Hey! With FQ9 ending soon, I wanted to let you know that I won't be able to cover your game until after the event. If you're okay with waiting, just keep the game on the event and I'll be getting around to it over the next couple of months or so. :)
Play game
Rise of the Tartans's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Art / Graphics | #10 | 4.571 | 4.571 |
| Overall Fun | #55 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Sound/Music | #71 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Controls / UI | #118 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Ai Usage
Genre
Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing
Turn-based | Card Games | RTS | 4X
Rating
Comments
- Youtube Link / Twitch Link
- Graphics : Fine, nice pixel art.
- Esc Menu's pie looks nice.
- Joan's horse's head might be a tad small
- GUI : Mostly fine but the ESC menu has no options menu, meaning no audio or graphical tweaking.
- Wheat's icon goes over the border , could be repositioned or shrunk
- The time left and the Unit cap feels like it's scrunched in the bottom left.
- All of the resources could be nudged up a bit tbf
- Performance : Generally Fine
- Music / Sfx :
- Music : Fine, seems to be one song at night and day, would be nice if there was a variety.
- SFX : Fine
- Gameplay : A Kingdom-like that could really do with some QOL features/upgrades.
- Misc Issues :
- An injured unit in a tower or gatehouse will be targeted by doctors and be unable to heal, leading to any and all doctors that walk near them to try to infinitely heal them.
- Jumping over enemies can lead to you getting somewhat stuck, the jump and collisions with enemies could do with tweaks.
- Picking up and throwing units can look a bit weird. Throwing them at a tower will result in them flying past it then teleporting into it.
- It can be rather fiddly to interact with what you want, sometimes requiring you to go back and forth repeatedly until it highlights the thing you want.
- Sometimes you jump as if you're on the moon, other times not.
- Enemies die with their HP bars not showing empty.
- Some popups can get cut off by half or more if you're close to the edge of the screen.
- Hitting ESC while moving Joan results in the horse movement sfx endlessly playing.
- Notes :
- The cherries are 'centcherrians' but what are the blueberries and pumpkins called?
- I propose "Bluebarian" if it's not decided atm.
- The lack of QOL impacts enjoyment quite a bit. I don't know if it's an attempt to not be a complete 1:1 copy of kingdom but it really feels like it needs a few things. Without a lot of the QOL / Semi-automation that kingdom has, it becomes rather tedious as you're just running back and forth constantly , which can become a problem as your attention is divided.
- Silo to store wheat or other items
- A 'gatherer' that can pick up the various materials strewn about.
- Farmers to automatically harvest the wheat
- More Upgrades for Joan D'Tart (?) , speed, HP, damage, armor (?), more inventory slots
- Doctors feel incredibly powerful, to the point it feels like you wouldn't need any other unit if you get enough of them.
- The moon giving gifts is fine but maybe there should be something indicating what and when it'll do so?
- Units being able to push wheat, dough, etc around tends to be rather annoying as it all gets pushed to the far edges of the map.
- The boss has far too much HP , if it wasn't cheesed nothing really could stop him from just waltzing to your castle.
- Pumpkins are somewhat rare and seem to consistently not drop pumpkin, if they are, it gets pushed off the edges of the screen frequently.
- Wheat + Oven = Dough? Shouldn't it be something else, Quern, millstone, etc?
- There's some background elements that could change up with your progress, [e.g. there's a hill in the background , it could get a farm, or a tower / keep on it eventually as you build walls near it.]
- A way to rally your soldiers would be nice, or keeping them inside the walled region, it's a tad annoying just having an archer waltz outside and proceed to get murdered.
- Upgrades for the HQ would be nice, e.g. there's a tower with a window , maybe we could hire a court wizard to be a powerful turret to defend it?
- Joan's idle animation feels rather sped up, more frames or slowing it down might be good.
- A sprint could be nice as an upgrade.
- An upgrade for Joan to passively Regen hp?
- The HP bars are rather NON-pastry based, maybe something could be done about that?
- Need to hit up for every bit of wheat put into the oven, rather than a hold
- No 'You Win' Screen, or it glitched
- The cherries are 'centcherrians' but what are the blueberries and pumpkins called?
- Final Thoughts : Overall I think this really needs a lot of work to really enjoy, as it is, it's fine but could definitely be better.
I played the game on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2873527358?t=00h01m30s (my stream VOD looks like it split into 3 VODs, so you might have to go to the next one too)
Overall, I liked the game! It reminded me a lot of Kingdom: Two Crowns. Playing on the WebGL build had lots of issues, as I'm sure you noticed on the stream :) The sound was laggy, and the gameplay was unfortunately laggy as well. So I don't know how much of my feedback is directly relevant to the PC build.
I found that the difficulty was somewhat high; I wasn't able to expand much and was constantly on the defensive. (In the PC build which I tried a bit later on, I was able to attack the monsters a bit better but it still felt difficult). Maybe I wasn't playing "right" and didn't have enough/any farms, but it was quite difficult to hold onto the land, since wheat took a long time to grow, and 2 wheat needs to be converted to 2 dough to make 1 melee soldier that wasn't super good. The soldier tended to wander around the wrong place/way.
While it was possible to pick up the soldier and throw them in the direction I want them to go, that's also quite a lot of micromanagement, esp at the start.
One suggestion is maybe to tone down the attacks, until the player explores more of the land? I think Kingdom: Two Crowns had some mechanic like that, so it was a bit more player-controlled / manageable.
While your game has a 5-day time limit, maybe the time limit would only count once a certain milestone is met, or something like that..
The suggestion you gave in the stream to build archers was extremely useful. Archers on the towers were super effective, partly since they have range, and partly since they don't wander off (which I think is the main factor). Maybe the foot soldiers should be able to be stationed at walls/doors too?
I think the game has good potential and I'd love to play the next iteration of it!
Hi! I really liked the concept, and the art style is just lovely.
The core loop is fun, especially at the beginning, though it started to feel a little repetitive after a while. Once I had four farms running, they were producing so quickly that I felt like I was constantly running around just to collect everything.
I also had a few thoughts about the interactions. Some interactable objects tend to overlap or sit very close together, which can make it a little difficult to select the one I actually want — for example, wheat next to a farm, or the bakery near the castle.
The controls for upgrading and spawning units also felt a little awkward to me, since they require switching between the keyboard and mouse. One thing I really like about Kingdom Two Crowns is how many common actions can be handled with just a single key, like pressing ↑. I think having a similarly simple interaction scheme here could make the game feel much smoother.
Overall, I really enjoyed the idea and presentation. I think reducing some of the repetitive collecting and making interactions a bit more streamlined would make the loop feel even better.
Hey! So I believe an artist was in the chat while I was streaming but not a dev, so if you want to reference anything that might have gotten missed I have uploaded to youtube here:
Hello,
I completed the game and here is my review of it.
The game was very enjoyable and the art is quite cute. Lots of funny dessert puns and general good vibes.
I like the animations and everything works as intended.
The music is on point and never felt in the way.
While playing I quite got into the zone of it and pretty much an hour passed. sign of a good game. Steam worthy!
Possible points of improvement.
really liked the turret archer and doctor mechanic.
The game feels very polished in general so I have nothing but nitpicks for this section
- I think the area that needs work now is UI. It was hard to tell when I could afford something and when not when in any shop menu.
- I also ran into a bug where if I had accessed a building nearby, the building next it it would refuse to get selected. This was remedied by walking some ways away and then back. This became very frustrating at some points. Click to open would be nice.
- upgrades are not differentiated from Unit spawns.
- The items would go off screen and become inaccessible. This was rather frustrating.
- Would like some upgrades for the main character as well.
- The boss was just a walking HP bar and did not do much at all.
- I dont think a single unit died to him
Other ideas
- Dough and wheat bar should be larger because everything relies on it.
- Town hall should have more upgrades
- need a farmer unit that auto farms wheat.
- can also add a baker
When my critique boils down to “more upgrades”, I know its a good game!
If you have nay other questions feel free to ask.
I was sold at the song on the title screen hahaha. Game is cute and I had a fun time playing it! I did run into a problem where I couldn't kill pumpkins, they would do a death animation but no drops and their health bar would ghost on the screen with one sliver left, so I just had to hope pumpkins would fall from the sky.
I love the idea and the art! Maybe it's just me, but I don't see a reason to have a jump button, maybe I didn't play it enough. But overall, it's an amazing game!



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