Artifact Control

by cdunham
co-authored: @jkoftekian
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.24
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.24
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.14
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.02
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.37
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.07
Capture the artifact! The artifact causes a random effect to happen every 10 seconds.

Use mana to summon units to go take control of the artifact.

Artifact effects: Increase enemy/player attack or speed, give player/enemy mana, randomize all unit positions

Controls:

Typical RTS controls, if you're familiar

- WASD to pan camera

- Shift to pan faster

- Left click to select unit, drag to select multiple

- Select the summoning circle in your base to access your spells

- Right click to give commands to units

Comments16

Chilleh
Chilleh4 Oct 2022, 09:50
Absolutely love the background music, it reminds me of crash bandicoot!!! Overall a very nice game (I very much enjoyed being able to capture the artifact >:) ). I kind of feel bad sending the poor little rats to their death at parts haha.
cdunham
cdunhamauthor4 Oct 2022, 22:47
@chilleh Thanks for playing, dude! The rats are my favorite lol glad you liked it, I'll give your game a try when I have some time.
LDJam user 4886
LDJam user 48866 Oct 2022, 09:47
I found it really difficult to find a strategy with changing conditions, my creatures were always smashed by enemies :'( But I tried!

Well done!
LDJam user 267116
LDJam user 26711611 Oct 2022, 06:20
Nice spooky aesthetic, I feel like that's underserved by RTS games. The changing field buffs were cool as well. Nice job!
khaotom
khaotom11 Oct 2022, 06:20
Not really a huge fan of rts these days, but I enjoyed this super fast and stripped down version! The artifact effects made a big difference to how I played. My winning strategies tended to be to keep building and hoarding units until the artifact was in my favor, then attack the circle. I needed a good mix, with a few ranged and hoards of rats to frontline.

I also liked seeing all the details in the bases, like the stairs down in the enemy base. Could there be a whole dungeon down there? Fun to imagine.
LDJam user 300360
LDJam user 30036011 Oct 2022, 06:23
Nice little game ^^ It is a bit hard to understand what's going on sometimes, or the perks of each unit (I spammed rats to overwelm the opponent :p ) but it was interesting. Nice BGM ^^
rsninjadev11 Oct 2022, 06:33
Very nice, loved the art and sound. It was fun once I figured out to play, controls shown in game would be a nice feature to add. When choosing troop I felt like my decision was uniformed, always summoning the most expensive one, I think it would be cool if there was some sort of information on which troops my troops would be more or less effective at fighting so I could counter the enemy summons better, other than that, great work!
BayLock
BayLock11 Oct 2022, 06:46
Amazing game. Really catchy graphics. Some work can be done from the gameplay side and can be a made a bit more complex. I think the 10 second rule did redistricted a lot of possibilities. Please do check out my submission as well.
LDJam user 30621511 Oct 2022, 06:54
Definitely a nice base for a n RTS game, some good controls a clear goal and some very clear unit differentiation. Though the gameplay is a little lacking. Which to be fair makes sense for a jam.

I personally just didn't quite see what I could do to impact the outcome of a fight besides dump more units into it? There didn't seem to be too much of a, I guess rock paper scissors setup. It was just rats die fast, zombies die slower and beholders are the best. Or if there was a rock paper scissor setup I didn't really see it in the gameplay.

Besides that though the controls were nice and like I said the goal was clear. The music was a nice background and the art was cool. It's just that gameplay unfortunately.

What I'd suggest is maybe leaning more onto a rock paper scissors setup like I was alluding to before. Ex. rats beat beholders because they can dodge and zombies lose to beholders because they're too slow or something else etc.. That way there's more variety in the strategy of the game. Where one unit can be countered and so you have to spread your units around based off what the enemy is choosing.

Overall though a really nice base for an RTS game with an interesting unit setup and some nice controls.
Sheol
Sheol11 Oct 2022, 09:52
A bit of a short game but I can see that with some more polish it can have great potential! I think it's nice that there's also some challenge with the random debuffs/buffs given by the artifact. I'm not really a huge RTS player but still I enjoyed this! Great job!!
jk5000
jk500011 Oct 2022, 13:07
I tried to play the game, but to honest I really not understand much what was happening. But it look and sound like an interesting idea.
asfdfdfd11 Oct 2022, 19:57
Nice RTS implementation. I've beat em to dust!
LePoulet14 Oct 2022, 05:39
It took me 3 tries to achieve victory. The game is cool, i had fun.
nardandas
nardandas16 Oct 2022, 01:41
It took me a second to kind of figure out the map and UI, but once I did, gameplay wasn't bad! I felt the combat was a bit lacking. I didn't mind the types of units available, but I wanted more control over their actions. Something like the typical attack -> attack move -> stand ground type of thing. I felt a bit less like I was commanding my units and more like I was trying to corral them into the artifact zone! Overall really cool to see RTS-type games in ludum dare, we need more of them!

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