Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

Blade & WheelView game page

Journey to defeat the guardian using a unique wheel-based battle system.
Submitted by Graeme Borland (@graebor) — 7 hours, 43 minutes before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Blade & Wheel's itch.io page

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

(3 edits)

Wow. This game is incredible (sorry a bit late to the party). I am writing, because I really wanna see a full release of this.
Your game not only made me understand the mechanical potential of the wheel without any explaination, but the overworld vs encounter formula for a roguelike based gameplay loop is ingenious. With the encounter and treasure being chance based instead of a clear map layout. Bravo!

I wanted to add an idea. Right now it is a bit hard to understand why you get certain options on the wheel. So my suggestion is to make sort of a basic skill tree / build system like slay the spire. That determines which wheel you get and by which chance, maybe rotating it like cards. And each action has the 4 options of the wheel. 

Example Ranger Build

Shoot Arrow:

- Aim
- Concentrate
- Stumble
- Hesitate

Nimble Feet

- Stumble
- Dodge
- Dodge
- Endure


Edit: After completing the game, and stumbling across the "Add Action" inside the treasure encounter, I feel like an idiot. The actions are already in a 'Deck' and 4 random ones are selected on each turn for your wheel, right?
Interesting. But nevertheless I stand by my idea of compound skills composed of simpler actions for more meaningful flavor in combat.

That was very fun and good

agree with kligunov-id on the balance. that was going to be my primary comment. not sure how to balance that with THE WHEEL. 

great UX, probably the best one i've seen in the 5-7 games i've played for this jam. super legible. nice presentation. great job! 

Such an insanely fun dungeon run, I was addicted as soon as I started. Finished the guardian fight and immediately wanted more!

Submitted(+1)

Extreme amounts of polish, amazing art style and good music. Excellent SFX and animations (apart from the encounter rolls, they are too slow indeed), they are subtle yet significant, and generally speaking are a head above other jam entries. The UI felt so smooth that at times I forgot it wasn't butter. Very impressive considering how much work that is for a single dev to pull off on a tight game jam time budget.


Overall game design was nice and played with the theme well, but some choices felt weird and balance is far off. Contrary to what you might expect (and tooltip color suggests), you are much better of staying in place to gear up on relics since combat encounters are not scary at all. This is sad not just balance-wise, but also because it incentivizes the most boring gameplay style, taking away from the core dynamic concept. I didn't abuse this since I didn't want to drag the game out, and still the final battle was extremely one-sided, the poor guardian couldn't even get a swing in while I got to do everything - pile up heaps of armor, have heal, stack up hit chances and dish out damage. Like some other mentioned, the choice to get extra combat actions didn't feel impactful at all since you have only 2 actions per turn anyway. In our game we (kinda) got around by not offering actions that you already had and instead giving you more powerful ones, sometimes playstyle-defining ones. We also had the option to preselect actions for the wheel, both to give player more control (we wanted that, but this is not the reason you would want to include that in this particular game) and to make this mechanic of gathering a deck of actions more viable, since you will actually get the chance to use more of your new and powerful actions or pick more situational ones. There are other downsides to this mechanic of getting more actions in our game as well, and we didn't sort the balance out either, but at least these are some things that could be done in your game as well.

Overall, quite a stellar game jam entry. Wish it had some replayability and more balance so I could play more of it!

Host(+1)

A great use of the wheel and a nice set of wheel-based extensions. Never really found myself needing additional combat actions, and found myself rarely taking serious consequences from the wheel, but enjoyed its interpretation as a combat system. Music banged, art is gorgeous and really sets the scene well. Loved all the tooltips. Overall a great concept with a lot of UI/UX polish.

Submitted

I was really impressed with the depth and polish of this! The music + zoom in on the player at the start of battle is such a good combo, that part alone elevates the whole experience! The relics felt a tad overpowered at times but overall the game felt very fair!

Submitted

Wheel!!!!!

Well polished! Has a lot of The Good Juice in a tight gameplay loop, nice deck builder system. I liked the trade-off between choices that, a player who would take a step back and look at what they’re scoring, would realize “oh wait I could use that as a turn”.

Also, works great on Wine.

Submitted(+1)

Love the art and sound, found the game a bit too easy though, but perharp i got lucky rolling minus movement, minus enemy chance and plus treasure chance on the map, ended up staying in place and looting up. Also found the artifacts in loot so good that never picked up actions if there ever was a choice between them and an artifact

Submitted

this entry is great and full of polish. a deck builder with random slices selected from a pool of options that affect damage, shield, hit and crit rate, and enemy and treasure encounters. on top of that, the relics augment the way you approach enemy encounters. great environment art and color palette

Submitted

this one is crazy good. as with deamon resources dept, I love the idea of a deckbuilder where you balance positive actions that you add to your hand with negative actions that you're forced to take, and the wheel mechanic really ties all of it together to create a super satisfying game loop. I also love how you incorporated the wheel into the progression mechanics and not just combat. Loved it!!!

Submitted

Love the art animation & sound, it's so slick! Very Very tasty. Excellent use of WHEEL.

Submitted

Very nice Art ! It looks clean. The wheel mechanic is well done very close to original Oblivion wheel. With having only the wheel to turn we still have different level of actions which is great

Mechanically, this felt like such an earnest recreation of the Oblivion wheel mechanic while expanding on the concept. So cool!