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Crusades's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Ingredients | #8 | 2.944 | 3.400 |
| Originality | #9 | 3.002 | 3.467 |
| Fun | #9 | 2.887 | 3.333 |
| Gameplay | #10 | 2.656 | 3.067 |
| Audio | #10 | 2.771 | 3.200 |
| Atmosphere (graphics) | #13 | 2.425 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Altough I am not a fan of this genre it was nice to play it. I really liked the random events that would happen and also that these events communicated pretty well what the outcome would be.
As others have mentioned, the UI could use some more work. As of now, it is mostly utilitarian, which is totaly understandable for a gamejam (making a moderatly good looking UI is hard as hell for me). It would also be nice to see how much food the village consumes each day, so you can plan a little.
Overall, a nice game which fans of this genre will surely enjoy!
The end of the review is approaching, so I'll write it here - it's interesting how WELL you used the devil's advocate ingredient. But you (I would say) explained it very poorly. Just few people will understand that this ingredient is there.
However, the game is unexpectedly well (for a gamejam) balanced and with a considerable number of interesting events. If you survive the monstrous amount of windows and things to click on, the game becomes addictive.
I had so much fun playing this! The game loop itself is somehow so addicting. The game is hard, but it feels fair. Only part that bugged me is that appeasing to the good side seemed too hard, as the resources needed, increased depending on your previous donations. That and the random events that kept decreasing the gauge made it really hard to move forward. I still havent been able to clear the game yet, but I will for sure come back to it and properly finish it. :D
The game is not easy, however I spent more time playing it than I expected. It's challenging and fun and it kept me trying for a while.
I totally understand that it wasn't a priority at game jam, but I think this game could use some UI redesign as it wasn't intuitive enough for me, but a person in the comments before me said otherwise, so I guess it'd be better to ask more people and not make conclusions based just on me. ^^ I'd recommend playing similiar games (there might be better, but Heroes of Might and Magic IV came to my mind and maybe some city building games like Sim City etc.) and take a look on how information about trading are communicated in them. Make some tests with real users/players and pay attention to what they struggle with. For example, I had problems with finding how many resources I have and it was hard for me to keep track of how many resources I need in order to do something - I learned how the system works eventually, I know where to look for these information, but I ignored it so many times (yeah, kinda my skill issue) because the text didn't seem important to me and wasn't structured the way I'd expect it to be. Maybe I'd like to see the costs separately for each people, food and wood crusade. Right now it's all in one place and just the numbers are changing. I would also find it great if the text was bigger - I have minor vision problems and it was hard for me to read it. Not impossible, but a little bit unpleasant.
What I appreciated was the game warning me when I haven't sent any crusades - I almost forgot so many times. It also surprised me that I can't quit in-game, but that's a detail.
Overall, I enjoyed the game mechanics. Some of the events were fun, I think it would be nice if you added more of them. I didn't finish it, but I believe that with a little more of math and less of spontaneity it can be done! :D
Yeah, I understand the game is basically only UI so it should be good. We have some ideas on how to improve it but with no real playtesters it was hard to tell what the biggest problems were with it. The difficulty is intentional, we didn't want it to be too easy since it's not that long of a game otherwise.
We will probably be making a post-game-jam patch sometime in the future once we have time. Custom graphics and tweaks for the UI, more events (we had more ideas but just didn't have time), and overall balancing are all on the list.
Thanks for playing!
I love the basic premise. Not enough people? Crusade! Not enough food? Crusade! Not enough wood? Guess what, crusade!
I don't know if I was lucky, but I found it quite easy. I don't know if starving is the only way how to die, but to have enough food seems to be not an issue.
It would be nice to have some explanation about how much food is needed, is it that each day one person eats one food? If so, then the ability to sacrifice them (and thus decreasing the required amount of food) makes it rather easy.
I would very much like to play the more polished version with perhaps more features (which is of course over the possibilities in a gamejam) :-)
That's funny, because a lot of people found this game very difficult! I'm glad it was't as hardcore for you as for others!
It's also possible to lose either by losing all your people, or lowering either the devil's or god's bar to 0%. But food is the most difficult to manage. And yeah, it's pretty unclear on how much food people eat each day, this should be looked upon.
Thanks for the feedback tho !!
A nice civilization-inspired game.
To start this, I should say that I don't really play/like games like these so I will try my best to give some constructive criticism but take this with a grain of salt.
I actually liked the visual of this. I appreciate you made the models yourselves and it looks great! Also I want to highlight the music. It is very well made and matches the visuals perfectly - great job to the composer! The mechanic is pretty interesting - trying to balance god's and devil's wants. The UI, even though it is very simple and could use some visual stylizing, is very functional and super intuitive and clear. Every piece of information I need I can find easily. The random events are cool and they make everything more interesting.
Now to some negatives. To me (very much possibly skill issue) it felt very difficult. I felt like the sacrifices and church building gave very little in comparison to how much I had to sacrifice. As I said the UI could use some work on the visual front (I understand time constraints and this looks fine). Maybe some more sound effects would be nice as well.
Good job on the ingredients! I clearly see "sacrifice", "my home, my castle" and "devil's advocate".
All in all a very good game. It is pretty impressive to have achieved this in under 48 hours. My highlights are the visuals and the music - all of which were made by you! Some downsides are the UI cohesion with the overal aesthetic and maybe too high of a difficulty (to my liking). Very well done!
Thanks for the feedback and for such nice words about the music and art <3
We had no time to finish the UI's graphics, as it was sadly a lesser priority than making the game functional. We're glad that the UI was at least intuitive!
Regarding the difficulty, you're right. The game IS very difficult, which was intended. However, we might've gone a little too far.
Thanks again!
I'm suprised by how well balanced this is. I did not manage to exploit the mechanic even on the third playthrough. Some events are quite random and end my game abrubtly. Like bandits taking everything leaving my people to starve :( . I managed to survive 60 days. Does the game have an end?
I liked that I could sacrifice people so they dont eat so much food :D
Edit: ok so 6th playthrough got me through on day 66
You can win the game by appeasing both God's and Devil's advocates to let you become a saint (Get both bars on the left to 100%). How quickly you can do that is just based on how you play, but obviously the randomized events will get in your way and make each run at least slightly unique.
The game is intentionally pretty hard. There are also some specific bad events that happen if you have too big of a difference between God's and Devil's reputation so it's recommended to not have a large gap between them if that helps. Balancing this sort of game is very hard for obvious reasons.
Thanks for playing!