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A jam submission

Excursion into a Long Forgotten DungeonView game page

A Short RPG
Submitted by LuciusAxelrod (@luciusaxelrod) — 3 hours, 45 minutes before the deadline
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Excursion into a Long Forgotten Dungeon's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound Design#54.1674.167
Gameplay#94.0834.083
Overall#103.8333.833
Writing#183.1673.167
Creativity#183.9173.917

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Extra Information about your game
Excursion into a Long Forgotten Dungeon is a single character dungeon crawler with permadeath. It includes weapon durability and limited drop mechanics to increase the player's sense of danger.

What themes did your game use?
Dungeon Crawler, Survival, Permadeath, Hidden Cheat (two super items are hidden on the third level)

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Comments

(+1)

Did i miss how to save my game? That is my only HUGE complaint. Not gonna lie, I died because I miss first chest, the one with potions, it was a bit frustrating and then I got to final boss, no previous indication of that so i couldnt prepare, LUCKILY I kill him with 4 hp remaining. but If i died there all my progress and levels and time would have gone to waste.

Ok, done with the bad side of it. Super nice Zelda like game, loved the puzzles. Also, the usable weapon mechanic feels nice, so you strategize a bit and not just button mash. Nice entry!

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed this game. Loved the graphical style. Combat was very fast paced. Leveling up gave a real sense of progression. The different weapons were well thought out. The puzzles were fun and simple. I got that number one and felt good about myself. There were a few things that really could have helped players:

- Explaining equipment, even a tiny bit. I wasn't sure how the cloth/plate equipment worked.

- Floor to floor balance is a little off. If you get attacked by a triple mob before getting better gear/levels, you may get wiped.

- Experience and gold for mobs are the same whether you fight one or 3. This feels really unsatisfying. I'm guessing because you had some switch for won battles to count how many per floor. But you could have done something with the troops to adjust this. 

- Final boss looks like a treasure and nothing like a dragon on the map. I wanted to explore and 100% things because I was pretty OP and well stocked with potions. But I check this box and boom, final boss. This could be disastrous for players who hadn't healed to full, or didn't have a ton of weapons equipped. Luckily I was well prepared, but if I wasn't, that would feel extremely frustrating. 

I would have played more and tried to get all the secrets, but now going back from the beginning is too much of a time drain. Lost opportunity!

Overall I did think it was really fun and a well designed dungeon crawler that kept the stakes pretty high.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback!

The troops give the same XP and Gold to ensure that the player hits max level and score exactly if they exhaust all floors of encounters, but I get that it feels unsatisfying. I could alter how it picks encounters to cover that and have varying xp. The encounter limit is managed by a plug-in I wrote.

Accidentally triggering the final boss is an issue everyone seems to have had, I agree that it should at least have a warning to allow the player to finish their exploration.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Let me start by saying this is the first Jam game I've completed and I was pretty excited to sit down with it the moment I saw the sprite sets :)

There are a lot of good ideas here, and some stuff I am not crazy about.

To get the negatives out of the way:

  • I feel the player's survival is too dependent on random potion drops. At least one enemy per troop generally goes faster than you and there's no way to avoid incremental damage on fights, even with the "correct" attack selections.
  • The high encounter rate/offset by limited encounters doesn't work for me. It just makes it annoying to explore /solve the puzzles until you've cleared the room of enemies, IMO.
  • I don't feel the encounters are particularly balanced, especially on floor 3. The first two times I got to that level I wiped on the very first fight; one death was due to an unlucky round 1 burn, granted. But then I accidentally pulled the boss with nothing but a Longsword and full HP, and was fine.

Strong points:

  • Excellent use of retro-styled battlers and tile sets.
  • Good music/sound choices.
  • Enemies feel unique and the hidden weaknesses were fun to figure out.
  • Weapons all have unique characteristics which adds a very cool tactical element, independent from enemy weaknesses. The player is incentivized to mix and match the characteristics on their equipment loadout, which is neat.
  • Secrets ranging from very simple to very clever.
  • Durability mechanic is solid thematically but did suffer a bit in terms of gameplay impact from the drop rate being super inconsistent.
  • Score system for completionists, enhanced by the unshakeable feeling you missed a super secret somewhere...

Overall, very good job, and I am glad to have prioritized this one. Also, sorry for the long comment!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

You're right that the potion drops are too random. If I update this game I will add a smarter drop system to make play experiences more consistent, as well as a rebalance of the encounters.

Submitted(+1)

This is a really well-made Game Boy-styled dungeon crawler! I love the retro Game Boy aesthetic running through the game, and the sounds fit the style perfectly. The battle balance feels good and I appreciate that there is a maximum number of enemies on each floor to keep the encounter rate from feeling overwhelming. The points system even incentivizes coming back and trying to find everything on repeat playthroughs. The durability system is a little annoying, but there's so many drops that it not only minimizes the annoyance and also encourages strategic use of resources and equipment distribution. I had fun!

Submitted(+1)

Cool little throwback RPG with a nifty mechanic that really keeps you on your toes rather than just hitting one button over and over. 

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

Great puzzler with a nice graphics. I love this simplistic artstyle and the gamedesign.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Hell yeah, this game is fantastic! Love the graphical style and music, and the durability mechanic is spot-on. 

I just cleverly forgot to heal before diving into dungeon level 3 and got smoked. I was stoked about find the Plate and it slipped my mind, nice puzzle there btw. I'm going back for more, kickass job!

Update: 2005/3000, I think because I warped up to the big baddie and missed some rooms. 

Great job!