Ludum Dare #45compo

Invasion

by gwinnell

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.92

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.92

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.60

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.39

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.56

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.64

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.42

INVASION!

Start with nothing... but a seed... of an invasive species!
Overcrowd the planet and take it over! Those native species won't stand a chance!

_Controls:_
* Mouse: select tile and action
* 1, 2, 3: switch place mode (grow, attack, seed)
* Arrows: rotate view
* O/P: previous level / next level.
* Q: quit

Please follow my indie game development:
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If audio isn't playing, unmute it here (Chrome):

Tools:
* Photoshop
* Reaper
* Custom C++ engine + Emscripten (same as all of my games)!

The Making Of Invasion:
In my (first ever) devlog video, I go behind the scenes of Invasion. How did the idea come about? What problems did the game design face, and how were they overcome? What would have been done differently?
Watch to find out! (and please subscribe!) :smiley:

Comments28

Gaz_Ireland7 Oct 2019, 13:42

Amazing Game! I loved it! Such a great concept too!

laegoose7 Oct 2019, 13:52

Graphics are simple but it's very satisfying to see my flowers growing everywhere!
Ultra-responsive controls and Polythene Pam tune make it fun to play.

Kazatan7 Oct 2019, 13:56

This is great. Enjoyed the puzzle, although it wasn't too difficult once you got the basics. The art and music were really nice. I did notice a little rendering issue when the camera is rotating around. One of the angles looks perfect then as it rotates the sprites clip their neighbours:

Doesn't detract from what is a really nice game though! Congrats :thumbsup:

gwinnellauthor8 Oct 2019, 12:37

@kazatan Thanks! I intended on adding more varied enemy behaviours but ran out of time. It is Ludum Dare after all!

Sprite overlap clipping is definitely a feature and not a bug. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

koemeterion8 Oct 2019, 12:47

Great idea and visualy apealing even that I cant understand why. So many colors :D
This was fun and I enjoyes quite a bit!

jharler8 Oct 2019, 14:37

I finished the game a few minutes ago and I'm still playing that tune in my head. I like it. Nice puzzles and good difficulty progression. Well done!

tobb8 Oct 2019, 20:08

Very interesting game mechanics and a nice spin on the strategy genre. The visuals are quite trippy which suits the game well.

Simple still challenging! enjoyed it!

GeruGames8 Oct 2019, 20:09

This was a really fun game. Lots of different colors and nice puzzles. Good job. Was easy to understand as well.

Cataractar8 Oct 2019, 20:11

Nice! Not too long, not too short. The music was great, some SFX for the three actions would have been nice though.

gwinnellauthor8 Oct 2019, 20:23

@cataractar There should be sounds! Just checked and looks like they're not playing in the web export! DOH! Will fix asap!

gwinnellauthor8 Oct 2019, 20:36

@cataractar I forgot that the web export doesn't play wavs. It now uses oggs and the sounds are working!

Cataractar8 Oct 2019, 20:41

@gwinnell I've tested it again. The sounds were exactly what I had in mind! :D

geist_1918 Oct 2019, 21:00

love this game. Took me a while to figure out what the best strategy is. Good job!

DrRozza9 Oct 2019, 00:01

Really cool mechanics in this, also loved the colour scheme of the visuals! Really satisfying completing a level as well.

Joe Williamson9 Oct 2019, 15:06

Nice work man! Took me a minute to figure out how it worked but then I was away. Very satisfying victory animation of taking over the garden :D

From what I could tell it was always effectively one action for you and one action for the enemy? Would love to see how it plays with actions based on current size, or some other kind of development vs the enemies size.

RustyMonky9 Oct 2019, 16:23

This was really well done! The feel of the game is great, the controls and mechanics are easy to grasp, and the back and forth between the invasive seeds and nature keeps you thinking on your toes. At level five, as you sprout in all directions to combat four different fronts, it can sometimes be hard to see all of the attacking bugs. That aside, I had a blast playing this game. Great use of theme, too!

someone9 Oct 2019, 20:52

Awesome game. I need more levels.
The game goes straight to the game completed screen if you try to start again after completing it.
The rotation is very useful, though it's a bit slow having to wait for it to stop if you want to rotate more than 90 degrees at once.

Arcus9 Oct 2019, 21:36

A great game! There are not many games that need a strategy in ludum dare, so this is quite unique :)

Hajden9 Oct 2019, 21:39

Really good action puzzle, I enjoyed it

StickyGames9 Oct 2019, 21:41

I finished the game :D i love the idea, audio and graphics are a good match.

kleinzach9 Oct 2019, 21:41

Cool game. The growing and expanding mechanics really felt like a distilled 4x game. I would say that it felt a little easy at points as I was never really being attacked from multiple points and as long as I played it a little slow the ants couldn't hurt me. Really well done though.

lesinvisible9 Oct 2019, 21:42

Amazing graphics and presentation, everything is so smooth and plays nice. And it's a custom game engine, looks fantastic!

sam.awk9 Oct 2019, 21:53

Really great strategy game! Good job!

Herex9 Oct 2019, 22:04

This is a pretty good and unique game in itself. I find it pretty cool what you have managed to do in your own game engine using C++. And not only that how fun and nice the controls and the actual game loop being enjoyable. Definitely an idea you could expand on :).

Bungalow11 Oct 2019, 06:39

Simple, but fun strategy game. I didn't read the controls when I first played and I feel like that added to the experience of slowly learning the rules of the world. It also had simple and still really fun levels. My only problem is that there isn't enough! I could play this game for hours if you release it as a full game with more content and interesting gameplay twists. Great job!

Malai11 Oct 2019, 12:25

Had a lot of fun playing, i wish there would be more (and more challenging) levels, as i had the feeling its nearly impossible to lose, because you can regrow everything without a problem. But to be fair, it was fairly challenging to find the strategy to kill all hives in the last level! And as you are a fellow emscripten developer, how did you implement sound if i may ask? :D

gwinnellauthor11 Oct 2019, 14:47

I agree with pretty much every feedback here - thanks all! If I work on this further I'll take this all into account.

@malai OpenAL! I don't think I had to do anything special to use the API. :slight_smile: :musical_note:

smilewood13 Oct 2019, 02:22

Fun little puzzle game concept. As most of the commenters have said, I wish there were some more levels, although I don’t think that many more were necessary for a game jam. I quite like the puzzle element that goes along with the three stages of your plant growth, it was interesting to have to juggle expanding and just having available defense. The graphics were nice and clean, although the billboarding effect on the flowers and trees while rotating was a bit jarring. Overall a great entry, I could see myself playing a more expanded level set for a long time.

Other games by @gwinnell

★3.77

★4.16

★3.77