Play game
Age of Decay's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #1 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Overall | #2 | 4.125 | 4.125 |
| User Interface (UI/UX) | #7 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Sound/Audio | #9 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Visuals(Graphics) | #12 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
DevLog Link
https://pavelee.itch.io/age-of-decay/devlog/1128417/age-of-decay-patching-paint-points
Developer Feedback Questions
What do you think about controls now?
Do you understand mechanics of the game?
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.





Comments
I like the idea - some tower defense vibes, it is the nice mix. Controls is good and the mechanic is clear enough but few minutes taken to get it.
Some times I was confused because the same resource is used to build and spawn the units from the graveyard. Because of it the building becomes unavailable while I selecting a place to build
Thank you for playing and feedback!
That's a very good point regarding the hidden cost of the unit. There's certainly room for improvement in the UI/UX to make that information clearer for the player
Very fun game play, I made it to the end and was creating a massive army by then.
I liked the mechanic of trying to spread your network of death across the map.
I felt like the bow and arrow wasn't powerful enough, or I needed a few more hit points. When I did try to help out, my health melted away too fast so I ended up just avoiding the battle. Would like a bit more health and then a faster healing mechanic when you're in your network. Then the mini-loop could be build -> attack -> heal -> build.
Thank you for playing and feedback!
This was really fun! The controls were easy to learn and I appreciated that I could press E or the number of the building to confirm the selection. The mechanics were easy to pick up on, but I think if I were to play this regularly, I would want some kind of feedback, or something to work towards. Unlocking more buildings, having a point where one map is conquered and I move onto the next one, or even just keeping track of a high score.
I think I'd also like to see a larger incentive to leave the "safe zone". Early on, there was some risk going to retrieve corpses to make more buildings, but at a certain point, I could safely stay away from the "front lines" for as long as I felt like playing. If there were some power up or special item that I could only get by going myself, it'd reintroduce the risk factor without making it a requirement, since there isn't really a "win condition".
I enjoyed the necromancer theme, I thought it was funny :)
Thank you for playing and feedback!
We also started with the Godot Wild Jams and trying to make our games accessible with multiple input methods. It can certainly limit design choices and make you really think on how best to handle input.
It is good practice to make sure all instructions are in game. For a jam putting them on the game page due to time constraints is reasonable, but as you continue to develop I'd try to put them all in game. I do not see any mention of pressing Esc/C/R1 to cancel building in game. In that vein, I'd add a setting to change which controls are shown on screen, between keyboard and joypad.
For the current 3 towers, your joypad controls work, but if you add more, you'd eventually run out of buttons. You may want to have 1 button to start build mode, with the last selected tower, and use L1/R1 to move through them. This is not as fast as a dedicated button, and requires a bit more paying attention to which is selected, but would allow for additional towers. One option for speed, would be to have the top button (triangle) start with the last selected, while the left (and right buttons (square/circle) start at preset towers, spread out among the options. This would allow quick access to placing multiple of the same tower, but also allow starting at known positions. If you had 9 towers, and started at #3, you could then know to press L1 twice to get to #1. Still not as fast as keyboard with being able to press the number and get there in 1 press, but allows a bit more speed within the constraints of a joypad.
With keyboard, the tower placement puts the tower in front of you, while the controller seems to favor having it on the same tile as you. It would be nice if the 2 inputs were consistent in the positioning.
When you are in tower placement mode and the tower details pop up, the tower list moves down. I'd recommend adjusting it so the tower list is anchored in the lower position.
There should be some sort of timer or push for the player to advance. While writing these comments I left the game running in a background tab and built up a lot of corpses. Obviously, this can be something for play balancing later, but it was something I acknowledged and used as a strategy. I restarted and built 3 Dead Towers, then waited while a bunch of enemy troops came in and were defeated. Then I'd advance until my Dead Towers could hit the enemy towers and place 2-3 of them. Once the enemy Tower was defeated, I'd build up more corpses before taking out the town buildings. Then I'd advance and do similar for each town. I'd build enough Dead Towers to cover me, while staying our of range of enemy towers to place a line of Totems. Then I'd start my wall of Dead Towers, while watching my health and after every 2-3 towers placed I'd move back to be healed. The tower placement was a quick move out then down placing the towers on consecutive tiles, trying to avoid getting hit. With the Totems already out, this went quickly.
It would also be nice if the game over screen included some stats, such as how many towers and skeletons built, how many enemies defeated, and how much decay had been spread. I went back and covered all the tiles I could before advancing to destroy the last structures. I placed a tower too close to the final flag building and destroyed it before I could cover all the tiles.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of the death/decay theme (I know it was last month's GWJ theme), but the game itself has a good foundation and was fun to play.
wow, thank you for so detailed feedback!
Lack of information how to cancel that's good point, it should be mentioned.
That's great you share you experience with making input compatible with keyboard and gamepad. That solution you described (with selecting building from list) i got before but ppl didn't really understand this, so i decided to simplify it for testing purposes. You are fully right that current solution is not scalable and that's problem. You got some good idea ideas to speed up selection, i need still some diging how to combine UI speed with scalability.
Introducing time push is something that i am afraid of problem with players skill range. You seems pretty advance player, you did quickly research about strategy that's something that belongs to talented players. I have problems to make game too hard for others. That slowly way of forwarding with towers is some way for players who cannot really handle other styles and just want to have fun pushing towers without bothering other things. Time push could be great idea for some extra mode for advance players who want more challange.
This game with fiction is something i wouldn't keep as you say (too generic), just working on mechanics that could be use for better fiction that this.
Thanks again for feedback!
I like tower defense games, so figuring out strategy with just 3 towers was pretty easy. I do agree that for jams and demos it is good to keep things easy, and we often do that as well. Adding a push is something for later development. We started on a tower defense game ourselves while ago in Godot 3, though never finished it, which helps with thinking about how they should work from a coding angle. You have a good start. I look forward to seeing how you develop the mechanics.
The controls are good, when there is not too much going on on the screen. In my opinon the game mechanics are clear now.
Thank you for playing and feedback!
Gripping gameplay!
The controls are serviceable (I tried both keyboard and gamepad controls) but I ended up misplacing my units a lot. I like the control scheme you used for the gamepad, and I think you should use that idea for the keyboard; if you used the number buttons as both selection AND confirmation (press 2 to select the tower, press 2 again to place it) it would feel so much better.
I grasped the mechanics pretty quickly. I understood that the graveyards used up dead bodies automatically (which I may not have figured out if I hadn't read the description first), and this lead to weird "standoff" moments where enemies died before they could reach my base, so I had to dive into enemy fire to grab their bodies and use them as quickly as I could to build more towers. Not a bad thing necessarily.
One suggestion; I would turn off collision on player units. It's unnecessary and it leads to my skeleton guys getting stuck.
It's not often that I find a jam game that I want to replay over and over again. Well done!
Thank you for detailed feedback!
Keyboard support confirming by typing again placement number, but i didn't write about it in description and game, but that's cool feedback because that should be more clear. Thanks for trying game on gamepad, that's really cool you find it even better approach.
That's good point that diving for bodies could be deadly and frustrating when you die so quickly after some progress. I will try to find a new approach that skeletons can pickup bodies for you. That's just idea but that could be some foundation for a new unit that could have this ability or just upgrade for skeletons.
Unit collision with buildings is good idea, there is no really value in having that. Using advance pathfinding could be overkill for performance without really value for player.
Really great feedback, thank you!
This is a fun game. Sometimes a bit hard to hit the exact area where to place a building. Running around and tower defence. Love it!
Choosing area is tricky and fully agree that could be not precise right now, next topic to think how to solve it better :D
Thank you for playing and feedback!