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A jam submission

The OracleView game page

A turn-based tactics game about being able to see a short time into the future.
Submitted by rikerg, Graham Wiebe (@Eavin7), Matt Rempel — 2 hours, 2 minutes before the deadline
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The Oracle's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#13.9294.077
Visuals#14.2994.462
Gameplay Innovation#13.8544.000
Overall#24.0034.154
Fun#73.7063.846
Unexpectedness#562.8913.000

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Please list any pre-made art/music/code/other assets that you used.
SFX source files from EpidemicSound.com and Envato Elements
icons by Toli, from thenounproject.com
rock texture from Megascans

How many members in your team?

Team of 3

List each team member's role, along with their social media / website links!
Matt Rempel - Design, Audio

Graham Wiebe - Art, Design

Riker Greenslade - Programming, Design

Anything you want to say to players before they play?
Hello my dear player,

You are an oracle infiltrating Grand Witch Olice's stronghold to try and take the prize promised for those who can get through the golden portal. Good thing you can see into the future. Unfortunately, so can she. Compete with Olice in a battle of wits as you try to outmaneuver her defenses and claim the prize!

On this journey into the unknown, you will encounter 5 different enemy types as you fight with your card-based abilities. It will take planning, skill, memory and a little luck if you're to reach the end.

Good luck,

Your humble devs.

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Comments

Great concept both for a video- and a real boardgame. Visuals and audio could be improved but very polished for a 2-week dev period. AI feels like playing vs. randomiser a bit, but given the number inferiority (1v8), stronger AI would get tough. The next mobile gaming hit? https://twitter.com/smushyarm/status/1307597024481730561

Submitted

Very well made for only 2 weeks!

The graphics are really good, the audio too.

The unexpectedness is the kind I don't like: randomness. When the blue enemy changes the actions, you can take a lot of damage at the same round. I think that if the player's life regenerated one point at the end of each stage the game would be less frustrating, but that was your design choice. Also, the cards come random, so sometimes you can't move, and other times you can't attack.

But that makes you think a lot more at your strategy, like trying to kill the blue one first to not let him change the order of the actions.

Some problems I had: In my ultrawide monitor the UI goes off the screen, so I had to play in my laptop's screen. Also, if I click into a card, I cannot cancel my action (also, a design choice, because when I select an action the enemies also decide their actions).

Nonetheless, this game have a lot of potential! I really liked it, and would be happy to see that game evolve and turn into a full game!

Congratulations!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your thorough review and comments!

We had debated having an unlock system where you had to choose a new card vs. some healing between each stage, but that got cut as we got closer to the submission deadline.

Thanks again!

Submitted

Amazing one. Especially love the design. And the gameplay. Yeah, one of favorites.

Developer

Glad you enjoyed it!

A fantastic, fun experience. Great work!

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

A simple and fun little strategy game. I like visuals and the sound/music was really good. Overall a good jam game. Well done.

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

This game has more polish than most paid games. Very professional. The game play is pretty original. Of course needs tweaking because I am bad at it ;)

I am still learning it though

Another example of an excellent jam game.

Developer

Thanks for your kind words!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I'm really impressed with how this game looks, feels, and plays, and the overall game design. The mechanics you have here are very interesting, I'd be curious how you did the AI. By far one of the best overall games I've played on this jam, it really shows that you put a lot of work into it. Great submission.

Developer

Thanks! The AI is mostly smoke, mirrors, and randomization, but don't let anybody know I told you that ;)
We're glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted

The polish in this game is really impressive, and the turn-based strategy mechanic too! Its fascinating that you achieved it in Unity, not many games have awesome visual effects like in yours. My only complaint would be the game's size weighing 255 megabytes, which isn't ideal for a jam game, as not many people would want to download your game. So make some optimisations, and update the game.

Developer

Thanks! Our artist knows all sorts of tricks to make Unity look polished, and worked really hard on making it look nice :)
Sorry about the large file size, but as it's just a jam game we focused on the content first. We'd hoped to get a WebGL build, but the graphics we used precluded that option. Hopefully too many people aren't turned off by the download!

Submitted(+1)

Really interesting idea, superb visuals and audio. Mechanics are polished and the UX is complete, good work!

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

I really liked the core mechanic, seeing enemy moves ahead of time and planning around them certainly gives the player a feeling of badassery which I can get behind. I also enjoyed the visuals - the enemy designs were quite intriguing and had satisfying animations and effects. The environment was also really nice, albeit simple.

All this being said, there are always places to improve. My main point of contention is that the game is either too easy or too difficult (or both!) What I mean by this is, I tried to use my memory and adapt my plans around enemies moves - but found it really hard to store much info in my head (this is the bit I feel is too hard). So instead I relied on making a lot of guesses and sticking to general turn based stats, which worked out OK! (this is where things are perhaps too easy?) 

Basically what I'm trying to say is that the game is complex, which I like, but it has so many moving parts that I almost don't get to enjoy them because I'm falling back on general rules for combat. 

Overall though, really good work - my kind of thing :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the critique! It's pretty thought out, and makes a lot of sense. We agree that it seems to work better at smaller scales, where it doesn't feel overwhelming to keep track of what's going on.
We also originally planned more UI elements and abilities that made it easier to keep track of what's going on, but time constraints led us to limit the scope.

Glad you enjoyed it anyways!

Submitted(+1)

An incredible game concept! Great job.

Developer

Thanks!