Swords and Kreatures by Ausstein

[raw]
made by Ausstein for LD 44 (JAM)

Title_Picture.png

Mix of Card Game and Turn based strategy

Controlling many creatures costs you life

The tutorial is very recomended

Made in Unity

Both our very first game (but both coding experience). Turned out amazing(programmer art).

30.04. 21:24 MESZ Added Windows Version because WebGl kept giveing screen size problems

Ratings

Given 36🗳️ 37🗨️

Feedback

JestemStefan
30. Apr 2019 · 11:44 UTC
Hi! Is this really your first game ever?

It's really complicated and cluncky but I'm amazed by complexity.

Also cards have a lot of white space, but important stats on them are super tiny. Almost unreadable on my screen.
Clementine
30. Apr 2019 · 11:48 UTC
It is a nice game, the musique is very cool with this kind of game. But maybe it need more interaction with only red gem because I had it a lot and not the others.
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 11:55 UTC
@jestemstefan Thank you for the feedback
I have published a board game before, but my first digital one. Plus I have a few unfinished gems on my harddrive. I entered this game jam to finally finish my first game xD. We are both computational physicists so we know our way arround code :)
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 11:57 UTC
@clementine yeah the balancing still has to be worked on, we plan on giving people the ability to build their own decks in the future.
Also the graphics are of course a prototype
JestemStefan
30. Apr 2019 · 12:04 UTC
@ausstein Next time try getting feedback from other people early! It's really helpful!
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 12:11 UTC
@jestemstefan
Yeah thank you. This games was made from one of my board game prototypes. We also took the card design and the art from that prototype, while not spending too much thought on how it would look on a screen.
We planned on implementing a zoom mechanic on a right click to make the stats more visible, but ran out of time in the end.
Hestrateja
30. Apr 2019 · 13:22 UTC
The concept is cool and is a fun game, although for future projects give more importance to the ratios, the stats were super tiny compared to the whole card and the game didn't fit in one screen with 1920x1080 resolution so you had to scroll down to take a card every turn which was a bit annoying.

But overall it's pretty well done. Props!
Entropy
30. Apr 2019 · 13:36 UTC
I like the concept of a card game combined with a board, I personnaly always wanted to find a good game that succesfully manage to combine the two aspects.
This game is a good start, although I would have appreciated that the game would fit my screen. I had to scroll every time I wanted to do something.
The tutorial is a mandatory step, but it lacks a bit of interaction with the player.
This game has great potential and I encourage you to develop it.
Maakus_1994
30. Apr 2019 · 13:47 UTC
@hestrateja @Entropy thanks for your feedback! Glad you enjoyed it! Yes we certianly did not have time to optimize things like this in the timeframe we had. We will keep updating things like this as we move forward with the project. Cheers!
Jeremia
30. Apr 2019 · 13:54 UTC
Really cool game!

The one thing that bugged me was, that the colors for the units on the board area get mixed up when one unit dies.

I also thought that having life mages would give you the surplus of life generation back, I spent almost the whole game on one single life. :smile:
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 14:30 UTC
@jeremia Yeah the mixing up has to do with the way we implemented things. We noticed that but decided fixing it wpuld be too much of a hastle since a lot of stuff depended on that.
Glad you enjoid the game, We did not do life regeneration because it would drag games longer than they have to be :)
Andreadbx
30. Apr 2019 · 17:54 UTC
The game system is intresting, my big problem with it is the tutorial, too much walls of text and in the end doesn't even allow to try what you learned, my advice is to try and explain while you play, so the player assimilates instantly the rules of the game!
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 18:01 UTC
@andreadbx Thank you for the feedback.
The tutorial was done within the last 2 hours before the deadline. We will keep working on the Project and keep this in mind :)
Lemur
30. Apr 2019 · 18:52 UTC
Loved the game! Want to see more of your work! It was an interesting game mechanic!
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 19:07 UTC
@lemur Thank you for the kind words :)
Fluffy_Kaeloky
30. Apr 2019 · 19:09 UTC
I got a bit bored with the tutorial and headed up in a game after reading half of it, but I still picked up the mechanics on my second try, and won. The gameplay is really interesting, it was fun to play !
As said before, the canvas is way too big, and the game doesn't completely fit on my screen. Otherwise, great job !
🎤 Ausstein
30. Apr 2019 · 19:48 UTC
@fluffy-kaeloky Nice to hear that you had fun :)

@fluffy-kaeloky @hestrateja @entropy
I added a windows version where youcan set the resolution, hope that fixes stuff
also if you have a FullHD monitor if you press the full screen button on the web gl it should work
Someday Not Today
30. Apr 2019 · 21:46 UTC
The gameplay is interesting, but to get positive emotions i needed to play this game about 10 minutes and understand what to do. And as said before, there are some bugs with canvas and screens, but at all, good work!
belug23
30. Apr 2019 · 22:17 UTC
At first I was skeptic, but I got caugth at playing to many creatures and I was hooked. Thanks for that game! Also thanks for the tutorial it's great you took the time to do that.
Maakus_1994
30. Apr 2019 · 22:51 UTC
@belug23 thank you for the kind words! Thank you for playing!
Maakus_1994
30. Apr 2019 · 22:56 UTC
@someday-not-today thank you for the feedback & for playing!
We do plan on making on making a more intuative interactive tutorial as we move forward, aswell as highlighting key components during game-play.
Sockyman
01. May 2019 · 01:49 UTC
The amount of features is impressive and it has the mechanics to make a fun, solid game. My frustration with it is that it is very complex and confusing. Along with the fact that there are few cues to what is happening, perhaps add particles and sound effects to show the player what is happening and perhaps make it more straight forward.
Sakkia
01. May 2019 · 03:15 UTC
I know the art is done by programmer but... add a background,dude
and the UI of tutorial really need improvement
🎤 Ausstein
01. May 2019 · 11:09 UTC
@sakkia we spend the 72 hours doing nothing but eating sleeping and coding with few breaks to not go insane.
In the beginning we had everithing slightly better looking with assets from the store, but we decided in the spirit of Ludum dare to do it ourself.
There was really no time to work on the art much more. However for the next Ludum dare a friend who is quite talanted with arts has offered to join us, so look forward to that.
Also as we said before we are planning to keep working on this, we plan on having the board in an xcom like stile with actual 3D models for creatures(from the unity asset store). So keep an eye out for that
🎤 Ausstein
01. May 2019 · 11:15 UTC
@sockyman I think it is quite interessting that we get such mixed feedback about the complexity. Whith people saying they skip the tutorial and still figure it out and then some people just being outright confused.
I think it is on us to make the game more accesible to everyone, with a huge emphesis on a better tutorial.

The sound and particle effects are a good point you are bringing up. Especially that the attacks have no feedback other than damage counters displaying.
We actually had a sound libary ready loaded in the project. If there was one more day in the competition you would have had your sound effects for sure:)
JofersGames
01. May 2019 · 16:19 UTC
I couldnt really understand what to do, but it looks like a lot of effort when in, so gj, im sure some people will love it :)
VeryEvilTomato
01. May 2019 · 23:45 UTC
Pretty interesting game, not so good at card games, liking the level of complexity in the limited amount of time, props!
kromeboy
02. May 2019 · 17:13 UTC
Very complex but it need work on the UI. Keep it up: there is probably a game here, but it may need a fixed scale interface and some information bigger. (played fullscreen 1920x1080)
Historymaker118
02. May 2019 · 17:29 UTC
I had no idea what was going on with this game, the tutorial was more confusing than anything else and the poor grammar and spelling mistakes combined with the bad UI made it really difficult to follow. You seemed to have made a rather complicated game here, but didn't do a great job of explaining it properly which you really really need to do. The music was nice though so that's something good.
Tattomoosa
02. May 2019 · 17:38 UTC
Whoa! Really complex game for 72 hours, good job! It took me a few games to get a win against the AI, so good job on that! Was there a way to recover health?

I thought the tutorial was pretty easy to follow and the mechanics made sense. The UI is fine but more feedback would definitely be good (e.g. if you don't have the resources for a card, some kind of error beep or a message like "not enough resource!" would be really helpful). Maybe a ring around units that can still move on the current turn too.
🎤 Ausstein
02. May 2019 · 19:37 UTC
@kromeboy Thank you for the Feedback. We had the mechanics of the game working only after two and a half days of nearly non stop coding, therefore we only had time for a bare bone UI, since we also worked on the ai after that.
The problem with the information size is completly on us and something we will definetly learn from, since this was our first game ever :)
We are currently working on a complete graphical overahaul of the game so keep an eye out for that after the rating is over:)
🎤 Ausstein
02. May 2019 · 19:40 UTC
@tattomoosa Thank you a lot, No currently there is no way to recover health. Spells for that will come in future version tho :)
We will keep your feedback in mind when designing the next version.
Kovakomes
02. May 2019 · 23:57 UTC
Nice! The UI is quite rough, but works. I've attempted a card game in LD before, and know exactly how challenging it is for 72 hours. Overall, well done!