The Claimants of Death by SirMichel

[raw]
made by SirMichel for Ludum Dare 47 (JAM)

The Story

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The God of Death was murdered by the God of Life. The whole world is stuck in a loop between life and death and nobody can die anymore. Now it is up to you, an eternal warrior and an ascendant of death, to claim what's rightfully yours. Break the endless loop of death and rebirth and defeat the other claimants, even if you have to start at the same point again and again!

How to Play

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Attack by clicking (and holding) the left mouse button. Hold the mouse button down and move your mouse to define the path of your sword. Drawing loops with your sword will deal extra damage and you can hit more enemies at once. However, holding the mouse down will drain stamina (the green bar).

Cast a fireball by pressing the right mouse button. This will cost you mana (the blue bar). Mana can be refilled by collecting blue flasks or by reentering the loop of live and death by dying.

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The Development

We are a small team of two developers, a sound engineer and a voice actor. All assets (voice acting, music, sounds, graphics) were created during the jam. We used Unity as engine, Paint.net and PhotoLine for graphics, Ableton Live for sound and music and two boxes of beer for extra power.

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Ratings

Overall 762th 3.528⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 772th 3.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 788th 3.342⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 964th 3.474⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1046th 3.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 182th 3.917⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 695th 2.833⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 532th 3.639⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 24🗳️ 13🗨️

Feedback

twobitjen
06. Oct 2020 · 00:59 UTC
That was a lot of fun to play. I liked the mouse to attack control. Does need a volume control.
BinaryPrinciple
06. Oct 2020 · 02:14 UTC
Nice intro, I would suggest a skip button if you want to reply. The control is smooth but maybe a bit floaty.
The attack with mouse was great and the enemies too. Great work for the short time given.
adhesion
20. Oct 2020 · 23:26 UTC
Nice, I appreciate the amount of lore and how it connects with the theme. The theme didn't seem to make a huge difference on the gameplay though. The sword swinging mechanic was cool but the combat overall felt a little weird - since you mostly have a similar attack range as the enemies, and you have no defensive options other than running away, most combat became hit-and-run - also the health potions were pretty rare for me so I had to be really careful. Using the mouse to swing in a circle usually seemingly wasn't worth it, it was easier to just hold the sword out and wiggle the mouse and it seemed to be more effective - I wonder if the swinging would feel better with gamepad (ie right stick to swing sword). Also, the stamina tended to run out in a lot of combat encounters (particularly bosses) so there was a lot of waiting around. (Maybe a sign that the enemies had too much health?) The magic coming out of of your left hand made it a bit hard to aim as well. Voice acting adds a cool vibe, though the intro is a bit long and the tutorial speech at the beginning of gameplay doesn't feel super necessary, the player should be able to wander around and figure out "pull a lever to open a door" without an explanation. I got out of the starting area and eventually died on Nogrim but never found any of the other bosses. Still a cool experience, this could be pretty fun with some more gamefeel tweaks - nice work.
StellarBearGames
21. Oct 2020 · 00:16 UTC
Really good story and voice acting. The mood was really epic, kind of reminds me of Gauntlet or Dark Souls. Level design was pretty good what with shortcuts and all, but some parts didn't make sense like dead-ends full of enemies that could just be ignored. The spinning mechanic is really cool but stamina regens too slowly so I ran by most enemies. The character moves faster on diagonals, this can be fixed pretty simply by normalizing but you'll have to look it up. Great job and congratulations!
CursedEmbassy
25. Oct 2020 · 18:17 UTC
nice game!
Chris Hall
25. Oct 2020 · 18:40 UTC
Super solid entry. I loooove all the voice acting and the intro cinematic. The lighting looks really good and the game is pretty dang long, especially for a jam entry. You can cheese the combat mechanic by just waggling the sword back and forth, which is definitely fun but also feels like a clunky interface to regular sword swings - if y'all decide to keep working on this one I would love to play a version that forced the circular motion even more. Perhaps with Zelda style attacks or something? Dunno. But anyway, I had a great time with this, nicely done!
TheGreenWorm
25. Oct 2020 · 19:52 UTC
Impressed by the amount of level design in this one, it's huge ! And voice acting was a nice touch. Attack style is innovative and fun to control, but adding some kind of knock back when hitting an enemy could be a nice addition in my opinion. They have basically the same attack range as the player, witch makes it difficult to fight without getting hurt.
LRVStudios
25. Oct 2020 · 22:07 UTC
Great game! The gameplay is fun and intuitive, the level design is great, but i recomend a skip button in the intro cutscene, it's too long haha. But surely a great work! Well done.
KallThar
25. Oct 2020 · 23:02 UTC
Wow some great artwork went into this. The controls seemed bit clumsy tho'. I liked the level-like rooms. Great effort and I hope it pays off.
Skleembof
25. Oct 2020 · 23:05 UTC
That was a lot of game for a game jam. This is one of the more unique jam games around and its a shame you have such few ratings.

I really liked the spinning mechanic, but I feel like you guys didn't go far enough with it. Obviously 72 hours isn't enough time to design and build a full game but I think if you would have focused on refining the spinning mechanic and less on the world and enemies, you could have had a hit on your hands.

Instead of simply spinning in circles to attack, the spinning could have instead been used to block and counter enemy attacks. When an enemy spins to attack you, you spin in the opposite direction to catch their sword and deflect it, then quickly do another spin to attack during the opening.

Also, I think stamina is not a very good mechanic for this game. I found that I was looking forward to finding large groups of enemies and slicing them to pieces, but after a few spins my guy would just stop attacking and it felt extremely unsatisfying.

Maybe instead of a stamina bar that has to recharge it could have just had some sort of spin limit. Like if you know you can only do 2 full spins before stopping, you could plan out your attacks better.

Overall though, great job coming up with a fun unique idea and implementing it in such a short amount of time. I hope you guys don't fully abandon the idea after this jam since I think it has some serious potential.
bellatrion
26. Oct 2020 · 00:49 UTC
It's nice that you managed to do an intro to the game and voices ! It really makes the game stand out. The combat mechanic is nice. I didn't go past Nogrim, as I ended up a bit lost in the world and couldn't find where to go, but great job !