King's Last Stand by Pukami
Astera Kingdom, home to explosive little creatures who are loyal to their king.
(Note : This game has no audio)
Summary
King of Astera, our resources have been depleted! Our weapons are useless against those invading monsters, but there is still hope! We found that the Astra have strange reactions when getting close to the dark creatures. It's a risky effort, but I'm afraid we've run out of options. This is our last chance to push them back!
Your loyal Astra have entrusted you with their lives to help you save the kingdom. You must work with your loyal Astra and save our home!
King's Last Stand is a game where you take the lead of the Astra creatures to repel the invading creatures. Take advantage of these explosive little cuties to take out groups of enemies and clear each wave till the end!
But how many of these cute Astra must be sacrificed to win this war?
Tips
A lot of people seem to have trouble beating the game, mainly due to the difficulty of Wave 7! Here are a few tips to be able to successfully complete it and save the Astera kingdom! 1. Astra self-destruct when contacting the enemy for too long! That means that your Astra will protect you from behind, so make sure to send them flying ahead of you to secure a safe path! 2. Running away and herding them into groups is the most efficient way to use the Astra! 3. There is no way to avoid being damaged in Wave 7 multiple times in the beginning as you are mobbed. Make sure to maintain enough Health Points from previous waves so that you can last through the initial mob! 4. Your enemies are always walking towards you. Your enemies also can't don't spawn near your castle in the south. Use that information to your advantage to group the enemies in the start of each wave in an advantageous spot! It's easier to get surrounded if you stay too close to the castle!
Updates
12/03/2018 - Fixed the rest time that should happen between each wave. - Fixed a bug where a few enemies were still visible after winning the game. - Added Windows, Mac, and Linux Build
Ratings
| Overall | 192th | 3.555⭐ | 138🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 200th | 3.381⭐ | 141🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 351th | 2.928⭐ | 140🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 211th | 3.579⭐ | 141🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 50th | 4.091⭐ | 140🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 253th | 2.729⭐ | 131🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 284th | 3.068⭐ | 134🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 60🗳️ | 79🗨️ |
It's a shame that there isn't any audio -- it feels like the only thing missing, and even a simple explosion sound effect could make a lot of difference. I highly recommend [sfxr](http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) and [musagi](http://www.drpetter.se/project_musagi.html).
Also what's stopping the player from just sitting in the Circle that gives you more? There's no incentive to wander off.
THAT SAID, i like the concept, and I think you should make a Jam version too with some adjustments! <3
I do agree that the game can be tweaked and adjusted more. I initially wanted there to be more "weight" to commanding your Astra and for it to be used as minimal as possible, but I wasn't able to get the design down in time. Thus, a slowed attack mechanic with no good explanation as to why.
Sitting at the circle makes it easier to be surrounded, as well as less visibility! Not the best design, but I definitely wanted the player to try moving around a lot to try and "herd" the enemies more.
Let me know if anyone else is able to clear all 7 waves! :D
Thank you for your comments :)
The theme is well respected too.
The only thing that disturbed me a little was that the character does'nt often shoot in the good direction, which is pretty disturbing.
Great job then ! :D
I wondering how it could change the game is you can have a dash where (e.g. 5 ) Astra make shield and die but only push enemies (you couldn't kill enemies by dash).
- a minimap, an arrow around your player (think Kid Icarus Uprising) or a way to move the camera angle would go a long way in helping the player locate their enemies.
- Of course: sounds and music
Great job!
I got to wave 6. It's great having a little information screen at the start,
telling you everything you need to know.
The mechanics show promise, but they aren't exactly fun yet. Having to constantly stop while shooting, coupled with the long charge animation before firing, really served to kill the fun of the game, incentivizing you to turn into a turret (which will kill you) rather than running and gunning (which is way more fun). It has potential, but some of the core mechanics need to be redone. My rating: 3.5 stars
The graphics are your strong suit. Great job with this one! The art looks great, and everything is well animated! My rating: 5 stars.
Not particularly innovative. The theme doesn't allow for much innovation, but still, it is a rather old formula. Tower defense is stale, hands down, and while the whole ammunition thing would be innovative in any other setting, it is just a side-effect of the theme. My rating: 3 stars.
A generic interpretation of the theme. At least it's light hearted. My rating: 4.5 stars.
Aaaaaaand it's time for another rant about opting out of (shocker) humor. Seriously, it doesn't have a whole lot of funny to it, so opt out! It will just hurt your overall score by lowering the average value, not increase it!
The mood is cute and nice, but is SEVERELY hurt by the complete silence the game sits in. The graphics set up something that just seems heartless without audio. Next time around, try SFXR, if you have time, or try to get someone else to make audio for you. It's WELL worth it. My rating: 3.5 stars.
Overall, I'd say that this game rather heavily relies on its graphics, and while they are quite well done, this does end up leaving the rest of the game, mechanics, audio, and all, lying in the dust. I'd suggest looking for a team to join, as that would allow you to focus on making your art good and let your teammate make the rest of the game better. My rating: 3.5 stars.
While I agree that the slow shooting can definitely get annoying for some people, I don't think that just making it a free shooter is going to be the solution for it. I wanted the focus to be on movement and trying to use the least amount of shots necessary, but I know that I didn't fully execute it well enough. A run-and-gun shooter isn't the kind of design that I find enjoyable in the long run, and a slower pace shooter that makes you think before you shoot was what I wanted.
I do appreciate the comments though! With more time, I'd definitely love to address all the problems in the future (and I really wish I could've added music and sound). However for this game jam, I'm already happy with how it is.
It could use some more intuitive controls or at least a directional indicator for the casting.
Otherwise, nice game.
Extremely challenging. but a fun mechanic.
Using the Astra as ammo didn't feel like a real sacrifice since I could always get more. It would have been cool if they had some cute SFX to make them actually feel like living creatures, but I understand that you had no time to put sounds in.
All in all, a nice game.
Some feedback:
- more enemies might make it more interesting (although i get it -- time constraints)
- one time an enemy spawned almost ontop of me, which was kindof strange, I was on the botton left corner of the map
- The shooting animation was a little frustrating -- it would have been nice if it was a little quicker -- i kept getting nabbed by the critteres when I was trying to shoot them
- It was easy to train the critters (they followed in a line) and there wasnt much of a reason not to train them (like if you start going in a circle they trail behind you). See image
- Noticed an off-by-one bug at the end (see screenshot)
Overall I really did enjoy the game! Really cool work!!
Overall very impressive!
I had alot of fun trying to strafe around enemies grouping them up and taking out huge groups with few Atra. Also of note, the player seems to move faster going diagonally.
Great fun, this game. And the models are adorable! Amazing job :D
Too bad there is no sound :s tell us if you implemant it one of these days !
Now i'll go for another try ^^
As of improvement, I think that tweeking the vertical movement would do great (as the player move a lot faster when diagonally moving). I didn't feel much punishment as I made mistakes, maybe decreasing the player HP and increasing it's movement speed to balance the previous nerf? What do you think?
I had fun playing it, nonetheless. Good job and thank you for making'n sharing this adorable game :)
The lumas...uhm...astras and the king are very cute designs.
I really enjoyed it though! Little astras are really cute, I almost felt bad sacrificing them. The rest of the art is great too!
Couple things that could be improved though. Adding some audio. The camera, sometimes is really hard to know whats going on since you can't really tell whats behind you and sometimes things get on the way (like the castle).
Other than that I would have prefered a faster pace in general and a faster animation for throwing the astras away. But hey this is a design choice and at the end is a matter of preference.
Really cool game, congrats!
@mrpiedpiper Congratulations on completing it!! That's amazing :D I'm glad you enjoyed it.
@bendev-games Yes, I also agree that the movement could be reworked a bit better. Moving faster diagonally was unintentional, so I definitely would pay more mind to it next time and try to keep the speed more consistent (and possibly even a sprint mechanic).
@jimbly Thank you! I used Blender to model and animate everything!
- You gain distance by kiting then sacrifice your spacing to take out groups of enemies
- You sacrifice health to run through groups of enemies (or tank hits)
- I was trying to start waves at the top then slowing work my way down to the castle to refill, so I was sacrificing territory to allow kiting
I know these are looser interpretations but the slower pacing made me think more about my shots and where I needed to be to make them safe, as well as should I shoot forward to clear a path vs clearing the pack behind me. I thought the game overall was very solid and the rolling astra animation alone nets this a lot of stars in the graphics category. Fantastic polish for a compo game too!
Anyway, this is super polished, and very fun and challenging. Thank you for making this!
Others have mentioned before but audio always adds a lot to a game, and write a script (or use built-in methods if they exist in your engine) to convert angle and speed into position, then you can keep a consistent speed whatever angle you move, regardless of keyboard or controller inputs.
You could improve the character maneuvering by making it always look towards the mouse (the mouse would handle his rotation) while AWSD would handle the movement;
I think that the releasing the stars mostly break the mood, i think that you should optimize the shooting speed to improve the juicenes of throwing them and the need of always having to worry about the remaining amount of stars...
could really use some sound effects.
Cute graphics, though I would have liked to see the Astra look a bit more distinct from the lumos from mario galaxy. (Also are they just an anagram for "A star"? xD)
In case you'd like to watch my play-through, it happened in episode 3 of my "Dare to Play" series and it was the last game played that night. https://twitch.tv/cyberlightgames Thanks for submitting it!
https://gamesx2.com/game/king-s-last-stand/
Also, do you have twitter by any chance? :D