Sorcery's End by James Dunlap

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

You've created a new world, but something's gone wrong this time. On the horizon appears a swarm of ruthless creatures, determined to destroy the Heart of your operations. You must make defenses as quickly as possible, or else you'll be overwhelmed. Is destruction inevitable?

How to play

"Sorcery's End" is a round-based tower defense game. At the start of every round, you get currency. You then have a limited time to place laser towers, missile towers, and mines before being swarmed by enemies. You can't place towers next to each other, but you can place mines wherever you like. The map is randomly generated so each game will be unique.

Controls

WASD - Move

Q+E - Rotate

Left Mouse Button - Select/build structures

Right Mouse Button - Deselect

Scroll Wheel - Zoom

Screenshots

screen.png

shot.png

unknown.png

Credits

James - Coding

Anthony - Coding

Cameron - Graphics, models, animations

Oliver - Music, SFX

Important Note

The WebGL version does suffer from lower performance and will lag especially with a lot of units on the screen. We have not experienced this in the downloadable versions.

Ratings

Overall 816th 3.441⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1048th 3.029⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1175th 2.721⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Theme 789th 3.574⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 604th 3.765⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Audio 551th 3.409⭐ 35🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1085th 3.088⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Given 35🗳️ 50🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 0
04. Apr 2022 · 14:44 UTC
Didn't actually know what to do, however from the screenshots the game looks quite strategic.
Sita
04. Apr 2022 · 14:57 UTC
I must say... technically it's a very impressive game, which must've meant tons of work.

I did rate the game highly, so I'm gonna comment on some nitpicks that I do have:

- I don't know whether this issue is only present in WebGL version, but the game runs a fair bit slower when zoomed out.

- the camera should start right next to base, got confused at first what should I defend

- the game would be great with a bit more polish - user interface, some tutorial, pausing the game

But given the amount of stuff in game, the quality of it and timeframe - it is at the very least very impressive.
Ambear
04. Apr 2022 · 16:14 UTC
![photo_2022-04-04_21-11-52.jpg](///raw/705/93/z/4a881.jpg)

Really lagging in webGL version, play only in portable
I want waves in this game be more recognizable, like different music till battle time and till building time
I really liked graphics in this game, style is very nice
ANd music good
Good job, want to see more games from your team!
LDJam user 76491
04. Apr 2022 · 16:21 UTC
Congrats for the game:v:! The furthest I got was level 12, here are some of my thoughts:
- I don't know if this was intended, but I really liked how the game would look like after some time when you zoom it completely out. The swarms of insects crawling and getting hit by the strobbing lights were a sight to behold haha.
- The game did lag quite a bit after zooming out, though.
- The design of the base and the towers were great :gem:
- It seemed that I couldn't build towers while the waves were happening. I think this is intended but I was a bit confused at first. My first tactic was to build 1 tower then wait to see where the enemies would come from, but then I got killed really fast haha.
- Speaking of which, I think there could be a better "separation" for the "building phase" and the "wave phase", something that could make it clear whether you gotta build towers or sit back and root for success.
- The game wasn't very difficult once I got the hang of it, until wave 12 at least. But it was very fun.
- I like that the terrain was randomized for every game.
- I really loved the music :heart:.
Cameron Dunlap
04. Apr 2022 · 17:03 UTC
@conradoclark Thank you for the feedback! The way the pathfinding was handled made it a bit of a challenge to allow placing towers during a wave. There was also the issue of balance; while it would definitely have improved engagement during the waves, the running strategy would quickly become placing mines along paths each wave.
Kyra Sanchez
04. Apr 2022 · 19:59 UTC
I enjoy this game very much, lag is definitely an issue but we can't expect perfect streamlining in the time we had for jam. Going to be playing this again later as I do love a good tower defense.
🎤 James Dunlap
05. Apr 2022 · 03:34 UTC
Hello everyone! Thank you for trying our game. As has been pointed out, the WebGL version does experience some lag with many units on the screen. Please be aware that we have not experienced this with the downloadable versions, so if possible, please try those. Otherwise, please accept the lag and know that the WebGL version is there for convenience only and is not indicative of the performance of our game. Enjoy!
luquio
05. Apr 2022 · 04:09 UTC
I found it a very technically impressive game but lacked innovation and art
Lakea
05. Apr 2022 · 08:28 UTC
A solid entry, on the first game i started no where near the base so ended up placing towers in the wrong place, but once I realeased it was fine, not sure if it just the web version, but the movement of the camera doesnt seem very smooth, all in all though a great entry.
Oqfi
05. Apr 2022 · 13:36 UTC
This is very difficult game both technically and in gameplay. The landscaoe is reaaly beautiful.

But delay between waves is soooo long
SwordMage
05. Apr 2022 · 14:07 UTC
Downloading the win version gave me an obscure warning so I shied away from it and went for the web one. This is fun, pretty to look at (especially the landscape)and worked well enough, albeit a bit laggy. I made it to wave 10 and felt good about it!
The only thing I was wishing for was a pause function to get a coffee before watching the show some more.
blobo
05. Apr 2022 · 15:45 UTC
I loved the low poly models, for both the structures and the environment. The bug too, everything looked great. The music was a bop, and the difficulty scaled nicely! I feel like you should get money when killing a bug instead of completing a wave, but hey, both work. Nice game!
🎤 James Dunlap
05. Apr 2022 · 22:36 UTC
@100th-coin The money distribution was a design decision that we could not all agree on which way to do it, so we went with the current version. It could be interesting to offer that as an option, though, to allow for different playstyles.
PoshDan
06. Apr 2022 · 06:02 UTC
I had some trouble anticipating where the enemies would be coming from, what they can climb over etc, so much that I started placing turrets completely at random, and that somehow got me up to wave 12 (at which point I felt i had seen enough).
I would have preferred having a bit more information to help with turret choice and figuring out the enemy pathing, I enjoy strategizing like that in a tower defense game, so the time limit didn't seem right to me.
The models are really neat, I liked the animations.
Solid jam game overall
NikolaVuk
06. Apr 2022 · 09:15 UTC
I'm really impressed with the amount of mechanics you managed to fit in one jam game. I played until the 8th wave and then I realized that the game suffers from classic TD problem, you build your bases up in the beginning and there really is no way for the AI to pass through unless they spam as many enemies as possible. The only damage I received was in first wave so absence of challenge kind of made me lose my interest. Maybe you could add units that do nothing but destroy player's towers or add units that heal surrounding units. Overall I think that such game design flaws shouldn't impact the rating of the game much since the mechanics you implemented are really impressive and it would demand a lot of extra effort to organize them in a more sensible manner (which is a lot to ask in this time frame). Good job!
borgi
06. Apr 2022 · 09:27 UTC
Impressive achivement for such a short jam! Congrats well done! I really liked the graphics and the sounds were nice too.
Gameplaywise I did not feel like I have a choice in the game, there are two things made me think that: 1) enemies are coming from a random direction 2) I can not make mazes for the enemies. These two things made me think the best strategy is just to build towers as close and as dense as possible to the base and hope for the best. Its possible that I did not know all the mechanis of the game and this idea is copletely wrong.
The controls were intuitive and clear!
Anyways well done, impressive implementation!
Bottled up Dark Peace
06. Apr 2022 · 17:32 UTC
I recorded myself playing, message me on the Jam’s discord @ Dark Peace and I’ll send it to you. The first time the game loads, it seems that you spawn quiet far away from the tower and I didn't find it until the monsters attacked. After a restart, it's fine though.The game is not very interractive and it's a pretty generic tower defense. The random gen is nice but it didn't feel like it played a big role. The monsters can walk on grass and on sand. I liked that the mine makes a big explosion and can destroy multiple enemies.
Zirrrus
06. Apr 2022 · 18:31 UTC
Made it to wave 10!
Neat little tower defence game. Really like the art of the bugs and towers.
Anchry
06. Apr 2022 · 18:34 UTC
Very impressive little tower defense game with some very carefully crafted visuals which i loved. I made it all the way to wave 14 and sort of got tired of waiting as the wave took an incredibly long time and nothing was really happening. But up till that point i quite enjoyed it!
LudumDareDevil
10. Apr 2022 · 01:25 UTC
Made it to wave 10! The difficulty curve is pretty dramatic. Really enjoyed the visuals!
Lone_Wolf
10. Apr 2022 · 16:10 UTC
It took me until level 8 to realize that mines had nothing to do with post-raid revenue (mines vs landmines), so I unfortunately was only able to make it to level 9, I think that was partly my fault though, as the mines clearly did explode when hit :P

Nice work! I especially liked the music
Anaxie Studio
11. Apr 2022 · 13:33 UTC
Yay another tower defense!

I'm on wave 13 as I write this. I actually thought the mines were literal money mines at first, so I was confused when they went boom :laughing: "Money mines" could be a nice addition since then you also have to balance economy vs defenses. I would have liked to see more info about the towers in the form of tooltips or something else to know how they're different from each other. The randomly generated maps are neat and I like how organic things feel. The graphics are nice too. Towers getting destroyed sometimes helps keep things going. I just wish the game could be played in full screen. Neat game!
Janku
11. Apr 2022 · 13:44 UTC
Wow! This must have taken a lot of work! Things I love -> graphics (bugs are really cute and I like low poly designs). Mechanics - really smooth roaming around the map, I really liked it, cool idea with hexagon shape of the tiles, really liked the diversification of each wave, every one was a bit different, different pattern, different enemies. Audio -> also reminds me of old games, but it mostly just works, which is fine. Overall great game! :) My feedback -> I had to search at the start for a base and get a hang of controls before I found it. Would be nice to include 'skip' button, when you are done putting the towers up. With each wave I was done like 20-30 seconds before the next wave begun, so it would be nice to speed that process up. Also -> very important -> enemy description. At first I thought it was only my mines exploding, I didnt realise until wave 7 that purple beetles destroy my towers (also I didnt understand how they did that, towers in near proximity of them just seemed to blow up). Also I would test it more, the game seems really well balanced as a gamejam game, but other than that it still needs a lot of work - but its worth it, the game is already really addicting and reminding me of lot of good things in similiar titles. Keep up the great work! :D

![2022-04-11 (18).png](///raw/179/d3/z/4ddb8.png)
Elania
12. Apr 2022 · 07:58 UTC
Pleasant graphic style, pleasant music and easy-to-use controls. Good tower defense.