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A jam submission

The Glass QueenView game page

Siege-style action RPG with tower defence elements.
Submitted by plexsoup (@plexsoup), James Medway, SuricatoGuerrilheiro (@Ravensherald), smcl, RCBit (@rcbit1), bigblackapple — 8 hours, 13 minutes before the deadline
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The Glass Queen's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#73.6433.643
Graphics#84.1794.179
Fun#113.3933.393
Originality#183.3573.357
Overall#193.3063.306
Controls#243.1073.107
Accessibility#342.6432.643
Theme#392.8212.821

Ranked from 28 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
3.5.1

Wildcards Used
take it easy, guiding light

Game Description
The Glass Queen is a top-down ARPG-style wave survival game with tower defense elements.

How does your game tie into the theme?
The main character is a ghost, queen of a long-dead kingdom.

Source(s)
https://github.com/smclaughlan/GWJ52

Discord Username
Chungle-Down Bim#6107, gerzytet#2873, B!SMRK#8841, kyveri#0177, MikuIsLucky#6257, Pitquid#1382, rcbit#7648, Suricato Guerrilheiro#0205, ThereIsNoJustice#3057, Jackson Channel5#5159, Xaeinovis#4198, plexsoup#4890

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
4 or 5, I think.

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Comments

Submitted(+2)

Very cool game! I loved the combat combined with tower defense building. I also really liked the idea of the  shells being additional lives. The art was top notch.

Submitted(+2)

I don't know what to say because to me this game is incredible in all aspects. Got me right from the intro. Great work!

Developer(+1)

Very kind of you! Thanks for playing and Thanks for the compliments. Especially appreciated, given the quality of Occultation. Respect!

Submitted(+2)

It was a really fun experience, the drawings add good ambiance the only complaint is that it was more fast-paced than I would personally like, not that is wrong, just personal preference. A very complete game.

Developer(+1)

Thanks Mario! Our games are on opposite ends of the pace spectrum. To be honest, Glass Queen is a bit too fast for me too. It feels strange that I can't beat my own game. Other people assure me that it is beatable though.

Submitted(+2)

The drawings and story in the beginning really set a good mood for the game, though it became quite chaotic and I ended up basically just spamming the towers around the base at random before having all my automatons eventually destroyed. I can understand that there may be an effect where the more ambitious a game is, the less time there is left over to create a good tutorial (especially when there is only a week to make it). Overall I think it was well made.

Developer(+1)

You got that right about the tutorial. Under time crunch, we really struggled with "what's the fastest and easiest way we can give the player the information they need to get started?" The game could have benefitted from more time given to developing a tutorial. Then again, the towers needed tuning too. Hard to know where best to put efforts.

If it's any consolation, you've landed on the same strategy I use. But I've never actually beaten the game in its current form. Best I can do is 700 Ichor.

Thanks for your comments. It's good feedback!

Seems like the game might be too difficult or too frantic in its current state, or the difficulty ramp is too steep. We didn't intend it to have "Foddian" level of difficulty, like "Getting over it", but that's what we ended up with. If we continue to work on it, we might be able to smooth out the difficulty curve and build a better onboarding experience. But I don't really know if there's an appetite for this type of game.

Thanks again!

Submitted(+2)

Well it's always hard to know if there is going to be an appetite for it or not. It's probably unintentional but if you think of your game as a vampire survivors type game (enemies spawning from outside the screen moving straight to a central target) with tower defense mechanics instead of the attacks coming from the player there may be a higher chance of finding an audience.

Submitted(+2)

I didn't really understand the gameplay as it was too chaotic from the start unfortunately :( I liked the concept and the graphics are really nice. A tutorial level would've helped to ease me in.

Unrelated, but to Chungle-Down bim : please don't shit in my mouth. (Toxic masculinity is dead and Ayda best character of all time).

Developer (2 edits) (+2)

Sorry you had a bad experience. We definitely need a smoother onboarding process. We all appreciate the feedback!

I'm not sure what happened with the other issue, but I'll talk to him. Hopefully it was a misunderstanding.

Ok. I'm lead to believe that this is an inside joke I didn't understand, and that its not a serious accusation or offense.

Submitted(+2)

Sorry for the confusion ! That was a reference to a show in which Chungle Down bim is a character who threaten people about shitting in their mouth. (Dimension 20 : Fantasy high season 2, for reference).

I hope this didn't affect the tone of my message too much, I didn't have a bad experience with the game ! I simply couldn't understand everything I had to do so I was a bit overwhelmed. It still was pretty fun, in a chaotic way :) Congrats on a successful jam nevertheless !! 

Developer (1 edit) (+2)

That's a relief. I'm glad I don't have to beat the shit out of   politely reprimand one of my colleagues for their toxic masculinity.

Developer(+1)

lmao

Developer(+2)

I'm gonna turn your mouth into a toilet!

(Adya is pretty great though 😂)

Submitted(+3)

Great game! The artwork at the beginning is utterly fantastic. Core game loop works well, too, with potential for future improvements. Music gives a great dwarf-underground vibe. maybe just a personal preference, but it would be great to have an overarching goal in the game, like a highscore (waves survived), or simply an end screen after x waves. Anyway, Thanks for your game!

Developer(+2)

Thanks for playing, there is actually a win condition that is gathering 1000 ichor (the thing dropped by the enemies)

Submitted(+3)

Nice game, sound and art.  the music reminded me of Demon souls hub. The combination of tactical and action element was unique. Great job!

Developer

Thanks so much for trying our game, we're glad you enjoyed it! It sounds like we did pretty good in setting the theme if those are your takeaways lol. Thanks as always for the kind words.

Submitted(+3)

Love the music and art style of the game!!! Got me going wow on the introduction!!

Developer

Thanks for playing our game! We're so glad you enjoyed the intro! :D

Submitted(+3)

My opinion echoes much of what has been said before. The lead up to the actual game is very good, especially the art. Parts of it feel like a finished game and it builds up expectations for the game itself. The game itself is a bit chaotic and confusing, both visually and in gameplay, but it has nice elements. The sound was pretty nice.

Developer

Thanks for giving our game a try! Glad to hear you liked the intro, I think we all agree it's suitably epic (even if it might set expectations for the gameplay a little high :D) Sorry to hear some elements of gameplay were confusing. We were rushing at the end to figure out how much tutorializing we had time to squeeze in vs final polish. Always a trade off in only 9 days!

Submitted(+3)

Insane Story at the beginning. The pictures are insane! Also with the music in background was really nice! The gameplay felt a bit boring and limited. After that intro I expected an epic fight with more different towers and upgrades and different enemies and more tactical components so that I can better plan and build the ultimate defense. But yes it is a Jam Game for this I think it was very nice! Audio was sometimes a bit too load in comparison to the music. I had no Performance or Control Issues!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! Of course, like most jam games, we had a lot more planned for the core game loop. We had to make some bold scope cuts near the deadline. Believe me it hurts to leave 2 or 3 days of code on the cutting room floor, but you know it's the right decision because it wasn't serving the game.

Submitted(+1)

Yep fully understand that. Better a finished product than a half baked. You did very well!

Developer

Thanks so much for check out our little game :D We all had a ton of fun making it. And as Plexsoup alluded too, we had so many feature ideas that just didn't make the cut, which is a shame. But also a good lesson in learning what a game needs to be good vs what is fat that can be cut and isn't central to the gameplay experience. Glad to hear you had a good experience!

Submitted(+4)

Impressive amount of detail in the opening imagery and story! I found the ghost/monsters which attack you genuinely creepy, but I didn't manage to progress too far though - I'm not too familiar with this genre which is probably why. Great submission in any case. :)

Developer

Thanks so much for checking out our game, we're glad to hear you enjoyed it! We were all really impressed by what our narrative and illustrator came up with for the intro and were thrilled to have their contributions! Check out Easy mode if you're having some trouble getting off the ground ;)

Submitted(+4)

Very good game! Right off the bat, I loved how the game look and sounded, just the whole atmosphere, and the small little extra mile you went for the lore. I also really liked the idea with the shells being extra lives. My main strategy was to buy a ton of aoe's and then just run around and destroy the enemy spawners. Unfortunately, I do have some problems with the game:

  • Mainly, I had a very bad issue with lag. This is probably on my end, since I don't see anyone else encountering this problem, but this is the main thing that took away from the game for me, although I didn't lower any ratings for it, since it's not your fault
  • There was also this weird bug where I exited fullscreen with the escape button and then just couldn't go back into it, although that may have also been either on my end or on itch
  • The game is really chaotic, and often times it's really hard to tell what's going on. The darkness coupled with the enemies blending into the background made it hard to tell what's happening where. This was probably made a little worse because of the lag, but I think the point still stands.
  • The lack of a tutorial made it take a few minutes of playing to actually understand what was happening. A lot of times I would just be confused what was doing what,  or how I just took damage.
  • There was a lack of any stats on the enemies/towers. I would see a lot of -20 damage markers on the enemies, but not having any health on them made it hard to tell when they would die. The towers' also didn't tell me how much damage they did, so I couldn't really tell what was good and what was better.

Overall, while I had a few complaints, I actually really enjoyed the game and all the different ways you could play. The experimenting was very fun, and the parts I didn't like were either minor or on my end. Great job!

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks so much for playing our game and also for the feedback! I'm so sorry you had issues with the lag. This was an issue that plagued development on and off in the final days of the jam. We implemented a creep limit, but it seems to not have fully fixed the problem D: 

Great feedback about stats on the towers! The damage numbers coming in were a late add, and allowed us to catch some things like towers not doing any damage (whoops!). Would have been a fantastic addition to add more details on the tower screen about how they function, in addition to the damage numbers.

Thanks again for playing and your review!

Submitted(+4)

This was exciting! I like tower defense games and it was fun having to decide between staying near my base versus going out into the dark. The strategy I used was to mostly use the gun and stay near the center of my base so I could upgrade my towers as soon as possible. But between waves I liked going out and shooting the enemy structures. The beginning drawings were also very nice and I liked the way the enemy eyes glowed in the darkness :)

Developer(+2)

Glad you had fun! We had no idea how hard it is to tune a tower defense game. Hopefully it feels fair, but challenging.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for checking our game out! We're so glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+4)

It's fun to play but it takes a little while to figure out what to do. It also suffers a lot from poor readability cause the enemies are blending with background and it's kinda hard to keep track of things even in front of you. Overall it's a fun fusion of top-down shooter and arpg game. 

Developer

Thanks for checking our game out! We really appreciate the feedback too. Glad you had fun!

Submitted(+3)

The graphics at the beginning looked amazing. Very promising. The gameplay was alright but a bit chaotic. Overall fun.

Keep the good work guys

Developer

Thank you Rido! We all really appreciate you trying our game out.

Submitted(+1)

Alright, I needed to come back and properly leave a comment this time.

First of all, the art in the intro is amazing. Hand made nice drawings telling the story, superb! And the music gives it a very nice ambience.

The gameplay while simple is fun. You have a some different towers to build. It's a bit chaotic and keeps you engaged all the time because if you stop for a moment you are done.

I found the game a bit difficult, I was a bit overwhelmed by the hordes at some point. They started destroying my towers and I couldn't keep up.

Also, one thing I would improve would be the fire animations of some towers. The one that creates explosions block a big chunk of the screen and that makes you get a bit lost with what's there. You don't know if there are enemies or if you character is being attacked, etc.

The menu with the three options is nice, you can easily navigate through your weapons, the tower build and the type of towers. About the towers, I would have radically changed the design in the selection menu and I would have let the player maybe stop the game while looking at the screen to think about the strategy. There is a pause menu, which I found out just now, but it blocks the view.

It's a very good game, no bugs that I have seen, building options, autogenerated hordes of enemies, movable character so you don't get bored by just building so you can actively fight, great graphics in the intro. Very nice game!