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Swamp Guardian - Ludum Praxi '26's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Innovation (how innovative/unique is this game?) | #6 | 3.549 | 3.833 |
| Fun (how fun is this game?) | #8 | 3.549 | 3.833 |
| Your overall opinion of the game | #8 | 3.703 | 4.000 |
| Theme (how well does it fit the theme?) | #9 | 3.549 | 3.833 |
| Mood (how evocative of mood/emotion/vibes is this game?) | #10 | 3.549 | 3.833 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
This seems like such a fun game! I could see this developed further into an asymmetrical board game with multiple players taking on roles for the Swamp Guardian and members of the Boat Crew. I love the level of detail you included while still laying it all out very clearly.
Slick presentation, with a whole lot of moving parts here.
Ah, this is such a fun game, so exciting to play. Kinda like "The Captain is Dead" vibes but you're trying to get rid of the ship instead of getting it back on course :)
I feel a bit bad that when I read 'swamp guardian' I immediately expected Shrek... I hope this swamp guardian will accept my apology.
The names of the swamp mysteries are probably my favorite part. I can just imagine the boat crew cowering in terror while some screeching swamp amphibian leap frogs across deck. I also really like the bold and clear lines in the illustrations, and while it's challenging to win, the game itself isn't that difficult to understand.
I'm super impressed you made this in so little time!
Would you believe that I have yet to see “Shrek?” People keep recommending it, though.
Sorry to hear that your expectations were subverted…! :-D
In any case, I appreciate your comments, Noa.
Angel and I played this together, and OMG we got SO close to winning. Angel would've won at the beginning of her next turn as the fire spread, and I would've (probably) won one turn later myself too.
I only have two issues here:
With this said, what you made was really awesome! You pulled off making a roll and write game, with tokens and moving around, in 3 days!! 😮😮😮 And with some more balancing (which I'm legit excited to see), this could be a fantastic game of balancing your actions, plugging in dice where they should be used, and keeping up with the threats. The invasion track was a fantastic threat the entire game, for instance.
We're still rather new to playtesting and crafting tabletop games, so my suggestions might not be great, but I personally love random events. Maybe rolling two dice to get one at the beginning of each turn would help? Or giving players another action they can use each turn, since I almost always had a die (sometimes even a 6) left at the end of a turn? They were great for unlocking the swamp mysteries, but once those were all unlocked, bonus dice were useless.
And again, please know that this isn't meant as negative. You pulled off something awesome here, and playtesting a solo game is REALLY hard because you're basically competing with the game itself. Getting that right takes a lot of time and effort, which you just don't have in 72 hours. And you've got multiple systems here working together in unison, along with a cool theme.
Honestly, throwing the crew token off the ship also felt awesome every time lol, like buh-bye dude!
- ✨Beth
Thanks for the comments, Beth…!
For a future release, I’ll see what can be done to make the health track more relevant. Maybe a simpler, three state health track ought to help: “Healthy, Wounded, Defeated.”
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I want to explore extending the game to embrace the idea of a “spirit of the swamp,” something like that, where the Creature is just one aspect. I am thinking of developing the idea of overrunning the human’s Camp with vegetation or swamp waters or something. This might be a mechanical way to utilize the extra dice you’re talking about, in addition to the random events you suggest.
I appreciate all this feedback and positivity from both you and Angel! Now that I’ve had a little distance from the design time constraints I think I can really stretch out on this one.
Oh nice, those are super clever ideas! I love that, a focus on not only the ship itself, but dealing with their camp. It makes perfect sense, as those at the camp could simply come again, or the loss of the ship would make them even angrier. I love that you've got ideas that not only improve on the mechanics, but also tie in thematically too, that's really cool!
I'm not at all exaggerating when I say that I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it :D If you have a mailing list or if you plan to email playtesters later when you get the next version done, I'm happy to play it again and check it out! We're at bethandangelmakegames@gmail.com :D
- ✨Beth
On my playthrough I lost by the invasion track filling. I would have won on the persistent ship/boat damage phase, so it was close. You did some decent balancing for such a short period of design time.
I think since there are 4 of each, having the permanent swamp mysteries in one column and the one-shot swamp mysteries in another might help with ease of use. That way a player can just know by positioning what they have in their repeated use arsenal each turn.
It’s nice to see the jam getting a mix of TTRPG and table top games! Swamp Guardians of the Backwoods Bayou is a fun premise. I am curious which came first, the game or the theme? One of Beth and I’s Ludum Dare entries went through so many theme changes the first day, (Epicatholon) I was glad when we finally settled on an avenue to pursue.
~Angel
I think the game idea came first, and when your jam was announced and I saw the theme I was able to finally push the button on it, so to speak.
I recently played the cooperative tabletop game, “Horrified,” which features the players banding together to face off with a collection of classic movie monsters. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of them, and I was reminded of my interest in creating a game from that specific monster’s perspective.
It’s a solo game, which works out for my current schedule (I’m currently on a kind of road trip/work tour) and the fact that I’m on my own most of my down time.
The Swamp Mysteries were the final addition since yeah: the game turned out even more challenging without them. I was wondering how to give the player additional advantages without just adding more and more dice to their pool. I definitely appreciate the suggestion of organizing that table a little more. At least in the rules document, I was more interested in having them organized alphabetically, but having them sorted as persistent versus one-shot is a better quality-of-life adaptation, and will be standardized in a future release.
Thanks for your detailed reply, the kudos on the balancing (it was a bit frantic, but I think I did all right) and I’m pleased to hear the game provided some challenge for you. :-D
Thanks for a bit of the behind-the-scenes info. I am always curious about all the little creative details we don't get to see on the other side of made games.
~Angel
Hi! Thanks for entering the jam. I don't see any files to download to be able to check out your game.
~Angel
Hmmm…. Hopefully I fixed it! Please let me know if you have any additional issues with or questions about the PDF.
That fixed it. I was able to download the PDF thanks.
~Angel