You Are the End
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_"The deeper you go, the more of yourself you lose."_
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Genre: Rogue-lite, Tower Defense, Platformer
This game was made during the Ludum Dare 57 game jam, with the theme “DEPTHS.”
Not really wanting to make another diving game, I started thinking of how to use the theme in a different way...
What if, rather than how deep you can dive, it was all about the emotional depth — the weight of your own choices during gameplay!?
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The game starts as a Tower Defense, where you play the role of a King trying to save his kingdom.
But it's no ordinary tower defense. To summon a unit, you have to sacrifice your people. They're your only resource — your health, your currency, and your power.
The stronger the unit, the more people you have to sacrifice.
_This raises a powerful moral choice for the player:_
If protecting your people means sacrificing them first... Just what would be left at the end?
Just an empty kingdom, with you as the sole survivor? That doesn’t make sense!!
That’s the reason behind the title — "You Are the End" — because as the King, you're sacrificing the very people you were meant to protect.
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To make things fair, there is a card system in the game.
At the end of each run, you get to pick any one of the three cards — Good, Neutral, or Evil.
Each card offers its own power or sacrifice for the greater good, pushing you to try different strategies.
To win, you must repeat this loop again and again — making thousands of sacrifices until you finally reach the end.
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Summon him, and the game turns into a platformer — where you fight alongside the very units you've summoned!
This opens up entirely new strategies — using other units as shields or going solo to test your skills against all your enemies.
It’s a moment where everything changes — the mechanics, strategies, and even your emotional connection/guilt toward the world you’ve been sacrificing to protect.
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To deepen the theme, the game includes the Prophecy system — a page with 5 lines and missing words that reveal themselves during key moments.
These words reflect your actions: how many you’ve sacrificed, your strategies, and the choices you’ve made along the way.
No two prophecies will tell the same story.
*Some will rise as saviours. Others shall be named the End.*
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- Regarding the NPC behaviour system, they have a one-on-one fight system. On spawning both sides look for an appropriate/close enemy to them and marks them as their own (*so nobody can steal their prey until either one of them is dead*) thus, sometimes they can go past already marked ones or just stay still - they too need to catch a breath sometimes :( I guess I should add a small indicator for this.
- Please play on itch.io with headphones on for the best experience (there's a *layered surround sound* added into the game) !!
- I'd love to see what prophecies everyone gets from the *multiple endings* (even if incomplete) =D
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_"The deeper you go, the more of yourself you lose."_
A genre-shifting Tower Defense rogue-lite, where your population is both your currency and your health.
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Descent Into the *Depths*
Genre: Rogue-lite, Tower Defense, Platformer
This game was made during the Ludum Dare 57 game jam, with the theme “DEPTHS.”
Not really wanting to make another diving game, I started thinking of how to use the theme in a different way...
What if, rather than how deep you can dive, it was all about the emotional depth — the weight of your own choices during gameplay!?
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A Kingdom Measured in Lives
*Your army is your people. Your resource is their blood.*The game starts as a Tower Defense, where you play the role of a King trying to save his kingdom.
But it's no ordinary tower defense. To summon a unit, you have to sacrifice your people. They're your only resource — your health, your currency, and your power.
The stronger the unit, the more people you have to sacrifice.
_This raises a powerful moral choice for the player:_
If protecting your people means sacrificing them first... Just what would be left at the end?
Just an empty kingdom, with you as the sole survivor? That doesn’t make sense!!
That’s the reason behind the title — "You Are the End" — because as the King, you're sacrificing the very people you were meant to protect.
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Death is Only the Beginning
You will fall. But each failure leads to new choices.To make things fair, there is a card system in the game.
At the end of each run, you get to pick any one of the three cards — Good, Neutral, or Evil.
Each card offers its own power or sacrifice for the greater good, pushing you to try different strategies.
To win, you must repeat this loop again and again — making thousands of sacrifices until you finally reach the end.
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A Genre-Defying Twist
Unlocking the King unit completely changes the game!Summon him, and the game turns into a platformer — where you fight alongside the very units you've summoned!
This opens up entirely new strategies — using other units as shields or going solo to test your skills against all your enemies.
It’s a moment where everything changes — the mechanics, strategies, and even your emotional connection/guilt toward the world you’ve been sacrificing to protect.
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Your Prophecy, Written by You
Five lines. One fate.To deepen the theme, the game includes the Prophecy system — a page with 5 lines and missing words that reveal themselves during key moments.
These words reflect your actions: how many you’ve sacrificed, your strategies, and the choices you’ve made along the way.
No two prophecies will tell the same story.
*Some will rise as saviours. Others shall be named the End.*
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Controls — Commands of a King
| Mode | Action | Control |
|---|---|---|
| Tower Defense | Move View | Arrow Keys (← →) |
| Summon Units | Left Click on the Unit | |
| Platformer | Move the King | Arrow Keys (← →) |
| Attack with Sword | Left Click | |
| Jump | Space | |
| Summon Units | Left Click (still available) |
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Gameplay Trailer -
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If You Fall… the Kingdom Falls with You.
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NOTE:
- Regarding the NPC behaviour system, they have a one-on-one fight system. On spawning both sides look for an appropriate/close enemy to them and marks them as their own (*so nobody can steal their prey until either one of them is dead*) thus, sometimes they can go past already marked ones or just stay still - they too need to catch a breath sometimes :( I guess I should add a small indicator for this.
- Please play on itch.io with headphones on for the best experience (there's a *layered surround sound* added into the game) !!
- I'd love to see what prophecies everyone gets from the *multiple endings* (even if incomplete) =D
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Genres: platformer
Tools: Unity
Comments36
The actual gameplay is pretty simple, and can get a little boring after a while (for me, all I really seemed to have to do to win was just spam a bunch of knights at the beginning, then wait 3 or 4 minutes until all the waves have ended), but I liked watching the units go about fighting each other, and it would be really easy to make that a little more interesting with a few more units available to the player, or maybe some variation in the enemies' abilities.
I feel like the game's strongest area is the visual aspects, which are really, really good.
Also, while I can’t take full credit for the art—since much of it is derivative—I’m really happy with the overall look and feel I was able to achieve!
I'd also recommend playing on itch io (web or windows build). I'd added mini health bars for each unit and for the enemies as well so it should be easy to figure out.
Just for reference the units prefer to engage in one-on-one fights and not an AOE attack (apart from the King). Please let me know if this doesn't work for you. :(
Haha, so it'd basically like the enemies have a one-on-one fight system. On spawning both sides look for an appropriate/closer enemy to them and marks them as their own (so nobody can steal their prey until either one of them is dead, lol) so sometimes they can go past already marked ones. I guess I should add a small indicator for this. Thanks for the feedback!! =D
:) Very fun game!
While I can't take full credits for art as most of it falls under derivative, I'm glad you found the look and feel of the game great!
Haha, I guess that's a good take on the minions lol, you never know what they might do next!! I did mention the minion behavious in detail in my previous comment so feel free to have a look. Thanks for playing!!! have fun xD
Music is vibey - the game could use a bit more audio feedback during gameplay.
Graphics remind me of Kingdom Two Crowns. Very polished look.
A bit difficult to rate since I couldn't play very much but what I did play seemed intriguing!
That system did take the most time to build, so SFX had to take a back seat. That said, feedback noted and they are at the top of my TODO list.
Again, thanks for playing and having fun xD
You could check out the gameplay trailer I made for more of what the game has to offer, but yeah, I'd leave the rating upto your judgement xD
Gameplay Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efakdOU2iV8
Feel free to share your completed prophecy after playing :)
As others pointed out, it's sometimes confusing to see our troops go through enemies or killing some from afar (and the same applies to enemies) but I understand the deadline issue ;)
Congrats on the fun game!
There's not much more to discover after that, apart from getting the remaining 2 of the 9 cards. I do plan to have something like the "Pact of Punishment" from Hades to make it more interesting if I plan a steam release.
Yeah, I see a lot of people pointing the enemy behaviour :( I'll have to rewrite that logic some time.
P.S. Congrats on completing the game @linky439 !! I'd love to see the prophecy you received (since it'll be different for everyone!!)
The art looks great, the intro is strong, and the BGM is good too, so I feel like I'm either hitting some kind of bug or missing a mechanic. I scrolled on the page to see if I could find some other controls for summoning the king or doing something to help in the fight but couldn't find it. Anyway let me know if I missed something (I made it up to wave 4 but then stopped because I couldn't figure out anything to do and new enemies were just walking past my army) but if you let me know I missed the way to play I'll definitely give it another shot!
There are multiple layers to the strategy -
1. The Basics - How you balance spawning the units, like let knights tank and then spawn the quick to attack and die thieves, etc since population is scarce resource.
2. When you unlock the King unit - the game becomes into a platformer, so you could go solo or spawn some units to draw aggro. The units do a one-on-one fight until either of them dies so you could kill the enemies during that.
3. The Card System - There are the 9 cards segregated into 3 categories which you can choose upon death. They dictate if you wish to be aggressive or be a tanker and so on.
Ultimately the game is heavily linked to the prophecy (think of it as multiple endings). The one you get (good or bad) depends on how you play the game - sacrifice the units or save them to become the kingdom's hero.
It should take 5-10 runs to complete the game. It all depends on the strategy you choose.
When the light of dawn touches the broken crown
and the promise of hope still lingers,
descend not as the reaper, but the sentence carved
by your own hand.
For in the depths, you may find redemption -
only and echo of the end you overcame.
A heads up: I played the HTML version, and although the game remembered which cards I picked (and how many runs), my population went down from 400 back to 150, so you might want to make sure the population number is saved somewhere ;)
The game lets you spawn upto 16 NPCs each, on either side. Any more than that and you need to wait for some units to die :( I do need to do some game balancing as well, so I do understand your perspective.
The NPCs are dumb (like me) so they don't necessarily choose the closest one to have a one-on-one fight, maybe a grudge from the last life, who knows xD I'll fix their behaviour in the future updates.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you think so highly of it!! Please do give it a try, you should be able to resume from the 4th wave. Just choose the middle row each time until you unlock the king unit. Hope you get a nice prophecy at the very end =D
P.S - Looks like you really care about your people as it's one line away from the best ending possible :sunglasses:
@borabee Ideally the game should only end if the population is 0 & the units are dead OR the king is spawned and is dead. If not, I'll have a look at these bugs you've mentioned, as no one else has reported them so far.
The King is a double-edged sword. On one hand, he does damage to ALL enemies within range rather than engaging on one-on-one fights!! That makes him crazy powerful, as you can dodge, jump and attack to absolutely destroy the enemies with correct timing. This does come at the cost of game being ended when he dies, but you can also spawn the other units to help you in battle while fighting yourself.
> Regarding the cards, there are a total of 9 of them, 3 in each category so generally after 9 deaths, there won't be any cards left to spawn after each category is depleted.
The ending is when you defeat all the enemies and get the FULL PROPHECY.
> You can still play after that or RESET the game to get a better prophecy.
Great work though from what I could see and the trailer ;)
> You can't spawn more than about 16 units at a time, so you need to wait for the units to die before popping more (this was done as the game started to lag when too many were spawned at once).
I do plan to change this along with adding a HUD for the number of active units in the future builds.
Please feel free to try again and let me know your thoughts, and the ending you receive. Have fun :)