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A jam submission

Hold The LineView game page

A Turn Based Tower Defense RPG.
Submitted by ZidixMalock — 2 minutes, 53 seconds before the deadline
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Hold The Line's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Gameplay#613.5503.550
Overall#1043.5003.500
Innovation#1363.1003.100
Graphics#1493.3503.350
Theme interpretation#1603.2503.250
Audio#1613.1003.100

Ranked from 20 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

GitHub repository
https://github.com/WarbDev/GameOn2022

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Comments

Submitted

Nice interpretation of the Theme! The game is quite innovative too! 

Submitted

Enjoyed the way you interpreted the theme of the jam. The music was quite nice as well. I also agree with FaceplantPhilip in that it was a bit overwhelming to have so many attack options to start with. However, once I got comfortable with the movement and mechanics, it wasn’t such a big deal and felt the attack options were pretty well-balanced.

Submitted

Fun game, I nearly played to completion but didn't end up finishing the last stage. I think the biggest problem I found was that there was too much going on from the very start of the game. This problem is two-fold:

1) As a player just starting, having 12 attack options in addition to 3 movement options is WAY too much for the first level of a game with no tutorial. It was really overwhelming and I was reading for the first minute or two of my playthrough.

2) Because you have every attack option available to you upfront, this means the player doesn't get any more powerful throughout the game. This poses a major issue because the enemy waves increased in power dramatically (Maul slime and 1-shot Blue slime I'm looking at you). This makes the game feel way too easy in the first few waves and way too hard later on. It also makes the game feel stale because there isn't anything to play for or unlock as the game goes on.

The best tower defense games are really successful because the player starts out with a very vanilla tower/unit and can either upgrade or buy more powerful towers/units as the game progresses to match the power creep of incoming waves. I think if you switched to this kind of model, the game would be even better than it already is!

Sorry for the essay, I think you guys did a great job and I really appreciated some of the smaller details like the animations of the map building/disassembling and the random quotes  :)

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

I really appreciate the honest analysis and feedback! I really agree with everything you said. We we're actually planning to do an upgrade system like you said at first, but because of the time constraints we we're forced to just give everyone all the abilities at once. 

I think that sacrificing the player experience for more content/graphics might've been an issue though, because of the reasons you stated. No matter how good our balance or mechanics or graphics are, if the game is difficult to play or get into then the players will be frustrated and less likely to have fun. 

(Nobody has beaten wave 10 yet, but so far you're the first to make it to have 9 and see the OP LASER BEAM SLIMES (did you try the cool hint owo?)) 

Submitted

Hahaha the laser beam slimes took me so off guard... I was like wait, what happened to my mage, he's dead?! 

But yeah, that's expected with a game jam! You kinda have to cut compromise on some areas to satisfy others. And which hint? I liked the wizard beard hint lawl

Submitted

Nice interpretation of the theme, kudos for delivering a game this complex in a month. I enjoyed playing it, but after the third wave, I started to feel it repetitive. The audio and the graphics are great and fit very well, and the 2.5D effect feels slick and smooth. Good job!

Developer

thanks sooo much! I'm thinking that to change the game to make it less repetitive, we'd introduce upgrades to player abilities. 

Thanks for the feedback and criticism! 

Submitted

One of my favourite games so far. Every character is useful and feels balanced. Nice and consistent aesthetic and art style. 

For improvements, (and I am nitpicking here) maybe add in a sound effect when you move (gives you confirmation that you clicked correctly without having to scan the line of characters) and a fadeout of the music when the level ends instead of an abrupt stop. 

Overall, very good game! 

Developer

Yeah I do agree that the current UI is not the most interactive out there. That's one of the things that, if only we had like 2 more days, we definitely would have fixed! 

And I absolutely love the artist for what he's done with the style! He crunched it all in like the last week ha (slightly stressful for me) 

Submitted

Very enjoyable! The three characters are fairly well balanced, none of them feel useless which is great. The art and writing you've done are great fun as well. Congratulations!

Developer(+1)

I wrote all the character myself, thanks. And we did spend a lot of time working on making sure the characters were balanced, thank you! 

Before making video games, the other developer and I used to make D&D homebrew classes and sub classes! So we're quite experienced in balancing things, I'd say. 

Submitted

Hey!

Nice game and not an easy one to make! I really liked the plethora of abilities you designed and was really impressed this came from a single person. Was kind of hard and a bit hard to get into, but i am more of the hardcore side of things so i don’t mind that.

Good job!

Developer(+1)

Oh no it wasn't made by just me at all!
I tried adding the other people as owners on the page but I suppose it didn't show up lol. I updated the page to include the other developer and the artist for the game.

Unfortunately, yea this game does require some commitment to play it, but I'm really glad you did end up playing it! thanks much.

Submitted

really really fun, got lost in it a little bit. Ive never seen a turn based game like this have people attacking from 2 sides, great stuff.

Developer

The two side idea was truly a very good idea (it was the other dev's idea not mine). We were truly hoping to make a game that someone can spend a long time optimizing and strategizing in, so I'm really glad you experienced that! 

Submitted

Gets though real fast.

Not sure what happened or what I did but at one point it seemed like I got stuck where I couln't control anyone and couldn't end turn either :(

Developer

Oh I'm sorry to hear that! There was a lot of bugs like that that we fixed last minute, but it seems like a couple still slipped through. ;_;

Submitted

very cool! I played for much longer than I thought hahaha ^^' after like level 4 it gets a bit repetitive. Characters are complementary to each other, it's overall well thought! ggs

Developer(+1)

Thank you kind and memey sir! Sorry to have stolen your time with this game (I'm actually not sorry that's a lie I'm actually quite happy you spent so much time in it) 

Submitted

very cool! I played for much longer than I thought hahaha ^^' after like level 4 it gets a bit repetitive. Characters are complementary to each other, it's overall well thought! ggs

Submitted

I'm not a fan of those types of games but this game is an exception. The graphic is so on point and I really enjoy the RPG element :3

Developer

I appreciate the supportive comments! (I say comments because there's two of them lol) 

I was hoping to make a strategy-type game that was easy to get into and play, so I'm really happy to have turned the tables a bit for you!

Submitted

I'm not a fan of those types of games but this game is an exception. The graphic is so on point and I really enjoy the RPG element :3

Submitted

Pretty fun! I really like the 2.5D style with the art. I feel like the characters powers are pretty well designed after I tried out different strategies with them. You could take this game to another level by adding a square that you defend instead of a line, so that enemies could come at you from all directions. (feel free to try out my procedurally generated platformer game as well:)

Developer(+1)

That platformer was really quite intense. 

And thank you! I agree, there's so many directions we can take this game (but they would require an utter overhaul of our spaghetti coded system haha). That square idea is actually quite interesting. If we did that, we could even make the camera rotate around the square, and really show off the 2.5D aspect. 

Submitted

Lazer gun, wizard, secret agent and a buff guy. Now that's a weird combination

Developer

Ha, it is true! We wanted one person from each time period in order to maximize personality and possible cliches from different media

Submitted

Nice game! I struggled to understand the Buff guy's utility for a while. He seemed underpowered compared to the shooty guys.

Developer

Thank you for the critique soup man. 

Yeah, the Buff Guy was definitely the weakest of the bunch. He's actually most useful in the later waves, when stuff really starts getting crazy.