Gather 'Soul Essence' from defeating increasingly difficult enemies.
The more soul essence you have, the stronger the enemies and the more they drop.
Except, you also spend Soul Essence to level up which means enemy difficulty drops again.
The goal is to get to the strongest enemy you can! So don't spend all your essence at once!
This was made for Ludum Dare 40 Game Jam. The game is nowhere near done as I had a lot less time available than I thought, but here it is anyway! Enjoy!
@thy-duck Yeah I didn't finish implementing the end goal so it's not really obvious but when you level up the enemies level goes down which not only slows your progress getting to a higher enemy level, but also sliws down your rate of essence collection. So spending 25%-50% essence at once is the more efficient way to play.
The wizard looks great and the death animation is cool, but the enemies are just cubes, and the controls aren't given anywhere, so I have no way of attacking them or leveling up at all...
I enjoy the concept, but I think the game is too easy. There should be a clear incentive to level up (despite all the drawbacks), you need to reinforce that risk-reward balance. But overall, I liked your game. Good job!
@secondthread Yeah, I got the controls on the itch page but I know that's not enough. Didn't help that I spent 12 hrs on a c++ project for an internship the day before submission but again, that's me for leaving a real deadline late. Certainly on my list of things to add! Thanks for your comment!
@sidewalksleeper & @eldogg Yeah balance is definitely going to need to be tweaked. I didn't even plot out the formulas on a spreadsheet/graph to get a concept, I just rushed it out. Enemies do get faster for each level, but it's negligable atm until levels above 100 really, makes the player speed stat useless until that is fixed. Thanks for your feedback!
I just played the WebGL version and I'm not seeing any way to level up? I had around 4000 points but was still Level 0, and couldn't find any key pressed that made it level up.
@rsim Thanks for playing. Yeah the level up method (along with everything else) is not well communicated at all. Although it requires pressing the + buttons on the stat panel (bottom left)
Pretty nice idea! Everything moves smoothly and the color palette is well chosen. Maybe, the controls would be better if you avoid the hand movement from the keyboard to the mouse. For example, putting shortcuts on numeric keys, so you can shoot while leveling up stats. It has a great potential. Well done!!!
Made me addicted way too fast. Excellent graphics and nice balancing. Music or sounds at least would have been cool. I could see a multiplayer and some new designs for stronger boxes. A save-current-game option would be cool for the addicts among us... Thumbs up!
Great idea @Johnsey I hadn't even put a first thought into the controls it wad just a "this will do" moment when adding I the few lines of code so I could test it. And it just got left how it was. Numeric keys with a visual indicator on the stat-box sounds good though. That or a 'pause' menu for it as an alternative that uses mouse but i feel like pausing would ruin the fun. Thoughts?
I liked the concept! The design is interesting and polished has potential. I think it would be interesting to change how to level up, perhaps using a key for each feature (this would need to be tested), or pausing the game the moment the player makes the choices. Congratulations for the game.
Gostei do conceito! O design está interessante e com polimento tem potencial. Acredito que seria interessante alterar a forma de aumentar de nível, talvez usando uma tecla para cada característica (isso precisaria ser testado), ou pausar o jogo no momento em que o jogador vai fazer as escolhas. Parabéns pelo jogo. :flag_br:
The game was fun, albeit it lagged pretty badly when the enemies joined into a large army chasing me around, making the game almost impossible with the low frame rate! The concept is good, and you should definitely polish the level-to-difficulty trade-off to make it better.
One thing that intrigued me was the fact "leveling up" means picking a stat to boost. I tried a couple of different stat spreads, but BRate and Regen seemed the most advantageous, and the others almost weren't worth the cost. Additionally, ramming into enemies was more effective to kill them at higher levels than shooting at them (which sort of enhances the utility of boosting health! XD).
A couple of suggestions. Perhaps add a limit to the number of enemies spawned at once, or stop making them spawn right in front of you (which happened a bit too often!). Also, there should a keyboard command to level up! Using the mouse in the game feels a bit clunky while enemies chase you around.
Overall, it was fun and has potential to be even better! Good work.
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Warn me as soon as you fixed it. Looking forward to play your game.
@thy-duck Yeah I didn't finish implementing the end goal so it's not really obvious but when you level up the enemies level goes down which not only slows your progress getting to a higher enemy level, but also sliws down your rate of essence collection. So spending 25%-50% essence at once is the more efficient way to play.
Still needs a lit of balancing though
I got too powerful though and wasn't under the threat of getting hurt, so some faster enemies perhaps could mix things up.
I had good fun!
Yeah, I got the controls on the itch page but I know that's not enough. Didn't help that I spent 12 hrs on a c++ project for an internship the day before submission but again, that's me for leaving a real deadline late. Certainly on my list of things to add! Thanks for your comment!
@sidewalksleeper & @eldogg
Yeah balance is definitely going to need to be tweaked. I didn't even plot out the formulas on a spreadsheet/graph to get a concept, I just rushed it out. Enemies do get faster for each level, but it's negligable atm until levels above 100 really, makes the player speed stat useless until that is fixed. Thanks for your feedback!
Great idea @Johnsey I hadn't even put a first thought into the controls it wad just a "this will do" moment when adding I the few lines of code so I could test it. And it just got left how it was. Numeric keys with a visual indicator on the stat-box sounds good though. That or a 'pause' menu for it as an alternative that uses mouse but i feel like pausing would ruin the fun. Thoughts?
Gostei do conceito! O design está interessante e com polimento tem potencial. Acredito que seria interessante alterar a forma de aumentar de nível, talvez usando uma tecla para cada característica (isso precisaria ser testado), ou pausar o jogo no momento em que o jogador vai fazer as escolhas. Parabéns pelo jogo. :flag_br:
One thing that intrigued me was the fact "leveling up" means picking a stat to boost. I tried a couple of different stat spreads, but BRate and Regen seemed the most advantageous, and the others almost weren't worth the cost. Additionally, ramming into enemies was more effective to kill them at higher levels than shooting at them (which sort of enhances the utility of boosting health! XD).
A couple of suggestions. Perhaps add a limit to the number of enemies spawned at once, or stop making them spawn right in front of you (which happened a bit too often!). Also, there should a keyboard command to level up! Using the mouse in the game feels a bit clunky while enemies chase you around.
Overall, it was fun and has potential to be even better! Good work.