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Artificer's Crystal's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Your GDD is informative and well-organized, though the introduction table could use some alignment fixes for clarity. The detailed breakdown of the tower defense phases is very helpful. To strengthen the art section, consider adding more images or examples to better convey the visual direction. The game itself has an intriguing art style and the camera movement feels smooth. I appreciated the creative twist of a politely evil orc as the villain—unexpected and fun! The puzzle-tower defense hybrid is clever and reminds me of Pokémon’s strength puzzles. A tutorial would help ease players into the mechanics, and adding in-game control prompts (like movement and undo) would improve accessibility.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRNy5DzShJBmJqBWKmsOmpYAqhwEbHRByPGOgWyHsy2rsGEzQJ8mcDUQ8GsIZYw2CTaajNqhYPr3er6/pub
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarize your game!
Sokoban (Block Pusher) Tower Defense Puzzle Game.
Defend your ultra-sensitive one-of-a-kind crystal from an onslaught of goblins!
Please explain how your game fits the theme.
You have "Only One" of an ultra rare crystal that has "Only One" health and making "Only One" mistake defending your keep will result in failing.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
Not really, but I'm proud of my homemade pathfinding I baked up to go along with my homemade Unity 3D gridmap (doesn't exist in feature set). So yknow, that was the fun experiment here
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Comments
Neat concept! Pushing your towers/blockers into place instead of the usual "click to place" in other tower defence games is an interesting choice that adds an extra challenge. As others have said, more information about what towers do what would be nice, but this is a good start!
Really challenging and fun! It did take a bit of trial and error to understand the different types of towers, but i def appreciate the variation you're provided with for defense. Will def have to come back to this to try and finish all the levels. Great job!
Thanks! Biggest thing ive learned is complicated code does not make a game approachable lol. I got so engrossed in making the mechanics work well I forgot to actually explain the game properly lol
Thanks for checking it out! Will make good UI and UX in the future update to this I am planning
I'm not the target audience but still enjoyed it, I would've like some more handholding on the range of the towers such as the tesla, but that being said it was still very well made!
I had always intended on making UI for hovering over the tower to get a range/ some info, but I just didnt really have the motivation/time. Being solo is hard! But if/when i extend this that is an intention of mine for sure. And a better tutorial to teach the mechanics. The witty meta dialogue was my substitute for a real tutorial lol!
Thanks for playing!
My main gripes are that there isnt enough undo (it would be ideal to undo the entire level I think), and the reset has me go through dialog again.
Other than that there’s some good stuff here! I think the level design and ideas are intriguing to see how you can guide the path of the goblins into a death cannon/lazer
Yeah, my brain jumped to limiting undos as for some reason it felt like infinite undos killed the puzzle aspect. Like somehow that forcing the player to restart if they made a mistake is a requirement for a puzzle lol. I have come around on this and intend to do a lot more UX. Like restarting when you lose from where you were, rather than a fresh puzzle slate. And of course, infinite undos. Thanks for playing!
Hey, liked it a lot. Was a little confused at the beginning but then I found out it was a tower defense. ( I typically don't read lol) Anyway, the last level is possible but I wish there were more!
Ha yeah, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that intent is hard to figure out. I kinda knew I needed a tutorial but didn’t make one. Threw in the witty super meta dialogue to hopefully guide the player, that and the “no path warning”. Tutorial will be in the works later when I continue
This is a fun take on tower defense! I kept messing up pushing blocks around and never even made it to combat, but I enjoyed the aesthetic.
if you mess up, pressing U is for undo!
Thanks for trying the game out!
Fun game, it instantly reminded me of Boxxle on the game boy, which I played a ton of back in the day.
I think a small frustration point for me was not being able to gauge how many hits a create has taken/can take from a given trap. Could also be that I completely missed that haha.
Either way, great job!
nah I never got around to like, damage numbers or damage frames for enemies. Was practically solo and ran out of time/motivation. Clear indicators will come in a future iteration for sure, as well as a million other QOL features I didn’t get to
The game was cool.
3 small points:
- The game could be improved by telling you what the tower are doing before the level start.
- the limited amount of undo can be annoying, especially as the game is in 3d, so sometime you miscalculate the distance.
- also, I would have love to see a level with only the tower introduce at the last level, so most of the difficulty of that level would be to make the longer path possible for the enemies.
Yeah, I wanted to do a sorta hover-tower UI. Just never got to it before the burnout got to me. Definitely in the works for a post-jam update, and its been added to the notes! Thanks!
I threw that tower in for fun, it was never completed the way I wanted so I didn’t make puzzles for it. But expect to see it and more in my month after jam update (if I get there)
I really like the concept. great art. I am really excited to see where you take this.
first thing i did is skip dialogue, expecting it to only pass the "text appearing" part of the dialogue, letting me read the whole thing as fast as i wanted, but it just skipped the dialogue entirely.
great game tho, i like it.
good point lol, I think ill throw in a “complete first then go next” before the Jam time is over for dialogue