Treant Wars by Tudvari
About
*The evil hordes are marching towards the sacred groves! *
In the heart of the groves, the Aether Tree stands tall, and you must protect it at all costs!
Can you endure the waves of evil minions and defeat their leader and save the realm?
Features
A healthy grove provides you a good amount of Aether, a pivotal resource for this task.
Ensure your grove flourishes and plant various trees, all with different behaviours:
When grown they provide various passive benefits.
And when the time comes, turn them into fierce treants!
However as treants, they lose their passive abilities, while they gain active ones!
Repel the melee Devilkins and Brutes, the fiery Imps, and keep the Scorchers at distance because they set your grove aflame!
Defeat their gargantuan leader and bring peace to the land once again.
## Controls
Left click to plant and summon treants through buttons.
Right click/Escape to cancel using a button.
I could only implement one hotkey: T to summon treants
Escape to go back to the main menu
Features that didn't make it?
Tree which deals periodically poison damage around itself. As a treant, it deals poison damage.
Tree which slows enemies in an area. As a treant, it roots a target.
A petard-like enemy that charges into your grove and explodes.
"Biome system": You can only plant nearby grass tiles, and trees convert sand tiles into grass. Grass tiles generate Aether.
"Realistic" fire the jumps from tree to tree, and some mechanic to put out the fire
Unique boss fight
Tents and campfires indicating spawn locations.
Ratings
| Overall | 10th | 4.333⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 8th | 4.319⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 44th | 4.014⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 79th | 4.014⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 33th | 4.222⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 44th | 3.857⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 174th | 2.833⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 45th | 3.943⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 26🗳️ | 48🗨️ |
@pebkac Thanks for the feedback, at first the idea seemed good, then it started to sound a bit lame... but in the end I think I made the right choice! :smiley:
@aivaxela Shoot, I tested only the Itch player, I always forget that LD is a special beast. :smile: But now it's fixed, it should work well in LD as well.
@drgcandle Thank you so much! Well, I didn't do anything else and my biorythm is ruined for a few days, but I guess that's the price. :laughing:
Love the "income engine" and thought it was super chill!
More trees for the people!
A bit easy once you have a good cash flow but the gameplay is so satisfying !
Congrats
Truly remarkable one man submission.
@robowarrior1982 Thank you so much! Well, it's a much more interesting this way and it also matches the theme! :smile:
@promzona Thanks for the suggestion. Yeah, maybe there could be a speed up function. I think the wait is necessary as a preparation, resource generation before a new wave... but maybe instead I could just reward the player with the resources that would have been generated through waiting. Same end results, but more streamlined experience. (But personally I would miss those 10 peaceful seconds before the action. :smile: )
@enver-arco Thanks, I tried my best not to overwhelm the player while also always providing something new with each level. :)
@bananplyte Haha, glad to hear that, cheers!
@universeflow Thank you! :)
@zoranac Thanks for the feedback! :) Yep, I guess having a secure place were you could hide all your generator trees, while you have a strict frontline.. makes it pretty easy. :D At first I wanted to have tons of enemies on that level, due to these reasons... but then I thought maybe people couldn't figure out this strategy and couldn't finish the game.
@magalix Yep, I should have put some kind of hard or soft limit on the blue trees, they are a bit op once you have enough of them. :smile: Thanks for playing, cheers!
@kujoen Glad to hear that you managed to finish it, thanks for playing, appreciate it! :)
- Great game, very fun, loved the art.
- I noticed that you could go over the max aether value
- The health bars had nice animation, but the name was a little small to read for some of them
- It would be cool if I could command the treants to move when there are no enemies so they don't stack and better protect the grove perimeter, instead of one corner, but I learned to do just that with the oak trees in treant-ready positions
- I found I didn't have enough time to read the different tree descriptions (fully) before a wave started, maybe have a start button or go over it when new tree is introduced
- I didn't notice the treant hotkey, could have been useful
- Purple tree sounded nice in theory (and expensive), but I didn't notice much effect in practice. At the very least maybe make it look better, focus players attention on the new spawned oak tree, make it scream "look I did something"
Good idea, added to my post jam todo list: Either during the waiting period, or when out of combat for a few seconds, the player should be able to command them. All I knew is that I didn't want them to be controlled, but I didn't realised that there could be a nice middle-ground. Thanks! :) What do you mean by "do just that with the oak trees in treant-ready positions"? Didn't quite get it but it sounds interesting. :D
Awesome idea, I'll definitely add a manual Start button! So you think it should plant saplings quicker? And any ideas on how to get the player's attention? :D
Thanks for the feedback, it was a goldmine, cheers! :heart:
I also experienced the max overflow on the previous level, but it's not that big of a deal.
You could even just have like positions treants go to when there are no enemies, or they could return to their "birth" place, which would add another layer of strategy.
What I mean is at first I tried to hide my trees from harm, but then I volunteered them and had 1 or 2 close to the spawn point so I could turn them into treants whenever enemies spawned from that direction and all my treants were on the other side of the map. I also tried to just chuck fresh oaks at enemies to keep them away, but I think the hp scales with age because they seem to go down much quicker.
I'm not exactly sure how it could be improved, all I know is when I saw the tree I thought "nice profit" but deploying it, when I would notice like 2 oak trees around I would be like "I could plant that myself for cheaper". Another question is how does it spawn the oak, because the player can't stack trees on top of each other, so what happens if the purple tree is surrounded by a "wall" of trees. Maybe the trees it spawns could automatically turn to treants when they mature? maybe have a sfx for when it spawns seed, maybe it could summon 5 oaks every 30 seconds, maybe have it spawn empowered trees having more hp (then also in treant form), or just buff the trees around them.
Nice balancing, not easy, but not so hard you didn't want to keep playing. Very nice.
liked the graphics, sfx and especially the game play. VERY well done :thumbsup:
*Might found a bug:*
I got stuck.
As you can see I have 0.0/sec, but the enemy stopped attacking, so it just stood there.
@kirass well, I'm alone, but thank you so much!
@josion Thank you for the kind words, appreciate it. :slight_smile:
@james-greenleaf Glad to hear that, thank you, now I'm really starting to think about continuing this. ^^ However I have a project I've been working on for 2 years and I'm at around 70%. So I shouldn't really slow its progress by starting into something new. :smiley:
@commanderstitch Thanks stitch, yeah, I'll improve that difficulty curve in the future. ^^ thanks for playing! :D
@incd021 Thanks, appreciate it! :slight_smile: Hmm, well, I guess the Aether tree's collider needs some work. And also the AI! :smiley: By the way, you can "restart" it with escape. Hmm, and on what screen & resolution are you playing on? I play on 1440p and I never saw those huge empty areas at the borders.
The game is an impressive compo !
@balimaarthebassfish Thank you balimaar, appreciate it <3
@senso Glad to hear that because I'm a Warcraft fan. Though for me the sounds reselmbe AoE a bit more. Thanks for playing, cheers! :)
@stmate03 Haha, thanks for playing, glad you like it, maybe I should continue developing this little game ^^
Also I did have a similar issue to @ntimi. If you are currently in the planting mode and then click the treant button (or use the hotkey) then it changes the mode but doesn't put the icon under the mouse cursor.
It took me a while to understand what I needed to do, but I suspect that's also on me.
Graphics is cute but is there a way how to open it on fullscreen? Otherwise, it's quite small (nothing I cannot handle but it would be better on fullscreen).
I like more types of trees that are useful in different ways. And the tradeoff of turning them into soldiers. Also, did I notice it right that there are different types of attacks? Do Aether treants shoot? This is also a very nice touch. A lot of thought was put in, I like it!
Thank you for the game!
You've managed to strike a balance between the game being too hard and trivial. I'm not a big fan of such kind of games, but once I found out what I should do to succeed, there was no stopping me! Also, I enjoyed the music and sound effects, they fit well together. And the cute pixel art, nothing felt out of place. Solid game!
Love the facts that each unit have several stages and you have to choose not only between different units but also between stages of each one.
Excellent entry!