A Blood God's Virgin Voyage by drprettypatty

[raw]
made by drprettypatty for LD 43 (JAM)

Sacrifices must be made. You are a blood god, with the goal of returning to the mortal plane. In order to do this, you must sacrifice a virgin at your altar. You can bring them to life, but the altar is four rooms away.

abgvv4.PNG

Mechanics

The game is played in three rotating phases:

  1. Spawn -- you must create a new virginal Loved One in the the Blood God's Chamber at the beginning of every turn. This costs 1 Soul, and if you enter the Spawn phase with 0 Soul you will lose.

  2. Encounter -- when you have rooms with at least three Loved Ones, a random encounter will occur. This only happens in rooms that have at least three Loved Ones. You will be forced to make a choice: you can make the Loved Ones fight to the death and preserve their virgin status with the winner gaining Strength, or they can kiss and lose their virgin status (but both will gain a Strength point).

  3. Act -- by selecting a room using the arrows in the bottom left, you may choose a single action per turn:

    Rest: yield your action, with no effect to Soul or Loved Ones

    ​Advance: choose a Loved One to move to the front of the line in a particular room

    ​Open Door: the Loved One at the front of the line will hold the door open, allowing those behind to move to the next room. The number of Loved Ones that move is determined by the Strength of the Loved One holding the door (e.g. 2 STR allows 2 Loved Ones to advance). The door holder will then be crushed by the door.

    ​Touch the Idol: the Loved One at the front of the line can touch the Idols in the Corridor of Hope and the Corridor of Despair. This allows you to consume them for an increase in Soul:

    ​​Weakling non-virgins (STR: 0): 0 Soul

    ​​Weak non-virgins (STR: 1): 2 Soul

    ​​Strong non-virgins (STR: > 1): 4 Soul

    ​​Virgins: 6 + STR Soul

Your goal is to pass a virgin through the final door, beyond the Entry to the Altar room. Good luck!

Credit

Designed and created by Zak Reynolds and Clint Glenn

Graphical and musical assets are original, created with the help of Pickle Editor, FL Studio, Serum, and Audacity. Sound effects were created with help from resources in the GDC audio pack, Image-Line samples, and freesound.org.

Font: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/almendra​

Built with Unity.

Philosophy

We wanted to create a game that involved sacrifice at every level. The easy choice for a setting (a blood god using sacrifices to take over the world) eventually resulted in what we thought were some interesting mechanics. Playing this game, you lose something at just about every turn -- some Soul at the beginning, either a Loved One or someone's virginity at the Encounter phase, and you often trade a Loved One for advancement in the Act phase. It leads you to a lot of calculated risk decisions, and you're hopefully often left feeling like you've lost something-- making the joy you feel (when RNGesus rewards your risk-taking) that much better.

The names of the Loved Ones were intended to be provided by the player for an extra layer of sadism, but we unfortunately (or fortunately?) did not have the time to implement that feature. Instead, there are some random names, but hopefully the relationship 'modifiers' will still lead to some drama and fun when it comes to deciding whether to make the Loved Ones kill or "kiss" each other.

We also focused on the gameplay tuning and design prior to anything else -- at the end of Friday night we had nothing but notes, and there weren't any graphics in the unity project until halfway through Sunday! There are some visual bugs and not a lot of polish as a result, but we hope that you can enjoy the game for its gameplay.

Screenshots

abgvv2.PNG

abgvv3.PNG

abgvv5.PNG

Ratings

Given 10🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

chaosed0
06. Dec 2018 · 03:14 UTC
Some criticism, hopefully constructive:

1. With all actions taking place in the UI, it's difficult to feel engaged. For example, when choosing characters, instead of picking from a list in the UI, it'd be nicer to pick from the character sprites themselves. Even simply moving the menu closer to where the action is happening may have helped.
3. The character art and randomly-generated names, while delightful, contrasted poorly with the music and the rest of the art and ended up detracting from the overall mood.
2. The game is a bit static. After understanding the mechanics, I felt that I knew exactly what I had to do - it was only a matter of time before I won.

The mechanics themselves, however, were very intuitive - I didn't have to read the help or the description once. I even intuited the win condition correctly. Additionally, the game functions well. I didn't notice any breaking bugs. Well done!
uinelj
07. Dec 2018 · 17:03 UTC
The gameplay seems well thought, and even tough I couldn't succeed at beating the game, I understood why. Interesting music too.
I think you could have added more personnality to your characters, by giving them a different sprite.
Nice one tho :) !
Quasar47
11. Dec 2018 · 19:44 UTC
A pretty challenging game. I'm not quite used (nor good) at that kind of mechanic, so I couldn't beat it easily. I love the UI effects and the funny names these hearts have; the gameplay really ties with the theme here: Strengthening your creations and sacrificing them to let weaker ones continue their trip. I could see you puta lot of efforts into making this game, and in 72 hours only, this is a pretty good job you did there!
syRoK
11. Dec 2018 · 19:56 UTC
It looks like a well thought out puzzle, I like these things. The gods look a little ridiculous. Music comes to what happens in the game) So to say, good luck in the next projects.
zgragselus
12. Dec 2018 · 00:51 UTC
The mechanic themselves are well thought, and it is indeed quite playable - but long pauses during the game tend to destroy the pace of the game.

Good job!
Drekler
12. Dec 2018 · 01:16 UTC
Great job with the sacrifice puzzler! I really enjoyed the concept and the mood of the game. It was really engaging, especially toward the beginning. I do wish that there were some additional mechanics or nuance after learning the basics. After I had those down, it felt a bit like rotating objects through the scene.

The ending was also a little anticlimatic. I was hoping for a large altar or sacrifical chamber at the end. I would be interested to see this expanded with finished art assets and expanded gameplay mechanics.
Howard Duong
13. Dec 2018 · 05:09 UTC
The concept of this game seem very thought out! I really like the vibe of this game and the mechanic is pretty cool. Good job!
🎤 drprettypatty
23. Dec 2018 · 16:31 UTC
Thanks for the comments everyone! @drekler, re: "I was hoping for a large altar or sacrifical chamber at the end" -- so were we! We had to prioritize our bugfixes and features pretty strictly towards the end, but given another day we would have implemented a 3D rotating background of the altar and a good payoff animation (so moving through the four rooms appears as if you are circling the altar, with a bridge going "inwards" to the altar for the fifth room instead of another room to the right). It's always hard to make cuts :(