Justify the Means

This is my first time submitting to Ludum Dare!! :scream:

My game is called *Justify the Means*, based on the saying *"The ends justify the means"*.

#### Made in Game Maker Studio Professional 1.4

The Game

This is a platformer which ended up being more narrative based than gameplay based.

The overall idea for my game is that in this world, magic exists. But you have to collect it from a certain plant and it runs out eventually. It also corrupts you and turns you evil, making your loved ones hate you.

However...monsters are taking over. There's too many of them. They are only killable by someone who has magic.

The more magic you have, the worse your corruption gets.

The more monsters there are, the worse the world gets.

If you get too corrupted by magic, you will turn permanently evil and get game over. :smiling_imp:

If your world gets overrun by too many monsters, you'll not be able to save your loved ones and you'll get game over. :skull:

What I would've liked to achieve.

My original intention with the last level was to make it more of a tough challenge to defeat the monsters, needing to keep the balance between the numbers of monsters while simultaneously not getting too much magic. However with my beginner levels of knowledge with coding and lack of time, I was unable to quite get the balance right. Instead I just ended up making the character basically invincible so you can at least get through the game without much hassle. :cold_sweat:

I intended to have a lot more story written into it as well.

However, For my first LDJAM and my first released-to-the-public platformer, I'm pretty chuffed at what I've achieved. I really tried to just focus more on my strengths being in the graphics. I learned SO MUCH about coding, my next Ludum Dare entry should be much better! :grin:

The future!!

I hope to flesh this game out someday in the future. I'm so inspired by this experience and I really love the core idea of my game and my original plans for it. My frustration with the lack of time has really made me want to make this a more polished game :grinning:

Thanks for playing my game!! :purple_heart:

https://twitter.com/Goat_Toaster

Bug fixes:

:ant:
- Removed moving platform as it wasn't working and you could just jump across the gap anyway.
- Made the description on how to talk to NPCs a bit clearer as it was confusing for some people.
- Made sure dialogue boxes disappear if you run away from them.- Fixed up basically all of the dialogue issues
- Accidentally uploaded a "Run as Administrator" exe. It's been reuploaded as a single time exe.
- Fixed respawn placement.
- Made the final room a bit easier to understand.
- Fixed room that had the wrong FPS setting.
- Lowered amount of particles to try and help with lag on low end PCs.
- Made UI clearer and easier to understand
- I've tried to fix the final level to make it more of a challenge! Let me know if it's too hard or confusing or something. (made enemies spawn faster and your arcanum goes down faster so there's more need to top it up, which makes you need to run away from the enemies for a moment while they're spawning!)
- Moved an enemy spawner so that the monsters don't all just spawn in one pit.
- Tried to fix any issues with tiles, on some monitors there's a 1px gap.

Known issues:

:confused:
- Final level WASN'T really enough of a challenge/ didn't execute my idea properly. I've attempted to fix this, let me know what you think as I've tried fixing this up.
- Story/overall game is a bit rushed. I intend to flesh it out more in a later version of the game :slight_smile:
- Some lag on lower end PCs. I've dropped the amount of particles, but if there's still some lag I'm not entirely sure how to fix as I'm quite new to this and I'm open to any help/suggestions with this! :smile:
- 1px gap between tiles on some monitors. I've tried to fix this, but please let me know if you have this issue!
- Bugs when pressing arrow keys and the dialogue window appearing at the same time, running animations still playing but unable to move. Have to release arrow key and push it again.