LudumData

Moon Festival by Teto

[raw]
made by Teto for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

INSTRUCTIONS

Send Moon Cranes into the moon to close the portal to complete each level!
Use Fireworks and Lanterns to get rid of the phantoms!
Generate coins from the Mooncake Stall to spend on buying and upgrading cards!

CONTROLS

Click a card to select
Click on screen as indicated for each card type

STORY

Across the world, Autumn festivals are held to wish for a plentiful harvest and celebrate a bountiful harvest. In China and many other East and Southeast Asian countries, the Mid-Autumn or Moon Festival takes place when the moon is at its fullest and brightest celebrating the end of the harvest.

One small town in China is known across the country for their wonderful display. On this night, when the moon is at its fullest, a portal opens releasing mischevious phantoms into the human world. They are scared away by fabulous light displays while cranes filled with moonlight are released to restore the light to the moon and close the portal.

Little do the people know, the spirits dancing across the sky are not puppets and kites. They are real.

As one of the festival organisers, it is your job to keep the phantoms from ruining the festival whilst putting on a fabulous show!

DEVELOPMENT

Code by @ciaranw . Graphics by @teto . Audio by @tiniuclx .

Ciaran and I had a super special addition to the team for our sixth jam to do some amazing music and sound effects! Tiniuc really brought the vibes to our idea and is a major improvement to my previous 8 bar loops of pure annoyance. In fact, the confidence in this music never getting annoying is so high that we didn't even put a mute button in.

As per usual, we bit off more than we could chew with an idea that was far too large for the 3 days we had, which included a full working day for me where we lost 7 man hours. However, we did somehow get to implement pretty much everything we had wanted to with balancing being the only major thing to do after the official deadline. (Thought a couple of extra hours could be forgiven due to losing it to work!) There are some slightly incomplete bits like some UI still being in their "placehold art" states but, whilst it may ruin the vibe of the transitional screens, hopefully they don't take too much away from the actual level! The help screen is also super confusing and incomplete so apologies for that! Tried to throw together what I could to explain some of the concepts at least a little!

True to LDJam spirit, we were not big fans of the theme (just so specific and restricted...) leading to somewhat tenuous harvest link since I refused to go for anything farming related. We did decide fairly early on to make a deck building game so we have continued to do a different type of game for every jam!

Overall, really happy how this one has turned out! Another big game for our small team!

Tiniuc

Special thanks again the Tinuic for joining the team! Check him out!

facebook.com/tiniuc
instagram.com/tiniuclx1

Tools

Engine: Godot
Graphics: Krita
Audio: FL Studio

Post release changelog:

  • Level balancing
  • Hooked up some sounds that were already imported but not linked from code
  • Added help popup to first level
  • Added border to 'cost text' so its readable
  • Smoothed animation of moon portal and crowd

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!

Web https://ciaranw.itch.io/moon-harvest
Link https://github.com/CiaranWoodward/LD52
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/moon-festival

Ratings

Overall 200th 3.804⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 124th 3.891⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 49th 4.068⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 638th 3.25⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 309th 3.826⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Audio 120th 3.81⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 596th 2.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 90th 4.045⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 29🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

Bo Dangles
10. Jan 2023 · 13:02 UTC
Cool game. I like how its got elements of a card game and a shoot em up (almost like space invaders). The music was also boppin. I played for a while and didn't notice the game get any harder or anything. I'd love to see more added to this game like deck building aspects and more levels
MadreDeDios
10. Jan 2023 · 13:25 UTC
Very cute game and a quite innovative gameplay in my opinion! I love the art!
🎤 Teto
10. Jan 2023 · 17:42 UTC
@bo-dangles Thanks so much for playing and the feedback! There are more levels and a deck building aspect buying cards etc. However, I really ran out of time on the terrible help screen so it doesn't make it at all clear you need to send the moon cranes into the moon to make a full moon which completes the level. You then get taken to the shop where you can buy cards and upgrade! If you have time, would be awesome if you could give it another play! I'll add that instruction to the description here too. It's always super helpful to know what's unclear to someone who didn't make the game so thank you!

@madrededios Glad you enjoyed it!
tiniuclx
10. Jan 2023 · 18:27 UTC
@bo-dangles Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed the music, it was a lot of fun to make!

@madrededios thanks for the feedback!
Najimi
11. Jan 2023 · 00:20 UTC
I played it for a while, at the beginning I had no idea what I was doing. But after a while I got the hang of it, and since it didn't really get harder over time and I didn't need to spend my money I stopped. I really loved the game idea, the music and the graphics make this a very wholesome game. Keep up the good work!
khaotom
11. Jan 2023 · 00:27 UTC
Great setting, Good tunes and audio. I like the innovative gameplay, a mix of missile command and deck builder, very neat. I wasn't able to figure out how to upgrade cards, not sure what I was doing wrong. Overall really nice game.
amarokczukay
11. Jan 2023 · 00:30 UTC
the mix between playing a card game and playing a shooting game is really neat! Sounds and sprites are nice, and the idea looks really original to me. i wish there were more cards to buy, or higher upgrades, maybe in the future :)
Uraffululz
11. Jan 2023 · 00:34 UTC
Great game! It was a bit repetitive, but that's not really a bad thing when the game is so fun to play. I only wish there were more cards with fun effects like the rest.
LucDeligne
17. Jan 2023 · 12:23 UTC
Very cool concept!
You've managed to make a really great game despite the sub-par theme and the limited amount of time you had
Tiniuc's music and sound effects are indeed amazing and perfectly fit the gameplay and the mood you were going for
Good job to all three of you!
arron-fowler
18. Jan 2023 · 08:15 UTC
Solid entry. It was nice to play and there was enough variety in the cards to keep it interesting. Definitly worth working on further I think. Great take on the theme. kudos
🎤 Teto
18. Jan 2023 · 16:53 UTC
@najimi Really great to hear you played for a good while and enjoyed it! We defo could have stuck some more levels in there or maybe we should have just made it get infinitely harder every round so we'll bear that in mind for next time! Unfortunately, the last level just loops.

@khaotom Thanks for the feedback! We definitely didn't make it clear enough how to complete each level! We've now added a little pop up saying to send moon cranes into the moon so really helpful to know what's not clear to people that didn't spend 72 hours making the concept haha! Feel free to give it another go if you fancy!

@amarokczukay Glad you enjoyed! We decided to keep it to 7 cards to not overwhelm ourselves in the jam but didn't quite manage to make each card have an upgraded version, as we'd intended, due to the time constraints. Maybe if we decide to work on it more, we'd put more upgrades and card variations in. Thanks for the feedback and for playing!

@uraffululz Thank you for the feedback! I agree and I think we didn't have as much time to spend on level design as we had hoped to make it a bit more challenging. We also didn't get to put as many upgrades in as we'd hoped so definitely wasn't as tactical in deck composition as we would have wanted. So happy you had fun playing though!

@lucdeligne Ahh thank you so much for all the positive feedback! We definitely struggled with the theme and I absolutely refused to do anything farming related! @tiniuclx was an absolute star and we really enjoyed having real music for the first time. Thanks again for playing!

@arron-fowler Thank you! It was definitely a challenge trying to balance getting enough variety to make it interesting without overloading ourselves so good to hear! Would love to take it further but we have said this about a couple of our previous games but somehow, the lack of a looming jam deadline means we never do anything aha.
arron-fowler
18. Jan 2023 · 18:21 UTC
@teto welcome to my back catalogue lol
cawfee_art
24. Jan 2023 · 20:36 UTC
very nice graphics and music! it was lot of fun to play
CataclysmicKnight
24. Jan 2023 · 23:24 UTC
This reminded me of a super unique twist on Missile Command, with a way cooler theme and some deckbuilding elements, which was super cool! I wished I understood what was going on a little better, but I had fun with it, and seriously that theme is really epic!
DFaouaz
25. Jan 2023 · 00:20 UTC
Fun little card game! Loved the sfx and music! Nicely done :)
Hawkin
25. Jan 2023 · 01:21 UTC
Would love to play and rate, but is the itch.io version the jam version or the update?
🎤 Teto
25. Jan 2023 · 09:33 UTC
@cawfee-art @dfaouaz Thanks both for the compliments!

@cataclysmicknight I defo agree that it's a bit unclear, would have loved to put some kind of tutorial page in and my help screen definitely leaves something to be desired but ah well! Really glad you enjoyed it anyhow!

@hawkin It's the version including the items on the changelog which I'm pretty sure are allowed per the rules althlugh I can't find them now haha. Feel free to bear that in mind while rating though, I'll give you some more details on what the changes were to help with what you might want to discount when rating.

- Level balancing - adjusting the spawn frequency of each enemy type. This was all written on paper during the jam but just input a few hours after deadline as I mention in the description.
- Sounds hooked up, about three effects had been imported to the file but not linked to the relevant thing. This was done the day after deadline.
- Text border and animation smoothing, a couple of minor cosmetic things.
- Very simple text popup added the week after deadline since it seemed lots of people were confused on how to complete a level so were not progressing.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions, thanks so much for wanting to play!
Lsy
25. Jan 2023 · 13:20 UTC
I really like the mood of this game. The pace of the game is a little slow, and players may not be able to get through the levels if they don't make a good card group. But on the other hand, the slow pace seems to represent the relaxed atmosphere of family reunion on Mid-Autumn Festival.

It's also a bold attempt to combine shooting and deck. The sense of shooting operation is mainly reflected in the fireworks. To extend the sense of control, make lanterns or other cards operable after firing.
Hawkin
25. Jan 2023 · 13:31 UTC
I love the spirit of the game! It's such a charming backdrop for what is essentially a deck building game, plus there is a unique level of interaction with each card. I can see why you wanted to balance the levels. It even still felt like a big challenge to me, so I can't imagine how it was before :D I appreciated that losing a year didn't mean losing the game. I think it would be interesting to experiment how one year's results affects the start of the next year's celebration. But you'd still have to be very careful about balance!

All of the variety of cards and the theming of them made it very immersive in the story you belt. All of the little spirit characters, as well as the music, built the story even further. Very impressive!

I did feel like I was always just on the verge of spirit bankruptcy haha. Every expenditure on defense felt like it didn't tip the balance a lot (e.g., fireworks required multiple hits, and lanterns were single target), but maybe there is more strategy involved.

Also, a minor suggestion: if "upgrade" meant "add a new card to your deck" rather than "improve an existing card", I might choose another word.

---

Concerning post-jam updates, I think everyone is going to have a little different interpretation of the rules. I appreciate you giving more detail! Here's the relevant section of the rules, for reference:

> Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/rules

I tend to only fix game-breaking bugs, but I do agree that your changes fit within a fair interpretation of the above. Thanks for sharing!
Wendy222
25. Jan 2023 · 16:53 UTC
Super cool idea, I use some time to understand the card. but it's cool!
🎤 Teto
25. Jan 2023 · 21:27 UTC
@lsy Thanks for the feedback! The idea with the lanterns is super interesting, I think we had wanted to make them have higher damage but more difficult to hit with compared to the easier but lower damage firework. Maybe being able to change direction with a gentle breeze would mean it still moves slowly toward the target, so still more difficult to hit, but more interactive and tactical once the lantern has been placed. Thanks for the idea!

@hawkin Glad to hear you enjoyed and thanks so much for the detailed feedback! I would have loved to have had more time to make it a bit more tactical in how the levels scaled but unfortunately jam time restraints didn't allow for it! We were hoping that having to balance having income cards in the deck amongst attack cards would affect the money you could spend to improve your deck for the next year where it gets harder but I think you're right in that it could have more of an effect! One thing we did want to make sure was that, if you lose, you still retain money earned so you can improve your deck and actually complete the level so that nobody rage quits from having to redo levels with a bad deck that they can't change!

With the upgrades, you were able to upgrade individual cards (although not all of them since we hadn't the time to get all the upgrades in that we wanted) so an upgraded firework was able to one hit the fox and cat phantoms. Ideally, more upgrades would have been nice so choices between what to buy and how to balance the deck would have been more difficult and deck composition could have been more interesting.

Thanks for the rules link too, I couldn't find it for the life of me! Thanks again for the detailed feedback and for taking the time to play!

@wendy222 Thank you!
torcado
25. Jan 2023 · 21:28 UTC
this is really cute! I was really surprised about the amount of content in the game! I didn't expect a whole card shop/upgrading system, that's super cool! The gameplay is really interesting, I like the mixture of strategic card game with realtime combat. It's pretty balanced too, I never found it too hard or too easy, I lost a couple rounds and ended up winning. I was going to mention that you can get an easy head start on a round by playing a crane before any enemies showed up, but because of its cost it isn't as obvious of a decision as I initially thought.

The art is very cute, the music is nice, feels very polished. really good stuff :)
🎤 Teto
25. Jan 2023 · 21:35 UTC
@torcado We always say that we will try and do something simple with more polish and we always end up with a far too complex idea haha! Thanks so much for the compliments! It's specifially the cat phantom that will negate a moon crane but, in the first level, the timing of the first cat spawn means that an immediately played moon crane will get cancelled by a cat right when it gets to the moon! We didn't notice this until later on and it's pretty harsh but a learning point on how cats work I guess aha. Thanks again!
Hawkin
25. Jan 2023 · 23:24 UTC
@teto no problem at all! It sounds like you really put a lot of thought into the system and balance. Like you said, it's really tough to get that right in a jam. Aside from defining the system itself, defining all the ins and outs and variations, and then balancing them ... Woof.

Maybe it depends on what personally excites you in these projects: a super simple system that is polished, or a complex one that has just a taste of the potential. The former might do better in ratings, but it may not challenge that design skill.

Anyway, thanks for making such an inspiring entry!
Tesseract
26. Jan 2023 · 01:01 UTC
This could do with a slightly clearer UI - when selecting a card it's not obvious at first exactly what can be clicked on (they flash, but so do lots of other things on the screen). I was also not expecting continuous input in a card game.
Once I'd figured out how to play, it was fun, and I would have liked it to last longer (with some more difficult levels).
digital bacon
27. Jan 2023 · 09:50 UTC
What a wonderful game! The art style is just beautiful, and the card-based Missile Defence-style gameplay is a lot of fun. Excellent work!
Fluburbio
27. Jan 2023 · 18:30 UTC
I love the aesthetics of your game, the graphics and UI are very cohesive and it looks gorgeous! The gameplay is solid too, I love the combination of card game and real time. The only thing I would have changed is the music, which I felt didn't match the theme/ambience of the game, but besides that, fantastic work!