Ludum Dare #53compo
Unwanted Delivery
About The Game
You are a young worker dwarf newly initiated into a rebellion started by some fellow workers.Your mission is to deliver a magical scroll to your unwilling king. It will force them to be a wise and fair ruler.. or that's what the workers say. Is magic even real?
Creator's Note
I wish I had all 48 hours of the compo to make this, but due to work I only got 15, and despite my best efforts I still scoped it like a 48-hour game, so there is a lot of cut content (especially with the combat mechanics), and I wasn't able to do much story refining, so it's probably a bit rough and confusingCode I didn't write from scratch:
* Settings.gd (61 loc) - framework for saving data across game restarts* Audio.gd (63 loc) - framework for easily setting up/playing sounds and music
Screenshots
See the first reply in the comments below, or look at them on the itch.io page---



Comments16
Good work
Wish there was more things to do other than roll dice, but I know you didn't have enough time to make more than this. Still, with what you had, you did a lot for a compo game.
I feel like the combat system could have been simpler in terms of math and that the player would have had more influence on it apart from accepting a good result or rerolling until they've run out of rerolls.
Overall I had a good time with this game, I liked reading the room descriptions and the combat system was engaging despite its simplicity. Good job on making this in 15 hours.
Replying to @mateusboga @xedur @jpbaraky and @zundou:
I'm very happy with the ending, I only wish I could have tweaked the story to fit it better, I didn't immediately think of it so it kind of wrenched things in a different direction.
I tell myself if I had about 4 more hours I would have had an inventory system with keys/upgrades/etc and puzzles you need to solve throughout the map, but I wanted the game to be done within this century so I skipped that :P
The combat system was inspired by old text adventures like Fighting Fantasy and Joe Dever's Lone Wolf (:wink:) but for a jam game I think things ended up being way to complex, especially since I had no skill level mechanics.
A version of this used for teaching math is probably a good idea, I've seen some games that do something similar, but not in a fantasy combat setting.
I wanted the dice rerolling to have a Blackjack kind of feel, but I think I fell a bit short there, it's been a while since I last played it :P
The theme was definitely rushed, as usual. I didn't want to miss my 10th consecutive LD, and I've got a pretty decent streak of compo games in too. Next time I might go for a jam game, and am going to aim for a good theme score.
The dice sound is sampled from my metal DnD dice, it feels really good to roll them IRL, the sound is :ok_hand:
Still, I liked what was there. I think this game actually felt a lot deeper to me than it ended up being -- the existence of the inventory system, plus the combat mechanics, plus everything else -- it gives the feeling of a complete game, where the reason I don't end up with stuff in my inventory is not because it wasn't implemented, but rather because I ended up winning so fast.
Moving around the map with the text-based descriptions was pretty fun, I think. The map gives a feeling of playing a board game, or something, while the text of course feels like a traditional text based game.
The combat is not too deep but it has some interesting strategy. In my first playthrough I had no need for the cheat button -- it seems like with careful rerolling it's not too hard to escape unscathed (my strategy was generally that I would immediately accept any green number, even if it is 0, because there's no penalty to taking a 0 -- e.g. it doesn't grant the enemy an extra turn or anything).
I did play through a second time to look in the rooms I had skipped by accident in my first playthrough (the treasury, plus the combat room next to the king). In this playthrough I did end up needing the cheat button, although I can't recall if this was due to bad strategy on my part.
For 15 hours work I think this is pretty incredible, honestly. It gives the feeling of a reasonably complete game just by having various menus that work, and there's quite a few different mechanics and systems to play with. Good job!