YOU WILL PROBABLY NEED TO READ THIS. THE GAME IS NOT VERY INTUITIVE.
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You use "A" and "D" (or the left and right arrows).
"A" (or Left) will "Charge" the cube.
"D" (or Right) releases the current charge as a defensive measure.

-The floor indicator (blue) shows your charge.
-The bottom of the pedestal (red) is bad. This means you are charging too fast and overloading the cube.
-Try to fill the blue meter without overloading.
-Overloading will cause all mobs in the room to rush the cube.

-If a mob is almost to the pedestal (ie. they braved the light) they will attack.
-The pedestal/cube has 3 shields, that will trigger automatically and absorb the mob.
-The 5 squares on the top rim of the pedestal will glow showing your remaining shields.
-On the fourth hit, the game is over.
-You can release your charge to let out a light blast that will consume all mobs in its radius.
-The higher the charge, the larger the blast radius. Be careful, there is a cooldown (plus you lose all of your charge).
-The more charge and faster the cube is going (you will hear a hum when at top speed) the more likely the mobs will come into the light.

-Charge the cube fully and it will clear the room and a new wave will spawn.
-Each will will get larger and gradually faster/braver.

-The game will just end (gameover screen) at a 100 souls. This was due to the fact that I had issues when there were that many mobs, so instead of dealing with it, I just end the game. I had meant to create a "You Win" screen, but didn't have time. So The game didn't break at 100, that's just the end.
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BUG LIST: (what I've found so far)
- There is some weird transparency glitch with the Web versions. The mobs will sometimes "disappear" when close to the cube. Doesn't appear to happen on the Windows version.
- There is a collision issue on the Windows version (though I haven't seen it on the web - go figure) where the mobs will sometimes get stuck on each other. Not game breaking.


The Cube of Zanigriv is hungry for more souls. Will you feed it?

So for my second entry, I was determined to prove to myself that I learned something from my last attempt. My goal was to "right-size" the scope of the project and maintain a more functional schedule to allow me to at least touch each part. With that said, I'm not terribly happy with my finished game hook, but there are some individual items that I'm pleased with.

The controls are "two-buttoned". You use "A" and "D" (or the left and right arrows). "A" will "Charge" the cube. "D" releases the current charge as a defensive measure.

You charge the cube fully and the cube will consume all of the souls in the room ("growing" larger in the process <-- heh?). However, charge too fast and you may draw unwanted attention before you are ready.

The interface was designed into the game elements itself. I never like looking at HUD screens, so I experimented with providing all the necessary information through environment and prop cues. I guess we will see how successful I was. I also did something new by going with a portrait view instead of the typical landscape. I'm not sure how practical it is in the end, but it's done now.

The enemy AI needs some work still. It keeps teetering between too hard and too easy. I haven't found the happy middle yet. Right now, I'd say it's on the too easy side. Like I mentioned above, the game hook could use some work.

Credits and Details:
I used Game Maker Studio as my game engine (this was also my first attempt experimenting with the HTML module - thanks to the timely sale).

Bfxr.net and MilkyTracker for sounds and music. I made sure to leave room to play with the audio portion as it wasn't something I was able to do last time. NOTE: I am not a musician and I spent about 3 hours following some YouTube tutorials on MilkyTracker before the start of the Compo. So please be gentle. You can check out the tutorials by I used here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgQLAgklMBxEuPzQUNKc2xSJu5pXx7xVx

Photoshop for the art work. I forced myself to not touch the pixels until Sunday. I'm never happy with my artwork and so I am never done with it. If left unchecked, I could have spent 48 hours on an few sprites. There are still some missing sprites and animations I didn't make it to (there are 3 mob types, but they all use the same death animation - which is weird consider one of them is 3 times the size of the others).

Unlike last time, I think I got all of the major, game breaking bugs . I guess we will see.

Hope there is least something here for you to enjoy. Thanks for reading and playing!

And don't forget to comment! The more pixels on the screen the merrier!