The last outpost by Istalri

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

So you’re the new major? Not a moment too soon! The situation was going to go wrong. As you know you are in charge of the outpost which is located in front of the land of the Demon King. Our scouts have noticed a big army, which is heading towards us. It’s true that everyone will not survive, you will have to make some choices.

Control:

Move Camera: wasd / arrows

Select Units: Left-Click

Cancel Selection: Click anywhere

Tutorial:

Create units cost blood. You can recover blood when you sacrifice experienced unit. Archer and Mage are long distance unit. The priest can heal your unit and the Knight can boost the damage of yours units. Units gain exp when they kill monsters.

Screenshots: NHY7a+.png rAYGa1.png 7tpif5.png

Ratings

Overall 672th 3.25⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 602th 3.159⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 430th 3.25⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 560th 3.409⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 774th 2.977⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 840th 2⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 797th 2.905⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 33🗳️ 6🗨️

Feedback

Keithdae
04. Dec 2018 · 16:30 UTC
Really cool game, the idea of sacrifying your high-level towers to build more towers works well. The difficulty spikes brutally at wave 10 so I wasn't prepared since before that it was really easy so I didn't try really hard :smile:
Vlad Ilisan
07. Dec 2018 · 13:42 UTC
I enjoyed playing the game. Just a tip, after every wave ends reward the player with some "coins", so you could fortify more.
🎤 Istalri
08. Dec 2018 · 08:19 UTC
@vlad-ilisan We wanted to add some money mechanic too but we ran out off time and we prefer to resolve some bug. But if we do a post gamejam update, this is one of the things that we want to improve.

Anyway, @keithdae, @vlad-ilisan, I hope you enjoy our game et thank you for playing :)
JUSTCAMH
09. Dec 2018 · 11:03 UTC
This was a nice game! Like commented above, it is weird that income is made from 'sacrifices' rather than wave progression. It feels less like a sacrifice and more like progression, particularly when some of the sell money will be used to replace the unit which was just sacrificed. Also, I got to wave ten, and it felt practically impossible, as my army of mages were easily taken down by easily thirty enemies. Still though, a very fun game with very good graphics and mood.
Quasar47
09. Dec 2018 · 11:09 UTC
Hello there, pretty neat idea to make a tower defense game for the jam. Especially in my eyes, since I love that genre :)

Altough, there are some things that would need to be corrected. First of all, some enemies do not drop currency when they are killed by the turrets during the first wave, which means I ended up destroying my turrets in order to simply move them, whch is not very practical. I assume this fits to the theme, so I won't complain about that, but it would have been nive to have short tutorial panel in the Options to explain that.

Secondly, there are two bugs that I noticed. They are not game-breaking, but it was fun to watch. First, if you left click on a button to create a tower, and the left click again on the button, you will create a copy of your tower preview, with the glowing halos stacking on top of each other, which can't be moved at all not deleted. Secondly, if you move the camera to far away from the battlefield, you will simply exit the map. This not horrible, but with a few lines of code it could have been avoided.

That said, the game is quite fun and easy, and very generous on how much damage you can take. That's something I love, consdering most of tower defense games let the enemies inflict a lot of damage just to keep pressure on the player, which is not something you would like to experience in a strategy game. Overall, you did a great job :)
VadeMetro
09. Dec 2018 · 13:52 UTC
Not so easy to play. But I like the idea! Your programmation work well. Good job.
Maybe sacrifice button should be on UI and always visible (but not the explaination title).
Epono
09. Dec 2018 · 23:57 UTC
Lots of clicks, some shortcuts would have been much appreciated to sacrifice and place units.
VERY weird difficulty ramping, really easy start (once you understand how each unit works) but then wave 10 comes like a train. Got surprised and didn't have the motivation to try again because of the really slow start :/

Pretty cool TD game with a twist otherwise!
Emperor Eagle
09. Dec 2018 · 23:57 UTC
Cool defence game! It had good graphics and lighting and I think, with more different levels and maps, that it is something people would pay for!
Bificommander
10. Dec 2018 · 00:13 UTC
This was certainly a novel and theme-fitting take on the Tower Defense genre. I personally disagree that you should get coins for killing enemies or clearing waves. It really fits the theme that you can only get cash by sacrificing your high level units. It ultimately works the same as kills->coins, but you have to decide when to sacrifice a high level unit to build several low level ones. Of course, to make that choice more meaningful, something could be done about the game balance, specifically the enormous spike at level 10.

Other small suggestions: A how-to page, with some descriptions of the various units and the basic sacrifice mechanic, a way to get back to the main menu (if there is a shortcut key already, put it in the how-to guide), and a fix to the names of units when you click on them (mage is also archer there, and priest is in a different language). Somewhat more involved suggestions might be a small color change or aura on higher leveld units to easily spot them, and making mages deal splash damage so level 10 isn't completely impossible.

But despite the lack of polish, I commend this game for its fun and fitting resource mechanic.

Edit: I see the itch.io page does list what the units do and what the basic gist is (I never figured out what knights were for). Maybe put that info on this page too, I missed it when I played it.
DeathStorm
11. Dec 2018 · 08:44 UTC
A cool, very cool idea. Iam directly inspired by your idea to make something bigger similar to your concept :D

The Graphics are ok and the sound is a bit repetative. But awesome what you achieved in such small time.

The controls are also a bit strange. They don't feel totally precise and good.

With some polish and some more work this game would be a "real" game.

Great Work, Well Done
Cliff Lee CL
16. Dec 2018 · 11:55 UTC
Great entry! :smile: You use the theme very clearly. The pace is very slow for the first 5 waves but became better later on. It will be better to use some effects to inform the player about upgraded units. I have to skim through all units to find the one to sacrifice.
Cliff Lee CL
16. Dec 2018 · 11:55 UTC
Great entry! :smile: You use the theme very clearly. The pace is very slow for the first 5 waves but became better later on. It will be better to use some effects to inform the player about upgraded units. I have to skim through all units to find the one to sacrifice.
AdamD
16. Dec 2018 · 13:37 UTC
Nice entry, I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said in the previous comments. I think balancing out the level 10 difficulty spike would be good, up until that point I'd created a pretty invincible ring of archers. I think there needs to be more incentive to keep experienced units, certainly in the earlier stages of the game it didn't feel like a hard choice to sacrfice - a bit more risk/reward with the central mechanic would be compelling. A good idea though and I'd like to see it developed further.
Kornel Meszaros
16. Dec 2018 · 14:54 UTC
Interesting mechanic, having to sacrifice experienced units. Stats were not clear though, spamming the archers turned out the most efficient way of defending.
HDugmag
16. Dec 2018 · 23:10 UTC
Amazing! Love the take on tower defense, the theme was well implemented, music and art felt fitting, and the overall mood was enjoyable. However, there were some bugs like placing units out of the green zone and no enemies spawning when replaying. But all in all, a competent entry!
Firesplash Entertainment
17. Dec 2018 · 20:26 UTC
Just played the game on our stream - thanks for your submission! I noticed when clicking a buy button while your cursoer carrys an entity the game gets buggy.

Rest was insteresting - especially the concept of sacrificing entities to get more blood.