Xenov: Ascension by Alxertion

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

Planet Xenov-81 is under attack.
Can you save its people?

Xenov: Ascension is an isometric voxel tower defense game, with roguelike elements, in which you are a general in charge of protecting a city from foreign invaders. Prepare your defenses, and keep the city alive for as long as possible.

There are multiple strategies you can use to approach the game; you could go for a farming build, or for a tower-intensive one, for example. Can you save a million people? Share your highscores below :grin:!

Important Note: On the 28th of April, we added a WebGL (browser-based) version of the game. The downloadable version has higher quality settings (and, most importantly, shadows!). The quality settings had to be lowered for the web version, so it is highly recommended that you download the game, if you are on Windows, for the full intended experience!

Releases:
v1.00: Initial release.

Good luck, General.

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More screenshots on the itch.io page.

Ratings

Overall 614th 3.75⭐ 40🧑‍⚖️
Fun 649th 3.608⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1599th 3.097⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1369th 3.597⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 312th 4.27⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Audio 724th 3.486⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Mood 673th 3.686⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

Zesix
22. Apr 2020 · 09:51 UTC
Whoa, neat art style! Great job with this entry :)
🎤 Alxertion
22. Apr 2020 · 09:53 UTC
@zesix, thank you! glad you liked the art :smile:
Ege686
22. Apr 2020 · 09:58 UTC
At the first game is little slow. You have to make the game faster because at the first I was bored. But graphics are cute and good. And I have question. Year is 3081 and there are flying cars but why there are tractors still?
Nicu Comiati
22. Apr 2020 · 10:01 UTC
@ege686 thanks for the feedback! we tried to balance the game to have a ~20 minute gameplay time. We didn't notice the tractor thing lol, guess we got caught up in making the models.
bobost2
22. Apr 2020 · 10:18 UTC
I really like the graphics and gameplay! I played it a few times and then I opened cheat engine and gave myself unlimited coins and speed hack and lasted 50 min (game, not real time). I had a lot of fun with this game :D
TheCze
22. Apr 2020 · 10:19 UTC
Really enjoyed the lovely graphics, they look perfect. The towers could use a bit more distinctive descriptions (they both basically say that they shoot lasers towards the enemies). The beginning of the game is a bit too slow, I actually let it idle for a bit.
Pusheeneiro
22. Apr 2020 · 10:25 UTC
Very nice graphics.
🎤 Alxertion
22. Apr 2020 · 11:36 UTC
@bobost2, glad to know you liked it! heh, didn't expect anyone to use the cheat engine on it, kinda cool that it works :sweat_smile:

@thecze, indeed, the descriptions for all the buildings could use a little upgrade; thank you for the feedback!

@pusheeneiro, thanks! :smile:
TheCze
22. Apr 2020 · 11:55 UTC
So the voxel graphics kept me thinking and I'd like to try to do something similar in future games. What tool did you use to create them?
🎤 Alxertion
22. Apr 2020 · 13:05 UTC
@thecze, MagicaVoxel (free and easy to use with other engines, i.e. Unity)
NoamRaz
22. Apr 2020 · 14:11 UTC
Wow Like It! Nice Lights!
🎤 Alxertion
22. Apr 2020 · 14:27 UTC
@noamraz Thank you!
Denis123
22. Apr 2020 · 15:45 UTC
Nice graphics :)
🎤 Alxertion
22. Apr 2020 · 19:28 UTC
@denis123 thanks :smile:
LooksLikeSomething
28. Apr 2020 · 16:53 UTC
Nice game, I loved the graphics.
chromaphase
28. Apr 2020 · 17:00 UTC
love the clean graphics ;)
Mulberg
28. Apr 2020 · 17:04 UTC
Cool game =)

I'd be nice to have a WebGL build.
Also, why GoogleDrive for the source code instead of Github?
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 17:32 UTC
@lookslikesomething & @chromaphase Thank you!

@mulberg Google Drive was chosen mainly because the project contains art/models/audio as well, and it seems a bit too bloaty for git (we also used Unity Collab instead of git as source control, so it would've been an extra step).

As for the WebGL build, we will attempt one soon :smile:
LudumDareDevil
28. Apr 2020 · 17:34 UTC
That was incredible! I managed to save 1691970 people. I was doing pretty well at first:
![Xenov_ Ascension 4_28_2020 12_21_32 PM.png](///raw/aae/b2/z/3381a.png)![Xenov_ Ascension 4_28_2020 12_21_24 PM.png](///raw/aae/b2/z/3381b.png)

Amazing game!
SvenErik
28. Apr 2020 · 17:35 UTC
First of the graphic style was clean and marvelous looking, excellent job on that! Gameplay itself fell a bit short compared to that, but still a solid game. The music was fitting with the futuristic theme, though some variation perhaps would add a lot to it, maybe during the attack. I'd love to see this developed a bit further! :)
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 17:48 UTC
@ludumdaredevil niice, I see you've used the farm strat :grin: Glad to know you enjoyed it!

@svenerik Indeed, both music variation (intensity increasing the more you play perhaps) and enemy/building variation would add to the experience. Thank you for the feedback!
JojoPalambas
28. Apr 2020 · 18:04 UTC
Nice game! Beautiful and fun!

I stopped after 25 minutes in my first run... Maybe you should have made the game a little harder, or made the enemies stats increase with time (like they progressively get 10% in every stat every minute), to keep the difficulty alive :)
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 18:12 UTC
@jojopalambas Thank you! A difficulty setting would be a good idea, as the game is easy for some (and difficult for others); balancing is something we struggled with and tweaked a lot. The enemies actually have increasing health as time goes on, but farm passive income can outweigh it if enough farms are built early on. Thanks for the feedback! :smile:
psydack
28. Apr 2020 · 18:26 UTC
Nice game
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 18:51 UTC
@psydack Thank you!
Wheffle
28. Apr 2020 · 19:30 UTC
Love the voxel art, really cool looking city! Pretty impressive! Nice audio to jam to, good gameplay! I like the farm passive income, and also soon discovered that farms make great walls. Sacrifices must be made! Difficulty curve could use some work, pretty sure I could survive forever, but honestly this is a great entry!
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 19:37 UTC
@wheffle Thank you for your kind feedback! Didn't cross our minds to use the farms as walls, clever :grin:
SAVVU
28. Apr 2020 · 20:26 UTC
Such a great idea for a tower defense! Very different from I am used to see well done! The isometric view with that nice looking tiles made it even more impresive! Well done and I wish you good luck with LD!
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 20:32 UTC
@savvu Thank you for your kind words!
OndraSej
28. Apr 2020 · 20:44 UTC
This is really cool game, and it feels very complete!

The graphics are great, and fit the game really well. Music was OK.
On the other hand, I wish I could zoom out a bit, this close-up view is not very well suited for strategy making. And I disliked what I dislike about most tower defense games - that you can't assign targets or target priorities, and the towers waste time on the infantry while they get massacred by the mechs.
jk5000
28. Apr 2020 · 20:44 UTC
The gameplay idea and visual style is really good. I also like the games music, but it did in someway felt a bit wrong for the game idea. The gameplay is a bit too slow, and you have to wait for too long before any thing really happens. The AI is okay, but I do not understand why it attacks the walls. But overall is this actually a pretty good jam game. Well done.
🎤 Alxertion
28. Apr 2020 · 21:02 UTC
@ondrasej Thanks! We had an initial idea for the player to pick which targets to attack (for a particular tower, in its description screen), but it was scrapped due to time concerns :sweat_smile: thanks again for the feedback!

@jk5000 Thank you! Valid points, pacing is a bit off in the beginning. A difficulty system would really benefit the game :grin: Thanks again for playing!
cjm
28. Apr 2020 · 22:03 UTC
Nice game.
Sometimes when trying to place a tower I would click on the tower placing button, and I would spend the money without it actually placing a tower.
Is this repairing buildings?
I managed to last for almost 17 minutes.
Trigueiro
29. Apr 2020 · 03:37 UTC
Good game but seems a bit unbalaced since on my 2nd try i was about 50 minutes in game without any chance to lose the game :smile:

![Screenshot 2020-04-29 at 04.34.29.png](///raw/ea3/3/z/33880.png)
🎤 Alxertion
29. Apr 2020 · 06:11 UTC
@cjm Thanks! Repairing buildings isn't possible yet, so it is probably a bug; towers should be placed by clicking on one of the buttons (or pressing the hotkeys 1/2/3) and then placing them on the map. We'll investigate :smile:

@trigueiro Nice! Indeed, slight misbalancing issues on our part; farms are a little OP. Thanks for playing!
AryanJumani
29. Apr 2020 · 06:34 UTC
Pretty cool game! Lovely graphics and audio!! Although I would say that the game got boring after I had got 30 farms planted and the difficulty did not rise that much(I was around 15 minutes into the game). It got really boring then. But at the start it really felt good to play it! Reminds me of Clash Of clans. Really well polished game!!
🎤 Alxertion
29. Apr 2020 · 06:44 UTC
@aryanjumani Thank you for the feedback! :smile:
Emperor Eagle
29. Apr 2020 · 10:36 UTC
Great tower defence! The graphics were amazing and it was an enjoyable experience. I did become confused as to where the enemies would come from as I surveyed the city (and wondered it the weapons went on the rooftops), but I was probably just captivated by the great graphic work! It was intuitive once I found the right place (facepalm me) and the mechanics worked together really well! I would definitely want to work on the difficulty however. It was really easy and didn't get much harder. Hence a greater difficulty curve would be great as would some more diverse enemies. Overall, really well polished and a great game overall! Well done!
🎤 Alxertion
29. Apr 2020 · 11:09 UTC
@emperor-eagle Thank you for playing! Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for the difficulty feedback as well!
Max Louis
29. Apr 2020 · 13:08 UTC
We played this on stream yesterday and it was great fun! First voxel game I have seen in the jam and it really works at this isomectric angle too. The gameplay was good and you've set this in a great direction! I'd love to see more progression on this going forward. I think in the context of a game jam, maybe varying the size of enemies as quick and easy way to create bosses could be cool? Amazing job team!

The stream was on Twitch here - you can find the stream recording somewhere on there https://twitch.tv/maxlouiscreative
🎤 Alxertion
29. Apr 2020 · 19:04 UTC
@max-louis Thank you! Glad you liked it, and indeed, good idea with the bosses! Thanks for playing it on stream as well, it was fun watching the playthrough :grin: Good luck with your game!
Max Louis
29. Apr 2020 · 19:18 UTC
@alxertion no problem at all! Thank you!
LCStark
04. May 2020 · 14:25 UTC
A great looking TD game! The voxels and isometric view work really well for this one.

The gameplay is a little bit lacking, though. The enemies always come from the same direction, which kind of defeats the purpose of locating your main base in the center of a large city. It also gives you an easy way to earn more money than you could spend - just place those farms on the opposite end, and they'll never be threatened.

The city itself looks great. The flying cars were a nice addition to make the city feel a little bit alive. You could expand on that, making some of the lights on buildings turn on and off during the night. Perhaps adding very small cubes to simulate people walking would be a good idea, too.

The day/night cycle looked nice, I only wish the transition between the two was more gradual. All the colors suddenly changing made me feel a little bit confused. It also might be nice to actually use it as a game mechanic, making the enemies send different units during the night.

Overall it's a really nice entry. I had fun playing it. ;)
🎤 Alxertion
04. May 2020 · 15:16 UTC
@lcstark Thank you for the feedback! Indeed we spent a lot of time polishing the graphics, which led to the gameplay falling a tad short :sweat_smile: Good ideas though, we'll be sure to note them! Thanks again for playing!