Kids, Don't Do Wild Magic

by eriku
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.91
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.50
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.85
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.63
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.37
Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.50
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.40
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.50
Hi there, and welcome to my game! It's called *Kids, Don't Do Wild Magic*, inspired by the Wild Magic subclass of Sorcerer in D&D 5th edition.

SS1.jpg
You are locked in a duel with another mage in an arena, and your job is to be the last one standing. Use your spells to lower their health to zero while maintaining yours by dodging their attacks! The trick is that you follow the school of Wild Magic, and the more you cast the crazier (and usually worse!) things get. But that doesn't concern you - where would be the fun without the bewildering arcane aberrations?

Controls

W - Move forward

S - Move backward

A - Strafe left

D - Strafe right

Hold Right Mouse Button + Mouse move - Horizontal camera control

Hold Shift + Space - Enter casting. Disables movement.

While Casting

Hold W - Flamethrower

Hold S - Throw fireball

#### Once More!
Hold Shift + Space + W for the flamethrower.

Hold Shift + Space + S for fireballs.

SS3.jpg

Wild Magic

As you cast more spells, your wild magic will go up. This will increase the range of your flamethrower and the explosion of you fireball, but can also come with side effects! Look for 11 unique effects to take place as you go about your battle.

SS2.jpg

Your Opponent

Your opponent is crafty ice mage. Watch out for their ice lances and ice meteors. They also have the ability to teleport - listen for the distinctive sound this spell makes.

If you're having trouble, remember these tips for good fire magin'
- Stay evasive. Don't let yourself get hit by those lances and slow moving meteors.
- Get close. Your flamethrower can be devastating, if only you can get close enough.
- Use their avoidance. Your enemy will try to avoid you if possible. Use this to your advantage by backing them into explosions.
- Charge up. Your attacks become much more effective once you've charged up your wild magic. You'll know you've reached your full power when the sky goes dark!

Comments16

Prostone
Prostone4 Dec 2017, 04:09
Yeah, learning curve is through the roof here. Takes a while to even get the controls, while the ice mage is wrecking stuff :D Looks great and I love the fire effects!
niborious
niborious4 Dec 2017, 04:24
Its an interesting little fight between two mages.
The controls were a little too awkward for me. Why do you have to hold right click to move the camera? why do you have to hold space and shift to cast spells?
I found it was too hard to predict where the fireball was going to land (given the camera angle, distance, and depth perception) to use it intentionally.
The other mage has clearly better spells imo. He can actually shoot right at you, spawn ice right on top of you, and teleport away.
I won on my second attempt by just spamming spells randomly and hoping one of the wild magic things would help me.
Xacur
Xacur4 Dec 2017, 04:27
The controls are unnecessarily hard, you need to hold 3 buttons, one of them you use it to move, but you don't need it because you can't attack while moving, and you'd have to because your enemy can attack you from an insane range. You need to be close range to hit him, but that'll never happen because he teleports.
And he can summon a boulder right over you to take half of your hit points.
bradleysmith
bradleysmith5 Dec 2017, 03:01
Pretty tricky but interesting. :)
koemeterion5 Dec 2017, 09:10
Tough opponent, but really a fun game. Just the controls could be much more simple and the spells arent really fair. But that makes it difficult and not that easy to play. Good Job.
Tay
Tay5 Dec 2017, 21:38
I like the concept, the general idea is good, but the controls are a bit awkward and the other mage is ,well, quite good. Fun overall, but would need some more polish :3
Sean S. LeBlanc
Sean S. LeBlanc9 Dec 2017, 07:36
Interesting concept! I think there are some solid ideas here, but also that the implementation ended up making it far more challenging than intended.
- The lack of a fluid camera control makes both the navigation and aiming much harder. Having it move smoothly based on mouse movement would be a big improvement.
- I agree with the other comments that the controls are pretty awkward. Since both spells are press+hold to cast, I think having an explicit "spellcasting mode" was redundant; simply blocking movement while casting either spell would have accomplished the same thing.
- Given the clunkiness of the player's moveset, the AI opponent's abilities felt fairly overpowered. I found myself often getting sniped by boulders with very little time to react and get out of the way.
- This is more of a technical point, but whatever was used in order to do the mouse aiming made it so that in the web version (on firefox at least) pops up the browser warning for an element having taken control of the mouse every single time you right click. This could probably be fixed by capturing the mouse all the time, and handling the different modes internally to the game if needed.

Overall, I feel like this would have benefited from a fairly reduced scope, but you did manage to make the battle feel pretty hectic, haha!
ErikUauthor10 Dec 2017, 05:02
@sean-s-lebanc Appreciate the detailed feedback. Agreed, a lot of it is unintentional, and the scope should have been reduced to make more time for gameplay improvements. Definite lessons for next time.
11tomi1210 Dec 2017, 09:26
Walking over those projectiles damages your life:( But the game is funny nonetheless!

If you are interested, please check out my LD40 game Escape Infection!
insality10 Dec 2017, 09:27
Turn on the game and returning to the PC after while with the screen "you lose" :)
After some time, get to understand how to attack and walking, but i have never beat this damn ice mage! :)
Also, too hard control player with this controls (especially on notebook without mouse?)
mactinite
mactinite10 Dec 2017, 09:27
Wow, it is pretty crazy how similar our games were. I really enjoyed the graphics, and the enemy AI was really cool, reminded me of a wizzrobe from Zelda. The controls were pretty clunky and that seemed unnecessary, it made it difficult with the pretty skilled enemy lol. Overall very nice job, and a bit... uncanny. :smile:
Fenerax
Fenerax10 Dec 2017, 09:46
As other people have said the controls are very tricky my fingers were everywhere. I really like the graphics and concept but i'm not really getting much of the theme.
deathray
deathray12 Dec 2017, 03:06
Very cool graphics (love the low-poly look), but very difficult controls. Sean LeBlanc's comments are spot-on.
Lex
Lex12 Dec 2017, 03:14
I got really hyped seeing the screenshots and reading the description and concept, but when I got into the game it wasn't so great. Maybe programming isn't your strong suit and that's fine, at least you completed and submitted a full game. I still think you should rethink commands like space+shift+w and s. Why did you choose these? Don't reinvent the wheel, try to go with something people are already familiar with.
bigbazwa
bigbazwa17 Dec 2017, 19:25
I like the graphics style and concept, but the controls seemed very complicated! I think with some work on the controls you could have a fun game here!

Other games by @eriku

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord