Oath of Balance by pickens-inc
Fulfil your oath as a Paladin to both the Gods of Life and Death! At the same time!

This is a First-Person voxel-style wave based hack and slash.
WASD - movement Left Click - Attack (Keep held for second attack) Hold Right click - Raise shield
You will be assaulted by an onslaught of demonic creatures! Cut them to pieces in the name of your deities! Will you show favouritism? Kill an enemy near the Altar of the God of Life (the yellow altar) as a sacrifice and receive a blessing in the form of a healing boost. Sacrifice an enemy for the God of Death, however, and you will be given the energy for a special third attack, a high-damage spinning slash!
Survive six rounds, and you will face off with the Soulreaper himself...
Then you win, we kept it short and sweet, hopefully. Thank you for playing!

(Whilst the SFX have been made by us, the music is made by Kevil McLeod, hence we cannot be rated in audio)
| Windows | https://polyrogue.itch.io/oath-of-balance |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/oath-of-balance |
Ratings
| Overall | 516th | 3.429⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 353th | 3.476⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 806th | 2.786⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 873th | 2.857⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 291th | 3.952⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 783th | 2.263⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 354th | 3.524⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
PS. Guys please consider marketing your game a bit, you could have much more ratings!
And thanks @easy82. We did well with the voxel style last round, since it's very quick and gives us more time to work on other things while still working in 3d. What resolution were you using? The menu should scale with the users screen... It's just a unity canvas. Also, we did really really well with our last entry, so I'm a bit nervous to get a rating again because I'm not sure we can top it.
Thanks again for the kind words!
After some time, I realized the most easy way to win the game, was to hold RMB and LMB the whole time. It protects you and the attack speed is also faster than when you attack 'normally'.
Good job!
Thanks for the game it was really fun!
The controls felt nice but you didn't have any options to your attacks. Simply holding the shield up and slashing away at your enemies was all you had to do. Maybe having a stamina bar where you lose stamina for attacking or blocking attacks would be useful here so you have to be tactical.
Overall a fun game which has a obvious connection to the theme. Introducing a more in-depth combat system would make this into a very playable game.
The controls do feel a little floaty as they feel a little delayed from when you pressed them though.
I found the cheaty way to win, go into a corner and hold left and right mouse button at the same time :)
To make the game a little more challenging, you could remove the shield or remove the possibility to attack and hold the shield at the same time. Some kind of stamina that would deplete when blocking could also work. The jump, while not necessary, was too rigid in my opinion.
Still, nice graphics and controls, altar mechanics were not obvious at first, but easy to find out randomly.
The game was a bit easy since simply pressing both mouse-buttons made me pretty much invincible while I could still attack. Or was I? ^^
Thank you for making this!
@riyroo Thank so much for the praise! I'm glad you liked the boss, I'm really happy with how he ended up looking too, especially since I'm not an artist at all.
@abso Thank you for playing! I'll rate yours too.
@linus Thank you for the praise and feedback! That's actually a brilliant idea I didn't even think of. I'm going to extend this a little to make the version I envisioned, and I will definitely implement a stamina system in doing so. And at least one more attack in the chain.
@ajayajayaj Thank you! I think that's what happens when you do first-person combat + slow chunky swords. I might remodel the blade and make the attack faster. And yes, I need to fix the shield + attack exploit :) Thanks again for playing!
@gorka Thank you for the feedback! It is definitely in need of more challenge/a tweak to the combat system. The jump is definitely redundant, and hsould probably be removed.
@mouthlessgames Thank you for playing, and hello again! I remember your terrifying last game, and time to try your terrifying new game! I'm glad you liked the controls! They're definitely flawed but functional. I admit I actually had to google the definition of "ego-perspective" and I think I understand, and that's a very unique and fascinating bit of praise, I wonder what I'm doing right, there! Thank you so much for playing!
Thank you, everyone, for playing!
Controls are intuitive, the graphics are simple yet convey the atmosphere effectively. The amount of effort that went into models and the types of enemies and animations is high. Music fit the atmosphere somewhat, and I appreciate that you put it in but opted out of the category since it is not your track (not your music is better than no music). The idea of killing enemies near an altar for a powerup was interesting.
**Needs Improvement:**
Game-breaking exploit occurs if you hold both right-click and left-click on your mouse - you become invincible and your attack speed increases dramatically. The enemy collisions prevented much movement if standing near one of the altars, giving the player little leeway in their strategy. The final boss was way too tanky (I beat him easily using the exploit above, however).
My main issue is that it feels too easy, and I didn't even find the exploit where you hold down both mouse buttons. I just stayed near the God of Life's altar and attacked anything that came near me. I gained more than enough life from attacking the floating eyeballs to offset the damage they dealt me, and I only ever needed to dodge for the spear-wielding enemies or the boss. I don't think I ever actually used the shield, nor did I feel any incentive to sacrifice enemies to the God of Death's altar.
So my main suggestions would be to rebalance the altars and fix the exploit, but this could definitely be expanded out into a very good full-length game.