The music is nice, but I don't know what to do here

Hi @shashwat, thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to make a proper tutorial/manual, hopefully the images I've uploaded will help you. I need to find some time over the weekend to make a proper tutorial (e.g video).

Hey @p-r I still don't get it. Hopefully your tutorial video will help me understand :)

Oh I got it!
Basically the right part of the screen is the guide, while the left part is the map of the game. The number on the square you are right now (marked with purple) determines how many squares you can travel so you can hover every square X(purple number) tiles away from you. The diagonals above a square determine what's on that square, while the diagonals below are used in some squares (you will see them on the formulas for damage, healing, gold,

Once you get it the game is actually pretty fun, I believe just highlighting the squares you can travel to would be helpful in making the game easier to understand! while playing I was using the guide to calculate a couple steps away which was fun!

This is cool. I really like that the map is so simple. having buttons simplifies things and makes us use our imagination in different ways. I imagine that it could be a great way to lay out a huge world. Thank you for making this.

Musics is great but yeah, I fit in the group that has no clue. There is so much to read before I can even start to play and that kinds of puts me off. Looking forward to the video. Please tag me.

I think I'm with everyone else here that I'm not sure what exactly what is happening when I do things.

Loved it, what a simple but interesting text game. Movement felt confusing at first, but then I figured out it's the *exact* number of spaces on the current tile. Should probably highlight where the player can travel and which/how tiles contribute to damage. Could also vary which tiles do damage and not just bottom-left minus bottom-right.

Like many here my first experience was: what happened? Then I looked at the UI and the picture, wait I died? Ok restart. five attempts later I won. The thing is that you need to understand the rather complex rules, nothing that you can just pick up and play. It took me some concentrated reading and a couple tests to fully understand what you meant with the rules.

For anyone struggling I suggest this easy guide:
- find your movement range
- search for good events and avoid bad events (the horse is extremely op in my opinion)
- if you see good events chose the ones with items or the ones where the bottom two squares have the biggest difference
- if you only see bad events chose the ones with the least difference (or the gold thief, he didn't screw me over once), ideally the two numbers below should be the same. The items will mitigate some damage
- do not try to move very fast just move in the direction of your destination

Critique:
- while the music was nice I felt that it didn't really fit, too lighthearted
- gameplay was actually engaging as soon as you got over the rules hurdle
- graphics where passable, but why are all demons looking like micky mouse?

Some suggestions for improvement:
- You should highlighting the movement range. While I like to pretend that I am a computer I am not and its just annoying to slide over the fields until you reach the range or counting them yourself
- I guess you wanted to make an old school game, and that's why you chose numbers instead of tiles. Nevertheless I would recommend to switch to tiles with pictures. They contain more information and are human friendly. You can even use alpha overlays to place the events on top of the location.
- give your squares names. It is much easier to refer to the location field then to the top-right field. Tell us once where they are. After that we are more interested in the context i.e. the meaning rather then the location. (I would suggest you call them location, event and event points)
- an outcome calculator would be nice at the very least for an easy mode, again I am not a computer if I play a game casually the pc might as well tell me the outcome of my decision.
- also make it clearer that the bottom fields are subtracted from one another and then the absolute is calculated (I only learned that after a few rounds, beacuse I was assuming that one means damage and the other means defense)

@voidsay thanks for your detailed input and for those tips, they're very useful!
Regarding your suggestions, they make every sense for this digital version, but my main intention was to create a game that could be played outside a digital medium, like D&D. You can pretty much just print the map and the rules, or play from a book. That's why I decided to keep it as analogical as possible. I'll take those into consideration for the post-compo version.

@caiclone, @fabdynamic, @don-tnowe thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

As for the rest, thanks for playing, and I understand it can take a while to get the game at first, probably I would too, and there's thousands of games to rate. This is a game that takes time, a cup of coffee, or if you prefer, a port. Play it on a cold rainy day by the fireside. Besides the manual, @voidsay made good suggestions in the comment above, they can be helpful.

Nice idea, a bit hard to understand. I like the music. :)

Ok…
Once you understand what to do, the game becomes pretty enjoyable.
The music is nice, but after a while I had to click the mute button because I couldn't concentrate on what I was doing.
I like the fact that I have to plan my moves, especially at the end of the game.

Here are my suggestions if you want to improve your game:
- as mentioned by @voidsay you **must** highlight the tiles you can move on (it's very cumbersome to hover every tiles with the mouse to find which tile you can navigate next). It's pretty easy to implement as it's only a diamond shape.
- A fog of war or a field of view (like 10-20 tiles away?) could add a bit of difficulty
- Have other objectives to complete before reaching the end
- Certain tiles could change their value after the player moves (sequentially or randomly or both, wathever) that will make a bit more tricky to plan ahead.

Anyway, very nice concept and game.

*ps*: I have to ask… The demons's design… Do you have a grudge with Disney XD ?

Cool idea! I like the music and am always a fan of custom art :) As someone mentioned I think highlighting where you can move would have made it much easier to understand from the start, but I still think it was cool. The grid of numbers was overwhelming at first and I thought it was going to be a math game ha! Good job coming up with something unique!

Like others I wasn't sure what to do at first, but for some reason I was really intrigued by your game. Maybe it was the music our all the random numbers of the board. I agree with many of the comments that were mentioned already. At first I was wandering around just seeing what happens. Then I just tried going to a square that would just get me closer to the destination. Of course that killed me a lot.

@eptwalabha Yes, I regret not adding extra objectives. I'm adding quests in the post-compo version.
Thanks for your tips, the fog of war is a cool idea, but like I said to @voidsay, my main goal is to make something that can be played on paper.
As for the ps, I don't have nothing against the mouse, one of m favourite characters is Goofy and I'm an avid reader of their comics :)

@shashwat,@bumdag,@krapht, I've just uploaded a small 4 min. tutorial video that should serve as an easy guide (hopefully).

Ooh, the video helped. I was able to finish the game! One quick note: The `|` sign signifying absolute value wasn't clear. It took me a few tries to understand how the bottom left and bottom right numbers work

Hi. I try your game and...in a lot of way, it is more deep and interesting than many others. The idea to use the map for both, movements, attacks, defense and other infos is really great. The rules are hard to understand at start. May a tutorial help a lot. It's ok for a jam that you don't have the time to create it.
Aesthetics is a little too rough imo but again, for a jam and because you got a deep game, it's ok.
Really good entry for this jam.

Nice game, but I got bored pretty quickly. I got some clues on what to do by reading the instructions, but I just kept wandering around and getting attacked by a demon every two moves, without any idea on how to actually complete the game.

@cookie-chr Thanks for playing, I should've add somewhere that to complete the game the player must reach the goal position. I'm going to improve the game forward, in a post-compo version, probably this next weekend, and it will include quests, a story-line, etc, so hopefully it's going to be more engaging than what it is now.
As for the demons, after 9 steps a demon will appear despite the rules.

Good game! Reminds me the old spectrum rpg games! But the problem is that it needs a tutorial... and with this complexity, I recommend you do a small campaign before this huge adventure. With that, players can control better their options in the game, and later, extend more the lore, objects, etc. later. Despite that is a nice game with a lot of options. Congrats!

Wow this game is really cool. I am bookmarking it. I like the music. What were you using to create the music? The movement reminds me of the knight in chess. The drawings are classic. You could do a lot with this. I like it a lot.

Congrats on finishing the game! It took a while before I figured out how to move and some things are still very unclear but I like the premise a lot and the music is really nice too!

This is very intimidating at first, but kind of cool! I'm glad you went for complexity and content instead of UI polish, it's perfectly appropriate for a jam. Definitely one of the more unique entries this event.