TurnKee

I dont see a download/play link anywhere on this page.

Pixel art is very polished and nice, 10 seconds are a bit too much to wait for a move but i understand the theme. i can see it as a turn based game though.

@eerongal Apologies for that; for some reason Ludum Dare decided not to link to the itch.io page. You should now be able to play the game directly via the included WebGL build, or the standalone executable available for download.

@kostas-nik We had originally contemplated adding multiple 'difficulty options' at the start of a new game, each with different turn durations (3 second, 5 second, 10 second). Unfortunately we ran out of time to implement it in a fluent manner, but we're certainly planning on adding this to a post-jam update for the itch.io version of the game. I'm glad you enjoyed the pixel art!

The pixel art is amazing, I gave 5/5 for graphics, but I cannot give a good grade for the theme because the execution needs more thinking.

If you make something turn-based and the player just sits for 10 seconds, it's a boring mechanic. Wouldn't the game be significantly more fun if the player didn't wait 10 seconds? It's a good idea but the theme was just inserted to make the game worse, not better. To be fair, the theme was challenging, but a big part of the jam is to design around this.

I actually think your guys idea is great if it had something slightly changed. If the timer was super short instead of super long (ofc this doesnt work for this jam), I think the game would actually be fun (say 1 second at the beginning and becomes 0.1 seconds eventually). I think the game would play somewhat similar to crypt of the necrodancer without the beats. If you guys wanna keep working on it that direction might be a good one.

Also I don't see the source code.

The pixel art is amazing, I gave 5/5 for graphics, but I cannot give a good grade for the theme because the execution needs more thinking.

If you make something turn-based and the player just sits for 10 seconds, it's a boring mechanic. Wouldn't the game be significantly more fun if the player didn't wait 10 seconds? It's a good idea but the theme was just inserted to make the game worse, not better. To be fair, the theme was challenging, but a big part of the jam is to design around this.

I actually think your guys idea is great if it had something slightly changed. If the timer was super short instead of super long (ofc this doesnt work for this jam), I think the game would actually be fun (say 1 second at the beginning and becomes 0.1 seconds eventually). I think the game would play somewhat similar to crypt of the necrodancer without the beats. If you guys wanna keep working on it that direction might be a good one.

Also I don't see the source code.

@martenscedric Yeah we pretty quickly realized once we had a playable version of the game that 10 seconds was too long for the timer, but to keep true to the theme, we left it at 10 seconds for the jam version. Without the 10 second theme constraint we have made the turns more snappy so it doesn't feel like you are waiting around for your next turn. We may change the timer in a post jam version, potentially 3 or 5 seconds. Would take some playtesting to get it to feel right. I guess it's a symptom of the theme being so specific time wise.

In regards to source code, we entered the Jam, not Compo, so no source code required.

I just finished all levels! Nice and fun, like a turn based top down Zelda with RPG elements. Beautiful and neat graphics, with nice color palette too! Also reminds me of Crypt of the NecroDancer, I think it will be very fun and challenging if each turn is 1 second. Well done!

A solid entry. I think a lot of the points I have to say are already echoed by others, but I'll give my full thoughts still!

First of all, I think the presentation is perfect. The graphics are consistent and polished, intuitive and sharp, and everything feels quite smooth and nice. The palette is minimal and consistent and looks *great*, and I'd also like to praise the font choice. As a veteran jammer this is always something that has hounded me, and I genuinely think your font is perfect for the style.

The constructive crticism really lies in the fundamental concept of the game. Indeed, if you're deviating away from the standard genre by adding in a twist, the key thing to ask is "how does this spice things up/make it more fun?" and you guys seem to fully understand that the ten second idling doesn't really lend to that. I kind of think it might almost have some merit as a kind of idle game if you could queue up actions and tab away. But if you're not going for that, then the question is more to ask what the player has to do during those ten seconds. Maybe they have an entirely separate task to decide upon. I'm not entirely sure reducing the timer is the only thing to make it more satisfying but it it'd definitely help! And make the game a lot shorter :sweat_smile: But yeah, maybe consider adding in some separate mechanic to induce stress during the timer if you'd like to help stand it out a little.

It just has to be said too that I did find the music a little grating! Nice that it was there, but sometimes if you're going for a jam entry, royalty free music works well too!

My main advice for jam games is to use the restriction of the theme to help your creativity in conceptualising the game flourish, and that the moment it gets in the way of the actual gameplay, to abandon it. That's not a mantra shared by everyone, but I prefer to make a more fun game that was inspired by the theme, rather than a less fun one that adheres strictly to it :laughing:

Again, it's a solid, polished entry and you should be proud! I think in the end perhaps the real nemesis was a completely different timer, the LD timer :laughing: so well done for finishing it.

@yword Thanks for playing through all the rooms despite the slow timer! Those are some apt references. The game has some Binding of Isaac influence from a design perspective, which Isaac is influenced by old skool Zelda. After a while TurnKee did seem to have similarities to NecroDancer, but without the beat matching.

@pickens-inc Certainly there was various features missing from the jam version that we planned but we didn't have time for, that would potentially make the game more interesting from a gameplay perspective. The music was a last minute addition. Wasn't enough time to focus on sound as a two person team. I prefer to use something I create than stock music, even if unfinished, to set a tone. I think the music would have been less of an issue had the gameplay been faster. Everyone does game jams for different reasons. For me I find there can be too much an emphasis on trying to have some finished product in a few days. I'm more focused on experimenting or setting a basis for a potential full game. Games are made in a few years, not a few days, so I try keep that in perspective. I think abandoning a game idea mid jam is risky. I wouldn't have wanted to, as I think the concept behind TurnKee has some potential, it would just take a lot longer than a few days to get it feeling right, so I wanted to see what we could get done within the time limit.

TurnKee - Post Jam Update:

A new post Ludum Dare game jam version is now available called "Speedee Edition".

Introduced 3x turn duration modes...

Speedee mode - 2.5 second turns

Normee mode - 5 second turns

Jamee mode - 10 seconds turns (the original game jam turn length)

The main game music has been extended plus other minor tweaks.

You can download Speedee Edition (or the original Jamee Prototype) from https://studiokraze.itch.io/turnkee

I initially went for the jam version and hot damn this makes 10 seconds feel like forever. I played through the 2.5 second mode and this still felt a bit slow, I think this could benefit from either no turn timer at all, or perhaps a mechanic to manage whilst waiting. Like maybe whilst waiting there could be a minigame to heal a small amount of health, or perhaps there could be some trickier enemies / traps to require more thinking. Or you could automatically advance the turn once you've selected a direction, and keep the timer as a maximum time constraint.

But still a nice little game, you guys did great on the audio and graphics! The art is a lovely sort of retro and very clear too. The one small nitpick I have is the pixels on the hearts being so much larger than all else, but really that's just me looking too deep into things =P. And the gameplay was nice too outside of waiting, I found myself intentionally skipping turns to line up enemies in a useful pattern and avoid conflict, which was a very rewarding strategy!

Nice little game! I like the art style and the mood of the game. But it feels very slow (I played the Jamee prototype). But it definitely has potential!

This game can definitely become something much bigger. Confessor that I was frustrated when I found out that coins are useless and that the word item is just a bait.
so I suspect your plan is bigger for this game.

I loved the color palette and the music. I didn't find any bugs in my gameplay. A tip for the designer: Don't use your game engine mechanics to augment your drawing. Set the size and make all the artwork the same pixel size.

Congratulations for the game.

Speedee mode definitely should click, because Jamee's 10sec (despite this being the theme) is a quite long time for waiting, even for a turn-based game since in most cases you only choose a direction.
Art and sound are gorgeous. Idea has a potential.

Good luck with further development!

@justcamh 10 seconds definitely felt forever, which we knew early in development, but for the jam version we wanted to stay true to the theme, know we would change the timer length after the jam. Obviously the post jam Speedee Edition rectifies this somewhat with different timer options, but would likely take a lotta playtesting to find the exact right time. I guess the issue is if you make the turns shorter than 2.5 seconds, it's getting close to just being a real time game instead of turn based. Certainly with more content/features it could make the the time turns take feel more worth it, if the decisions for moves are harder to make. Yeah the hearts in the UI could do with some tweaking and shrinking. I do like the idea of there being ways to do a pacifist run, but that should be by choice.

@euler-moises Yeah there was def more plans for the game, but not realistic to get done in time. The coins hint at that one of the features we planned was to have a shopkeeper for upgrades, potentially at the end of levels(which would be where an item system would come into play).

Just going to mirror what others are saying. I love the presentation of the game, but the timer mechanic just makes the game entirely unfun to play.

The thing about the timer is that it doesn't seem to add anything. There's no reason for the timer to exist aside from slowing down the gameplay experience. Even if sped up to 2 seconds or whatever, that's still pretty slow.

Overall a nice game with good pixel art and eventually challenging levels, music is repeditive however and having turns that long is a bit boring, I understand that it is supposed to stop the player from making a stupid mistake as they have time to see their move, however what if the player was either actually punished or not thinking ahead or they had a button to signify when their move was made. 4/5 music was repeditive and turns needed a bit of thought but overall an interesting game.

The game was pretty decent. My favorite thing in this game was the art, it was really done.

I managed to get through the whole game, past the mummy and out the door. The thing is: i didn't actually kill anything except 1 ghost because he blocked me. The combat and coins in this game could've been left out and nothing is lost imo, maybe it would've been better if the monsters instantly killed you, so you could manuever around them. Therefore different monster designs, like ones that move twice and then pause, or some that move diagionally could've created interesting puzzles. Other than that, perhaps syncing the music to the timer would've been a nice touch too :D

I understand there isn't a ton of time to add stuff but i think saving time implementing xp, coins, and variable pathways could've been spent to spruce up the core gameplay loop! Looking forward to seeing your next entry hopefully in Ludum Dare 52 :D