Last Stand by TheMightyTrout

[raw]
made by TheMightyTrout for Ludum Dare 50 (JAM)

Last Stand

Enemy forces have surrounded you castle and are beginning to siege. You are outnumbered and it’s only a matter of time before your castle is reduced to rubble. Use the materials available to you to build defences to delay the inevitable.

How to play: Build Phase: 1. Select a material to build with. 2. Place blocks to protect your castle. 3. Press the play button to start Defending.

Defence Phase: 1. During the Defence Phase you cannot build more blocks. 2. Click on blocks with the activatable symbol to turn them on. Use them wisely. 3. Rounds get progressively harder. 4. Different materials can withstand more hits, but they cost more.

Controls: 1. Place Block/use activatable block: Left mouse button 2. Rotate Block: Mouse Scroll/right Mouse button

Blocks

  1. Glass (basic): Glass is the weakest and lightest block but also the cheapest option.
  2. Wood (basic): Wood has a moderate strength and weight and therefore can withstand a few hits from projectiles but is a bit more expensive.
  3. Stone (basic):Stone is the strongest and heaviest block and is therefore more sturdy and therefore can withstand a few hits from projectiles but is a bit more expensive.
  4. Zappy (special):An enhanced wooden block with Plasma Powers. Active: turn on the Plasma for a short period of time, any projectile that hits the laser will be instantly destroyed

Basic blocks can be placed as either a Square or a rectangle:

Credits: 1. Game made using Godot game engine 2. All art was created by us, exclusively, in Microsoft PowerPoint (not even joking) 3. Sound effects were all compose and recorded by us, using whole range of unconventional sound gathering techniques and edited in audacity 4. Background music acquired from external source: https://www.bensound.com/

Ratings

Overall 961th 3.318⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 627th 3.432⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 770th 3.227⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1080th 3.273⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1199th 2.727⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 818th 2.875⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 948th 2.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1042th 3.132⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 14🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

Skyward4d
05. Apr 2022 · 08:51 UTC
Really neat concept that fits the theme nicely.
I could only get through the first few rounds myself after several attempts, but the gameplay was intuitive and fun.
Also, it's hilarious to me that you made the assets in powerpoint. Nice job!
cad
05. Apr 2022 · 08:59 UTC
Fun game! Got to round 5. I enjoyed the attention to detail when it came to having the cannon balls damage the castle only when the speed was high enough (or so it seemed!). Props for using Godot engine. One thing that would've been nice is a more tight endplay loop (where when I lose it tears down the experience and restarts everything nicely).

Happy LD50!
math1369
05. Apr 2022 · 09:21 UTC
I like the game. It's very simple, but fun. It reminds me of Angry Birds. The music is a bit annoying after a while. Maybe a little longer audio would have been better with more variety. I would have liked a restart button and the ability to adjust the volume.
Ben Newington
05. Apr 2022 · 09:32 UTC
@math1369 Thanks for your review ! Our initial idea was actually reverse angry birds haha
Ben Newington
05. Apr 2022 · 09:43 UTC
@cad Thanks for your review ! The hit detection code was soooo buggy for most of the development so I'm glad you noticed it :D
LDJam user 245333
05. Apr 2022 · 10:01 UTC
I'm surprised that the physics works so well! I feared my blocks would fall the instant I drop them, but they manage well to stay balanced. It's pretty fun to build defenses with them! Didn't find the zappy block that useful though. Tricky to use, and overall less efficient that the good ol' rock.

Nice job!
LDJam user 5143
05. Apr 2022 · 13:59 UTC
I found the easiest way to defend your castle! If you build a bunker around cannons, they will can't shoot to your castle.

And sometimes rotating is really uncomfortable. I think it will be better if you change rotating to constant angles. For example: if you click right button, your block around to 20 degrees. It will be help to build more accuracy buildings.

It is a fun concept! Good job!
🎤 TheMightyTrout
05. Apr 2022 · 14:55 UTC
thank you everyone for your feedback! its great to see that even with a few notes on how to improve the game that everyone is enjoying it.
@cad a reset button is one of the things we would have liked to implement that we didnt quite have time for.
@itooh i would love to hear your thoughts as to how we could make the zappy block more useful
@kurakurture glad you found a stratagy that worked for you! in future updates after the game jam we are planning to update the game to restrict blocks being placed within the enemy zones (where the cannons are). and as for rotating the block you can use right click to rotate clockwise a bit smoother than the mouse wheel. we decided against incrementing the rotation by a set angle as we wanted a bit more freedom and precision of the angles that you can place the blocks at
🎤 TheMightyTrout
05. Apr 2022 · 15:01 UTC
@skyward4d if you find that funny wait until you hear how the sound effects were made. the cannon explosion was a recording of us slaming a draw shut (the bang sound) and the boiling of a kettle (the grumbley part) and even better.........the building a block sound was a combination of hitting a coin on a coke bottle (hammer sound) and us scraping a knife accross some burnt tost (saw sound) (needless to say that the other people in the house thought we were going a bit crazy)
MrPouletBZH
05. Apr 2022 · 15:44 UTC
Nice concept, but it was a bit difficult to build efficient defenses x) I had a bug where the rotation of the block wouldn't stop, but pressing the right click again would stop it. Nice work overall!
🎤 TheMightyTrout
06. Apr 2022 · 12:35 UTC
@mrpouletbzh thanks for the feedback, would like to know if the bug happend just once or if it was a reoccuring bug. also the reason the game has been ballenced to be a litte on the difficult side is because we had to ensure the inevitibility thatthe castle will eventually fall to fit with the theme.
Kat
06. Apr 2022 · 18:49 UTC
Nice entry! Love the sound effects and the physics in play.
lootgrounds
06. Apr 2022 · 19:16 UTC
I played this game and I loved completely breaking the game and playing for like 20 minutes with destructions and gameover screen in front of everything
fc85057
07. Apr 2022 · 02:00 UTC
What a unique concept and executed extremely well! Easy to pick up and a lot of fun to play. The audio is great as well. A little more feedback on what you can place where would put this into "full-fledged" game territory. Great job.
Martta
07. Apr 2022 · 17:24 UTC
Good game! Reset option would have been super important, needed to reload the page for couple of times. But other than that, nice that you had time to make music, sound effects and variety in building blocks. As next improvement maybe adding more beefy effects all over the place, like some wood splintering then the cannon hits etc, smoke, blood and rubble everywhere! Also maybe next you could add variety on the enemies and it would show you what enemy is coming next. I really like the game and little bit of work i could see myself playing this game for fun hours and hours! And btw. I managed to get to the wave 4 after 3 tries. :)
Quinn_Patrick
07. Apr 2022 · 17:43 UTC
This is a concept that I never even considered. Engineering the best defenses within a physics engine is really fun. I found it pretty challenging. Only getting $12 per level makes it difficult to move up to higher level defenses. It would also be nice if there was a way to remove old or damaged pieces, or rearrange ones that have fallen out of place. A lot of times, pieces that I needed before started getting in the way of better ones that I can afford now.

The audio is really good, too. The music is fitting and easy to listen to. Good job, overall, I enjoyed this.
arqitech
08. Apr 2022 · 17:02 UTC
Wow! :smiley:

I really like this concept!
It reminds me of angry birds, except this time you're defending, not destroying :wink:
I managed to get to wave 3, also I think, that everything except glass is a little expensive.

Overall a good game, well done! :thumbsup:
TheBookSnail
09. Apr 2022 · 20:48 UTC
I got got round 13 first try, very addictive. The physics works out so great, I don't know how you did that. I kind of stuck to the same strategy and I didn't get too creative.
0x746564
12. Apr 2022 · 02:37 UTC
Interesting take on the Tower defense genre. I didn't realize I was supposed to be building from the ground up at first so I placed things floating in the sky.

Others have mentioned it but a reset screen would have been handy. I did think it was fun that you could play on the gameover screen.
01FE7E
12. Apr 2022 · 20:36 UTC
It's reversed Angry Birds. Cool creative concept.
I think it would be nice if the physics would be simulated during building phase.
LDJam user 268300
12. Apr 2022 · 20:40 UTC
Really good submission. I really like the variation in the canonball direction. One thing that I would have liked is an indicator to show if I could build something.