That felt lovely to play. I feel like I could have done better, but you've done well enough. The mechanics were simple, but fun to play with. The sense of urgency combined with the difficulty of resource management made for a tense but rewarding playthrough.
Such a wonderful game from both aesthetic and mechanical perspective. I mean, it looks gorgeous (and it did already in Ludum Dare form) and the main idea is very clever and allows for subtly different approaches. I don't know whether the game naturally tends towards more extensive freeform levels or more focused puzzles with precise solutions, but it certainly feels like you might have something special in your hands.
There are 2 additions I'd like to see in the game: an undo button and more predictability for knowing which tiles will be sucked into the vortex in which order.
The need for an undo action was more obvious in the puzzle levels. It can become clear that the path you've chosen won't allow you to pick enough resources but the other route you were pondering 4 moves ago just might. Unfortunately the only way to return to that state is restarting the whole level.
The vortex tile issue would be partially resolved by an undo action. Planning a route in puzzle levels is a blind process since you have no knowledge beforehand which tiles will be sucked into the vortex a few turns from now. One route you take might result in loss of a wagon while the other might not. Again, the only solution is a restart.
I understand that changing the game this way would nudge it towards embracing the full-information puzzle part of its nature and you might be philosophically opposed to that. And besides, a world-ending cataclysm is supposed to be chaotic! The decision to take a detour to forage some berries should not be taken lightly when the world is disintegrating around you! Maybe there's a decent permadeath roguelite mechanic lurking there somewhere. A (pseudo?-)procedurally generated terrain with random disintegration pattern in a continuous campaign with caravan wagons persisting in some form from one world to another.
Thank you so much for the extensive feedback! Oh yes, undo for puzzle levels, that's absolutely right. For the normal mode, i'd probably exclude it, or let that be a magus spell so it can't be abused to discover and undo. With the puzzles, i'm thinking more into the direction of setting them up as a separate side challenge, and to have the core game be the freeform levels. Both works, but i feel freeform is where Karawans heart lies. Puzzles were mostly a side effect :D
Better predictability - agreed, a very good idea. I also like to enable stuff like that behind upgrades. So maybe it's a permanent upgrade you get for reaching a unique point of interest, like an abandoned tower, on your trekk across the worlds. A bit of unpredictability in the early stages might still be nice, so you can't fully calculate the risks, but might need to adapt.
I always thought of it as a campaign across worlds (just didn't manage to make another freeform world or meaningfully connect the worlds in the game jam (btw, we didn't touch art, music or sound after the jam). So your roguelite idea sounds great, definitely something to try and test. I'm not sure if i could ever bring the procedural generation to a fun level. It would be great, and i think the mechanics are a great fit for that. We'll see, right now we got all hands busy with developing Dome, from LD48 :)
Really enjoyed this. It's one of those games that fits together extremely well - the music, the simple sprites, the snippets of text - and the difficulty is extremely finely balanced. I found that "Gaia" rewarded my natural inclination to conserve resources, but still required investing a whole lot in beacons and time-slowing at a strategic point.
There's not all that much I can offer in terms of suggestions to improve it. Obviously another world and/or more puzzles would be fantastic, but that's just extra stuff. The only other things are down to convenience: I feel as though the foreman upgrade should probably come as standard (since the resource cost is trivial and it saves a ton of clicking, it's basically a must-buy anyway), and it would be good to see some kind of pathfinding ("Desert" in particular wouldn't work without that long trek through nowhere, but does involve a lot of mindless click-click-clicking). Those are extremely minor quibbles, though - it's an excellent game!
Both suggestions are very good ones, and i'll heed them if and when we can get back to developing Karawan some more. I'm happy to hear you used the magus a lot!
Loved this. This is really up my street. Just scraped through first time, losing nearly everyone. I'd certainly buy a beefed up version, with more levels and other features. Good stuff!
I really enjoyed it! thanks for making it... there's something about hex grids that gets me excited and I've been wracking my brain for a while trying to beat 'Desert'. Really fun little game.
Wow, thank you Marcello, that means the world to us. We enjoyed making the game a lot, and it's incredible that it does touch/reach some people like you on a deeper level. I loved your intro to the review. It hit the games tone so well. "Sometimes there are houses and people looking back at you – from across an ocean of darkness. Well, you can’t save all, can you? You turn away." - powerful! I feel like you could have done a better job at writing for Karawan than I - i'm no writer at all, and it happened out of necessity :D
I hope we can continue to work on Karawan at some point, and expand it into a full game. What you played was the work of about 5 days, so i'm excited what we could do in a year ;)
We are mostly just starting out as gamedevs, and your review made the 3 people who made Karawan very happy.
Really enjoyed the overall feel of this game. Was very easy to pickup with very minimal instructions. Even though this game lacks alot of replay ability (which you would expect from a Ludum Dare Game), it has some great potential. I think this game is a great showcase for what this team is capable of producing. This is a game that I could see being a full release in the near future. Well done, I always love seeing and playing what people can produce from these games jams!
The second and third map are very different from the first. The first is open, with many ways to finish it. The others are more puzzle like.
For the second, you have to very much optimize how much food you get out of these bushes, so you can survive the treck across the desert. It is very tight.
The third one, you probably know you need a certain amount of ore to reach the portal. Getting that ore before the world crumbles is the difficult thing. There are a few ways to do it - just one hint: your wagons can also work tiles while being on a bridge.
The first world is the proper content though, so you haven't missed anything. The others are more like a gimmick.
That seems to have been the issue, apologies! I must have somehow missed that text. I'll remove my previous complaint, thank you for the speedy response!
Awesome game, simple yet difficult, stimulates one's brain cells! I love this pixel style and music is really relaxing. I still didn't beat the desert level :)
I am a huge fan of the Dying Earth genre and the melancholy atmosphere of this game is just fantastic. The art, music, and dialogue really enhance that feeling.
Thank you so much, i'm so glad it worked out. Dying earth is super interesting to me too, i didn't know there is a name for that genre. Sometimes we think and act like we are immortal, and i like how that genre reminds us we are not, so we can use the time we have better :)
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That felt lovely to play. I feel like I could have done better, but you've done well enough. The mechanics were simple, but fun to play with. The sense of urgency combined with the difficulty of resource management made for a tense but rewarding playthrough.
I had a lot of fun playing this! I didn't beat the game, but it's worth completing. Great job!
Such a wonderful game from both aesthetic and mechanical perspective. I mean, it looks gorgeous (and it did already in Ludum Dare form) and the main idea is very clever and allows for subtly different approaches. I don't know whether the game naturally tends towards more extensive freeform levels or more focused puzzles with precise solutions, but it certainly feels like you might have something special in your hands.
There are 2 additions I'd like to see in the game: an undo button and more predictability for knowing which tiles will be sucked into the vortex in which order.
The need for an undo action was more obvious in the puzzle levels. It can become clear that the path you've chosen won't allow you to pick enough resources but the other route you were pondering 4 moves ago just might. Unfortunately the only way to return to that state is restarting the whole level.
The vortex tile issue would be partially resolved by an undo action. Planning a route in puzzle levels is a blind process since you have no knowledge beforehand which tiles will be sucked into the vortex a few turns from now. One route you take might result in loss of a wagon while the other might not. Again, the only solution is a restart.
I understand that changing the game this way would nudge it towards embracing the full-information puzzle part of its nature and you might be philosophically opposed to that. And besides, a world-ending cataclysm is supposed to be chaotic! The decision to take a detour to forage some berries should not be taken lightly when the world is disintegrating around you! Maybe there's a decent permadeath roguelite mechanic lurking there somewhere. A (pseudo?-)procedurally generated terrain with random disintegration pattern in a continuous campaign with caravan wagons persisting in some form from one world to another.
Thank you so much for the extensive feedback! Oh yes, undo for puzzle levels, that's absolutely right. For the normal mode, i'd probably exclude it, or let that be a magus spell so it can't be abused to discover and undo. With the puzzles, i'm thinking more into the direction of setting them up as a separate side challenge, and to have the core game be the freeform levels. Both works, but i feel freeform is where Karawans heart lies. Puzzles were mostly a side effect :D
Better predictability - agreed, a very good idea. I also like to enable stuff like that behind upgrades. So maybe it's a permanent upgrade you get for reaching a unique point of interest, like an abandoned tower, on your trekk across the worlds. A bit of unpredictability in the early stages might still be nice, so you can't fully calculate the risks, but might need to adapt.
I always thought of it as a campaign across worlds (just didn't manage to make another freeform world or meaningfully connect the worlds in the game jam (btw, we didn't touch art, music or sound after the jam). So your roguelite idea sounds great, definitely something to try and test. I'm not sure if i could ever bring the procedural generation to a fun level. It would be great, and i think the mechanics are a great fit for that. We'll see, right now we got all hands busy with developing Dome, from LD48 :)
Really enjoyed this. It's one of those games that fits together extremely well - the music, the simple sprites, the snippets of text - and the difficulty is extremely finely balanced. I found that "Gaia" rewarded my natural inclination to conserve resources, but still required investing a whole lot in beacons and time-slowing at a strategic point.
There's not all that much I can offer in terms of suggestions to improve it. Obviously another world and/or more puzzles would be fantastic, but that's just extra stuff. The only other things are down to convenience: I feel as though the foreman upgrade should probably come as standard (since the resource cost is trivial and it saves a ton of clicking, it's basically a must-buy anyway), and it would be good to see some kind of pathfinding ("Desert" in particular wouldn't work without that long trek through nowhere, but does involve a lot of mindless click-click-clicking). Those are extremely minor quibbles, though - it's an excellent game!
Hey, thank you for all the kind words :)
Both suggestions are very good ones, and i'll heed them if and when we can get back to developing Karawan some more. I'm happy to hear you used the magus a lot!
great game! Love it!
I love this! Would really love more of that <3
Great game. Good music and nice graphics.
Loved this. This is really up my street. Just scraped through first time, losing nearly everyone. I'd certainly buy a beefed up version, with more levels and other features. Good stuff!
I really enjoyed it! thanks for making it... there's something about hex grids that gets me excited and I've been wracking my brain for a while trying to beat 'Desert'. Really fun little game.
Ciao, If you can, take a moment to read our Karawan review on TBL.
https://turnbasedlovers.com/review/karawan-tbl/
wish you the very best
Marcello
:)
Wow, thank you Marcello, that means the world to us. We enjoyed making the game a lot, and it's incredible that it does touch/reach some people like you on a deeper level. I loved your intro to the review. It hit the games tone so well. "Sometimes there are houses and people looking back at you – from across an ocean of darkness. Well, you can’t save all, can you? You turn away." - powerful! I feel like you could have done a better job at writing for Karawan than I - i'm no writer at all, and it happened out of necessity :D
I hope we can continue to work on Karawan at some point, and expand it into a full game. What you played was the work of about 5 days, so i'm excited what we could do in a year ;)
We are mostly just starting out as gamedevs, and your review made the 3 people who made Karawan very happy.
Best Wishes, René
It's a great honor to talk about Karawan on TBL. Keep up the great work :)
Very good! Needs more levels!
Great little game. I would play more levels.
Really enjoyed the overall feel of this game. Was very easy to pickup with very minimal instructions. Even though this game lacks alot of replay ability (which you would expect from a Ludum Dare Game), it has some great potential. I think this game is a great showcase for what this team is capable of producing. This is a game that I could see being a full release in the near future. Well done, I always love seeing and playing what people can produce from these games jams!
do love the overall vibe of this game, did manage to complete the first lvl will give it one more try :)
I love it! Very interesting game, took me while to finish but is very well executed. Congrats!!
I love the art style!!! It's beautiful!!
Cool game ! A bit too hard for me to finish, but it's very interesting and I love the art style.
thank you :)
How to finish Third & Second Map. I'm stuck.
The second and third map are very different from the first. The first is open, with many ways to finish it. The others are more puzzle like.
For the second, you have to very much optimize how much food you get out of these bushes, so you can survive the treck across the desert. It is very tight.
The third one, you probably know you need a certain amount of ore to reach the portal. Getting that ore before the world crumbles is the difficult thing. There are a few ways to do it - just one hint: your wagons can also work tiles while being on a bridge.
The first world is the proper content though, so you haven't missed anything. The others are more like a gimmick.
I haven't heard or seen an issue with that. You need 5 wood for each bridge tile you want to place. Are you sure you got sufficient?
That seems to have been the issue, apologies! I must have somehow missed that text. I'll remove my previous complaint, thank you for the speedy response!
awesome game
Excellent concept and good execution
Fantastic game! great design, graphics, sound. Congrats!
Love it
Verry good Game.
Bro, AWESOME game, great soundtrack and epic strategic elements even though there ain't no fightin, congrats bro.
i really like this game! good work
I feel so lost in space and I love it!
it took me half an hour, but I spent all the worlds
Nice, congrats :) Especially the second one is very difficult, very close.
ALL THE PIXELS
thw style is so perfect for this kinda game and its genuinely really fun!! you actually WANT to keep going to reach the end!
Awesome Game, really loved it!
rad
Awesome game, simple yet difficult, stimulates one's brain cells! I love this pixel style and music is really relaxing. I still didn't beat the desert level :)
Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. Yeah, desert is overly difficult.
aagh i cant even beat gaia
I am a huge fan of the Dying Earth genre and the melancholy atmosphere of this game is just fantastic. The art, music, and dialogue really enhance that feeling.
Thank you so much, i'm so glad it worked out. Dying earth is super interesting to me too, i didn't know there is a name for that genre. Sometimes we think and act like we are immortal, and i like how that genre reminds us we are not, so we can use the time we have better :)
nice game nice idea!
Thank you for the feedback, i appreciate that you took the time to give it and i'll think about how players could be enabled to better plan ahead.
Beautiful game, very relaxing. The art, the music, the gameplay just all went so well together. Amazing job.