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kasdf247 days ago(+1)

the audiovisual presentation feels completely authentic, and the entire game is incredibly charming. the amount of polish and breadth is impressive — I think this is the longest jam game I’ve ever played, and in return you’ll get the longest jam comment you’ve ever seen. there were a handful of minor annoyances (see below), but overall this was quite enjoyable!

my only real complaint about the gameplay is that it’s way too easy, mainly because so many units have access to the powerful charm ability, and it really snowballs when you can charm enemies that also have the charm ability… not a single god (friend or foe) died during my playthrough, which was kinda wholesome. charm is a neat dual-use mechanic, both for healing and for convincing enemies that you’re cool. I love the little quips by charmed enemies. I just think it would be nice with more variation in abilities, instead of everyone having charm.

I made some notes while playing:

  • there’s an inconsistency where pressing X to close the charmed dialogue also opens the menu, it was a bit annoying but I got in the habit of pressing X->Z after charming.

  • when I got in the groove and started pressing buttons fast, I was meaning to select a unit and have it move up, but instead I pressed X->up->X on an empty tile and quit the game without warning. luckily it happened early on the second level, and I was careful not to do it again.

  • I found it a bit weird that I had to skip a bunch of turns while holding the temple after clearing the second level. I get that it was the objective to hold it, but when everyone is on my team, what am I waiting for?

  • it’d be nice to see countdowns for levels 2 and especially 4, to know how many turns are left.

  • I almost lost a god towards the end of level 4. it was actually a bit tense for a turn or two, that was the highlight of my playthrough :)

  • Heracles has a really long dialogue about “the twelve labours” on level 4 that exceeds the dialogue box. same with Zeus’ charmed dialogue on the last level.

  • I like how not everything is explained, like different tile types affecting gameplay, and I enjoyed figuring that stuff out.

  • pressing “skip turn” on the win screen gives a dialogue about losing.

  • I wish I could adjust the volume after starting the game.

…

overall great entry, you went really hard on the NES focus and it paid off!

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Madam Materia247 days ago

I was very proud of level 4, glad it was the highlight of the game.

Did you get any of the other endings or just finish the once?

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kasdf247 days ago(+1)

I only finished it once, I have too many jam games to play this week. I assume the dialogue would differ based on who sat on the throne at the end, is that what you mean by other endings or is there more to it?

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Madam Materia246 days ago(+1)

Nah, you're spot on. :P

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daid246 days ago

I added the end-turn menu the last day while also doing the last two maps. So I'm not that surprised there are some usability issues with it :)

I thought I fixed the 12 labours text, but I guess I didn't... the zeus charm was an issue. Due to how I setup the charm messages, I had no way to split those into two parts and didn't see an obvious way to cut it down to size. It was getting late, I had to submit to the jam. So while we knew, it was left in like that. BUT does show how engaged people where with the game if they encountered that ;-) as it's very late in the game.

The win screen has sort of the same thing, I found the game would semi-crash if you finished the last map, so I quickly put in another unwinnable map at the end and wrapped it up. It would have been better to switch to a credits roll, but, simply didn't have the time&energy to set that up anymore.

Yes, the game is easy. That was also a bit intentional. It's hard to balance game jam games, so I balanced on the side of easy to people can at least enjoy all the content. You can make it harder if you go on a murder spree instead of charming all gods ;-)

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kasdf246 days ago

I agree it’s generally a good idea to make games too easy rather than too hard for jams, it’s just not my cup of tea. you intrigued me with the idea of a genocide run, so I gave it a try. it really emphasized how little variance there is in this game, as now it’s down from three abilities (charm, heal, attack) to two abilities (heal, attack). I don’t mind minimalistic designs, and I gotta say you do a lot with the few mechanics you have, but the balance is way off. it felt even easier on levels 1-3, but Poseidon got me on level 4 — it seemed nigh impossible, which was really cool! for the first time I was forced to use the terrain to my advantage, and actually think about my moves. I had to be strategic and careful, which is what I was initially missing. it took me three tries to finally kill everyone in level 4, and then came level 5 which was completely trivial… it was quite a let-down. in the end I spent most of the time tediously going through the motions without much thought (tbh I had to put on a podcast in the background to stay with it), but I did really enjoy level 4 for what it’s worth.

this time around I also noticed there’s terrain info at the bottom of the screen, I completely missed that the first time I played. there’s a bug though: flying units attacking grounded units on defensive terrain show “Def: 0” but still do -1 damage. grounded units attacking flying enemies on defensive terrain show “Def: 1” but still do full damage. I guess the logic (or UI) for defense on flying units is erroneously applied when they take damage instead of when they deal damage.

anyway, I hope I don’t sound too harsh, I know most jam comments focus on the positive aspects (which this game has plenty of) — but I’m here to give my honest feedback, and I’ll be blunt: beyond the awesome presentation, the gameplay is very simple and often tedious. if the entire game consisted of only level 4, I wouldn’t have any complaints. it felt way too long for what it is, even after just one playthrough, let alone two.

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daid246 days ago (1 edit)

Oh, I hear you. The initial plan was to put more effort into more types of attacks, and various advantages/disadvantages. But time pressure caused us to shift tactics on what to implement. Madam Materia did great on the sprites and story, so my main priority became to make sure all those made it into the game.

The "def" part is working as intended, the displaying of terrain info just isn't as clear. Being on terrain just gives a bonus to defense, but when planning an attack, it doesn't update this bottom line to show the (adjusted) defense of the target. And flying units just never get this bonus, but if you attack from a flying unit to something in mountains, the unit in the mountains still gets a defense bonus.

If you grab the windows version, you actually can discover that a lot of this is data driven and can be adjusted from text files. There is actually also an editor, but I disabled that for the jam release. You can find that here: https://daid.eu/8bit/TrialsOfOlympus.html if you want to create your own custom challenge ;-)

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kasdf246 days ago

I see, that makes sense about the “Def” UI — it’s a really confusing design decision though.

cool editor!!

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