Ludum Dare #37compo

Keeper of the Altar

by blackbulletiv

Overall★★★★★★★★★★4.16

Fun★★★★★★★★★★4.13

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.90

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.94

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.03

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.61

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.00

Coolness★★★★★★★★★★64%

You are the keeper of a dark lord's altar. Legions of knights in shining armour have come to desecrate it. You must protect your lord's altar using a variety of means... including dual-wielded heat-seeking cluster RPGs.

Controls/Instructions:
* Movement: WASD
* Shoot, upgrade, select: left mouse button
* Change weapon: mouse wheel up/down, numbers 1-5
* Pause/unpause: P
* Set coins to 1000 (cheat code I left in): O

* Click on the altar to access the next wave, and upgrade your gear in between waves.
* Click on braziers to upgrade to fireball turrets (will cost 15 gold).
* Collect gold dropped by enemies to purchase upgrades.

Modes:
* Normal mode starts you with only a basic SMG, letting you buy upgrades as you collect gold.
* Skirmish mode starts at the 10th wave level, and starts you with all upgrades, and all turrets.

Notes/warnings:
* There is a rare bug where the game will not register all enemies as dead meaning you will waiting around a lot to progress (game has a 30 second grace period for this situation). If this happens I recommend just restarting the game.
* I haven't tested the Mac version. Let me know if there are errors.
* The .love requires LOVE 0.10.2 to run it. It may work on other versions of LOVE 0.10.x, but I haven't tested it.

Comments23

easy8212 Dec 2016, 21:29

Wow, this is spectacular! Great graphics and sounds, but the best is the gameplay. It's very smooth and polished, I loved this one! Congratulations.

mediocrity13 Dec 2016, 11:05

The game looks and feels great. Well done!

MoonlightBomber13 Dec 2016, 11:24

I've made it through wave 16 with all weapons maxed out.

DiscoFish14 Dec 2016, 12:03

Cool top down shooter!

KaiseanGames14 Dec 2016, 12:29

Has very nice feel to it.

hunttis14 Dec 2016, 12:36

So far the game that I've played longest, upgraded all the weapons to max. While I think the weapons were great for being so crazy, the maxed out RPG made the levels a bit too easy :)

Maybe the altar should destroy a bit more quickly to make the game end :D

But in any case, I enjoyed it a lot, smooth controls, graphics that did the job they were supposed to (especially liked the persistent gore :D) and simple enough. Nice work!

buckle200014 Dec 2016, 12:42

Presure deduction tool.

Vadim Ivshin14 Dec 2016, 12:44

Simple but addictive

Fuad14 Dec 2016, 14:50

I love it! Remind me Crimson Lands. Sounds are little bit annoying, but on the background of really polished gameplay it's nothing. Thank you, it was very pleasant experience.

smaganik16 Dec 2016, 13:21

Nice!

Mango Malarkey19 Dec 2016, 15:25

What a great game! You really nailed the feeling that this kind of game should have! I had to turn the sound of after a while because someone came in the room and it was quite loud, and even then you could feel the impact of your rocket launcher as the whole screen shook!

The only improvement would maybe be an ammo system, as I didn't see a need to any guns beside the rocket launcher.

Well done!

Karai1720 Dec 2016, 08:58

This was a very cool game! I like the system, and got up to wave 12. I enjoyed the variety of weapons, but wish I could upgrade towers more. Perhaps a variety of enemies would be nice too. All in all, great!

~josefnpat

masterkrepta25 Dec 2016, 03:32

Love it. i Found the laser to be my weapon of choice, especially maxed out its Very OP. There may be a bug sometimes, i found myself not able to kills all the enemies sometimes if they were too close to the alter. (noticed this most often in the lower right hand corner)

youngbrothers25 Dec 2016, 10:14

Best gameplay I have seen so far. Well done!

Hamsternator25 Dec 2016, 14:11

I have nothing to add. Great entry with an amazing amount of polish. Had to check twice to confirm that this was a compo entry =)

Very well done.

kidando28 Dec 2016, 13:24

Keeper was a great play. Loved the sfx. The graphics were awesome. Great atmosphere. I know what gun to pick to make to wave 10 :). Awesome entry

Zgragselus28 Dec 2016, 14:01

Great game!

I love this, made it to wave 12 or 13 and then fell so many times they managed to destroy it. But I upgraded fully all the weapons!

handoharken28 Dec 2016, 15:20

Really well polished, lots of fun, good work - especially for compo!

jramell31 Dec 2016, 06:18

INCREDIBLE! I could learn a lot about game feel from your entry. How did you do the lighting effect when you shoot the SMG? I have never used LÖVE before so I'm not sure where to look in the source code. Would you be so kind as to explain me how it works or send me a link where it does so? My twitter is @SergioMadera10 :)

It of course gets repetitive once you've seen how all weapons work once fully upgraded, but... man. I had a lot of fun. Ambiance was amazing. That rumble sound effect at the beginning was really effective setting the mood for the game.

Pietro Ferrantelli31 Dec 2016, 10:35

Awesome moody and bloody game. Aesthetics are unique and creates a unique atmosphere. Love the combination of tower defense and top down shooter mechanics, the lowrez pixel art is really good, as well as the VFX and the sound design. The concept is theme-related and is well executed thanks to the game feel.

nlbi2131 Dec 2016, 13:42

Hey, very good game, I found it super addictive. Very well done this top down, felt very solid, very good work.

Piscythe2 Jan 2017, 00:57

Really sweet graphics and weapons. Homing rockets and laser seem like the endgame picks, but I'm personally fond of the shotgun. I was caught off guard by the bottomless pit areas, and the homing attacks seem a bit unreliable. Also, it's possible for dead enemies to drop money near the bounds of the map where the player can't get it. Good job with the lighting and weapon sounds.

First run: Wave 16.

automatonvx2 Jan 2017, 01:09

Good entry, played for quite a while, but once i had the rpg maxed out it was feeling pretty easy. If you were going to extend it, maybe variety of enemies would be good, or changing shape of the room or something at later waves would make things interesting. Great job