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A jam submission

Simple Board (Miz-Jam-1)View game page

Submitted by and one — 1 hour, 50 minutes before the deadline
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Simple Board (Miz-Jam-1)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creative use of art assets#2263.2503.250
Overall polish#2403.1883.188
Overall#3073.0633.063
Engagement#4162.7502.750

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

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Felt a bit underwhelming honestly. The highlights for attack and for move appear to be wrong somehow - you clearly can move 2 squares to a side with a knight and still get an attack off.
Everything felt the same in terms of damage bth, so all the pieces felt pretty much the same.
Another thing - one can move pieces through the enemy pieces, which feels wrong.

You may want to take a look at the game called "Wargroove", it's kind of the same thing as what you got, but much better in terms of overall polish.

Developer

Hey thanks for checking my game out! I can understand your critique about the attacks feeling underwhelming as I share the same opinion. At the end of the day, it was really just a lack of time in the 48 hours (you can refer to one of my comments below that kind of identifies this).

I definitely understand what you're saying and it really was just a matter of lack of game mechanic explanation. Just to clarify for attacking, essentially the attack range shows where you can attack at your current position; this means that when you move, your current position is updated and thus you can gauge whether or not a valid attack is possible within that current range.

"Another thing - one can move pieces through the enemy pieces, which feels wrong." I think this point is just a matter of opinion, but I can see where you're coming from.

"You may want to take a look at the game called "Wargroove", it's kind of the same thing as what you got, but much better in terms of overall polish." I think this is a bit unfair of a comparison considering this was just a game jam game vs. a fully developed and published game. Obviously, you're 100% correct but I don't anyone should be held to such a standard in a 48-hour time restriction.

Overall, you're right and I appreciate the critiques. The game is faaaaaar from finished and I'll definitely need to learn to manage my time better in game jams.

Submitted(+1)

Yeap, lack of time is a common problem :)
I agree it is unfair to compare a proper released game and a game from a gamejam, but it is a good thing to do nonetheless. You can quickly see a lot of things one can improve, like the environment, UI stuff and whatnot.

Submitted(+1)

yeaa bord game club 😎

Submitted(+1)

OK, I played this all the way through and there are only a few small things I could critique it on at all:

  1. the sprites for the different classes don't feel distinctive enough.  maybe some color variation too?
  2. Animations felt a bit slow, athough I think they were also felt very natural.  Maybe a quick animations toggle?
  3. Tooltips or labels on the legend showing what differentiates the classes (move range, etc) would be helpful
  4. From a gameplay standpoint, would it make sense for units to block units on the same team?  Maybe they actually do but the UI doesn't indicate that?
  5. Is attack range not enforced?  I wasn't sure if I was misunderstanding the UI or if  you hadn't gotten to that yet.
  6. A way to de-select a unit without using it's turn would be nice.

And some other thoughts:

  1. I really like how the characters darken when they've moved.  Back when I used to play Civ 1, that was a huge pet peeve that you couldn't tell which were already moved.
  2. I really like that the game auto-detects that you're out of moves and turns over to the other player.
  3. Smart move to have local multiplayer.  I think a few other games had network-based and struggled to have enough players to make a video and I imagine that's affecting them during the jam, too.
  4. Click and drag for attacking from current position would have felt natural.   It feels good the way it is, too, though.
  5. You said it's not a finished product but I think, at least, it's pretty darn feature complete.

I'm seriously impressed.

Submitted(+2)

Really nice game! You are the only other person besides me which I have seen that did a turn based game for the game, good job!

Submitted(+1)

Really cool idea! :)  My wife managed to beat me though :'( 
One small thing is maybe you could add a way to cancel moving a unit, as there were times i wanted to cancel a movement to do something else first, but then just lost that chance :(
Overall great game :D

Submitted(+1)

It's pretty cool what you did. It works perfectly as intended, so I don't have much to say except I like the music and I think you really managed to sell the board game feel (except maybe for the fact that units have life bars).

Keep up the good work!

Developer(+1)

Wow,  I didn't really expect any traction from this game. It's my first game jam and I just kind of submitted it and never looked back. I really appreciate all of your feedback and it's nice to see the sense of community in gamedev!

Just to clarify a few things (some already mentioned in the comments below):

  1. This was more a learning project both in the aspect of implementing new concepts (path-finding and grid-based movement) and in the fact that this was my 1st game jam
  2. It is a multiplayer game. I would have loved to have implemented an AI but as you can probably guess, the time frame of 48 hours was hardly enough to get one working well (taking into account the time to make the actual game)
  3. Combat is very simple. Unfortunately, as with most of my problems, I ran out of time to create animations, different attacks, and etc. Because of this, there is a lack of strategy and all the characters pretty much have the same function besides different attack and move ranges.
  4. I went the board game route because I thought it was unique. Most of the games I've worked on or I'm currently working on are real-time top-down or platformer games so I thought'd I try to challenge myself.

Closing thoughts: This was a really great learning project. I feel that now I have a much better understanding of turn-based strategy and I hope I can put out a better game of the same genre in the future. Thank you guys for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Was anticipating the AI to take over for the second player, that would have been a great addition, but i understand it might be hard to do it in the jam. Overall looks very polished. 

Submitted(+1)

Really solid, and I love the strategy vibe, just need a computer to play against and I think I would spend a lot of time playing something like this

Submitted(+1)

The game, while being a learning project, seems to build a pretty solid base for the core mechanics of a Tactical RPG, so if that was your intention, you definitely achieved it.

Submitted(+1)

Some AI would have been nice. Obviously playing this by myself isn't that much fun.

Everything looks pretty clear and understandable. Some simple yet nice animations bringing the sprites alive! It is kinda hard to distinguish different units. Maybe some slightly different colours would help. Also not quite sure if the block/cross for move and attack make much sense. I feel like representing them with colours like in Fire Emblem makes more sense.

Seems like there isn't that much strategy involved really. There isn't enough difference in the units. I'm guessing the faster moving unit does less damage than the tank but still has no chance since it has the same attack range and is stuck there after an attack. Would need more like rock paper scissors type of dynamic. Like especially the symmetric levels, shouldn't the starting player pretty much always win?

Double click on an unit to pass the turn is an annoying hidden feature. Too easy to do it by accident.

Anyways, good job! Bit of a gamble to do a multiplayer only game on a jam...

Developer(+1)

Hey! Thank you so much for the playing the game! This game, as you can tell, is far from finished. In reality, this was more of a learning project than anything. Though it was a game jam, I didn't look at it as a "competition" as much as a new challenge. It was my first time implement path-finding and grid-based movement so learning actually took up most of the 48 hours. I definitely agree with everything you said and maybe I'll revisit this project again in the future, but as for now it was really just an experiment more than anything.

Submitted(+1)

Fun game! I like the different boards you added, as well as the audio effects!