Some very tricky balance but satisfying long-term strategy!
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Inkmen's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1068 | 3.640 | 3.640 |
| Style | #1109 | 3.820 | 3.820 |
| Enjoyment | #1153 | 3.480 | 3.480 |
| Creativity | #1430 | 3.620 | 3.620 |
Ranked from 50 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
This game was built to scale the amount of people working on my game. The team is probably 80+ members. Also, in the game, the stats are scaled with your progression, and if you don't want to lose, you have to scale up your team.
Development Time
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description for full credits.
You have the credits in the game too, if you select "no" on the first interaction.
Comments
Very nice game! I can't say I'm fully convinced it fits the theme perfectly, bit I like to see new inkman every fight, with a new name, and then get a chance to use it. Mechanics feel very intuitive, having a very specific set of actions with spawning inkmen, salvaging ink, collecting a deck and using abilities. All that creates an enclosed gameplay loop, quite complex and deep, but manageable and not overwhelming. I also liked the style and visuals, very consistent, creates a very strong atmosphere. I would appreciate a bit more variety in sfx. Otherwise it's a well polished game all around, great job!
Very fun! Lots of room for strategy with such a small amount of statistics and buffs.
Unfortunately, I did find a method to get 1616 ink points. The duo of "attack cheaply" and "sell 1 ink point for 1 action point" is unstoppable. Still fun though!
yay I finally played games woooo anyways here are my notes:
- cool story I guess
- animations are cool
- would have loved some proper sound design, it's definitely something you should spend time with next time. Also the music doesn't loop...
- there are some buttons that appear to be clickable (has the outline thing), but don't actually do anything. This includes the thing in the bottom left corner and the passive abilities of the stickmen
- I really like the "guide" text you added, it really helps the player figure out what's going on without having to do a complete tutorial. Although a sound indicating when you can't do something would be appreciated.
- The UI work is great, very legible, color coding is done well.
- I liked how the order of stickmen mattered. That actually makes you think of how you move them, also because that they cost an AP to move.
- The best strategy seemed to be get a strong hitter, attack, move a weak guy forward to tank the hit, repeat
- I really liked the ink to AP action, makes the game have a bit more strategy, although it's quite exploitable at the moment. Having a max use amount would probably fix the exploit.
I decided to stop at 69 ink
Could have gone further, but there isn't much variety, and the exploit just made the strategy very simple and boring.
Would like to see cards with less AP per attack, stat increase every time a card moves and stuff like that. I know you can come up with cool ideas.
Hey, thanks for playing!
3. Yeah, my bad for the music (and I do have to work on sound effects more)
4. Was wondering if I should add a "red message" when clicking on it, a tooltip, or just remove that
5. Thanks, and yeah, was thinking the same thing
8. You got it, planning to add a few other abilities to get more variations though (attack the enemy
9. Indeed, thinking about different ways to restrict that without making the game more complex
There are also already cards that can attack with less AP (Cheap Attack), and yeah, planning to add more effects tied to the specific gameplay of the game
Thanks for the feedback!
I did not expect to see a turn based game like this! I truly like the choices you can do with the cards (getting ink or having more units), using skills and also moving units. This makes the game very dynamic and fun. One wish is adding more audio. Anyway, the graphics are really good and I like the variation of units. The theme is used in a fun way too. Excellent job!
This game is interesting for the theme implementation.
The idea of scaling the developing team instead of making a game about scaling or building stuff as other games I have seen, is creative haha. I know that in the game, while you progress, the difficulty scales but I prefer seeing the other implementation.
As for the game, I feel I got stuck in a strange dimension for how the introduction is and I like it. With the help of the 1st stickman, we can survive longer in that ink world.
About the audio, I think this aims for a scary environment but I feel it lacks a little bit in that part after some time of playing, because you only can hear the hits of the attacks and it starts to feel like an empty environment, at that point I put my music while playing. (Or I didn't listen to any song after the few minutes, I turned up the volume of my PC but I only could hear the sound effects.)
The visuals feels good in the game since all are stickmen so nothing feels off or that doesn’t belong to the game and if it does, for me, feels more funny than anything because I’m like “haha, this stickman is fun/interesting/etc.” Some I like, some were scary and it was fun to see a lot of stickmen. This hour I played, I saw a new one at times which helps to feel a bit refreshing while I see a lot of “common” ones for how much those appear. I think the only bad part of the visuals is when you start to play, each time you pass the round, the transitions between each round feels strange/rough but after some time feels normal.
The gameplay is simple so it’s easy to gasp and fun to think at the start, but after some time, I just used weak ones to defend the strong one and loop that until I ran out of ink, whenever I got “bad” rng with the ink cards or I miss click and did the wrong action haha.
I think my only “complaint” is that the 1st enemy after the 1st boss, can feel rough or hard depending on what the stats are or the cards you got before the strong enemy. Literally my runs died on that 1st strong enemy and if I could pass that, I could reach round 28 easily, so I guess this is more classic rng of card games than the game itself, I don’t know.
I think my favorite abilities are the one you give +1HP to the stickman in front and the one that increases the ATK if the stickman is alone.
I think that’s all I have to say, I don’t think I’ll spend more time finding my stickman (and I don’t see it in the credits so I think it wasn't used but still was fun to play for a bit).
It’s great to see this game was made in this little time. :D
Thanks for playing and all of that feedback!!
For the music, sadly forgot to check the "loop" option :')
For the transition between rounds, I do have to put some delay at the end of battles, to atleast see the attack animation etc, maybe a fade in, etc etc
Was planning on making more "world content" (like what you see at the beginning with the dialogue), but welp haha
The "boss" is also placed wrongly, the one with a lot of stats is the actual boss haha
When I play, I succeed in succeed in beating that first strong enemy, but the cost is often too high, and I lose a few rounds after
A few people found out how to win infinitely if you get good rng (and think about the tactic), but yeah, in that case it's rng dependant
The plan was to handcraft battles at first (hence the few first battles), but with ~100 different stickmen, it quickly became obvious I didn't have time to make abilities and custom stats for all of them, so I try to generate, but it does come with some issues (especially when not having the time to playtest much)
Also nooooo
I'm sorry, your texture is in the game, but I forgot to change the name and the texture of the card, aaaaaaaah
Just been fixed, will be good as soon as I update the game, sorry again >.<
And glad you liked these abilities! Definitely helps in knowing what direction I should go for with the next ones
Thanks again for the feedback, and for the stickman too!!
I see, the original vision about the world content sounds fun, I liked the introduction :D
Also, about the boss, that explains why it’s strong haha, I thought it was more like, you passed the 1st boss, now here is a spike in difficulty that will show you how it will be from here. And yeah, it’s good that now the stickmen have the same attacks, I didn’t mind it for the same reason of short little time and lots of playable stickmen.
And nice to know about my stickman, I don’t mind that it didn't appear because I only wanted to put it in the last comment with the feedback haha. If you make more updates, feel free to let me know :)





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