Warden of the Depths by Alex de la Cour
As the last hope for humanity, the Warden of the Depths, it is down to you to fight your way through a dungeon filled with deadly monsters.
In this game, the only time you can deal damage to an enemy is when they are staggered from a successful parry. Unfairly, they can kill you with one shot. Do you have what it takes to best them?
My use of the theme was that enemies give a clear signal, flashing red, before they attack. Wait for this, and then smash that parry button!



Made entirely by myself, Alex de la Cour, with the exception of audio.
SFX were sourced at https://pixabay.com/
Music by Eric Matyas at https://soundimage.org/
Controls:
Controller (RECOMMENDED)
Move: Dpad, left stick Attack: X Parry: RB Jump: A Dash: RT Camera pan up/down: right stick
Keyboard/Mouse:
Move: WASD, arrows Attack: control, left mouse Parry: alt, right mouse Jump: space Dash: shift, middle mouse Camera pan toggle: F (hold)
Day one update: added a browser build. For best results, play in full screen.
| Link | https://alex-de-la-cour.itch.io/warden-of-the-depths |
| Link | https://alex-de-la-cour.itch.io/warden-of-the-depths |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/warden-of-the-depths |
Ratings
| Overall | 579th | 3.356⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 476th | 3.297⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 735th | 2.763⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 783th | 2.579⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 422th | 3.763⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 459th | 2.667⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 665th | 3.181⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 65🗳️ | 101🗨️ |
Have uploaded a web build, thanks for the tip, think I'll just nix the download link on here.
Some attack hurtboxes seem to exist on frames where the sprite isn't there yet. Projectiles can hit you in really weird situations and much further away from you than what you'd expect. I definitely think decoupling the hurtboxes of the player, enemies, and projectiles from their size that you use to determine their floor/wall collision would do wonders. The hurtboxes should be smaller in general, for sure.
Also, there are a couple other issues that can be pain points. Enemies can push each other? Making your (correct) spacing get you killed. The whip enemy can spend a frame or two moving forward in between attacks, meaning if you're too close they will just walk into you and you die that way. Also, the zombie and whip guy's red flashes require different timing? Which is odd, it's like you're taught to react one way, then immediately punished for it the next time.
Finally, I think the wall jumping could use some improvement. I'm not entirely sure how other games do it in a way that feels better, but I found I had to readjust the muscle memory I built playing other games, to the way this was programmed. Holding towards a wall to wall cling, then the second you hit jump, that direction thwarts your jump, tends to feel bad. Also you can clip on corners of ceilings, hovering infinitely. Just small corner case stuff.
I know I had a lot of criticisms, but know that I still had a good time and played it to the end! I think a bit more time on the little Q.O.L. things would have elevated this game a bunch, and what was there was already quite good. Nice work!
I don't think I have any negatives, maybe just that the walljumping was sometimes a bit glitchy, as if the collision was hunting pixels to hold onto, not sure, but that is understandable for a JAM game, so I didn't take that in consideration :) Overall amazing game.
And in that fight, you can run/dash to the right and only one of the zombies will go after you.
Also sorry about that last level, I could feel the frustration watching the video every time you died! Especially with those projectile hit boxes, WAY too big.
Anyway - I really appreciate you giving it a second go and completing it. Hero.
Originally you didn't have to parry, but I realized about halfway through the final day that it was way too easy to just blast through the game and kill everyone and never parry once and I felt like that defeated the point of the main mechanic. Glad you still enjoyed it though.
I'm also glad you appreciate that whip animation - I was wondering what was wrong with me deciding to put in such a tricky weapon to animate, swords are so much easier! But sometimes you just gotta' have fun and make cool looking stuff.
Thanks for the game!
Running into enemies kills the player, but in hindsight this probably wasn't the best idea, and I should have only made attacks able to kill. That's definitely something to put on the list for any future improvements.
But thanks for playing, and I appreciate the feedback! Maybe one day I'll expand on this because I enjoyed making it more than any previous jam game.
Trying to play the web version on my MacBook Pro in Safari doesn't work properly. None of the environment displays for some reason. It worked fine in Chrome though.
Nice game! The art was great, the movement felt pretty good and snappy. A few pieces of feedback though. The attack telegraphing needs a tiny bit more, especially at the begining. Have a few easier enemies that telegraph a little heavier, then start to get a little more precise as it goes on, just to help people get used to it. I don't mind difficult games, I tend to enjoy them when that is part of the point and the game is designed around it, but they need to feel fair. The parrying itself isn't bad once you get used to it, the problem is that the enemies just barely touching you especially when they aren't even attacking, or sometimes not even touching you, kill you. There is no grace period and the attacks don't fully match their hit boxes. If the enemies couldn't hurt me just by touching me then this would already work a bit better. Getting killed by a zombie because another zombie slightly pushed it one pixel closer to me doesn't feel very fun. haha
All that being said, the core of what you have here is really good and you should be proud of it. Nice work!

I think if you could only be hit during an attack and not just moving around that might feel better, although its a pretty big design change. I felt really cool doing the double projectile parry and then fell straight into the flames, that was rude.
Also that's strange about the visuals on Macbook, I've never stopped to think about any difference in building for browser between mac and PC. Have you ever seen a problem like that in other browser games?
Also sorry about those flames - I was really deliberating hard over whether to put that. It was meant to be a callback to the start of the level where it tells you to look down, and then the first time I playtested that level I forgot and jumped right into them myself.
Anyway - well done on completing!
A few things that I got caught up on
- Hit detection could be a bit more generous for the player. Seemed like the player would get damaged without actually getting hit. Most noticeable standing to the left or right of the purple fire.
- In the section with the two zombies, if they ended up next to each other, while one was winding up an attack, the other would push it forward, making it impossible to stand close enough to trigger the attack and not die to the zombie getting pushed into me, even if I got the parry stun off.
Great entry! Thanks for the game and the fun challenge!
I noticed that during wall jumps, if you reach the exact corner of a ledge, it can feel a bit glitchy, probably because the character is rapidly switching between two states there.
One small thing I would also prefer is being able to run fully off-screen before the next level loads. Right now it feels a bit like you’re hitting a level boundary while the screen fades and loads.
But thats criticism on a high level. I had a lot of fun with it!
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
*EDIT: no idea why it doesn't display the "Game complete" image*
*On that topic it would be cool to see the amount of deaths it took me to complete the game*
Overall I liked the game - visual and audio were made (and selected) pretty well.
At the same time while figuring what to do with the two zombies on second level (took me around 10 attempts) I noticed parry button didn't have a CD, so spamming parry would work about 90% of the time. That was the only real counter I found to these zombies moving one another into my face sadly.
The rest of the levels felt better in that regard, but I did have to spam parry one more time on the 3-HP whipper + 1-HP zombie + out-of-screen shooter floor.
The attack's hitbox not connecting while staying in the enemy also felt a bit weird, but probably to the better with on-touch hit mechanics.
One major issue I felt was not seeing fire on the floor below - felt punishing for not being able to look down on the level with "pick left or right pit".
Altogether I see the potential in the game and I think I would enjoy a longer version - with natural game jam issues fixed. Good job!
I indeed forgot to add a parry cooldown and that's something else that'll go in any update - my tactic on those two zombies was very quickly dash to one side and then only one zombie follows you, but then again I didn't make it known that they have a distance on their line of sight.
On the level with the fire pit drop downs there's actually a tutorial that flashes up on the screen before the first drop-through platform that tells you how to look up/down, similar to the other pop-ups in the previous levels, but maybe I didn't make that obvious enough.
Either way - thanks for playing, I appreciate the feedback. I'm glad you see potential, I'm inclined to agree and I'm actually working in my spare time on a proper demo for this because I had a ton of fun working on and playtesting it.
Has issues with the control mapping in my controller. I didn't like the trigger being jump.
Also some of the help text was not appearing in the web build, I see a darkened box appear at the bottom of the screen with nothing on it.
That's annoying about the web build issues. Were you playing on windows? I had someone have issues with the web build on a mac. Anyway - apologies for that!
Anyway, don't worry about quitting at that point - that was the last level! I probably should have toned it down a bit, I struggled to complete that during playtesting but by that point my brain was pretty frazzled and I just needed to get something out!
This is easily one of the most polished and complete-feeling games I've played this jam. The controls, the parrying, the graphics, the sound (even if you took the sounds from somewhere else, you integrated them well). I had a really really good time with this one.
I think a lot of people are saying it's too punishing, and I do agree. The parry window could have definitely been longer (although you could've also made the cooldown longer for parrying again). But some of my bigger issues were actually just bugs. The biggest one is that sometimes I couldn't hit enemies after parrying them (basically forcing me to restart the level), but one of the biggest ones for me was that enemies could push other enemies into me. The two zombies in particular were rough - I'd stand, ready to parry, just to get killed by the second zombie pushing the first one. I think the roll timing could've also been slightly more forgiving too, just by giving the player ~200ms to roll once they touch fire before dying.
But none of that's to take away from how great of a job you did on everything else - if I look past the difficulty, I think this might have been the most traditionally fun game I've played this whole jam. Amazing work, and would love to see a post-jam version if you ever make one!
I fully agree on all other aspects, both the criticisms and bug reports. I was definitely victim to spending too much time on the art and animations and not leaving myself enough time to bug fix and tweak/balance. And some of them are so easy to fix like spending literally 2 seconds removing collisions between enemies! But that's the curse of the game jam I suppose.
Either way - I'm glowing from hearing those kind words. Awesome.
Strongly agree with those nitpicks. I really could have done with just that final 5-10% extra polish and playtesting but I majorly ran out of steam.
Thanks for playing!
Yeah, it was definitely designed with controller gameplay in mind, the keyboard controls were sort of crowbarred in in hindsight. I playtested in a bit with KBM and it definitely felt clunky too.
Cheers for playing though!
But thanks for playing!