Trial Protocol

by cx1

co-authored: @qin, @wula233

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.83

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.79

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.80

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.20

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.75

Trial Protocol is a vertical tactical turn-based combat game.
An evil corporation has manufactured a series of clone soldier units — including a girl and a dog — and thrown them into the pit to test their combat capabilities.
Your goal is to guide the unit to the bottom of the pit and complete the trial.

Controls

- Use the mouse to issue commands to the subjects (the Dog and the Girl).
- The currently controlled character is highlighted on HUD.
- Move first (green indicator), then Attack (red indicator).
- After attacking, that character's turn ends.

Turn Order

- Dog → Girl → Enemy Turrets → Move Down a Floor (only if the side wall light turns red) → Dog again.

Objective

- Survive and reach the bottom!

Tips

- The Girl's shots aren't very accurate.
- Enemies can hit each other.

Made by

- cx10: game design & programming & BGM
- Ringo: programming
- Wula: art
- Lihua: SFXs

Tags: #pixel art

Genres: strategy

Tools: Unreal Engine

Comments5

d-demetori7 Apr 2025, 17:16

Cool idea, after a while becomes a bit repetetive, would be cool to see new powers/mechanics in new runs

Monado9 Apr 2025, 07:38

Really liked the main gameplay aspect here! I do think it got a bit of the same after a while, but trying to see just how far I can get was super fun!

TopperVideoGames10 Apr 2025, 05:02

This is a really fun gameplay loop! Being able to see the future layers allowed me to plan moves way in advance, which forced me to make choices that may not be good immediately but better overall. I even wanted to play it again after beating it, and it was only then I saw there was a skip function, which did help! The random generation gave good layouts, where even an easy to kill placed enemy could potentially be more useful left alive another turn.
There was a glitch on the second run where at the very bottom, it scrolled past my team leaving them off screen. I could not click on their actions, so I was stuck. I still had a lot of fun with this gameplay, and I would have liked to see more! Great work!

woe10 Apr 2025, 17:49

This is surprisingly interesting to solve, nice idea!

LDJam user 18426425 Apr 2025, 06:57

It feels like the combinations of the retracting platforms, turrets being crushed if they land on each other, turrets being able to shoot each other, hiding behind turrets protecting you from damage, and the turn based system should come together to create some really interesting emergent gameplay, but the player just doesn't have enough tools to manipulate the mechanics to make that happen. I think that some way to move turrets, a placeable shield/barrier, a teleporter, or something else along those lines would really help make your systems come together into an interesting and cohesive game. As it is right now it's fun for the first half of the level, but the difficulty doesn't really scale up unless you get an unlucky miss that puts you on the back foot so to speak. It's still a nicely polished game, it is just so close to being great!

Side note: I encountered a bug where one of the characters can get stuck off screen due to the last few platforms never retracting. You can't move off because the spot you need to click to do that is off screen leaving only the skip button for that character.