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TDpole's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Sound (Audio, music, sfx, cohesion between them) | #16 | 3.083 | 3.083 |
| Playability (Gameplay and technical stability) | #17 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Originality (Innovation and creative use of systems) | #17 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
| Immersion (Usage of theme, incorporation of atmosphere) | #19 | 2.833 | 2.833 |
| Look (Visual fidelity, art direction, aesthetics) | #21 | 2.750 | 2.750 |
| Heart (Overall love put into the game) | #22 | 3.083 | 3.083 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Give a quick description of your game
Recruit ninja and wizard frogs to defend the path to the lake while freeing your tadpoles.
Permission to use your work
YES
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Comments
It's a good game, i'd like it. Unfortunately I am really bad and I have always lost but this is my fault
I liked the goofy frogs. But the game feels a little bland? I skipped all of the text, understood nothing that was happening within the game, promptly placed cool looking blue or red frogs on the lily pads (which from the comments and game description, just learnt are ninja and wizard frogs) without any context, and bam! Pressing the 'Clear Debris' button enough times after enough time had passed made me win. A little uneventful and confusing, in my opinion. This game needs a little more, both with ideas and execution, to be engaging. Awesome human ribbit sounds tho; I dig it
Thanks for the detailed feedback! I agree the game could use more to be engaging with more interesting decisions to make.
Cute frogs! I loved their faces with that dorky lil smile. Like TomatoToaster said, great job working in the frog theme and making it feel like a "frog thing" if that makes sense.
I struggled a bit with the tutorial in the sense that I didn't understand right off the bat that the armor had to be removed before hitting HP, I thought it was more of a "if it has armor use a wizard to target their health, if not use a ninja" deal (but that might be on me for misreading instructions). Once I realized how it worked, I wanted to reorganize my frogs but couldn't move them—a "remove frog" or "swap frogs" mechanic would be cool here. I still won that round (kind of missed having a replay button after the victory message, lol) and my second run went much more smoothly now that I knew to place the wizards first :)
To prevent an easy solution like "put 4 wizards first then 4 ninjas", maybe you could have enemies that have higher armor than usual but very little health so that you'd need more wizards, or enemies that regenerate armor so the player needs to mix wizards and ninjas instead of always keeping them separate. For the debris, because there was no real need to clear them during the game I filled out my board with frogs first
and forgot I had to clear the debrisstrategically only cleared them after I no longer needed to spend flies on frogs. Maybe some kind of pressure on the player (time pressure? Tadpoles getting antsy?) could change that and force the player to make choices to add depth?You weren’t the only person who struggled with the tutorial and I agree it could have been more clear and concise. Being unable to move the frogs was something I also found annoying during playtesting but didn’t have time to implement versus other polish sadly.
I originally had some enemies that used the mechanics more deeply but then became worried the game would be too difficult and frustrating to play so I scaled it back. If there had been time to implement another level it definitely would have made the mechanics more interesting.
The debris clearing is a weak point of the game and feels pointless. It felt better when I first implemented it but then realized getting to the end but losing because the debris wasn’t gone was pretty lame so I implemented the automated clearing. Sadly this essentially undoes the whole mechanic and due to a lack of balancing feedback I erred on the side of caution making it more easy in that regard (I originally had it so that you only had a bandwidth of two extra towers before you ran out of money for clearing debris but that felt so bad and just turned the game in to a boring math problem). A different method of putting pressure on the player or something else for them to do would have been a good idea! Thanks for playing!
I loved the distinctly human "ribbit" sound effects. The balance and depth felt lacking as there weren't any meaningful or challenging decisions beyond place relatively equal amounts of ninjas and wizards.
I made the sound effects and music myself so thanks for the compliment. I agree with you regarding balance and depth. I was worried about adding too much complexity and not finishing in time but it does hurt the gameplay and make it less interesting.
Great name and good work incorporating the frog theme, I like the sounds and the the frog guys' attack animations are so funny. I think splitting up the tutorial would be good to minimize all the reading at the beginning,
Thanks for giving the game a try! I agree with you regarding the tutorial as others had issue with this as well. Unfortunately I ran out of time to do a more guided tutorial. I will keep it in mind for the next jam!
Pretty good after i decided to read lol, good game. Also the number of flies didnt go back up after a loss just a bug a found.
Thanks for the feedback! Did you run in to that bug after losing a run then clicking “start game” again? I can’t duplicate it on my end so if you remember anything else about how it occurred let me know!
Pretty unbalanced and hard to understand for a Tower Defense
Appreciate the comment! What aspects did you feel were unbalanced and hard to understand? Was there not enough information or did the tutorial instructions not provide enough guidance? Something else?
The tutorial screen had too many information to absorb so i ended learning about almost nothing, the enemies were to hard to kill and there was moments were i lost all my money and couldn’t get it back.
Makes sense. I definitely had concerns about the density of the tutorial screen so I’ll keep that in mind going forward. Good to know about the currency loss issue as well.
I like the attack animations of the frogs shooting their tongues out at enemies lol. Funny we both ended up making tower defense games in godot for this jam.
Thanks! I also thought it was funny we both ended up making tower defense games. The theme fit that type of game really well.