Ascension: A God's Test by MatHype
Download for Windows (under 20mb): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7Jr9hhu7miNZHhUd2w2X2RYVWM
Instructions: The Game only uses your mouse. You can mouse over the actions (and the tiles, if you have no action selected) to better understand their uses. Every action has a cost in resources, mana above all. At every turn, you'll receive a basic amount of mana, and some buildings can help you out with that.
The gods will present some quests to you, and check upon it some days after. Failure or success will change your "Favor" value, which is the true goal of the game: If you reach 200, you'll win. If you reach 0, you'll lose. To win, develop a strategy around which quests to keep, watch over your resources and balance your map. Good luck, and watch out for lava!
A good tip is to make sure your resources are well taken care of, while you build a small city with villages and temples, and put up the statues you get. This is a slow game, but once you get a couple quests in you'll know what it is all about!

Follow Ayel, a minor goddess, while she tries to prove her worth to the other gods. Play around and change a plane your very own, and watch as it evolves and changes itself!

Our team (detailed credits in-game): - Ana Clara Guimarães - Mateus "Farofa" Farias - Arlam Júnior - Cássio Eduardo - Patrícia Eiterer - Gustavo Jendiroba - Maria Luiza "Malu" Bittencourt - Marcelo Dakí
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/ascencion |
Ratings
| Overall | 568th | 3.067⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 644th | 2.6⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 434th | 3.033⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 421th | 3.367⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 588th | 2.867⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 323th | 3.067⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 535th | 2.185⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 572th | 2.857⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 50🗳️ | 54🗨️ |
There is definitely a problem with lava though, it spreads so quickly that if you don't know how to act right away, it can just ruin your game entirely. It might be a good idea to have an in-game message warn you about how to deal with lava when a volcano first erupts, telling you to use rubble to block its way immediately. Might also be a good idea not to let lava spread diagonally, that feels very unexpected!
Played it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139473859 (starting at 2:33:24)
One problem I did notice may have something to do with me having a 4k screen and the scaling not being set correctly: some of the text appeared way too small, such as the objectives, taking up a tiny fraction of the box they were given.
Overall a solid game, though pretty hard to get engaged into without any sort of tutorial in the beginning.
(also the text gets cut off here)

That being said, the combination of 3D and pixel art in the game really works in your favour. And of course, I love me a game with some voice acting in it. If you were more dramatic in your inflections, I think this could have made the game more charming. And maybe more voice acting in between the rounds when your turns get all used up, eh? The music also is fitting enough; I like how you seem to have two different tracks in game to switch it up.
Mechanics are fun and most of all I liked gods quests mechanics.
But I was overwhelmed by volcanos(
Good job :)
I liked the mix of modeling and pixel art.
I also liked the voice overs, expanded my experience, as if I really were being challenged by other beings.
It was very challenging to learn to play, I had to exercise my patience.
Hahahahahah.
There are a few minor errors (such as actions that waste mana points at random and other relatively nebulous things). In full screen mode I had some trouble reading the floating window that appeared half cut.
Tip: I wish somehow it would be easier to learn. Perhaps increasing visual feedback for when actions were possible. I suppose part of the intended experience was actually learning by itself, in my opinion the game is on the way to get there.
There is an impressive variety of terrain types and actions in the game, and the quest mechanic was pretty efficient in giving the player some concrete goals to work towards. The tooltips very pretty efficient in explaining the game mechanics, while still leaving . One thing that could have been explained better was how resources are earned (e.g. through tool-tips on the resource icons). The base mechanics of harvesting and imbuing terrain worked really well.
The lava-mechanic gave some additional urgency to the game, but it felt a bit counter-intuitive. The placement of rubble at the beginning of the game, seem to signal that lava will not spread diagonally, which then came as an unpleasant surprise later. It also seems that lava keeps multiplying, even when cut off from the source (i.e. a single lava-field, with no connection to the volcano, seem to be spreading in multiple directions). Finally, the Lava-mechanics and the quest-mechanic felt like they collided occasionally: Racing the clock is one thing. Racing the clock, and then having to abandon your plans at the very last moment, or face being buried in lava, felt a bit frustrating.
The art and music worked really well, and the element of the gods talking to you during the game (being voice acted no less) was a very nice touch, that made the world feel more alive. The UI worked quite well, with the exception of the tooltips sometimes being cut off (for the mountain and stone tooltips for instance) or obscured behind other UI elements. The map was very clear, it was easy to get a grasp of the world and resource status at a glance.
This was definitely an interesting game to play, I hope you'll expand on it!
>Volcanoes appear,
>at the behest of Ogun.
>World drowned in lava.
I dont understand why after each turn the game is replaced with a black screen. This makes it insanely hard to see what resources change. I think just removing this screen will make the game ALOT more enganging.
The lava was very annoying and i did not understand how to counteract it.
I think this game is about a day away from being something very awesome, but it needs some extra love. Good job!
The only information that I felt was missing is that building towers (and having villages/shrines around it?) gives you the deity's resource. I went through most of the game without building a single one, until I almost ran out of stones.
Overall, I liked it, but it could use some more polish...
It looks like you guys put a lot of effort to do a strategy game this complicated in such short time.
The music is awesome, if a little evil.
The voice overs would benefit with some treatment, maybe record in a more quiet enviroment?
Overall I loved this one. Good job!!!
Please rate my in danger game!!!!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/monster-island
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piKz6z64rgg