Hi! This is a playtest of a single level of Crunch, an RTS I'm working on. Let me know how you fare in this one level demo. I appreciate all feedback! I'm trying to create a fun, fast-paced RTS game loop that I can then attach roguelite meta-progression onto.
Hi @morganquirk.
A curiosity about people online. If they cannot figure out a game in the first 60-seconds, they usually don't give it too much more time and move on.
Please either post a Youtube demonstration with text prompts or verbal speech and/or complete written instructions for all aspects of game or simulator and walkthrough for first level.
Thanks !
@dw817 Ahh thank you for this feedback! Clearly the game does not explain itself well. I think I'll revise the game until it's clear enough to new players, rather than explain it with a video / instructions.
This Is really cool! I have now played it about 10 times and I think this the best execution of an RTS I've seen on Pico-8, besides maybe Age of Ants (which is going for a completely different style). Here's my thoughts:
I was able to figure it out and win on about my third playthrough. The graphics are amazing (my favorite moment was seeing a ship's path bend around a planet, for the sheer unexpectedness, the planets are fun (it reminds me of Slipways, another Pico-8 game), and the squares are easy to see but not visually detracting), the controls were snappy and fast to operate (due to the low board size, partially), and the menus were easy to operate quickly. For menus, it might be nice to automatically send a ship on selecting a planet if the home planet only had 1 ship, as I messed up on that so much. Resources are simple, but they work well and there's a good economy. If this was expanded on, a second resource or some more interesting way to spend the current one would be cool.
The board is really small, and that and the fact that ships are your only controllables makes the mid game (research & defense) phase that happens in a lot of RTSes pretty much gone, which feels awkward, but I think its just new for me. If textures could be resized easily, I would suggest making the board 8x8.
"CRUNCH" turns the board from a spacious sandbox to a deadly void fast (too fast? not really I think with this many components, but if there were any more components, "CRUNCH" should be later), and it's hard to figure out how to plan for it, which could be fixed with a separate countdown that appears 10s before "CRUNCH". I felt like either "CRUNCH" instant killed me, or I quickly dispatched it and went on to victory, which I think is what it should be.
Presentation of information is pretty great, but there are a few gripes I have. A button that tripped me up was trying to hit X to leave the Install menu, but that's minor and just me not thinking through it, every time. Battles are incredibly confusing, and it seems to be that only numbers matters, not type. I still have only a good guess what "CRUNCH" means when it appears. It happens at 90s left, and new planets spawn, 2 for the enemy, 1 unclaimed. Is that all of the effects? I'm not sure. (My thought process during "CRUNCH": there's new planets now? Well I guess I'll... whoops I'm dead). Speaking of the timer, it feels super annoying to build up a massive force in 50 seconds just to be unable to use it because of the timer. Maybe, the timer speeds up when forces are about equal, but freezes during "overtime" when the equal forces fight it out to get ahead, and upon capture of the first planet, it is over.
Last thing before strategy, I'm super interested (If you keep with this project, I just realized this is over 2 years old, lol) how the meta-progression works. It would be super cool to have part of that be getting bigger and bigger maps, but that could be hard with pixel art. As for new buildings/upgrades, having attachments would be cool. For example, have two(upgrades to two, starts at 1) slot where you can either put ship modifications (all ships this make have... double speed, for example), or defense options (PDC, a directional shield that damage enemies approaching from the top), or my favorite idea, which would be a self destruct module you can attach to your buildings. It would be triggered through holding X for 1s, and in 5s, would destroy the building and any opposing ships there. A player could trigger it right before their building is taken, dealing massive damage to the occupiers and negating them a factory. These modules could be sent from the home planet (which would be a special building now, not just an extractor), which could send them in little capsules that would move really fast towards their respective worlds and float nearby as stations. That's just my ideas here, though, so do whatever you like and take from here if you like it.
Strategy:
My strategy at first was to spam extractors except for 2 scout things that would just mass produce the blobs of death (overwhelming force is really the way to go here)
Then, I started trying out spamming scouts still, but making an impenetrable fortress of defenders on one spot to negate their army while I took out singular planets. That worked well enough to let me win consistently, but then I wanted to try out the bombers, so I went again.
The bombers are ok, but they are "big and heavy" (not really, but they take a while to build up enough money to use them and then use them), so they're really not part of my strategy. I think they should be less strong, but super fast, and so can be used to strengthen a line where it fails. Or, introduce a new ship that has those traits!
I think that this demo is overall a great demo, and the fact that while writing this I would flick back up to the game to play again to think through an idea shows that your design idea of a fast & engaging RTS really worked. I know this post is 2 years old, but this is really cool, and I'd encourage you to finish it if that is something you're interested in.
Hope you had a good two years, thanks for making such a great game!
Wow, thank you for the detailed feedback! You may want to check out the (also kind of failed) game that I worked on for a while which inspired me to try to make this much more streamlined prototype. https://morganquirk.itch.io/hostile-quadrant
It has a lot more content, it's not for everyone but maybe it is for you :P at least to play around with.
The idea behind the "crunch" mechanic: Hostile Quadrant had a significant problem with exponential growth - it was very hard to make interesting and varied encounters where you would have to face different enemy strategies, because the economy is so crucial. Crunch was an attempt to solve this problem with a big hammer - just teleport in whatever enemy units/planets configuration I want. Your pre-crunch economy and expansion and unit production still matter, but the enemy strength does not depend on it. (The plan was that for a given level, the player would know what the crunch would be ahead-of-time, so they could plan for it. )
I'm glad you think it has potential, in playtests I found people generally didn't understand how to play it quickly enough. I still believe in making some kind of game like this but not sure if Crunch is the answer.
I'm not going to say a lot, I enjoyed it but I do think it could of used some sound effects also a way to get rid of the industries you set up. But yeah I enjoyed it
I love this short game. Played it a lot, even get all planets or lots of resources and then
I got a bug.
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