Genomancer

co-authored: @tiar

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.30

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.73

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.25

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.95

You're a Genomancer, whose abilities are controlled by your unstable genome. Your genome is composed of codons - the four elements, and a stop codon. You can have up to 4 abilities, and passive effects. The abilities are encoded by unique codon combinations, and any "excess" codons improve the ability.

Kill endless waves of enemies, and every few levels, mutate - voluntarily or not!

#### Controls:
* Move: WSAD
* Ability 1: Left Mouse Button
* Ability 2: Right Mouse Button
* Ability 3: Q
* Ability 4: E

#### Effects on player:
* Earth: max health
* Water: max mana
* Fire: bonus damage
* Air: movement speed

#### Effects on abilitites:
* Earth: splash damage
* Water: lower mana cost
* Fire: bonus damage
* Air: lower cooldown

#### Here's the list of abilities, if you don't want to figure them out yourself (F: Fire, W: Water, E: Earth, A: Air, S: Stop):
* F - Fireball
* FF - Fireblast
* FA - Firestorm
* FFF - Chaosbolt

* W - Water Cannon
* WW - Bubbles
* WWA - Snowball
* WA - Frostbolt

* E - Earth Spike
* EE - "Earthquake"

* A - Wind Strike
* AA - Hurricane
* AF - Lightning Bolt

So, for example, if your genome is the following:

FFW S WAA S EEEEEWW

This means you have 2 abilities, and character passives:
* Fireblast with lowered mana cost
* Frostbolt with lowered cooldown
* 50 health and 20 mana from the rightmost gene.
Be careful, there is no base health or base mana. If you lose all earth codons from your passives, you'll have 0 max health and die.

So, how do mutations work? Every 3 levels (later on, every 2 levels) you can select a mutation:
* adding a codon - a new codon is inserted before your selection - probably the one you're going to choose the most,
* substituting a codon - the selected codon is replaced by a new one,
* removing a codon - the selected codon is removed,
* inverting part of your genome - the entire part of genome between your first and second selected codon is inverted,
* swapping 2 codons - two codons swap their places.

You also mutate randomly every 3 (later on, 2) levels.

Play now!

---

Attributions:
- https://soundbible.com/653-Catapult.html
- https://soundbible.com/1356-Flame-Arrow.html
- https://www.chosic.com/download-audio/26012/
The Great Battle by Alexander Nakarada | https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

The abilities and codons icons and the missiles images are not ours either, but we've made the wizard and the knight images and the floor.

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Tags: #2d, #endless, #godot, #hand-drawn, #indie, #singleplayer, #top down shooter

Genres: shooter

Tools: Godot

Comments24

Wbertrand4 Oct 2021, 23:48

Great game overall, loved the art and mechanics for ability mutations. Very original idea! I did find it a bit difficult though, it may be good to have the initial waves be a bit easier to give the player some more time to figure out exactly what is going on, but after a few deaths I had the hang of it!

Platyp4 Oct 2021, 23:58

I liked the idea it but I always seem to die before I get a good build going.

Maxathon5 Oct 2021, 00:03

I found this extremely confusing.

Noctiphobiaauthor5 Oct 2021, 00:22

I added some more details here as to how the game works - this kind of game would work better with a mini-tutorial, but you know how it is when you have 3 days :)

I agree that the game is too hard right now. Thanks for the feedback!

tiar5 Oct 2021, 00:37

@platyp - try playing with "Immortal player" (check it in the main menu of the game, at that dark screen with game name), it's kind of like a test mode but you can explore building up your abilities and genome without fearing death.

Owinmowe5 Oct 2021, 03:13

Loved the game and the complexity. Nice work!

JPGFG5 Oct 2021, 03:15

Hey I thought your idea was super intuitive and pretty fun to mess around with, it does just sort of drop you into the environment though and that can be a bit trial and error. Cool game dude

marbles5 Oct 2021, 03:19

I don't know what's going on. I didn't understand what's happening in the codon UI. I think you focused more on the content, as there's lots of abilities and mechanics. But you forgot about how to guide the player, like, you presented all mechanics right away (eg. add, substitute, remove, etc) and didn't guide the player how each would work. I think this would make a fun game if those things are fixed.

ryusui5 Oct 2021, 07:01

The concept is interesting, but I feel like the game is too punishing by default to really enjoy/get into the mechanics you've laid out here. I know this is a limitation of the jam/compo format, but the concept would be much better suited to something more complex than a basic "waves of enemies"-type game.

Xwilarg5 Oct 2021, 13:00

The game was nice but a bit confusing, I think it could be nice to have more opportunities to "change" your character because surviving is tough

kromeboy5 Oct 2021, 16:27

The idea is nice but is confusing. Also I think that the gene modification shuld occur early (after the firts round). And it could huse some on screen tutorial (like "if you do this, then this will happen")

Tohmis5 Oct 2021, 17:08

As others have said a tutorial would be nice but those are understandably not a priority when time is such a limiting factor. I like the complexity of it although it is pretty overwhelming at first. Also enemies spawning extremely close to you can be a bit annoying. Maybe making it room based with doors and you trying to find a way out instead of them spawning in waves would be a nice addition. I enjoyed it

Fupi5 Oct 2021, 18:14

Super laggy on the Web, made the game pretty much impossible. It'd be good to have a Windows build. Thank god for the immortal player option tho, I actually had a lot of fun there! This is the most creative interpretation of the theme I played so far, discovering different attacks is very gratifying!

Wendel Scardua6 Oct 2021, 03:09

Cool idea... I wish the difficulty progression were more smooth though, so the player could have more opportunity to play with the gene mechanic. Also, I've noticed the enemy attacks hurt themselves, was that on purpose?

Noctiphobiaauthor6 Oct 2021, 03:26

@wendel-scardua Enemy "friendly" fire is deliberate (although I'm not sure if it was a good idea), but enemies killing themselves with their own spells is not.

Sceef7 Oct 2021, 01:25

like a magic)

Cookiezz7 Oct 2021, 04:03

The game was interesting, but it was quite unclear on what was happening with upgrading.

ScalphaMission7 Oct 2021, 04:05

Scaling difficulty is super difficult given how little time and engagement you get in most jam submissions. Great job anyhow!

lauchsuppe7 Oct 2021, 06:29

Interesting concept! I was a bit confused at first, but after reading the description, I really like the genome system. The difficulty was a little high, but I understand it's hard to get right in such a short time. Including an invincibility mode was a smart move - was definitely my saving grace haha

chesiq7 Oct 2021, 11:06

Great game! Loved the concept, the way you can get invincible, really cool skills progression. Personally I'm a big fan of complex game mechanics, makes brains work! As mentioned getting it balanced is really hard in such short time, so I also found it a bit too hard. Overall enjoyed playing it.

TTU_HASAN8 Oct 2021, 09:15

I LIKED YOUR BG MUSIC AND GAMEPLAY WAS ALSO AMAZING

subcreation8 Oct 2021, 17:40

Excellent concept and a really fresh take on the theme. The game could have used a more gradual difficulty curve and more explanation to the player, but the core mechanics are engaging and have a lot of potential.

Rewzu19 Oct 2021, 12:22

A bit confusing but innovative idea! Quite unusual take on the theme. It seems quite fun after getting used to it! Nice entry!

Anaxie Studio19 Oct 2021, 16:38

Really interesting concept and it's fun to see another "wave survival" game! I like the amount of combinations, although I'm not sure I understood how to swap between abilities (or whether they are all active at once). The graphics and (specially) the music are also neat. Good work, very creative!