The Sapling Sage by LukeBenkart
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:
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.
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!
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!
Wards and turrets: Turrets shoot enemies, wards slow them down so that your turrets can pick them off.
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:
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.
| Youtube | https://novaknight531.itch.io/the-sapling-sage |
| Youtube | https://novaknight531.itch.io/the-sapling-sage |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/the-sapling-sage |
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🗨️ |



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.
- 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 !
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.
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!
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