Mana4Life by dawik9000
Hi There! This is our entry for #ldjam40 !! The premise of the game is that your health and mana are opposed, which means that if you use mana, your health increases, and if you get hurt, your mana increases. But be careful, you die if your health drops to 0 OR if your mana drops to 0. The game consists of and endless arcade kill-em-all. You have 3 abilities you can use (all of which consume mana), and enemies come in waves, every wave stronger. There are 2 bosses that appear randomly every 3 waves. Music gets louder each round, rock out while surviving through faster and stronger waves! Be sure to post your highscores in the comment section!
I disabled graphics and audio as we are 4 coders and we got both of those from outside assets (No one would like to see our art :D)
Made with UE 4.18





https://youtu.be/LYeT90wAK3Q
https://youtu.be/iRduADjd0
Credit for outside work:
Art
Polygon - Dungeon Pack - https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/polygon-dungeon-pack
Music
Title Screen - Hey Sailor - youtube.com/watch?v=tZBVwUBciiU
Main song - Empowered - youtube.com/watch?v=z4RXYiRZb58
Additional song 1 - Spartacus - youtube.com/watch?v=rTsb2-878wA
Additional song 2 - Witcher, Armageddon - youtube.com/watch?v=N-4KYq_Dvxs
| Windows | https://dawik9000.itch.io/mana4life |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/mana4life |
Ratings
| Overall | 676th | 3.35⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 681th | 3.19⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 437th | 3.32⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 614th | 3.4⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 444th | 3.188⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 522th | 3.344⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 49🗨️ |
Quick edit: Also, the art/music isn't ours - as we stated in the description - since all our team's artists were busy during the jam, but we tried to make the most out of what we could find!
Seems like your audio levels are not corrected, menus is really loud compared to the game, thats just minor stuff though.
I've brought a pirates pack from asset store too, but donnot have time to make them a polished game.
It seems you got the points of how to set lightings. Good job~
Thanks for your thoughts!
I'll update the main post with the songs
The person in middle of camera a bit prevent for me.
Overall, this is cool arena with perfect graphic (sad that is not yours) and brutal music :)
Also, I have some bug, when you cast the skill and die:

The music is louder every wave, and there are two tracks that alternate, but you are completely right that the music should be louder since the beggining.
We are aware of that bug, but we dont have time to fix anything for the moment, as are working on another project, but thank you for telling us :D
Check Out My Game If You Like. All Feedback is encouraged!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected
We surely have to look in to giving the player some extra feedback as to when he is getting hurt, will do so when we have some spare time.
However, I got confused what to do as the game starts.
Either didn't I know what attacks do I have.
And There should be a crosshair for aiming.
When I was attacked by enemies of I hit a enemy, there is no feedback (such as screenshock?) to notice me that.
Should be a great and addictive game if without those atrifacts.
The optimization issue... What can I say, its a Jam. If we continue developing we'll look into it.
The Q is totally OP and super fun to use, died after like 2 rounds each time. Can't wait to see the improvements on ths game!
The q does seem quite broken in the beggining, but it roots you on the ground so you eventually balances itself.
The theme interpretation we had was, the more mana/life you have, the worse chances of surviving, so you had to keep balancing it out no to have too much of anything, but then again, that was our interpretation.
Thank you very much for trying out!
We thought about meking the enemies drop mana/health orbs so you could get more mana actively without having to get hit, but we kinda forgot about it (gamejams makes our brains work in weird ways xD). We will surely implement an active way to gain mana when we have time, maybe around holidays.
Have a good one dan :D
That chicken dance spell is by far the best thing I've seen the entire jame.
Good job.
The balancing mechanic seemed to reward me for standing still in a small crowd and spamming fire. Since there is no noticeable cooldown on your fire spell and since you're rewarded for getting hit, you're also rewarded for playing in a somewhat boring style. I'd suggest having a way to widen and narrow that bar so that players don't get directly rewarded for getting hit/making mistakes. Have a max resource amount for the bar and every time the player gets hit, shrink that max amount. To recover that resource pool you could use drops potions/glowy things that spawn around the level that give it back. This way when I get hit I can only attack 4 times instead of 8, but my health is still low so I need to be careful.
Then I think you should have two basic skills instead of one for the balancing act, and since this involves a lot of health/mana sacrifice I think a necromancer/dark magic type character fits really well too. The first spell might be a life drain beam that siphons health and drains mana. Then the other could sacrifice health, restore mana, and shoot your blood at the enemy that creates an aoe. I think this keeps the spirit of the mechanic in place but also allows for deeper gameplay. Also you could make each resource give a buff, maybe speed for health and attack for mana. That way the player can choose the one that they want at the time. Then they'll need to balance their resources even more accurately!
Mostly spitballing, but hopefully you get some nice ideas from it :)
Have a great one!
Congratulations and good luck!
I applaud the re-examination of what it means to have a health bar, and even celebrate the experiment you've created here. But I confess that, while I found the central mechanic to be interesting in theory, in practice, I found it a complete disaster. There isn't much fun to be had where a core part of the game is to stand around and taking hits on purpose just to keep oneself alive. My natural inclination, after realizing I could die from attacking too much, was to simply draw a crowd in, take a bunch of hits, then play the dance button, then repeat the cycle. The experience was, naturally, repetitive and uninteresting. I did also find it difficult to tell who and how enemies were attacking me, so I eventually ended up not bothering to look up at the screen, instead focusing on the bar at the bottom. With all the beautiful artworks, that seems like an unintentional experience.
Still, don't stop innovating!