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Rampart Rush's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| I appreciate the art/visual style | #52 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| I find this game's challenge/puzzles interesting or compelling | #68 | 2.020 | 2.020 |
| I appreciate the game-feel (responsiveness of interactions) | #78 | 2.041 | 2.041 |
| I would buy a longer/commercial version of this game | #82 | 1.510 | 1.510 |
| I appreciate the mood/atmosphere | #83 | 2.245 | 2.245 |
| Overall | #83 | 2.035 | 2.035 |
| This game was intuitive and self-explanatory | #85 | 1.980 | 1.980 |
| I appreciate the sound design and/or music | #91 | 1.306 | 1.306 |
Ranked from 49 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Jam Entry Confirmation
Indie Game Clinic COLLAB JAM '26
The Team
Sam Santala : Art/Design
Robert Moodey: Programming/Design
Other Credits
N/A
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Comments
I had a bit of trouble understanding what to connect, but after I figured out that the white circles were connection points, I was able to generally figure out what to do. I stumbled a bit when making some connections between the two buildings that somehow prevented more movement - but after deleting and redrawing them it seemed to generally do what I wanted. I was confused that even though the towers seem evenly spaced, some of them still don't overlap the gates as well as others, and I never really figured out what the gears did. The art looks great, and it was fun to make a little factory of carriages moving to different destinations. Here's a playtest
Thank you for playing CheeseOnCheese, your feedback is top notch and very much appreciated. Getting to watch a playtest recording was awesome. The game is very rough and there isn't enough explanation on what you're to do. Tower placement definitely needed some love. Glad you liked the art style, I'm sure Sam will be happy to hear that feedback! <3
First scene I finished by accident, I thought. 2nd - it was not so easy with lines from the mouse and different lines from the building site. And then the slime comes :D paniced a bit but when focused more on lines and possibilities I connected the... dots! (badum-tss)
To make this feel more intuitive, the Gear should add more range, and the monster could be more random in moving to the gate, maybe with a bigger number. Cool concept, could be a very intuitive, easy-to-start strategy game. Then add the juice ^^. Find some free sounds, samples, or tracks online and try with one to add the tempo/atmosphere here or there. Keep it up :)
Thanks a lot Forgotten ❤️Really appreciate the lovely feedback on the project. Sorry it wasn't quite up to the standard we were hoping for, but glad the slimes gave you a bit of a rush :P
I found it very difficult to understand, in the tutorial stage I was pressing all the buttons on my keyboard before realising that I had to use the mouse, and I found that the strategy of the gameplay wasn't clear at all. I also found the lack of sfx left the gameplay feeling quite flat. I liked the visuals and the painterly style of the grass though.
Thanks Artichat! As the artist I'm glad you liked the work on the assets :) Yeah I think adding just a mouse icon or something at the start would have made it much easier to grasp immediately, maybe even an arrow on the first node. Unfortunately we kinda rushed near the end so I think we just about slapped things together without any polish at all, but I really appreciate the feedback 💛
I think the start is good, where you make the player draw a path, so the player knows the main mechanic. However, the second level throws too much things at you at the same time. Took a while before I understood where the carriages were spawning. You have upgrades (I think? blue?), range (and damage? green) and you can also directly draw paths from spawn to the towers (is worse than getting the bow/green first?). Giving everything green arrows seems as the optimal strategy, but got overwhelmed fairly quickly. Some enemies stay out of range. My advice would be to introduce each element one at the time, and make the player notice what changes each time.
Thanks a lot Crate. Yeah there's very little onboarding or tutorializing unfortunately. If we keep working on it I think creating a step by step of what elements are introduced when and how would be high on the priority list.
This is really neat. I had a difficult time figuring out how to play at first, more tutorialization would definitely be necessary for an idea as unique as this. It almost reminded me of a factory builder, managing inputs and outputs on belts while considering throughputs and ratios.
Interesting concept, figured out late into my first run that towers need both resources to operate. I think you have the right idea including the bow and cog symbols below the bars, but you could probably make them a fair bit bigger as they are easy to miss. The range of towers seems a bit small as some enemies seemed to just beeline towards the doors and never come into range of them. Overall there are some good visual design choices, e.g. the waggon icon being filled in radially to indicate when the next waggon will spawn is a nice touch.
had some trouble understanding how it works, i think you draw paths from the castle to the towers to supply them
but im not sure what the ranger house and the repair house was for, and how it worked
Thanks Jelted,
Yeah, unfortunately we didn't have much opportunity to expand on the actual use of the buildings. I think we simply overscoped and didn't manage to get half of what we had intended out, or explain what we had properly either.
Concept is very cool, but the execution needs a lot of redesigning, i didnt understand what the blue bar is for, i would limit the amount of roads on screen and make it more obvious how much carriages tower needs to sustain itself
Thanks Ulmlaut, yeah one initial idea was the thought of buildings having limited connections, and thus creating a strategy in how you place them, but time constraints limited it unfortunately.
Really appreciate the feedback though :)
I did not realize that roads were directional for a while, so I just drew roads from top to bottom -like the example- and nothing happened and I didn't realize what the problem was. Gave the game some extra time to figure out what it was expecting, but even so, monsters love to clump near the middle of the top gate, where it takes until archer upgrade #2 to target them. Even focussing on just the bottom two towers and one of the top, focussing on the top after the bottom reach the 1st range upgrade, I was killed before I could then get enough of the other upgrade to kill the monsters faster than they were killing me.
There might be more to this idea, but having unwinnable scenarios pop up so commonly and so soon prevents me from exploring it.
Hi Murder.
That's a really good point on the directionality of the roads actually, I hadn't considered that at all. We were basing it on Mini Metro, but I guess in that it's somewhat self explanatory and circular in a way this one isn't.
And yeah the balancing is basically non-existent unfortunately, sorry about that.
Thanks for the detailed feedback though, much appreciated 💛
Yeah, in mini-metro the roads aren't directional because the trains travel both ways! I could see developing this in the mini-metro direction.
Hm. Villages randomly popping up, with towers by them. Make a revolving track between villages to shuttle archers between towers, and then directed graphs from special towns/buildings to upgrade town buildings. Possibly get rid of the centralized producer.
Not sure if what I see is what your vision is, but I can definitely see how a game would be developed from that inspiration and this base :)
I couldn't really figure out how to play this one unfortunately, I liked the look of it and the concept of like a logistics based seems interesting though.
Thanks Oarc! The looks were definitely a rush job on my end, but I'm glad they're passable at least :P
But yeah it definitely needs work.
Took me a while to figure out the mechanics. Once I figured it out, I found the game basically impossible to survive. Interesting idea, but definitely imbalanced.
Thanks Rabbit. Unfortunately there was virtually no balancing so I agree, it's essentially impossible in its current state. But I'm glad you like what aspects of the idea appear in this.
Ok, to be honest this is a interesting concept that has been executed poorly. But i like the idea, just not there yet.
Thanks Tiwo :) Yeah definitely not where it should be, but I'm glad you see some potential in the idea
after several minutes of confusion i realized the goal was to draw roads. for the first couple games i drew all the roads and died pretty quickly; i thought "there is no interesting decision" then I realized you could remove roads! suddenly the game shifted from poorly tutorialized to poorly tuned:
- the right side is twice as far from the arrows so it takes twice as long to arm
- the towers do not start covering any of the gate and it takes several minutes to make the range large enough to include the gate; so once you start taking damage it's over.
- there are too many monsters. it needs to start slower and increase linearly
- other tower defense games give you a lot longer to start damaging enemies and usually allow you to start damaging them very far away from the tower. I would make all the towers have max range and make the one hut only increase the rate of fire and the other increase damage.
Thanks Andy,
Yeah we had hoped the first section would have worked as a tutorial of sorts, but perhaps it still wasn't communicated well. Originally we had hoped to make it so you could choose the placement of the buildings and what buildings you could place, adding a lot more strategy and initiative for the player, but I think we just overscoped and didn't have time to flesh out much of that at all.
I really appreciate your in-depth feedback and I've made a note of everything. Thanks again <3
I didn't find the main mechanic explained very well and onboarding could be a little smoother, the game felt it had a little designer-itis.
Would be nice if the towers prioritized the closest enemies first, I noticed they kept targeting far enemies while the gates were getting hit that could also be contributing to the difficulty in a way that players feel is unfair.
With some sound and more communication it'll be a very satisfying game.
Thanks for your comment, Comrade :)
Yeah I think we probably overthought some of the mechanics. Due to the time we had available we basically just about threw things together with no real balancing and some things scaled back quite considerably unfortunately.
And I completely agree on the towers having some kind of priority, I've made a note of all your feedback as well. Thanks again <3