Nature vs. Demons by Lazzor

[raw]
made by Lazzor for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

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Intro

Nature is fragile, so we need to do everything we can to keep it safe. Unfortunately there are demons out there trying to corrupt everything in their wake. Trying to keep a balance between the forces of nature is no easy task and so you need to be the hero nature deserves. Find the source of the corruption and put an end to this demonic madness!

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Gameplay

Fight your way through multiple levels of strategic combat. Select your army from a multitude of nature creatures with different effects and abilities.

Be careful though. As nature is very fragile and the balance between the powers is unstable your creatures can become corrupted. Once this happens, they fight for the demons for the rest of the battle and can not be selected into your army any more. So keep an eye out for creatures that are close to being corrupted and choose the best army for the fight at hand.

Natures Last Hope

The creatures you have at the beginning of the game is all that is left of nature and all you have for the entire game. Once a creature is corrupted it will no longer be available for selection. Manage your creatures so that you can make it to the end to defeat the demons.

Environment

The environment your creature stands on comes with great advantages and disadvantages. Additionally, every creature can alter the environment on the battlefield. Gain the upper hand by using the environment to your advantage.

Attack Patterns

Every creature has its own attack pattern to strike the enemies or alter the environment. Position your creatures strategically to hit multiple targets at once.

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Ratings

Overall 864th 3.444⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Fun 928th 3.259⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 802th 3.259⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1373th 2.667⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1213th 2.926⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 1031th 2.48⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1217th 2.92⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 35🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

SlimmerBurger
04. Oct 2021 · 22:33 UTC
It's really impressive that you managed to make a tactics game is such short time. It's really good, although I couldn't really get the hang of the environment changing, I just attacked and it seemed to work fine most of the time
Mr_DanH
04. Oct 2021 · 22:44 UTC
Woah, there's a lot of game here, good job! A little bit overwhelming to understand all of the available units and environments when you first start, maybe slowly feed that to the player over a few missions.
kurrik
04. Oct 2021 · 22:44 UTC
I was impressed you had a whole strategy system with AI built for this! There's a bit of a steep learning curve to figure out how the unstable creatures thing worked, and I was wishing for a better way to see which characters I could control, but I'm really impressed with how much there is here!
dangerbleistift
04. Oct 2021 · 22:47 UTC
This is a very complex game for gamejam, congratz for managing to pull something like this up.
Was a little bit too much information for me, so i got overwhelmed by information on the screen pretty fast. nice game :)
SnubbishShrub
04. Oct 2021 · 23:32 UTC
I like it! The whole concept was pretty solid. I have to admit though, I kinda cheesed my way through the game; water is a little overpowered since you can heal past the HP limit and it carries over for each level (nothing could kill my 37hp rain coral, and it was giving him a bit of an ego). I feel like if extra hp didn't carry over, it'd be fine though. Overall, great game!
Emprime
05. Oct 2021 · 15:56 UTC
We actually never found that bug. Congratulations for finding it :D
baconharemthug
06. Oct 2021 · 22:51 UTC
An impressive amount of content and fun visual style. I felt like the game got a bit repetitive after the first few levels though, it might have been better to make fewer levels with more monsters per level.
Cody Creed
07. Oct 2021 · 19:16 UTC
Good strategy game. I had some trouble discerning my characters from the enemy ones.
Majadroid
07. Oct 2021 · 20:14 UTC
There aren't many people who dare to develop a strategy game in a game jam. You did a good job, but next time you may change your priorities a bit. I tink less different units and less differnt environment effect would have been abseloutly okay - maybe even better, in order to keep the learning curve flat (always better in a game jam). The time gained could well be put into music and sound effects, as this is extremely important for the atmosphere of a game.

Overall, good job!
🎤 Lazzor
09. Oct 2021 · 17:29 UTC
@slimmerburger @mr-danh @kurrik @dangerbleistift @snubbishshrub @baconharemthug @cody-creed @majadroid

First of all, thanks for all of your helpful feedback! The ambition of the project is something we always think about during development but unfortunately we are very undecisive about which parts we should leave out, as everything sounds cool at first. And then we are stuck having/wanting to implement it, which leaves us with a bunch of stuff that kind of works but not much polishing. But hey, that way there's always room for improvement the next time! :P

@majadroid I completely agree with you. The systems could have been easily scoped down in order to add more polishing and audio. That might be, because I always go into game jams, thinking audio would be a nice to have if there's still time in the end. But there's never time in the end so next time we'll try to add audio right from the start of the project! :)
Life_Lich
09. Oct 2021 · 21:48 UTC
As have been pointed out already the game feels very overwhelming at first, but I do not consider this to be a bad thing, for strategy games like this and most strategy games do feel overwhelming at first, but maybe I am wrong also good art work.
Mighty Tiny
10. Oct 2021 · 12:39 UTC
As others have said, there is a LOT to this at first, but once you get the hang of that, it is pretty fun.
jessefreeman
10. Oct 2021 · 17:28 UTC
This was really good and I found myself playing longer than some of the other games. Great job!
Guilloteam
10. Oct 2021 · 17:40 UTC
I'm impress with all the features you created in a single jam, congrats! It was a lot of fun, I just think characters were really tinies on the screen
cirno
11. Oct 2021 · 00:53 UTC
It's really hard work to finish a tactical game in the jam! The abilities of changing environments is also fun that I can cover multiple enemies or allies with the environment then fight. The action point seems to be a little low and the direct attack uses the action point more efficiently.
Bearacus
19. Oct 2021 · 20:08 UTC
Wow an RTS in a 3 day game jam! amazing! I love the visuals! shame there's no sounds but considering all this content you have, it's understandable. Great work!