Destructo by JPGFG

Destructo is a Turn-Based Tactics style Roguelike with an UNSTABLE™ twist!
Ensure to play on Full Screen!!!
This game was a solo dev project moved to the Jam because I busted time on the Compo. I had a ton of fun building out this project and learned a ton in the process.
When playing keep your eye on the changing tile colors which marks unstable ground. Also when the game reverts to the main menu it is because you died, I neglected to add any sort of death screen, so it's just like death in real life. Both of these will be addressed for the post jam version!
I really hope you enjoy, and if you play, make sure you leave a comment in the comments so I can go play your games too!! Also I would love to hear about any bugs you find or difficulties you have with the game as it was built in a short period of time so I'm sure there are some bugs!
Known Bugs as of 10/5/21 **
-A rare bug where enemies will glitch into illegal positions and break the loop. Leaving the command list empty.
--If you find yourself with this bug just use the reset button, runs are meant to be fast so there's no harm in resetting!
IF YOU LIKE THIS:
I am considering building this out to a full release, BUT I do not wish to work alone. If YOUR pixel art blows my art out of the water, and you're interested in this working on this game. PLEASE send me an e-mail here -->>> jp.greasefiregames@gmail.com
Anyway, thanks again for playing,
JP @ GreaseFireGames
Ratings
| Overall | 713th | 3.551⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 655th | 3.5⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 948th | 3.123⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 727th | 3.565⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 592th | 3.775⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 649th | 3.294⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 825th | 3.348⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 106🗳️ | 127🗨️ |
The particles were very nice and the artstyle and console helped keep everything clear.
Gotta smash those mike (clone)s haha :D
One improvement I'd suggest is keeping the warning longer visible. It got a bit confusing at times having to remember the unstable ground. But overall very cool! (ps: greetings from the stream haha)
I really like the graphics and I'm impressed that you have a full turn based tactical engine going in just a couple days, bravo!
also greetings from the stream :)
I liked art and juiciness of killing ennemies / openning chests
Good work !
One thing that could be improved is the how to choose actions because clicking on move, attack and end turn became a bit annoying at the end
I think the tactics parts worked quite well and was surprised that you were able to effectively code one for a game jam, very nice work!
Art was quite nice, but the music was kindof intrusive on the experience. Sound effects as well were very abrupt and sharp compared to the music.
As far as balance goes, I went to save up for the move speed increase, but as soon as I had enough crystals, the price increased :( and by then I had to fight the next level of creatures, and they washed me fast!
2nd run went better haha.
Anyways, great entry, as others said maybe some keybinds would be great, but other than that I thought the idea was cool and I'd like to see more!
Pretty simple but the unstable ground was a nice touch !
The ground animation and pixel art was the the srength of the game for me !
(+) ground made up by blocks ... I do like them, they give the 2D some 3D's element
(o) pixel art should be in the same size / pattern
(o) the battlemaps could be bigger (5x5 -> 8x8)
(-) random events can easily end a run, especially when the path
(-) it is not clear when loot is gained from slayed monsters, maybe a lootbag/-stack are spawned by a monster's death?
(o) diagonal movement & attacking could be quite cool
(o) prices should not go up when you don't buy, and save exp for movement lvl2
(-) when getting a health upgrade, there should be no need for being healed full
I think with your current setup, you could go from a tactics style movement to something more like a roguelike since you only have "move" and "attack". you could use WASD to move and if you move into an enemy, it attacks them.
With the current tactics style movement, it would have been easier if you could select your abilities with keyboard too:
[1] Select Move
[2] Select Attack
[Space] End Turn (could also be cool if it ends your turn automatically if you have already moved and attacked)
- at least in the early game, keep the unstableness indicators on-screen. Having to memorize what ground will be removed is an extra complication that can be added later as difficulty progression.
- similarly, add indicators for where the gold is dropped. First I didn't realize I had to pick it up.
https://youtu.be/8_LZxCDpWIE?t=8938
It was a lot of fun and I'm surprised you could make this many systems in a single weekend, nice job! I was a little conflicted killing the enemies since they were all named Mike, just like me. Oh well, the best Mike survives.
@zliebowitz I'm surprised you could afford it so early! That's intentional though, it's meant to be the most powerful upgrade in the game.
@bentglasstube yeah that procedural tile destruction seems to cause some issues sometimes with blocking the player from completing levels.
@weine You don't actually have to pick up any items the xp and gold are automatically added to your inventory after killing enemies or opening a chest.
@mhorth Hey yeah that's the bug I have been hearing about where the command list blanks out and cannot be played. It appears to be due to enemies moving to illegal tiles and breaking the game loop.
wish there could be more random shape and size of terrain. the pace is a little bit slow(maybe more enemy and reward would be better?)

I liked the graphics :thumbsup:
The move works like a teleportation : you can go to a tile at a distance of two, even if there is a huge gap of void between you and the tile. It's a little too bad, and decreases the consistency and strategic interest of the game. A little pathfinding function would have solved this.
It looks like there is a delay between the money and XP you earn and the values displayed on the interface. It should be indicated immediatly after you killed a monster, and not at the end of a turn. I read the previous comments and it seems you have to pick up the gold dropped by a monster, which I did not realized. But it also seems that the last earnings of a level (when you reach the exit) are not counted. In short : the handling of XP and gold earned is either buggy or not easily understandable, and I totally get lost into it.
As said in other comments : the complete randomness of block destruction may cause levels that you can not finish. But this randomness is quite cool and is a great application of the theme. So I would just add the possibility to rebuild blocks (it may cost golds). This would solve the problem while keeping the game coolness.
And of course : more monsters, more weapons, more attack patterns (bow, fireball, cone of clod, bomb, ...), more terrain types, more unstabiliy events, more loot, etc. But you already know that.
I'll play more tommorrow
Really cool that you could get something like this going in the time. It's a great base for enhancing it further and could get good with more work being put in.
Sometimes I did not really know why I died, I also have not really understood when enemies attacked me. I think some animations would add a ton.
Also sometimes you would not be able to reach the end as the floor breaks away. Even if the move teleports you, sometimes the gap is too big, but i think some kind of retry instead of death would be awesome for this.
Also I don't know exactly how exp / gold worked as sometimes I killed enemies but did not have more resources in the shop at the end
I think adding some more terrain tiles would be a very senseful enhancements as it could greatly change up your route.
But again, great work for the time put in.
The mechanics that the game has right now work together pretty alright--it is possible to move around and at least attempt to get some upgrades. I think the main thing this game would benefit from is polish--it's unclear, for example, that you kind of have to walk over where enemies died in order to pick up their treasure.
I do think that the disappearing ground mechanic could use some elaboration. It would be nice to see a way to buy, for example, a bridge, or something that could save the player from standing on the ground, or whatever. This is because I think it's alright for the game to have RNG elements that can randomly end your run (it is a roguelike), but it would be even better if it were possible to mitigate that RNG through careful spending and planning.
One small note is I got softlocked one time, where the ground disappeared below me but I didn't die.
@recher Thanks for your input on the possibilities for changes to the formula to affect RNG. I like the cruelty but it is problematic when the game doesn't allow you to continue beyond a certain stage.
@cyangmou thanks for your input, it means a lot that you actually came over to play it. I'm gonna be squashing bugs next week, and I've decided to build out the game for real and have a few directions I'm thinking about taking.
@honey-pony Thanks for your notes, I definitely agree that it could use some more polishing and I plan to continue to address some of the polish issues and the amount of bugs in the gameplay for the post jam version.
The audio is simple, but works well. The graphics are nice as well. Only thing I'd complain about for visuals is the smaller script font in the menu. It's not the easiest to read.
I did encounter a couple bugs. The first time I played and the first level, I did not receive any gold or xp. I think I had killed 2 enemies and got 1 chest. The other bug that stood out was when the character was surrounded by fallen land, all the actions vanished. Shouldn't it have just gone to game over?
Overall it's a nice jam entry. The mechanics are fun enough that it would be nice to see a more fleshed out version.
For the most part I thought the game was pretty fun. It's fairly easy to understand the controls of the game, and while it takes a bit too many clicks to make a turn pass, I appreciate the turn-based nature to at least think through what the next set of actions I should take. I think the floor dropping does add a neat formula to the classic. It would have been nice if the floor either blinked or stayed a different color when it's indicating the drop, because I often confused it with highlighting the tile (while having the red-shifting screen effect on.)
It's sort of curious that the player can upgrade their attack power very quickly. At first, the upgrade seems completely pointless given the player can already oneshot all enemies, but after a certain point, the enemies also upgrade to provide that incentive. It seemed, however, there were only two types of `Mike (clone)`, and it was very easy to upgrade attack before hand to a point where my character one-shots them. In fact, around the third playthrough, I did get to a point where I was nearly invincible, and merely died because I wasn't paying attention to the floor blinking animations.
The parts of this game that worked for me was trying to plan around tiles that fell and are no longer traversable. Needing to change my strategy due to changing landscape over, you know, performing Mike genocide made the game much more interesting. I think to emphasize this portion of the game, it would have been nice if more variety were added to various gameplay elements that really forced the player to take risks. For example, it would have been nice to see some more enemy variety, and with it, varied attack ranges and formations. Another obvious update would be adding more types of tiles (e.g. walls,) and maybe add more types of items. Adding some traversal-affecting items would be nice, too.
It's a good start: with a bit more time polishing the upgrade system and added variety of gameplay elements, I can see this becoming something bigger.