TRIWAR by Donitz

[raw]
made by Donitz for LD 44 (JAM)

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Play the game at https://donitz.itch.io/triwar

TRIWAR is a strategy game about revenge and triangles. The high priestess of Tressia shall vindicate her fallen civilization by transforming the very life of her enemies.

TRIWAR can be played in the browser using keyboard+mouse (highly recommended), mouse-only or with touch devices.

The game was coded in pure Javascript ES6 (so no Internet explorer, sorry). An interesting sidenote: This is the first game I've made which is completely devoid of graphical assets. Everything in the game is rendered through Javascript as 2D shapes. As a result this game will render crisply at any resolution.

Another tidbit: The AI in this game was based on a boids-like model, with each unit type having its own rules: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids

I hope you enjoy the game!

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Ratings

Given 70๐Ÿ—ณ๏ธ 27๐Ÿ—จ๏ธ

Feedback

kleinzach
30. Apr 2019 ยท 00:09 UTC
I really enjoyed this. The mechanics were very neat, and from what I could tell completely original and thematic. The graphics were very simple, but evocative and felt complete. Very cool!
TractorFarm
30. Apr 2019 ยท 00:09 UTC
Really excellent!
Draconimous
30. Apr 2019 ยท 00:11 UTC
This was a really fun game
:)
nox282
30. Apr 2019 ยท 00:16 UTC
Cool concept. Very smart to use a js based framework!
moi93101
30. Apr 2019 ยท 00:32 UTC
I finished it, and I enjoyed it :)
QuadApe
30. Apr 2019 ยท 00:44 UTC
This game was pretty fun to play!
ldjsq
30. Apr 2019 ยท 01:06 UTC
I love the game :) how do I beat the spawning pool level?
cheesepencil
30. Apr 2019 ยท 01:40 UTC
Couldn't beat spawning pool, ouch! Great execution. If this is vanilla js with no libraries that's amazing
๐ŸŽค Donitz
30. Apr 2019 ยท 06:13 UTC
@ldjsq @cheesepencil I find spamming X is the easiest way to win the spawning pool level.
GastricSparrow
30. Apr 2019 ยท 13:39 UTC
Oh my god, I could rave about that triangular aesthetics for DAYS! This was great fun, at least until the Spawning pools got me. That was a big difficulty SPIKE (get it? Cause the whole game is made of spikes? No?)
Mia Devs
30. Apr 2019 ยท 14:03 UTC
Nice Game
RodNasca
30. Apr 2019 ยท 14:32 UTC
This game is wonderful, I kept it here to try to finish it later. Congrats on the job!
Inferture
30. Apr 2019 ยท 15:18 UTC
Insane to think you did all of this without a sprite ! The walls and the queen be especially look nice !
The game was fun, and the levels were varied enough to not get bored :) Very nice entry ^^
voidfishing
30. Apr 2019 ยท 17:23 UTC
I really liked this! the movement feels really nice and I like all the different servants, the art style is great too (especially the characters!) :)
XMPTEd
30. Apr 2019 ยท 20:54 UTC
Lovely looking game, great sounds, fun to play - tried some levels a few times to clear them :) Getting your units to actually follow you around was the biggest pain - they don't path very intelligently! Still, really enjoyed it!
GaryS
30. Apr 2019 ยท 21:09 UTC
_Love_ this... plays great, really slick. A good mechanic very well executed.
PolyHatSteve
30. Apr 2019 ยท 21:23 UTC
Really great aesthetic, fun gameplay, and even a compelling introduction. Spawning pool is tricky, but the one I couldn't beat was the second last level - super difficult. Not that that's a bad thing, I'm sure it's beatable with enough practice. Regardless, really impressive to build a compelling RTS in a 3 days, so great work!
trozen
30. Apr 2019 ยท 21:36 UTC
Fun game mechanics! I really appreciate the uniqueness of this game- lots of games went very literally with the theme, but this one is a different take. It was fun to try out different minion compositions. Thank you very much for including autorun!


I made it to the Spawning Pools (I think) level and was not able to beat it. The difficulty ramp felt pretty good leading up to that level, but then I just got stuck there.

Fun game, and I'm really glad you made it!
Twan Mul
30. Apr 2019 ยท 21:43 UTC
interesting game, difficult to feel what the effect of the keyboard controls where besides spawning a character to help you. Very smooth gameplay and nice mood though!
Deprecat
30. Apr 2019 ยท 22:41 UTC
Really cool game, and super impressive that it's all ES6! The movement feels really fluid and responsive even with it being mouse-based. The sprites are adorable, and even with them being so small they're so distinct from one another you can attribute a lot of personality to them.

Great work!
JulienLussiez
01. May 2019 ยท 00:13 UTC
Pretty cool game. I like the ambience and music. Kudos for the coding part.
Kaitlin Quick
01. May 2019 ยท 01:12 UTC
Really nice game! It was easy to pick up and addicting to play. I really love the simple shapes as graphics, too. It's all so polished and looks great, and the atmosphere is on point.

Great job! :)
firemax34
01. May 2019 ยท 02:16 UTC
I like the mix of strategy, dodging and rush.
Ivan Garcia Filho
01. May 2019 ยท 02:26 UTC
Awesome gameplay, i stcu kinto the 6th stage and i would just enhance the experience adding more feedback to the units ... i missed a "spawn vfx & sfx" when the unit is summoned, also a vfx&sfx as a clue of the channeling time (the time it's taking to summon the unity), and maybe some footsteps or different attack sounds between the units to recognize who's attacking and taking damage...
Nomus
01. May 2019 ยท 22:56 UTC
Amazing game really fun and interesting mechanics. The boss was pretty cool to beat and the music was on par with the theme.
ristoretto
01. May 2019 ยท 23:43 UTC
I like how you spawn units directly where you stand, it still gives the feeling of spamming buttons for โ€œmore marinesโ€ and you get them directly into battle. And how your main hero only can take one hit, so you have to be careful not to collide with single enemies and try to micro units so they get good set ups.

Units got stuck behind walls in levels with narrow space, but that's about it. Very well executed!
Fahim Faysal
02. May 2019 ยท 05:11 UTC
I don't normally play rts games but I like this one. I think the game fits well with the theme and there is some interesting risk/reward gameplay here. You can only take one hit but you need to risk yourself anyway to get enough currency to spawn.The only unit I don't like is the grenadier. I feel like it's to slow it's better to rush down the enemies instead. I think you should make it a tank type unit or maybe a turret that is stationary but deals a lot of damage.

I also think that there is too much of a focus on kiting enemies. Maybe add a shield that will protect you from hits a couple of times so that you can charge into the battle field. The movement should not be tied to the mouse. But then again, it'd make it touch incompatible.

The pathfinding can be a bit iffy sometimes. You could add a retreat order button that would make all units stop attacking and retreat to make things easier.

The graphics are minimalistic but good. Animating with simple graphics like this can be hard. What you can do is Lerp the color of the units as they are about to attack (to red or some easily discernible color). That way the player has more information on when to attack/retreat. I feel that clarity and availability of information is the cornerstone of strategy game design. Look at into the breach for example. There's a gdc talk available.

Overall, I really like it. I hope I wasn't too critical because of it.
๐ŸŽค Donitz
02. May 2019 ยท 06:51 UTC
@ristoretto @fahim-faysal You can take multiple hits if you have more than 20 life orbs available, but I'm not surprised that it doesn't happen too often. The demolisher unit is created from 4 lives and can take 4 hits, but can still be spammed down by the rapidly attacking drone units.

I agree that the grenadier/demolisher unit seems to lack purpose. It's still usable but it's not really essential to the game at all. Some kind of shield unit would have been a better idea. Maybe you could have spawned a stationary force field like in Apex Legends.

Color lerping based on reload delay is a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.
Daratrix
02. May 2019 ยท 17:54 UTC
I was finally able to play it for myself, and it was as fun I it seemed when I saw it on stream. It was really fun to play, you got a nice take on the RTS genre, and I had a good time overall. You could have been rated on audio, even if the bips in game are forgettable, that simple menu music is haunting! Really inspire animosity, and cold, unstoppable revenge, fitting the concise narrative perfectly.

The only trouble I had with the game was how unreliable melee units are: sometimes one melee unit (X) could destroy several attack drones when they trickle in one by one, but if two attack drones come at the same time, I would sometimes loose more than three (X) dudes (and their momentum would make them hit the priestess, right behind the 3-4 men wall they just blew through). I think the demolisher is actually alright, it just needs a bit of setup to be effective. Clearly a poor choice if you are on low funds/units, but if you can get 3-4 shooters and 5+ melee guys, demolisher becomes a really potent unit. But regular shooters (Z) kinda have the same issue, they can't hit the attack drones unless they are moving straight for them, so a few attack drones can destroy a bigger groups of shooters if the angle isn't favouring the shooters. Unless you got melee guys front, which is good because it forces to make different kind of units (kinda the point I guess ahah).
With a varied composition of unit, you seem to hit a "critical mass" pretty quickly. Usually once I have 6+ units I could just hit Z->X->C->repeat until the match is over, winning with sheer number instead of actually dealing with the encounters. On the other hand, some missions had a really tough early game, where you could loose in the first three seconds if you don't immediately rush into battle. I guess that balance is hard to it, but it's a shame that reaching mid game is harder than reaching the end of a level. Actually, scratch that last paragraph. As I wrote this, it occurred to me that this was part of the narrative, and makes perfect sense. Oh well. There's beauty in the struggle.

But the experience was great nonetheless, I found all units useful in some way. It was a short but intense, self-contained and self-sufficient, full experience. Incredibly satisfying.
Rgarbati
02. May 2019 ยท 18:42 UTC
Your job on that game is just amazing. I just loved it, asking for more level. I cannot say anything else that gj. One of my favorite game so far in this game jam. Just amazing !
๐ŸŽค Donitz
03. May 2019 ยท 07:49 UTC
@daratrix Thanks for your very detailed analysis of the game. Agreed, once you hit a certain number of units the rest of the level becomes a cakewalk. The mines act somewhat as a countermeasure to that but not really enough.

@rgarbati Thank you!