The Sapling Sage by LukeBenkart

[raw]
made by LukeBenkart for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

Play as a powerful mage as you fight to protect the tree that gives you your powers. Explore different areas, find ancient ruins, and fight formidable foes while you progress through the game building you defenses!

READ THIS BEFORE YOU PLAY!

A lot of people are a bit confused when first starting the game, so to help out, here's some basic instructions that would have been in a tutorial if we'd had time:

  1. You are not confined to the tree area. Once you have some good defenses placed around your tree, feel free to explore a bit and push the enemies back.

  2. There is a final boss at the spawner for each enemy type. Defeating this boss will unlock the next enemy type and give you bonus gold (and maybe a new powerup). Watch out though! Different enemies may attack from different directions!

  3. The music is directly tied to your tree's health. If the music starts to fade back, you might want to teleport to your tree to defend it. Remember that your attacks deal more damage when your tree has more health!

  4. Wards and turrets: Turrets shoot enemies, wards slow them down so that your turrets can pick them off.

  5. There are 4 special spells. The "R" spell (green) heals the tree when you are close to it. The "F" spell (purple) teleports you back to your tree. The "E" spell (yellow) shoots a piercing spell. The "Q" spell (orange) shoots spells in all directions.

NOTE: You might want to look at the screenshots and or start up the game, and come back to these points so you are able to put 2 and 2 together between the game and these points.

Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoy this game as much as we do! :heart:

Game1.PNG2020-04-20<em>23-13-05</em>3.png2020-04-20<em>23-13-05</em>7.png2020-04-20<em>23-13-05</em>5.png

Change Log: -Cost for Upgrades is now shown -The game actually allows you to restart

Controls:

WASD/Arrows - Move

Mouse - Aim

LeftClick - shoot

(rest of controls are in game)

Towers:

1 - Ward: Slows enemies down that are in it's radius. These will eventually run out, so be sure to replenish your wards every so often!

2 - Turret: Shoots nearby enemies. Better turrets do more damage, have higher range, and fire more quickly.

3 - Upgrade: By pressing 3 you permanently upgrade the level of the towers you place down.

Ratings

Overall 198th 4.022⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 189th 3.935⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 829th 3.478⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 504th 4⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 895th 3.854⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 77th 4.196⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 237th 4.022⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 16🗳️ 17🗨️

Feedback

Jirushi
21. Apr 2020 · 03:33 UTC
This was so addicting!
I didn't think a game that would follow the theme in a so obvious way would have stolen my heart, but it just did.

Also great job on the adaptive music, it really has an impact.
Jirushi
21. Apr 2020 · 03:36 UTC
P.S. There is a tag specifically for Ludum Dare on Itch. It adds a notice on your Itch page that redirects to the submission.
CocaPasteque
21. Apr 2020 · 07:07 UTC
Very nice game, here are some improvements I could propose you :
- A small minimap to see where the attackers are coming from
- In addition to the minimap, stereo sounds (spatial sounds) would be great to hear from where your turrets are shooting

I think that was the only thing that bothered me while playing the game, I had turrets all over the place and couldn't figure out which one was shooting so I was rnning in circle trying to find the attackers :smile:

Great game otherwise, really fun !
MegaMiley
21. Apr 2020 · 13:34 UTC
Nicely done! Took me some time to understand what everything does but once I did it was quite fun to play :)
barret
21. Apr 2020 · 18:04 UTC
it would be helpful to give some descriptions of the controls on the page here and what the different towers do. Like I didn't realize what the first tower you have when you press 2 actually does? it had some kind of energy coming out of it.

also the teleport option is very necearry b/c in the beginning I went exploring and couldn't remember how to get to the tree and my tree died lol. But once I got the teleport with f it was so much better.

also this is just a personal preference, but I always find games where you can only see a little bit b/c of the darkness to be somewhat difficult. But I understand it's night time so that made sense thematically.

overall pretty cool take on tower defense. I love hybrid tower defense games. I'm making one myself so this really caught my interest.

funny enough my team made a game about a mage protecting a tree as well but it's an action platformer.
Marcelo Zoletti
21. Apr 2020 · 22:54 UTC
The game graphics looks nice and the music fits with it, the gameplay is really adivtive and fun to mess around. After exploring and killing some bosses I noticed that your life bar only updates when you get hits, this makes hard to keep track how much health you have left, and in the 3rd wave the enemies, when too close to the turrets, don't get damaged (I don't know if that is a feature or not), one think that I would recomend is, after dying the player should get quicker in the tree to respawn by how long is taking (raizing velocity by time). In general the game is really fun, one of the best games I played yet, Great work!
🎤 LukeBenkart
21. Apr 2020 · 23:47 UTC
@marcelo-zoletti The enemies don't spawn from just one direction. And the spawning rate was low because you were only ever in phase one. By exploring you can find ruins with bosses. When you kill a boss the phase increases and the game becomes harder. It seems like you didn't really explore.
Marcelo Zoletti
22. Apr 2020 · 00:04 UTC
@lukebenkart Oh I see, haha my mistake, I'll play the game again and change my feedback then.
Marcelo Zoletti
22. Apr 2020 · 00:05 UTC
.
isayneigh
22. Apr 2020 · 13:01 UTC
I enjoyed the atmospheric music and the interface/graphics look incredible imo. I honestly couldn't figure out what I was suppose to do :sweat_smile: I just kept walking around and then the camera would hover back to my starting point and ask if I wanted to restart. I'll have to try again when i'm not at work.
🎤 LukeBenkart
22. Apr 2020 · 13:42 UTC
@isayneigh Sorry about it being a bit confusing. I've just updated the description of the game (both on Ludum Dare and on Itch) so you should be fine to read it and hopefully understand.
Amazura
22. Apr 2020 · 16:55 UTC
really enjoyed it and i love the music, but the map is just to big. it takes me 3rd restart to finally met some enemies. in my opinion, you could add some clues so player know what they're doing. or minimaps and place red dot on enemies or give some enemy indicator on screen or anything else. overall the game is great.. good job :thumbsup:
gamescodedogs
22. Apr 2020 · 19:40 UTC
Thanks for the game :) Found it on Twitch @instafluff. I really love how shooting mechanics feels. Wish you the best of luck!
Briibot
22. Apr 2020 · 22:07 UTC
A fun game! I agree with Amazura that there could definitely do to be worked in some mini-maps, enemy indicators or some of the likes - it took me quite a few playthroughs to actually understand what was going on and where I should be. Additionally, it would be really nice to have some kind of indicator as to when the tree was taking damage! There were a few times I just completely had no idea where things were coming from, wandered off in the wrong direction and lost.

That said, once I did figure out how to play, I found it enjoyable enough to try quite a few times - now as we speak, I have every base so heavily camped I don't think I'll be seeing another monster for the next century, lmao. Next steps for this could definitely be something along the lines of an end game purchase/game complete for getting to this phase - there's nothing left for me to do, but I feel bad just closing it out without some kind of final message! Great work!
AdonisDevs
30. Apr 2020 · 03:31 UTC
This is interesting. It is a tower defense game mixed with an adventure type game, which is very unique. As others have said, the map is way too big. I think there could definitely be more added in the future, but this is a great start :D
elysiagriffin
09. May 2020 · 20:28 UTC
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615952171?t=3h04m03s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin