Crysterra

PROTECT THE ISLE OF CRYSTERRA MAINTAIN THE STABILITY OF THE CRYSTAL CORE

In the legend of the Isle of Crysterra, the crystal core holds power so immense it controls the land itself. However, Crysterra is under attack. Shadow beings craving the power of the crystal core have started appearing on the island. It is up to the Crystal Guardians to protect the core and maintain the stability of the island's terrain.

CONTROLS

Select your desired Crystal Guardian on the map or from the left menu.
Choose which action to take from the bottom bar.
Select target square or enemy for the highlighted action.

Action point cost displayed in info box on the bottom right.

Control | Action
--- | -----
Left Click | Select
WASD/Middle Click | Rotate Camera
Scroll | Zoom Camera

OVERVIEW

Ensure the crystal core stays stable.
Prevent an unstable core altering the terrain.
Protect the Isle of Crysterra!

DEVELOPMENT

Code by @ciaranw . Graphics, and sound by @teto .

Jam number four together! Unlike previous jams, we thought about what type of game we wanted to make beforehand since we didn't want to make something we'd already done. Previously, we've done a shooter, a puzzle game and a platformer, so this time, we decided to make something turn based. When the theme was announced, we only brainstormed for about an hour before managing to come up with the idea of the changing terrain as the main interesting game mechanic. By far the quickest we've ever settled on something!

With the concept decided, it soon became clear we'd have to make this a 3d game to get the most out of it. That was already terrifying since neither of us have done any 3d work in Godot before and I definitely do not have the Blender skills to be making 3d assets. It was interesting trying to get the 2d assets into the 3d world but we're super proud of the result!

The island was the main focus for Ciaran to start which ate up the entire first day. Actual gameplay hardly got started until the final day but how amazing the island looked was definitely worth it! As usual, had to cut out some mechanics we had intended to put in due to the time constraints but that's always the way! We had wanted to give the player the ability to alter the terrain at the expense of the crystal's stability to add an extra level to the strategy and make the terrain even more interesting.

UI is not either of our favourite things... So making a game where all the control are from the UI was also time consuming and a bit tricky. For Ciaran, having to specify things that you wouldn't even think twice about when playing a game (like previous things being deselected when something new is selected) definitely ate up time. Personally, I hate having to draw things like boxes and containers and I find it so difficult to make them look good and fit the theme so I ended up being really laazy and some of my "placeholder" UI ended up in the final game...

Since I had completed the bulk of the graphics and UI on the first two days, I was able to spend more time on sound since there was less level design to do than previous jams due to the nature of the changing island (and Ciaran was still frantically trying to do the gameplay). We added background music for the first time as well as making the sound effects digitally rather than recording anything which I definitely preferred. The music is incredibly basic but trying to add anything more complex ended up sounding horrendous so apologies for the somewhat annoying/boring loop!

Overall, another load of new things learnt this jam and we are really happy with how the game has turned out despite not being able to add everything we had wanted.

TOOLS

*Engine:* Godot
*Graphics:* Krita
*Audio:* LMMS

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!

Post-release Changelog

Fix music not looping
Fix Enemies spawning on same tile causing crash
Fix win condition comparison error
Fix shadows not disappearing on enemy death
Fix visual glitch in central column
Fix enemy stats not as planned
Fix path cost calculation off by one
Fix next turn button not visible unless player selected
Fix crash if send projectile when enemy about to die
Fix annotation highlighting for attacks