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Battle of the Bald Mountain's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creative use of art assets | #137 | 3.560 | 3.560 |
| Overall | #251 | 3.213 | 3.213 |
| Engagement | #276 | 3.160 | 3.160 |
| Overall polish | #310 | 2.920 | 2.920 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
I enjoyed the story established in the introduction. I appreciated that you highlighted important words in the tutorial, too! It's a small thing, but it helps emphasize key mechanics. I think you did a great job making a game feel like an adaptation of a tabletop, and the combat quickly became intuitive.
I love how you combined sprites together to make the bigger characters! That made them feel much more complex than the original 16x16 would allow. The "auto-advance" button fit right in with the "tabletop" vibe, although it may have been helpful to show what objective the character was moving toward. The coloration of the tilemap definitely made it feel alien (not human), but if you had more time, I think the overworld could have used more visual interest to match the epic story you craft!
Great job overall! I lost Prince Caspian toward the end, and I immediately wanted to restart and try again using new tactics.
nice strategy combat system, I try to retreat enemies, but never got that result, I think that defeating last commander will work but no,
nice work, really nice colors at map
Very smooth turn based strategy with good graphics. I really liked the idea of being able to suppress an enemy's attack by depleting their stamina. Retreat never really seemed to be an option, since enemies could keep up with you easily and also reduce your stamina as well. There was an unfortunate bug where if I ever lost a unit whether to death or retreat, the game would lock up (feels like it must be an out of bounds index error). The nitpicks I would have is it would be nice to have clarity on stuff like which units have attacks available, which units are currently selected, which enemies are the ones attacking. Additionally the indicator squares for movement range are difficult to see on the dark background. Great work!
I can tell a lot of work was put into this! It was incredibly ambitious to attempt a game like this for a game jam, and I think you did a great job considering the time constraints!
Thank you for playing :)
Wow this was ambitious for a jam game. I loved that you attempted this genre and it's the only one I've come across so far. I really liked that you spent time building a world and story behind your game to get players invested. You've done a really good job using the asset pack to make all the different units.
I admit this isn't my favourite genre of game, so I did find combat lasting a little too long for my liking. I think the UI could use a little bit of polish too, but you had to do so much UI work in a short amount of time I feel bad critiquing it.
Overall a really good entry, nice job.
Thank you for playing :)
I'm glad you appreciated the world building, I really like doing it and try to always put some of it in every game I make.
And yeah, the UI could use a lot of work haha. It's something that I started practicing for this jam, but still needs more time investment to become better at it.
Awesome game! Wasnt expecting to see something like this for a game jam! Really great effort!
Only things that could improve it are some move animations and sounds, and perhaps some additional unit variations like archers or horse riders. Apart from that this is a very solid game!
Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed the game and beat the Beast-King :)
I can tell a lot of work was put into this! It was incredibly ambitious to attempt a game like this for a game jam, and I think you did a great job considering the time constraints! Gave me an Advance Wars kind of feel (my personal favorite type of game like this is the Disgaea series however). Great work! :)
Thanks for playing :)
I only recently got into these type of games(and making them!), so I don't know most of them. I'll definitely write down Advance Wars and Disgaea into my list of games to checkout!
Hoi good game^^
Had alot of fun playing!
Kinda used my king as a tank since he's very OP lol
Cool choice of color palette for your game also :)
Pretty solid game imo. Good work!
Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed it :)
Really nice game! The art was really creative and I like the RTS combat system. It felt a bit repetitive at times, as I had the enemy unit surrounded by my units and just kept stabbing them every turn. Maybe add some extra attacks to choose from for a more dynamic experience! The audio only came out of the right channel as well, which was a bit annoying but I could live with it since they created a nice atmosphere. Given the time limit though, good game!
Thanks for playing the game :)
I agree with your feedback. There's certainly some quality-of-life changes that could be added to the game(I experienced the same keep-stabbing frustration in my playstestings).
I gotta push out a fix for that speaker issue haha
This was fun! I love how you used the assets. The combat mechanics are simple but effective.
I wonder what kind of AI you used.
Thanks for playing :)
I wrote the AI, and it works on a few simple rules.
For AI pathfinding it's Depth First Search that sorts unvisited nodes by distance first, then by cost.
The AI has a target priority list that you can feed to him. I planned to have range units, and some other unit types, so the AI would target a specific group first. In the jam version it only targets closest though, but you can give him any object or array to target from.
For attacking the AI's goal is to attack his target, but if he won't be able to do it in this turn then he will go through the target priority list and find the first target he can attack along the way. (so in a sense the AI will decide whether to attack first and then move, or vice versa).
When I was presented with the retreat line, I thought "this is such a great idea!" So I was expecting being able to push the enemy units, or make them flee under certains conditions, etc. But I wasn't able to use this once in the whole game, even though I played until the boss fight - which I lost be being severely outnumbered by the way, as being attacked reduce my endurance!
I think this game is well executed and has some great ideas, but it needs to be refined a bit more.
Thanks for playing the game and the feedback :)
The retreat line is actually for you. Once your units reach it, you can exit the battle. In the current state of the game it's not that useful sadly. My original idea was for the game to be a tactical retreat simulator(get all troops out with minimal losses), but I pivoted near the end due to lack of time.
Aaah, ok, I didn't get that. That would have been cool! Maybe you can try to take the time to implement your vision now...
Strategy games are always fun. I missed some more qol things in the combat. I had to click on all of my units to see if i had attacked with all of them. Some options to make my units stronger would be cool. I had fun playing it. Nice little game. :)
Thanks for playing the game :)
I completely agree with you about the indicator who can still attack on the turn. It's an issue I had when playtesting as well, but didn't get enough time to implement it.
This is an excellent submission! I think a lot of players can be turned away at the start by the magnitude of text (a lot of gamers don't like to read lol), so if aspects of the game are introduced bit by bit, then that makes sure players don't lose their attention and so they can't miss any information they should know.
Great job overall though!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed the game :)
I really like adding lore to jam games, but I can see your point. Having a full screen of text on game load can be a bit exhausting to the player. I'll definitely change this for future games.
Thats a very cool game! I love all the detail you put into this, from the story to the atmosphere and mechanics. The only thing that bothered me is that the ambience music played only on my left speaker, I don't know if its intended to be positioned and by moving from certain place the music will change, but still it was weird to me. Nonetheless great experience!
Haha damn, thanks for the heads up on that. I couldn't hear that on my laptop. I forgot to attack the audioplayer to the player unit, so as you move right the music stays left. I'll definitely have to fix that.
Anyway, thank you for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed the game! :)
I enjoyed the strategy of the combat, very fun!
Thanks :) Glad you enjoyed it.
I feel like you had a clear vision and executed it well. It has a lovely moody atmosphere. It would have been nice to have been eased into the gameplay a little more
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. I agree with your opinion that more "easing in levels" would improve the experience.
I successfully managed to slay the beast king B)
Really fun game, I like the strategy. Once I realized that surrounding units could cause them to skip their turn (I think that's what was happening) - it became a lot more interesting strategically. And the AI was really good, I felt like they weren't ever doing anything dumb, their turns were pretty smart, made it satisfying to out-think them in the final battle.
One critique I would have, sometimes it wasn't really clear what was happening in the battles, the enemy had a red square, but when I moved to them I didn't attack. I think slowly easing the player into the core mechanics of combat would help a lot. Also, having the ability to upgrade my units, spend currency to either replenish troops or upgrade my weaker units would be really cool!
All in all, I had fun playing it! Nice work!
Thanks :) I appreciate the detailed feedback. I can see now people need more easier levels to drill in the core mechanics. It's definitely a hard game design issue knowing how much tutorial to give to the player.
I like your idea about currency, I honestly never thought of going that way during the design of the game but I definitely see it fitting in well with the current concept now. I already plan to 'remake' this game in future jams if the theme allows it, so it expect currency at that point :)
Glad you enjoyed the game!
I like the overland and battle map structure, because you can mix up different kinds of events. The first two were battles, which I played, but were a bit slow.
If troops had half as many hitpoints, but you had twice as many troops, the battle would be way more dynamic which would help with the pacing I think.
I like the idea behind the game, and the art execution is good, but I think the mechanics need a bit more work. You could also add some extra animation and effects to spice it up.