (because of the healer) so you might have attacked your own guy by accident.

Fantastic strategy game! At first I thought it was going to be a bit gimicky, but when the numpad controls started to feel natural it became really fun. I would love to see a more fleshed out version. Well done. :D

Not bad, not bad. The enemies pretty much crushed me as I had little to no idea what I was doing at first, and once I figured it out (half my units were already dead when I realized I could move diagonally) I was already at a great disadvantage. I probably should have used the hook more. In the end I tried to group my 3 healers together in the back and let them keep everybody alive, which worked out for a little while, but the army of robots was unstoppable.

The fact that I'm even able to tell this story of my experience with the game already kind of shows how cool it is. Quite a complex system that seems to work quite well. And I like the music.

A few things that could need some improvement:

- Skip maybe should be on a different key. Several times I accidentally skipped a turn when I wanted to actually move down (as I'm used to the arrow key layout)

- while the sprites are charming, the color palette could be refined to look a bit more friendly

- I belive the left player has a disadvantage, due to the order in which units have their turns. The right player can move a whole lane to the left within a single turn, the left player however can only the first unit of a lane (i.e. the one in the front). This asymmetry isn't great as the left player initially has to skip many moves.


Anyway, great game, well done!

@OhFiddleDiddle Really glad you liked it. Like I mentioned above the controls were originally intended to be different, but at least you are now prepared to play cataclysm dark days ahead ^^

@Shellfish Games Wow, thanks for the in depth feedback! At this stage of development the turn order is simply the order at which the units have spawned. I'm really happy to see that it was worth it to not just release what I had for the Compo and participate in the Jam instead. And I guess I can see what you mean with the colours.

The art really sells the scale of your units. They feel like toys because they are so small in relation to the large glass bin they are in. The pattern on the floor is a bit much. I found the units get a little bit lost in it; there isn't enough contrast. The inside of the claw machine is a nice setting for this and I like your artistic choice to make everything feel so small. The arrow and square cursor above the active unit are nice to identify which unit is moving. The grid lines are also handy so I don't have to guess if a gap is 2 or 3 moves away.

The controls are a bit weird, but you get used to them. Thanks for putting up the alternate controls build because I don't have a numpad.

I think having little arrows telling the player where they could go would help with people understanding that you can move diagonally. When it's a toy's turn, there would be 3 little arrows (like the arrow that tells you which toy's turn it is, but half the size) in front of them pointing upRight, right, and downRight. And then once you've moved, these arrows would get an attack icon (like some swords or something) so the player knows the movement phase is over and now when they press a button, they will attack.

I also never noticed that I could use the mouse to see the stats of units. It might have been more likely for players to stumble upon this if the info was displayed right at the mouse (or on that specific unit's head) instead of in the top left corner. Then as you move your mouse across the screen, you would notice the popups. Individual health bars might get lost on top of one another. I found that I wasn't always quite sure if the unit I was moving was the one I was thinking or the one in the next row because the perspective kind of breaks down in the center. Other than the center, the one point perspective is very nice for spacing out the units to be able to see them without being all on top of one another and losing the little guys behind the robots.

Mac?

I love the idea. I think having the ability to reposition a unit with the crane in a strategy game is a fantastic idea. The game could benefit from some additional VFX, for example screen shake and whatnot when you attack an enemy. Also, A simpler interface to command units would be good. It felt kind of tedious to cycle through units that I wasn't going to move every time I wanted to eventually get to a unit I did want to move.
The graphics fit the the game very well. I also just want to reiterate how great the concept is: I think the crane mechanic fits so well with the strategy game genre. Great work!

Really good concept, a little hard to understand at first, but when you get into it it's very interesting!

@Solrun Thanks for the feedback. Yes the movement options need a better indicator, but the arrows would be a bit much as there are 9 possible directions (you can use the crane to get behind enemy lines after all). For indicating the exact unit that is active I was thinking about a shader, a glowing outline.
The idea behind the floor is that it is a compressed pile of toys, which sadly doesn't have a strong contrast with the units. A post post Ludum Dare builds is coming, so look forward to it.

@abhimonk Glad you liked it. Like I mentioned above the turn order is simply the order the units were spawned at. A later version of the game might allow the player more choice of which unit to use or at least a better option at skipping turns. The way I programed the game makes the controls a bit complicated, but I do have an Idea for mouse controls.

@VeryEvilTomato Good to hear that it is worth the effort.

Very fun game, I could not understand very well how I played in the beginning, but after I got it right, the game was very fun!

Congratulations on the idea!

This was our participation in: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/type-hero-adventures

hey couldnt really play the game since it uses numpad keys and some keyboards dont have them - and a gamepad isnt supported either. Just wanted to leave that looks like a cool game tho! Since i do sound design and music i just wanted to say the sound effects are okay but you should invest more time into your music or ask someone else to quickly help you out

Good stuff dude! :D
Kept seeing this in the game list so i figured i had to try it out one day and glad i did.
The graphics are adorable, and gratz on your first Jam btw! <3

@Skytrias You can play the version I have mentioned to thestroyer https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e5iiq7doo9g8du/Crane%20Command%20ver_0_76.exe?dl=0 (played with Q,W,E,A,S,D,Z,X,C). I tried to participate in the Compo, so I made the music myself without much experience.

nice simple game :) i only played one match and I had an awful loss XD so maybe i need to play smarter. You should avoid using the installer .exe and instead use the normal ext (which is usually within a zip file) because it is easier to play the game if it is exe without installation. Also, for the controls, it might sound stupid, but you should actually mention that 4,8,6,2 are the directions and 5 is the skipping, because it took me a long while before I actually understood that :). Also, nice work on the AI, regardless of whether it is simple or complicated, the fact that it can fight you and corner you is nice indeed specially since this is your first jam :)
Also, the coins should keep stacking, so in future versions (if you want to make future versions) you can add more attacks by the crane that cost more coins

@Mohamed-DKD Thanks for the feedback. I already learned my lesson regarding the installer and version 0.76 that I have linked here twice in the comments is just a single exe. I did mention in the tutorial that 5 is for skipping, but I could have been more clear about the controls (you can also move diagonally). I'm planing to use a mouse control that is going to be a bit more obvious. And thanks for recognizing the work I've put into the AI, you are the first to mention it. That really took me some work in spite of their limitations. Using multiple coins for a single action is something I haven't even considered yet, but that might make it into the final version.