Last Breath by Pious

made by Pious for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

About:

Play Last Breath! Dive into a sci-fi thriller battle in the dimly lit corridors of your compromised spaceship. Keep in mind your suit stability and health as you judge which actions to take during a turn-based encounter. Be wary, blindly firing your weapon without watching your stats may lead to your demise.

Controls:

Action Selection: WASD or ARROW KEYS

Action Execution: ENTER or SPACE BAR

Pause: P KEY

Settings: V KEY

Restart Match: R KEY

Our Message:

Hey everyone!! Hope you enjoy our second Ludum Dare submission! At the beginning of this year three of us submitted our first LD submission, an ambitious project that, despite it being fun, we struggled to publish. This time, we narrowed our focus and got the help of a fantastic musician and sound designer to really push for a complete project with higher levels of polish! I think this is a game we are all very proud of. This was a chance for us to try new things, such as the fully lit 2.5D scene, or the pixel art assets. We would really appreciate any constructive criticism you can offer!

Credits:

Lead Game Design: Andres Solorzano @Pious

Lead Programmer: Giancarlo Perez @RezTheCoward

Lead Artist: Sofia Hayden @Sofimei

Lead Music and SFX: Peterson Normil @Agent-Peterson

Art:

Something emerges from the dark...

You've won... for now...

Edit:

Known Issues:

-UI Scaling and managing anchors with varying viewports is hard

~~-Stability at 0 should stun you for 3 turns, we may fix this bug~~

-Main Menu settings do not work for some reason. In-game pause menu volume settings do work though.

Fixes: Stun from lack of stability wasn’t properly inside the inspector, but now it is and so there are actually consequences from 0 stability as intended!

Link	https://rezthecoward.itch.io/last-breath
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/last-breath-1

Ratings

Overall	1332^th	3.014⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Fun	1499^th	2.286⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	1447^th	2.456⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Theme	1399^th	2.618⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	50^th	4.571⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Audio	218^th	3.853⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Mood	290^th	3.843⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Given		24🗳️	47🗨️

Feedback

juegoman

05. Oct 2021 · 05:06 UTC

Everything about the vibe of the game is spot on! The actual game play itself did get a bit monotonous though. Good Work!

baconharemthug

05. Oct 2021 · 05:11 UTC

Great audio and amazing graphics! The gameplay felt a little flat since it seems like the only reasonable thing to do is heal/restore sanity when it's not wasteful and spend the rest of your time shooting.

cerieyele

05. Oct 2021 · 05:13 UTC

Cool graphics and ambience, like this dithering. Honestly would like to play something like this, but bigger and better balanced, imho it's a bit overextended, but I understand why

Matt Fabius

05. Oct 2021 · 05:22 UTC

Love the concept! It's an interesting spin on turn-based strategy game, and the mix of 2D/3D art styles looks really unique. The audio and VFX definitely add that extra bit of polish that make it feel complete. My only complaint would be the enemy heals often for what feels like too much health so it ends up dragging on the battle to feel too long. Also, the UI menus are all really tiny, I think this might be any issue of the UI not scaling with screen size. Overall, it's a neat concept with a lot of polish for a game jam game. Nice work!

OllieOA

05. Oct 2021 · 05:39 UTC

The 2.5D look and feel is very nice! Combat is unfortunately way too slow, though, and it was tough to keep going.

Would love to see this expanded!

VPhyre

05. Oct 2021 · 13:43 UTC

What an excellent game! I really liked the artistic look of the game, the sounds are very good too. The gameplay is very interesting and creative, especially regarding the instability part.

It would be awesome to be able to play a complete RPG in space with this battle mechanic.

Congratulations!

LDJam user 261489

05. Oct 2021 · 14:39 UTC

very nice graphics

Graios

05. Oct 2021 · 18:43 UTC

Graphics are awesome but the game itself is way too slow and way too long for what actual gameplay there is imo. I also didn't notice any difference on whether I'm at full stability or 0, can someone point out the difference for me ?

🎤 Pious

05. Oct 2021 · 21:00 UTC

@juegoman Thank you! Apologies for the repetitiveness, it was the most we could do with few hours, we hope it was at least interesting and intriguing!

🎤 Pious

05. Oct 2021 · 21:02 UTC

@baconharemthug Thank you so much! Unfortunately there wasn’t very much time for more abilities and balancing but I hope you found it intriguing!

🎤 Pious

05. Oct 2021 · 21:44 UTC

@cerieyele Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it and I appreciate your understanding :)

Quite Good

05. Oct 2021 · 22:34 UTC

Really great artwork on this. It would be nice to have the classic rpg items and consumables to increase stats for a longer game. I think having varieties of attacks would also do a lot of favors to this flavor of game. Good stuff!

LarrySeinfeld

06. Oct 2021 · 01:14 UTC

Woooow, that art was stunning, loved the setting, and the music and sound was great! I'm a sucker for turn-based RPG battles, so naturally I loved playing it haha. I think there were some really cool ideas in here with having to micromanage your health and stability, I always love that. Would have been cool to see another attack ability that maybe a had a risk/reward aspect to it that the player could choose from every now and then and attack animations could have been a little faster. But those are small caveats in what was overall a very good job!

GuinyTime

06. Oct 2021 · 07:37 UTC

Wow, the graphics and characters in the game are really great and the 2.5D style is cool! I really like the pixel art you posted.

When I first started fighting monsters, I found that the monster's moves were fixed, and it could regenerate health until it exceeded its original health limit, while the main character could not! I had to keep repeating the monster attack cycle in a relatively rigid order to slowly drain the monster's health. It was a long, drawn-out battle and a little boring. Maybe the monster's moves are relatively random and I think it's more fun :)

kyboon

06. Oct 2021 · 09:29 UTC

The art style and music are great, but the gameplay gets repetitive after a certain point. And the stability point has no purpose, it falling to zero has no negative effect, I managed to win the game without using 'Stabilize'.

Gastar

06. Oct 2021 · 12:52 UTC

Really great visual style. But now you can beat game by only press attack and heal

suisou

06. Oct 2021 · 17:04 UTC

This art is so cool.But it takes too long to fight monster that let me find out defense is meaningless.:D Nice work

Erukolindo

06. Oct 2021 · 18:30 UTC

The art is great, the music is atmospheric, the base concept isn't bad, but the execution just isn't fun.
Out of the four things you can do there's never a good reason to defend. You heal when you're below 5 HP, you stabilize when you're below 50 stability, and on every other turn you attack. It feels bland, and becomes downright annoying when the enemy starts healing, causing the fight to just drag on.
If the enemy had a rarely used attacks that either target both HP and stability, or takes more HP/stability that you can restore in 1 turn it could make it more tactical.

TastiHam

06. Oct 2021 · 19:22 UTC

Amazing pixel art and great audio. Could be something like darkest dungeon with some depth on the gameplay. Would definitely benefit from random attacks on the enemy with some kind of indicator what he's gonna do next, so the player can actually make tactical decisions.

🎤 Pious

06. Oct 2021 · 22:12 UTC

@Matt-Fabius Thank you so much! I appreciate your understanding and haha unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for balancing too much, it is possible to beat but it’s pretty difficult and a bit dragged out

🎤 Pious

06. Oct 2021 · 22:13 UTC

@OllieOA Thank you for your feedback! :) The combat unfortunately had much to be desired but I’m glad you enjoyed how it looked and like the concept!

🎤 Pious

06. Oct 2021 · 22:15 UTC

@vphyre Thank you so much for your kind words! :) We appreciate your comment and time playing and we’re glad you liked the idea!

🎤 Pious

06. Oct 2021 · 22:16 UTC

@GeoBlackrU Thank you! Our wonderful lovely artist @sofimei did a great job :)

🎤 Pious

06. Oct 2021 · 22:17 UTC

@graios Thank you for the feedback! Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to balance and the combat was left wanting. Also the lack of consequences for stability was a bug resulting not properly putting it into the inspector, but we fixed it now!

Marshal

07. Oct 2021 · 01:54 UTC

Dead Space rpg I'm on to it haha, really nice game!!!

Radovik

07. Oct 2021 · 18:29 UTC

I really liked the game. The visuals and sound are great, but as others have said it is way too slow.

AdamCYounis

08. Oct 2021 · 02:47 UTC

Wow, such a beautiful entry. I loved the way the production elements came together in this one. The vibe was really strong, and it definitely feels like we've been dropped into a boss fight in the middle of an RPG. This felt a bit like a double-edged sword for me, as I didn't have much of a chance to engage with any of that world before the fight, and the pace of the combat felt like things were dragging on, before long. It's a well-balanced fight, but the impact of each turn being so minor made the stakes feel relatively low.

I would have loved to see a couple of smaller enemies and a little bit of intro narrative before this fight. This way, I think there would be less pressure to have the fight itself take up more time, and things like the boss healing HP could be removed. It makes sense for what the game is now, but is kind of annoying to see the player's progress get undone.

Overall, I wonder if decreasing the scope of the art just a touch might have opened up the scope for gameplay a little further? In any case, I enjoyed what I played, and feel like whatever comes from you next will definitely impress, as this has.

Thanks for the entry!

Tulkas

08. Oct 2021 · 19:27 UTC

Graphics were the best part of this. In time, gameplay repeats itself. So i think game could have been faster. This might been a counter thing for the repeatedness. Overall i liked it, good game!

Game_Coder28

09. Oct 2021 · 23:23 UTC

These graphics are spectracular! Like others have pointed out, the game is quite slow, but other than that the gameplay is great! good work!

arya-s

10. Oct 2021 · 14:50 UTC

I was really impressed by the artwork on this title. The sprites and title screen are not just beautiful, they also tie in really well with the 3d perspective and together with that set the mood. The music is really fitting too and I was imagining how we go tot this fight.

The gameplay felt a bit slow, I think that made it a bit difficult to really feel fun. As others have said, it feels like a bit of a slower less important fight in the game.

Overall I can see what you were going for and what you guys put out is really cool! Congrats.

Tom Kun

13. Oct 2021 · 04:13 UTC

Great game! I think the defend button/option is a little bit useless, and overall the gameplay is slow what other s have said.
Congrats!

Ismael Rodriguez

15. Oct 2021 · 01:28 UTC

Very cool entry. As other said, the game plays very slow. I'd recommend making sure all the actions last less than 1 second, because waiting for a few particles to fly across the screen isn't really fun, even though it IS really pretty. Yeah the game looks VERY good. The sound and the mood are perfect. Good job!

GullynGames

17. Oct 2021 · 21:25 UTC

I love the graphics and audio of the game! One downside of the game is that it gets very repetitive after the first few minutes - as soon as the enemy gets down to low health, it heals, making it hard to kill it. The mood of the game is great and I love the art style. Great job!