Swarm Lord by Ptolo

[raw]
made by Ptolo for LD33 (JAM)
Dev-Kerrin are releasing their first game! :D

Play as the monstrous swarm lord who wants nothing more than to consume all life in the world. Brave robot defenders are set to defeat it but it's terrible powers of creation allow it to produce a swarm of minions.

It took a lot of work to add enough elements to make a passable RTS but I'm happy with how it worked out :3

EDIT:

When I posted this in my exhausted state I clean forgot to explain the mouse controls D:

- MOUSE CONTROLS -

Left click: select unit under mouse cursor.

left click and drag: bandbox round units.

Right click: give move order to units selected, units auto-attack when in range.

- ENEMY ROBOTS -

Freighter: Unarmed truck carrying food. Kill these for lots of Biomass to eat!

Recon: Small wheeled vehicle, fast but no match for members of the swarm.

Tank: Has high range and damage, make sure to engage with many units to overwhelm its slow rate of fire.

MegaTank: You do not want to get into range of these guns! Leave engaging these units until you have a proper swarm.

Replicator: [???]

- MOST IMPORTANT GAMEPLAY MECHANIC -

The swarm always hungers! The Swarmlord and any units it creates will need to eat or they will slowly lose health. Bugs will automatically eat any plant-life below them or dead units (ick) A fed bug will regenerate health.

The Swarmlord eats to collect Biomass to build units so send it moving over plants or near dead units. Try to keep the Swarmlord from getting hurt as it will need to spend Biomass to heal.


Thanks for all the feedback so far, the maps are random so I can't guarantee that every map is fair or even possible, such is the life of the Swarmlord :P

EDIT2:

Had a question about binaries be asked so I'd like to explain that the whole game was written in JavaScript, you can see the source code in the linked Github account :) I've added an explanation of each file to the Readme there. The folder 'public_html' is exactly the same as the one being embedded in this page.

Just for fun I added a link straight to the embedded webpage, now you can play Swarm Lord at whatever your monitor's fullscreen resolution is at! Sadly my code for placing tiles is horribly unoptimised and the framerate stutters on my machine at 1600x900 D:

Ratings

Coolness 45% 1415
Overall(Jam) 3.57 242
Audio(Jam) 2.96 455
Fun(Jam) 3.48 232
Graphics(Jam) 3.00 701
Humor(Jam) 2.29 773
Innovation(Jam) 3.52 167
Mood(Jam) 3.14 507
Theme(Jam) 3.42 553

Feedback

Rongefilet
25. Aug 2015 · 16:18 UTC
Very impressive attempt at RTS, pretty hard on the first try, maybe a tuto would be a plus. ^^
Daniel X. Moore
25. Aug 2015 · 16:20 UTC
Pretty neat game! Was a little tough to figure out at first but once I learned how to build and control my guys I ate all the stuff and busted up those tanks!
ZzCalvinzZ
25. Aug 2015 · 17:15 UTC
hard at first to learn controls, but that makes sense...after getting the hang of it, the gameplay is fun. good job!
MrTwister
26. Aug 2015 · 00:15 UTC
Impressive! Loved it!
It's really hard though. But it's the kind of enjoyable difficulty :)
Zambini
26. Aug 2015 · 16:17 UTC
Nice! RTS for a game jam is ambitious :)

It's hard, and I didn't initially fully understand what generated resource.

Cool background score! It is very mellow and relaxing and a nice contrast to the gameplay :D
pi_pi3
27. Aug 2015 · 13:16 UTC
Where are the binaries?
crucknuk
28. Aug 2015 · 19:37 UTC
It was very ambitious to start an RTS during a jam, good job!
IonProgramming
01. Sep 2015 · 00:36 UTC
Difficult, but fun. The music was very peaceful...
Biruts
02. Sep 2015 · 00:50 UTC
Very nice project guys, i really love it, please check our game too and if you liked it give us a vote. Look for Road to hell and enjoy.
oskardevelopment
08. Sep 2015 · 17:34 UTC
Awesome game! I'm really missing the RTS in the Ludum Dare! Loved the idea of eating! Could been nice if the swarm didn't loose as much health as quickly (if at all) when being located on "drained" land. Nice music and a good mood!
aberdeenphoenix
10. Sep 2015 · 16:32 UTC
This is excellent! Love it. I think more instructions would really help with the learning curve. Fairly easy once I figured it out, but at first I didn't realize the connections between different parts of the interface or what I was supposed to be doing.
tweedle
14. Sep 2015 · 21:26 UTC
Liked this a lot! I'm a big fan of RTS games, and this is a solid idea for one.
It was a bit hard at first, and I think a tutorial would be helpful for new players.
Great job!