Trench War by rjhelms
A real-time strategy game of World War 1 era trench warfare. The catch is that, in the chaos of battle, you can't control units directly - just issue orders, and hope that someone follows them in time.
Get 8 soldiers over the top to defeat the enemy.
Buildings:
Machine Gun: suppresses enemy fire around it, but also can damage friendly buildings and units.
Mortar: Breaks enemy morale, reducing the duration if incoming barrages and increasing time between them.
Medic Station: Heals soldiers in an 8-tile radius.
Trenches: Provides cover and safe passage for soldiers.
Walls: They're walls. They stop bullets, but also people.
Other orders:
Sentry: Orders a unit to hold a position for a brief period of time. Useful for trying to get soldiers to take cover in the face of enemy fire.
Charge: Orders a unit to climb out of the trenches and attack the enemy. This will provoke the enemy into heavy fire!
Get 8 soldiers over the top to defeat the enemy.
Buildings:
Machine Gun: suppresses enemy fire around it, but also can damage friendly buildings and units.
Mortar: Breaks enemy morale, reducing the duration if incoming barrages and increasing time between them.
Medic Station: Heals soldiers in an 8-tile radius.
Trenches: Provides cover and safe passage for soldiers.
Walls: They're walls. They stop bullets, but also people.
Other orders:
Sentry: Orders a unit to hold a position for a brief period of time. Useful for trying to get soldiers to take cover in the face of enemy fire.
Charge: Orders a unit to climb out of the trenches and attack the enemy. This will provoke the enemy into heavy fire!
| Web | http://rjhelms.itch.io/trench-war |
| Source | https://github.com/rjhelms/LD31/ |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=39055 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 88% | 2 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.20 | 514 |
| Audio(Jam) | 2.55 | 548 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.06 | 484 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 3.08 | 599 |
| Humor(Jam) | 2.30 | 651 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.55 | 218 |
| Mood(Jam) | 2.91 | 603 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.42 | 617 |
A little more feedback when they're getting hit would be helpful. I also had a hard time telling the difference between victory and defeat. For example one game I dug trenches straight up then charged. The guys got up and ran and it looked like they made it. But then it said I lost.
Lastly I thought the point was moving forward but whenever the guys finish their task they seem to run back to the start. Or was that something else?
You had some nice sound in the game but I'm not sure you connected it to the most important events the player needed feedback on getting hit, dying, and crossing the line.
Loved the idea and presentation. Good thing there was no barbed wire.
Good job!
nice game =)
To address some specific comments:
- Yeah, the music doesn't really fit in my opinion either. It was a rush job done right near the end of day 3, and putting together a synthesizer blues jam is something I can pretty much do in my sleep.
- The players have two metrics: health (red) and morale (green). Players lose morale by getting injured, but also by having bullets whiz over their head - when it hits zero, they drop what they're doing and flee to the bottom of the screen, where it slowly recovers.
- Winning and losing: I definitely didn't make this clear as I should have in the game. Units don't automatically "make it" once they're over the top; every 5 seconds, one of them can be killed in no-mans land. You've to to have 8 over the top alive at once to win - that's the "troops to victory" counter in the top right. You lose when you've got no one alive on the battlefield - so if everyone goes over, but never get that counter to 8, you'll lose.
- I agree lots of other things aren't really clear. The two things that are most missing to me is some sort of feedback about the state of jobs and buildings, and feedback about what happens when enemy fire hits a building. I had envisioned some more sprites to show those things, but didn't have time - then I was thinking about progress bars, but that felt like a really clunky solution. (And I also didn't have time.)
I definitely am considering picking this up again once I've had some time to recover!
Maybe I'm missing something, but the enemy fires like a gazillion bullets and mortar shells and even spamming mortars and walls doesn't seem to slow them down one bit. With that kind of artillery dominance, the enemy could simply waltz in and take your poorly defended trenches.
Also, I know quite a lot about this time period, and it just doesn't seem like the game is capturing the essence of it (though, to be fair, that needn't be the point).
But I don't want to discourage you; I am certain that with a bit more work and game balance, this can turn out to be a good game.
Over all I enjoyed this though, and I think it could make for a really fun 2 player game with a few tweaks!
I liked the approach you took here with the design for this game, but I don't think the music fits at all to the mood appropriate to a game about the Great War.