Great game and promising concept!
Some things I can think of after playing, I agree with what others have said below, and I wasn't entirely sure what the dragon was going to do at the start.
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Line Fencing's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creative use of art assets | #95 | 3.727 | 3.727 |
| Overall | #252 | 3.212 | 3.212 |
| Overall polish | #299 | 2.970 | 2.970 |
| Engagement | #350 | 2.939 | 2.939 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
Creative use of the art, and a lot of polish. The timing of the block was a little unforgiving, but then in a full game you'd probably get eased into it with easier enemies a bit. The dragon would make a great mini boss!
Great choice of music and sound effects too
Submitted
Captain TanksSo much to do with this core mechanic. Tiny game with a very strong idea. Might have been worth extending with some more smaller enemies and such, so post-jam you should add more characters and abilities!
Submitted
The Technomagical MethodThat's very fair, I did something similar, "hey, I want to see if this mechanic has potential".
In this case, it for sure has. Combining movement and actions is really satisfying, consider adding an "up" or "down" mechanic for each class, perhaps selectable abilities, maybe the ability to strategise around enemies, and you've got a full, innovative game!
The only change I might make would be to have an "absolute" key, like Q for the defender and W for attacker, wherever they are. Or perhaps a "tab" key, where you select the next fighter
I like reading this because this is more or less the direction I envisioned for the project: I had in mind a third ability for characters that you need to hold a button for a while to execute (and so it requires good timing), new characters with different abilities, and enemies with different patterns and abilities that will require you to change you team. And as I explained in another comment, I was planning on "absolute" key mapping, but I don't know why I changed it at the last minute (I thought it would make more sense to people playing on a keyboard)... The tab key is nice though, I might steal this idea :D
Thanks again for your feedback, it fills me with determination to build on this idea!
Oh and if you want to enable a variety of controls, there should be nothing wrong with clicking to select a character, then dragging in a certain direction to execute an ability (left/right to swap places, up/down and/or hold to do timed abilities, etc). I think you really struck a rough gem here and there's a lot of potential for timing -and- tactics, even strategy! I'll be following you to see where this project goes!
Fun little game and a really interesting mechanic! It took a little while to figure out how everything worked, but once I did, it was really engaging! After I beat the dragon I even went back and tried a few more times to get a perfect run, but ultimately couldn't do it. =P Awesome use of the art kit, and wonderful animations - I especially loved their facial expressions! Really gave them a lot of character. Great job!
Impressive use of the art kit and smooth animations, fun music, cool concept. I would have appreciated if you moved the selection arrows to the same general area as the attack indicators or otherwise highlight the selected character as splitting focus between the two spots on the screen caused some annoying slipups for me. Great work!
Submitted
Castle of ImmortalsI honestly opened this to rate it all 1's because I thought it didn't use the artkit at all. To my surprise you were so creative I could barely recognize it! Great job!
The gameplay was too hard for me though, the mental gymnastics of switching characters, and them changing who's 1 and who's 2 broke me haha.
Still, great game and I'm rating this one very highly :)
Submitted
Battle of the Bald MountainNice gameplay idea. The controls were a bit confusing at first, but i quickly got used to them. Very creative use of the art kit. I had fun playing this game. Good job! :)
Submitted
War DrivenVery original mechanic. At first I struggled a bit to get used to it, it can be a bit confussing, but when you get it it's pretty fun. I would love to see this idea expanded!
Submitted
Serfs GaloreAmazingly creative use of the artkit, well done! I really liked the rigging and the animations in this game, and would love to see some more attacks and animations implemented. My only complaint was that the blocking didn't seem to have much of an effect a lot of the time, and I wasn't quite sure how to use it properly. Could be my lack of skill, could be a timing issue. Either way, this is a fantastic game! Good job!
Submitted
Scunthorpe ScavengerReally creative use of the art set! Couldn't even see the parts of the asset pack at first! Game was a little hard, but that might just be me. Good job!
Submitted
Man & MonsterWow, that mechanic is really, really cool. After I beat the dragon I was just really wanting more gameplay! Literally the only problem I have with this game is the fact that I just want to keep playing it! Switching the characters feels good, the game is super responsive, and it feels really awesome to nail the shielding. You really executed on the core gameplay concept excellently!
And the use of art assets was awesome, the characters looked great!
I had a lot of fun playing your game! Great job!
I beat the dragon and won. It’s a short game but it has quite an engaging mechanic, and I can see a lot of potential in it! I like that the sprites were contorted in a way to form the dragon and characters, I think it’s quite creative. Firstly, I think the controls need to be improved because it’s very difficult to reorient the mind when the characters switch positions. The game was more difficult than expected because the controls were counter-intuitive (which I believe is not a good reason). Very simply, instead of 1 and 2 being the position, 1 and 2 should be the character. 1 for the shield guy, 2 for the sword guy. Secondly, do not take control away from the player when the sword guy is swinging - this makes the shield guy irresponsive when he could be blocking in-place, or better yet, allow players to cancel the sword swing into a shield block. Third, the dragon’s damage seems to happen at the beginning of claw animation; the damage happens before impact, which does not feel right. Lastly, the indicator of the dragon’s attack is too muted, it needs to be more apparent, maybe brighter colors with some effects and sound. If you can fix these 4 problems, I believe your game will shine.
I enjoyed the game, and am excited to see more characters, abilities and mechanics being added in the future!
Submitted
Tetra Ho!Thanks a lot for your feedback! To be perfectly honest I agree with all of it. When I imagined the game, I wanted to assign a specific button to each character (that's how I envisioned the game being played with a controller, hence the blue (X on a Xbox controller) and green (A) characters), but while implementing it I thought that mapping the spot made more sense because it was mimicking the placement of the keys on the keyboard (that's why characters are on the right of the screen, so 1 can be on the left). I also agree that taking away control is not great, but I will use the jammer's favourite excuse: I didn't have time to change that.
I think I'm going to start fresh because the code is a mess, and use different assets, but I'm definitely going to expend on this idea. I have a list of maybe 10 characters I want to implement :D
Follow me if you're interested, I'll be sure to post updates here, and thanks again for that great feedback!
I can see how different parts of the dragon matches certain parts of the tileset, not at first sight but it's there.
The game itself is a bit confusing to play, I didn't defeat the dragon because even if the shield bearer was on front, sometimes the swordman got damaged. I guess I haven't figured out some rythmic pattern to do an attack/defend iteration.
Very good concept!
Submitted
Star PigThanks for the feedback!
What confused you maybe is that to defend with the shield you need to move it on the attacked spot right before the attack finishes (the shield gets temporarily invulnerable when he moves). With more time and more means I intend to make the attack animation clearer, to show exactly where it lands, I admit it's not super clear right now.
Wow you went hard on the art part.
It's very different but we still see that it's inspired from the art kit.
i'll be honest i can't play this right now cause my internet doesn't work very well but hey art looks good on the screenshots ahah
Nice work^^
Submitted
Dog Galoresorry but I cant see the use of the art pack in this game , witch is a shame , because the game feel is amazing its very hard to react to the attacks and I wasn't able to beat the dragon , I did come close tho and really tried my best but gosh is this game hard
for the art I'm so sorry I have to give you only one star but if it wasn't for the rules this I would love to give you more than that because the animations are wonderfully smooth and the dragon is very well made
I don't mind if the sprites are combined like crazy but in this case I have to say I don'T see the art pack in here ( excluding the skulls )
the mechanics are very interesting tho , maybe you should try building on them and eventually you could end up witch a very unique combat system that you could use in lets say a RPG
You don't have to justify yourself, you rated the game how you thought it should be. I thought I left some obvious signs of the art pack, such as the head of the characters, their chest plate or the eye of the dragon, but I can see how all of this gets lost in my Frankensteinian constructs.
I really appreciate your feedback on the mechanics, because it was my plan all along to test them during this jam so I could use them in a bigger RPG project later on. So thanks!
i like how you played with the art,good gameplay one thing i found hard it's dodging
Submitted
Man vs ScorpionThe Art of this game is very nice and most have been a lot of work.
It's difficult to see when and were you use the art kit.
and I wasn't very good at this game.
But it still looked beautiful.
Submitted
Knight-Jam
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