I grew up playing old school RTSs from the 90s, so I'm just such a sucker for games like this. But yeah, the balancing in this game is nearly non-existent; once I spammed knights in the first few rounds and started upgrading I one-shotted everything in every round. I love the concept and the isometric pixel art is A+, but I do think the concept was just too ambitious for the time frame given. With another week of work I could see this game being much more realized.
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Hold the line's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #4 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Intuitiveness | #7 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
| Gameplay / level design | #8 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.300 | 3.300 |
| Fun | #9 | 2.900 | 2.900 |
| Theme | #10 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Username/s
discord:coder
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Oh I totally agree. It all started with "alright, hold the line... so like a line of soldiers defending a castle" and then I started adding archers, and arrows and priests and waves and formations and a tech tree... and I run out of time. Mainly because as I said, I had to do the art (which some of what I did I like and some I don't) and that took a lot of my time. If I had an artist I could have focused more on mechanics and balance but well, it is what it is. Lesson learned. Or I should have gone for something simpler, not isometric, but square grid base, 8x8 characters and so on...
Anyways, thanks a lot for playing and for your feedback!
Couldn't ever figure out how to get past wave 2. If there's some secret for that, please do let me know!
Submitted
The Last SpartanHi! The trick is to spawn knights as soon as you can, don't wait for the wave to be over, as soon as you kill someone and get 25 gold, press Q and spawn them next to the fight to help others.
Still, you'll probably manage to have fun in like 4 or 5 waves, then you can just spawn knights and win. As I said in the rest of the posts, the art took me too much time and I didn't have time to properly balance the economy so you either die in wave 2 or live forever spawning knights haha.
Still, thanks for playing!
Looks great and is fun! Love the isometric viewpoint! I'm sure with some balance it could be interesting, it was very easy to spam knights as you know.
Submitted
FishmongrelsWave 2 took me a few tries, but once I got it, I could just spam knights. It's quite unbalanced, and I even managed to get a negative balance by unlocking skills.
But you did a really good job with the art and implementation of the theme!
Submitted
Line AssaultYeah, as I said in my post below, unfortunately I didn't have time to properly balance it or finish the skill tree, which is a shame since I lost too much time with the art. It's more like a proof of concept.
All experiences leave lessons, my scope creep won this time, I should have made something way simpler, you can't properly make an RTS in a few days. At least I hope I get a decent score in presentation haha.
Anyways, thanks for taking the time to play it and for the feedback!
I think the game is either too easy or too hard first i struggled, then i just spammed knights and won everything, arstyle is cool and so is the theme
Submitted
Line BastionThanks! The art is all by me, I'm not a pixel art expert, I just manage decent stuff, but that took too much of my time and at the end there wasn't much time remaining to refine it and balance the economy. If you manage to have decent and balanced 4 or 5 waves, then you can just spam knights and win.
Lesson learned, I'd probably make a short post-mortem post about the game. Thanks for taking the time to play it!
It's a pretty cool strategy, but I couldn't get past wave 2. If you work on the balance and add a 2x speed button for convenience, the game will be really great.
Submitted
Line on the RoadHi!
Yeah, I said it in a few posts, I didn't have time at the end to properly balance it so I had to upload it as it is. I also thought about the 2x (mainly when I was playtesting it and I wanted to reach wave 5 or 10).
It's a shame, but it is what it is.
Thanks for taking the time to play it and for your feedback!
Alright, time's up. It's unfinished and unbalanced, I wanted to get at least the 3 basic units working (knight, priest and archer), and some basic state machine behavior, different teams, different classes... The skill tree works but I didn't have time to add more skills or cap them. I lost a lot of time with the art (all was done by me) and that precious time should have been used to balance the game.
The balance of the game was also really hard to achieve. Clearly more than I could chew in a few days, I should have reduced the scope and go for something simpler, but I wanted to challenge myself a bit.
Still, all lessons learned.
Anyways... it was a fun experience :-)
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