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A jam submission

Spirit WardenView game page

Magical Girl Game Jam #5 - Tower Defense/Card Game
Submitted by NudgeForward — 41 minutes, 40 seconds before the deadline
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Spirit Warden's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Genre Mashup Incorporation#53.7503.750
Engagement/Fun#133.1253.125
Overall#173.0363.036
Originality/Creativity#173.4383.438
Audio#172.8752.875
Polish#232.2502.250
Magical Girl Concept#232.8752.875
Graphics#252.9382.938

Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the Magical Girl Genre?
Player character is a magical spirit warden protecting a magical staff. She was sacrificed at a young age to watch over it.

Which genres from categories A and B did you choose?
Tower Defense/Card Game

How does your game mash those genres?
The game incorporates a deck of cards that are used for your totems (towers). Enemies travel along the path of the totems in order to grab the staff and attempt to leave with it.

Were the graphics/audio assets for your game made during the jam?
All art assets were created by me, excluding the font and audio. There are two looping audio clips that I bought during a Humble Bundle deal. Everything was created in either Aesprite or photoshop.

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Comments

(+1)

Solid core design! I like the UI work, though I don't see much reason to put away my cards. I did not know what the discard button was for too. I did run into a couple bugs, such as the hand not updating with new card graphics when I pressed draw, and a pretty major bug where the Draw timer froze and I couldn't get new cards. I was still able to win after that, funnily enough, since stacking towers is so strong and I don't see a reason not to do it.

Suggestions if you expand on this:

In these games where you have a player character moving alongside the towers, I'd always hope that the player can actually attack or contribute in some way. I can also see totems and enemies having various elemental strengths and weaknesses, and the towers potentially combining special effects when stacked on each other. 

It's very playable even despite the hiccups, which I think is a great victory. Great work on your first jam project, and I hope to see more!

Submitted

Cool, nice to see another tower defense card game!

I liked the overall gameloop... building up the defenses, chasing down the staff when stolen, and drawing/using cards. I also really liked that you could attack yourself!

The overall graphic look is pretty good, and the music fits. More SFX might add to the experience!

It was pretty confusing on my first run, I didn't really understand what to do and kept fighting myself as my cards weren't refreshing. However, that may have been a bug... I did run into quite a few bugs. On my second run, I was able to build up a bunch of defenses, but after the 1st wave my "Draw" timer locked and I couldn't really get new cards (i could use some of the old ones though, even ones that said they were locked). Lucky for me, the defense setup I had made was good enough to carry me to the end.

The balance is probably a bit off, as you mentioned yourself in the comments, but balancing TD is hard... believe me, I know first hand!

I enjoyed my time playing this game! I think with a little bug fixing, polish, and maybe a little expansion (more mechanics, a story, additional unit types) this game will really shine! Awesome work!

(+1)

This is a pretty impressive game. The graphics are pretty good, and most of them are original, and it implements not only tower defense mechanics, but also card mechanics and a player that can move around and attack things. That's a pretty big scope for a jam game.

It's definitely rough in its current state. The biggest problem is that it's just super unbalanced. You can't place many totems, they're not all that effective, the player character isn't all that effective, and there are a ton of enemies. The UX could be better: I didn't realize that you needed mana to place totems and thought it was just broken, and I didn't connect the gauges in the upper left to health/mana or figure out the draw mechanic until my second round. The cards seemed a bit buggy as well.

I think with a little more work this could be a really good game, and as it stands it's still an impressive jam entry.

Submitted(+1)

Pretty fun and excellent game design all-around. Spirit Warden takes away the micromanagement aspect of tower defense which I am not a fan of and instead focuses on the interactions of the card game, which is awesome. The player doesn’t truly die and can respawn, which is a good design choice. The fact that the enemies can be personally killed by the player and the staff retrieved like capture-the-flag also makes the game much more dynamic and interesting.

There are bugs in the game where I couldn’t draw any more cards (and in turn, couldn’t play anymore Mana or Health cards) and I always had to hide/show the hand to update and actually see the cards that I’ve drawn. Another thing I’d like polished is the Mana and Health cards need not be directly dragged onto the player - it didn’t feel good from a UI standpoint to perform while moving around. Maybe make it a bigger area or allow it to be dragged anywhere onto the play area so that it’s easier to trigger. One last suggestion is to have a bit more focus on strategy and make totem effects more distinct/clear, so the player can feel that their card actions are more impactful.

Overall, I had good fun and I’m impressed with how well the design and mashup interactions are. It just needs more polish and content which I look forward to seeing in the future. Great job!

Developer

Thank you for the review and I'm glad you had fun! Originally I planned for the totems to be unique in the sense of status effects such as slowing down the enemy or buffs to other totems. I also wanted certain totems require a totem "size" before placing it but ultimately ran out of time and settled for the more boring faster/higher damage. I totally plan on going back and reworking them back to my original vision.

Submitted(+1)

This is an interesting concept, but I think that you might need to balance things a bit more. As soon as I worked out how to play and got the totems surrounding the staff fully stacked there wasn't much more to do. There were a few bugs like cards in my hand disappearing, and being unable to draw cards at one point, but I'm sure with a bit more post-jam polish this will be even better.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing and the feedback. I couldn't agree more!

Submitted

I have no clue how to play this game. I kept dying over and over

Developer

Thank you for giving it a try! I will definitely make an effort to improve in this area in my future projects.

(+1)

Great Job! For a first game, you got a lot of stuff done ! 

Albeit, needs a lot of polish and might have some bugs with the way the deck works or maybe a tutorial ? The player also seems weird something with the turning /facing direction not always working and attacks / getting hit could be more showy.

Developer

Thanks, that means a lot! 

Absolutely, the cards (and game) could use a tutorial and everything ranges from unpolished to easily broken lol. I literally added the heart cards and functionality 30 min before sending and didn't notice that the heart cards go on cooldown when you use a mana card. Anyway, thank you for the feedback! <3