Rise of the Termites by Togis
Rise of the Termites A Ludum Dare 38 Game where you manage a colony of Termites under assault
Opt-out of audio and music category
Play the game
- ITCH.IO: https://togis.itch.io/rise-of-the-termites (Browser & Download for windows)
- GameJolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/riseofthetermites/252431
- Newgrounds: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/692559 (not the best experience, but it's there too if you prefer the website)
In Rise of the Termites, you manage a colony and fend off from enemies attacking you. The game doesn't include a tutorial but mouse over anything to get info about it.
- Include Multiple levels with increasing difficulty
- Include a Sandbox level for you to build without fear of death
- 4 different types of Termites
- 29 different type of Buildings
- 6 resources to manage
Modding the game
- The game is fully moddable, check out the streaming asset folder, it contains all the data for rooms & levels. You can create your own rooms and own level as you like!
Screenshots & Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLSPyeydYXQ
Links
- SITE: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$16850
- SOURCE CODE: https://github.com/sboigelot/LD38
Program used
- Unity 5.6.0f3 Pro & Free
- Visual Studio 2015 Ultimate & Comunity
- Paint.Net
- SourceTree
- Piskel 0.10.0
Sound & Music
- http://www.fakemusicgenerator.com/ Auto music generator
- Popping by udoxas | License: Creative Commons 0
- Crache.wav by davidou | License: Creative Commons 0
- Digging .wav by tanapistorius | License: Attribution Noncommercial
Script Language
- C# (Unity Mono)
Data Format
- PNG
- XML
Post GameJam Fix
We discovered 2 major bug preventing from playing while playtesting after the game jam:
- Bug 1: If you lost a level, the level would became super hard and impossible to win again (very quick fix, 6 word in c#)
- Bug 2: The level without economic goals were impossible to finish due to a missplaced bool = false
- fix a type
- Add a very small description text for a level
All theses bu fix are really easy to code and can be found in code on the git commit: https://github.com/sboigelot/LD38/commit/4192683c4195974e26b96f38eddaa6a1f5e9f940 They do not in any change the gameplay but would really block people from enjoying the game.
Ratings
| Overall | 446th | 3.278⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 427th | 3.074⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 436th | 3.019⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 293th | 3.611⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 678th | 2.444⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 442th | 2.6⭐ | 12🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 539th | 2.174⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 571th | 2.87⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 51🗳️ | 117🗨️ |
I should only assume you're not strangers to strategic games :)
I'd like to see the game expanded, even if that would incline just polishing it up. It's easy to manage when you familiarize yourself with it, but not so easy it becomes boring, which as we all know it's all about.
I like this project, that's why I spent some time gathering what you could improve :D
Issues I'd report (checked on web build):
- I'd love to see termite spawn rate indicated somewhere - just a timer or a clock icon would suffice. Or maybe some indication on the queen to make it more immersive?
- changing the sfx/music volume slider also moves the map :)
- after taking more than 70% damage soldiers are indistinguishable from workers at a glance - and from the dark layer of soil - an outline would fix the soil problem, and adding a characteristic feature in shape of soldiers would help
- not sure how, but enemy entering a room that was in process of digging reset the progress on dig (that's a weird one...)
- tooltips can flicker when termites of different type overlap, showing different tooltip each frame
That said, It's a solid and well made project. It's great you managed to build it in such short time, also counting for the problems during the LD.
Cheers! and DeveloperArt4Life :D
The ants look good, given the time limit, I think the background would look better if it was more simplistic.
I feel like having to wait to excavate the rooms doesn't add much to the game, it's just another step I've to wait, I rather have the rooms already available and have to wait for the "buildings" to being built. This way would not only skip a step but also I'd know how many rooms I have to work with from the beginning.
First time I've played the tutorial I failed because I've had no more rooms available to built, so I had to start all over again. The second time I've managed to almost complete it, but even though I had 5 warriors and 5 workers, the objective list didn't show that I'd reach 10 population. Also, the soil takes too much time to build up(is there a way to improve the rate that you get soil?).
I think that this kind of game is hard to pull off, maybe it would be easier to make fewer levels, maybe even just 2 levels, one easy and one hard, so it would give you more time to tweak them and make them more enjoyable.
If you keep on working on this game, I can see it being a cool pc/mobile game, good luck if you wish to do so, and good luck on the competition.
Cheers!
Here is some answer to your questions:
Selling / destroying / changing room was something we had in mind, then decided against, then discussed all together and decided to implement in the game, then... forgot hehe :D I guess we forgot to create a ticket for it on our project management board and at the end everyone was too tired to remember.
About the tutorial "10 population". It is working but badly explained in the game, this is probably because we are not native English speaker and extremely tired when we finished implementing it. You can win it but you need 10 workers and 5 soldiers. If we renamed "population" to "worker" in the goal text it would fix this directly. But this will be post LD.
Collecting soil faster is possible, you have to dig your way up to the "surface" and build "soil generator" room. You can even improve them 2 times and have worker working on it. Once again, we didn't explain that very good in the game :(
I know you focused on other aspects instead of the art, but I'm going to comment anyway :P.
* Some of the assets look sharp and some blurred, looks like you just need to be consistent with the point/bilinear filter for the assets.
* I found the way the termites float around kind of unnerving, looks like they are in water, maybe some animation would help, maybe not.
* the difference between the workers/soldiers/enemies and health of each could have been clearer.
Anyway good game, thanks also for playing mine and streaming it.
The art and music of course need polishing, but that is to be expected given the complexity of the game.
I found the tutorial less than obvious. It was clear that I should click on the spots that had shovel icons, but it wasn't clear that I should click on the rooms already dug to change them into other things.
This would make a cool rts. Build up your colony and send your soldiers out to protect your own colony and attack other colonies.
Overall pretty nice little RTS, I played only the tutorial and the second level. Some of the ant sprites seem to be bugging - like, turning completely black?
The game itself has a lot more content than it looks on the first sight.
The building part is great especially than you played fallout shelter :wink:
Pressing esc really messes the game up for me
It feels like an incremental game, but it's half-way. If it's supposed to be an incremental game, I would solidify that by:
- Continuing simulation when focus is lost. Kinda a necessity.
- Making *accumulation* of goods *slower* and accumulation of *caps / maximums* *faster*. This makes it feel more like I'm slowly accumulating goods, as is the ethos of incremental game. I can tab away and wait while I build enough food to upgrade that farm / etc.
- Chance to make a bigger fort and harder levels - it feels like I don't get to realize my whole potential as of now.
If, instead, you're *not* trying to make it incremental, it feels a bit too slow to me, *especially the building of rooms*. I enjoyed it because I considered it an incremental game, but otherwise there could be more interaction.
You got the music stuck in my head :)
The main missions are a bit on the easy side and always end very abruptly. The user interface is ok, but missing some important features already outlined by @joyfired.
Good work. Have some nearly appropriate bugs :ant: :ant: :ant:
Good game !
Thanks everyone for all your comments, every criticism is really appreciated and we love when we see some of you enjoying the game!
We learned a lot as a team during this LD and will take all of your comments into account for the stable version of the game and the next game jams.
It reminds me a bit of Sim Ant, a game that's in dire need of a modern interpretation. If you decide to make it into a full game, keep me posted.
On web version volumes slider on the right-top move also the camera.
Music sound good.
Very addictive gameplay, i had a great time. Great Game and Good Job :D (sorry for my bad english)
Really loved how the music slowly builds up.
It was easy to pick up and understand - I didn't know what the enemies were at first but I figured it out pretty quick.
Music and graphics were both good, but I think the music was the stronger of the two. You did a nice job on this game for sure.
If I had one complaint, I wished I could have dug more than one room at a time when I had more workers. I understand why you didn't allow it (balance) but at first it was a lot of clicking and waiting.
**edit
nevermind, I had to edit the game and opt-out, it should be fixed now :)
I didn't take the time to play through all of the levels obviously, but that alone is quite telling. Given that you've only spend a weekend making this game, but still has something that could be played for a long time, I'd say that's pretty impressive in itself. Granted, the game can feel a little slow at times and could do with a way to be sped up.
Figuring out the strategies needed to make sure I could both defend against enemy termites and also have enough room to get enough workers and food and soil was pretty fun!
I like the concept and the world building, although slow at first, picks up fast at the end. I takes a while to understand, but once you read everything (and lose a couple times) its all good.
I did feel that there was a fixed way to win the game in every scenario, but then again its just a short time for a Ludumdare.
In any case I loved it and I got through all levels!
Congratulations!
Building the chambers for the insects makes fun. I didn´t get it though, how to build a venom room instead of the other room. I just didn´t have this option in the tutorial after making the first flour without venom growing room.
Besides, I had so much fun :D
The music was really interesting. It's cool that it was computer generated. It sometimes had this strange melody to it, but it was oddly fitting with the termites. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it was really cool none the less.
The only bug I ran into (other than termites) was when I moused over the queen in the tutorial, the tooltip for the queen and the tooltip for the nest would flash back and forth.
One thing I would change is how much the workers affect digging. I feel like they don't speed up the digging of a tile as much as they should.
Glad I played this. Thanks for the game!
Nice game! Balanced difficulty and neat theming with the termites. Social insects are cool!
Like I said before, while management games are generally not my cup of tea, this turned out to be just about the right level for me. Was a bit confused at first, but soon got the hang of it, and started feeling good about myself for figuring out how to reach the objectives in each level!
I see that the fact that you can't remove rooms if you realise you've made the wrong decision has been mentioned before. My initial thought was that would've been nice too, but on the other hand that does give the levels a lose condition, so maybe it's for the better! c:
Couldn't find an explanation for why you opted out of the sound categories (music not original, maybe?) but music was good and so were the sound effects.
The only real issue I had was a bit of trouble clicking stuff sometimes, with what seemed to be clicks being picked up by all buttons in the same position on the same frame, but it was easy to work around and didn't break the game. c:
The differences between the various levels and their objectives were nice too, so that there wasn't an overhaul of mechanics from the start.
Nice job!
@Ava-Skoog we opted out of the music and audio category as we didn't make them ourself. The music is auto generated by a web site and the sound effect are just taken from a free to use sound library. We didn't want to be unfair to the people and teams that actually created music and sound from nothing.
It isn't explained very well, but I did figure it out. The bigger problem is how dull it is.
Because you can only dig one room at a time, you're forced to wait a lot at the beginning. If you could dig multiple, or started with some already dug, that would help ease the monotony a little.
It seems like you've got some good ideas. You just need to make it actually fun.
To answer about team size vs game polish-ness, the team was large at first, but we lost one member on the first day due to sickness. Also only one of us had experience with unity and none of us ever made art before. This doesn't excuse everything of course, but I hope it can shine some light on the subject.
Thanks a lot!
I found that I wasn't looking at the top right corner stats at all during the first half of gameplay. In the end no enemies spawned any more, and that's when I saw that oh, I need more storage space.
The mouse dragging was annoying (I didn't try to test keyboard controls), because the world didn't move pixel-per-pixel. I found it sometimes hard to control. Selecting units by clicking was also sometimes very difficult, and sometimes by unpressing the mouse button I opened a room menu accidentally.
Perhaps you could add a room destruction option, so players could re-allocate some rooms for better use? The music didn't really fit the game, but it's an autotracker :D Good work!
It was hard to get into it at first, graphics are not really engaging and a bit confusing (to your defense, without graphist and with this much work, I understand). Also musics don't fit the mood imo, they are more distracting than relaxing. And without tutorial, I was a little lost.
Fortunately, the UI does explain well the role of each building, and the objectives are pretty clear (though there's a difference between collecting 300 food and max out the food to 300). I managed to build every buildings and level them to the max without loosing life, pretty proud of it! Once I discovered how to accelerate the recolt of food and soil, it felt a bit too easy though :p
Otherwise, the termites are a bit hard to distinguish (this overloaded background doesn't help). I don't know what is the role of workers either as we're collecting resources via buildings. Could be better if the collecting speed was linked to the number of workers imo. But maybe I missed an info somewhere I don't know. Battles are a bit confusing too, I don't really know what is happening and just hope that my soldiers will handle it one way or another. It needs some feedbacks, and more control on it.
Well.. although some points can definitely be improved, I did enjoy my game once I understand the core mechanics. The base is there and just needs some polish now. Good job everyone!