Debts in the Depths

Phew, that was some intense jamming, but I'm super happy with the end result! Maybe I'll release all the art assets for anyone to freely use later.

Wow! so many characters and enemies, and they all look pretty good!
The game has a good sound track, nice crispy SFX
Punchy animations - I especially like the level transition that has you busting thru walls!
Impressive shop system that seems to give you upgrade options in accordance to your money level.

Pretty fun! Liked all the different characters you could buy and fight with and the SFX for when you collect coins is just so satisfying

Nice game! I managed to pay my debts ^^

The Heart system was a bit unclear? One time I lost the level, and just lost one heart. But the next time I lost heart, I lost 2 hearts and lost the game? What was the logic behind the heart loss.

Thanks @lazyanttu, good to hear you managed to pay off your debts! I'm afraid the heart thing might be a bug, unless you were fighting the dragon.

@reaktori I hope I am not spoiling anything, but I was fighting 2 Dragons in the post game "endless mode". Might have been level 22/20 if I remember correctly.

Love it, really great game and quite complete! Enemies hit each other through the walls but beside that it's perfect!

Very impressive game to be done in so short time! Just a small bug - when you transfer between levels, you can still shoot. And if you shoot in the last moment, you projectile can still hit enemies ever the level is not yet started!

@lazyanttu Ah okay okay, that is a "feature" that only happens when fighting against dragons. They instantly kill you even if you have hearts left.

perfect game, definitely gonna be in the top 10 compo entries

That's a really meaty game for a compo entry, good variety of units and map layouts, well done!

Wow super impressive entry! Made it to level 24 on my first try, and had a ton of fun while doing it. The art direction/sound design were spot on, the music was great, and I really loved the healing/damaging mechanic from the character. Definitely high marks from me, great job for such a short time!

Very cool game, sound, art and game mechanics work really well together. It was a bit unclear to me what placing your units serves before the battle, seemed pretty irrelevant, though maybe I just didn't properly discover it's impact. Overall very solid work, my respect

Wow, very impressed with this game not even sure where to start. Sound track is great and sound effects are well done. Visuals are excellent from the environment changing as you progress to the wide variety of units types. The upgraded versions of each unit genuinely look and feel more powerful and threatening as well as having a good cool factor. I found myself being invested in my units and was upset when I lost certain ones. Having to choose between healing your units and damaging the enemy is excellent game design. Difficulty wasn't particularly easy but also wasn't particularly difficult but overall satisfying, almost lost my entire army to the boss and was loosing units on a couple levels leading up to it. Overall the experience was very good and I could easily see myself playing something like this in my spare time.

A bit of constructive criticism I had no idea what invest did and wasn't entirely sure how some units were different from each other, some sort of tooltip to show stats/details in the shop would have been nice. Also I would have liked more of an visual indication of when my own units died, maybe something like a kill feed or a ghost floating up from where they died with their unit types head on it, though the latter might add to much visual clutter.

Fantastic job well done overall!

This is the type of game that makes me realize that I will never win with my own game. I am beyond impressed that you managed to do ALL of this in 48h, by yourself, that's absolutely nuts. I saw on itch that you have been wanting to make a game like this for a while, so I'll mainly go over problems/issues I faced during my playthrough because the overall idea, polish and feel is incredible. I can't express how good this submission is. Easily my favourite so far. I played through all levels.

During the first few levels I didn't realise I could use my mage to shoot, and the difficulty felt challenging but reasonable. After I realized though, I never had to think about my plays. How investing works isn't really communicated in any way, so I didn't know what it did at the start, but man, it's is absolutely op. All levels were super easy when I just spent (almost) all of my money on investing each shop. Just collecting all the gold from the investments when you've bought a lot of it took like a minute each round, was getting 20k+ at the boss. Investing definitely needs nerfing, but I also felt like the mana attacks were also quite strong. Maybe they just felt this way because the levels were so easy with all the money I saved up.

Regardless, super impressive. Definitely 5/5

I thought that this is a jam game, but when i saw that this is compo... Man, you are really a pro! It makes me proud that such a talent participate in LD!

Good work!

Definitely one of the titles that stands out, amazing job!

Probably one of the best games for me in LD57

Looks nice! Sound Design good. Seems like the ready game

Feedback:
- "Click Here to Continue" - Wants to click on all screen (not only button side)

- (bug) Cursor under tile:

Honestly great, well done!

really great game, simple but catchy and strategic.

Feedback:
i would remove no-mana friction. allow to shoot just maybe do less damage if no mana or something. Dont make player feel useless/blocked.
Sound is a bit too loud by default.
Add keyboard left-right movement on A/D and shoot on space, next round on space too.

The best one I played so far. The only negative I can think of is that you could be given more of a hint that a boss is coming. Other than that, its all positives.

This game is better than cake. absolute madness

Such an amazing game, I love the art, the audio, everything :D The gameplay is really solid.

The last boss killed almost my entire party, impossible to go more than 23 waves :p

Wow such an impressive game, i don't know how you managed to fit all that in within 48 hours, insanity! Looks and plays amazing, the sprites are really well designed and animated. Both impressive that it looks so polished and it's super fun to play. Amazing entry.

It's always amazing to see what a veteran in the industry can do. And with 10+ games under your itch.io belt, it's no surprise you can churn out something like this in 2 days. This game is top 5 for me. Kudos!

Really solid game with a lot of depth, monsters leveling up, your shots can attack enemies or heal frinedlies, etc. Not to mention the juicy pixel art. The only thing I despised was the mana meter, it was very hard to keep track of it with all the action on the screen the can even hide it sometimes. I really think a simple 1s cooldown could have worked better. With that said 5/5 game

Brilliant! The game is so complete, I was almost confused if I was playing a published game on steam.

Just beat 20 levels — this is the first jam game that really pushed me to complete its challenge. Super fun to play! I did feel that Spellpower might be a bit overpowered — I poured all my money into it and was able to spam it to clear enemies pretty easily.

very good game design, clever mechanics on the top. The healing to your allies but damage to your enemies is nice. my favorite ld57 at the moment by far!

Wow! The aesthetics and music really remind me of the original Warcraft I and classic MS-DOS games from that era. It's a cool strategy game, and honestly, it’s clear a lot of work went into it. At first, I wasn't quite sure how to select units - IMHO there wasn't a clear visual cue - but that confusion only lasted a moment. After that, it was smooth sailing. All in all, great job! For something made in just 48 hours for a compo, it's truly impressive. Fantastic game!

Wow, really cool! Lovely art, and the gameplay really ticks my boxes! Love how versatile the player magic is, and it's so nice that units get to level up with time! Managed to reach level 24 on my first run by turning myself into a walking orbital strike :D Seriously really nice!!!

Really great game! I made it to the dragon on my first try but only got him down to about half health because my tanky minions died in the previous level. My only critique would be that it's not clear what buying into investment does. The pixel art is fantastic and meshed really well with the old school music. Well done, and crazy amount of content for a compo submission!!

Good job. Many units, lots of polish, didn´t encounter any meaningful bug besides the unit position thing, which is no real problem. Investing seems a little unclear, but it did end up making me rich by the end of the game I suppose. I love that there is unit promotion, although I don´t know how good upgraded units are because of it. I especially like the player control during rounds. Great balance of power, punishing spamming and rewarding doing it efficiently.

Really cool game. Banger soundtrack.

Playing the mage made the auto battle phase really fun. It's a great way to extend the formula.
Healing your units was even more engaging than just trying to shoot enemies.

I think you could meaningfully expand on the concept of positioning by making the terrain matter more and maybe add a rock-paper-scissor mechanic to units. For me the best strategy seemed to be to just clump everyone to a ball of destruction.

Awesome job!

Just amazing job!

@elzach Haha thanks! The soundtrack was actually the first thing I made for the game!

Making music is probably my weakest game dev skill, so it is often easier to first make a song, and then build a game that fits the vibes, rather than the other way around! Sounds crazy, I know, but it works for me!

@reaktori hah! Awesome! That's how it is for me and UI. Even though my UI still sucks. I just need to get it out of the way first.

but damn it's awesome, the game is so beautiful and super well done, the feedback is great. and it's really great to have things to play all the time even during the fight phase by having this shooting phase... really a great game

This looks absolutely amazing! 10/10 pixel-approved!

Such a fun idea!

Really fun! Was able to beat the first boss, but then got absolutely stomped when I got to level 24 with the double boss battle. That was insane!

Beautiful pixel art, lots of great juice like busting through the walls on level transition and very fun core mechanic. Great work!

The game is addictive, it is interesting to move further and further strengthening your squad.
Thanks for the game!

really fun and addictive. nice work!

An amazing gaming experience, until I passed the 20th level I thought the game was too simple, but after 20 everything changes. I spent 20 minutes of my working time and I don't regret anything!

Really fun! only stopped to give a review

One of the best games of LD57!

One of my favorite entries — the game is packed with juicy details that make it super addictive. The mood is really well crafted, and there's no frustration, just pure fun! Super impressive result for such a short amount of time. I also really love the ability to heal allies as well as deal damage to enemies!

Fantastic game! I managed to finish the playthrough on my first attempt, I really enjoyed seeing my minions improve as they stuck around and killed enemies. The dragon killed pretty much my entire party though, so I was living off scraps until I died at 24/20.

This was fantastic. I loved the music and visuals. Gameplay is fun. Also enjoyed the little details like units leveling up, the level transition and getting extra gold during that.

Great work!

Wow, you getting all 5 stars out of me, I just don't know what to add here. This is definitely my favorite one in the jam so far, definitely saving to play more later!

Wow, that's a crazy complete game for just 48 hours! It looks amazing and is so much fun to play. Just felt a little bit to easy until the dragon ;)

Absolutely amazing and entertaining piece of work, well done! The sounds are satisfying as well as movement. Is it possible to get a full screen version of this? Sadly I could not move the PC to the right side of the game screen for some reason and missed a good bunch of gold there. Still managed to get pretty rich, tho!

Overall fun experience, I really want to try this more than once! Good job!

Thanks everyone for your amazing feedback! It means a lot to me!

@radonkalmor You should be able to turn the game full screen on the itch.io web version, or by downloading the windows version and pressing alt+enter!

What an amazing game, was fun to play, strategize whether to invest in the future or get units now to continue and farm the gold from blocks while your units are fighting. The art was good the sounds and music was nice. The only thing I could say is that I started to see some cool units, continued to invest to be able to easily buy them and still have some investment left, but I started to only get skeletons and goblins offered in the last few levels :cry:

I really liked your game! I was hoping to check out the code to see how it was made, but it turns out it wasn't built in Unity as I initially thought😅

@naks Haha yea sorry about that! I love using GameMaker for game jams, it's so good at rapid prototyping pixel stuff. But I doubt anyone can understand my jam code in the first place :sweat_smile: