Block Wizard Arena by Games_by_Tom

made by Games_by_Tom for Ludum Dare 50 (COMPO)

Tom's Block Wizard Arena is an increasingly difficult and never-ending battle of wizards, that can both choose one of three randomly chosen actions within a time-limit.

(very blocky wizards)

With each new round, your opponent will become more difficult to defeat, and inevitably you will be no match to them anymore. How many rounds can you survive?

I am calling this game "preliminary-finished". It is very much playable and I think already quite a bit of fun, but the graphics are ... well... have not been my priority 😉😅

So yes, created from scratch, as you may also find when (trying to) review the spaghetti-code.

* Controls are very simple:*

When it is your turn, click with the mouse on one of the three boxes with possible actions. If you do not choose one in time, the middle is picked automatically. Music and audio controls are on top of the screen. You can check your health and mana points at the bottom of the screen, as well as the current enemy's health points.

* Please put the game into fullscreen mode, otherwise the left edge seems to cut off text: *

* The game was developed by myself from scratch under 48 hours (35 actually, due to the starting time's zone) *

Link	http://source.gamesbytom.com/block_wizard_arena/Toms_Block_Wizard_Arena_Source.zip
Link	https://tomsgames.itch.io/blockwizardarena
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/block-wizard-arena

Ratings

Overall	541^th	2.94⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Fun	559^th	2.62⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	505^th	2.82⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Theme	581^th	2.64⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	598^th	2.12⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Audio	358^th	3⭐	26🧑‍⚖️
Humor	432^th	2.229⭐	26🧑‍⚖️
Mood	528^th	2.667⭐	26🧑‍⚖️
Given		23🗳️	27🗨️

Feedback

Tiny Pig

04. Apr 2022 · 12:09 UTC

The music, effects and lighting made a kind of fantastical, eerie atmosphere and the sound effects were fitting. It got a little repetitive towards the end and there were a few bugs like the first block being half off screen and sometimes my blocks were clickable when it was the enemy's turn. It was a pretty good idea and facing an endless stream of wizards with random spells would make for a great game with more time to improve graphics or even adding more spells or giving them more exciting names.

mgear

04. Apr 2022 · 13:23 UTC

good gameplay, this could be easily expanded into full steam game with graphics etc!

UkuleleFury

05. Apr 2022 · 03:55 UTC

lol, at "very blocky wizards". Pretty fun! I like the pan back and forth turn-based mechanic. I think making me choose a random action with a quick time limit makes it feel like an interesting a new turn-based battle game. The music and sounds are good too! :) And the blocks work..., but could use a little more love.

AlexHoratio

06. Apr 2022 · 00:31 UTC

interesting game! i like the way the gameplay played out. i also found a bug where only sometimes, for some reason that i couldn't work out, i can spam-click an ability and activate it multiple times before the camera turns away 😈

MAT4DOR

06. Apr 2022 · 18:56 UTC

The audio was nice, but I found it very slow paced for my taste. There was also the issue of clicking the powers even when it wasn't my turn, which I accidentally did at the end of the game and killed myself. Managed to survive 21 at least.

Studio Vykanic

06. Apr 2022 · 22:45 UTC

Enjoyed the gameplay! It would be a fun one to continue to expand on. I think the camera movement was just a little dizzying for me, it might need some slight dialing in still.

Jimbly

07. Apr 2022 · 04:16 UTC

That was neat, I survived 10 rounds. I mostly just used melee and healing, so I guess I was playing a Cleric? It was a hard to see the leftmost power button, perhaps a monitor aspect ratio issue - I'm running at 16:10, maybe only displays right on 16:9 screens?

I liked the blocky wizards getting bigger and bigger compared to me =).

🎤 Games_by_Tom

07. Apr 2022 · 18:06 UTC

@tiny-pig and @jimbly :
It seems that when the game is not set to fullscreen with that ![fullscreen.png](///raw/f67/63/z/4d665.png)
blue botton, the text of the left cube is always cut off. Maybe it works for you if you enable that?
I added the screenshot above as well, maybe it helps someone.

@jimbly the Cleric comment had me actually laughing :laughing:

** And also so far ** @studio-vykanic @mat4dor @alexhoratio @ukulelefury @mgear :

** Thanks for your feedback everyone! **

I think I spent too much time getting those pesky "virtual cameras" from Unity to do at least a bit of what I wanted them to, and too much on the debugging of the action blocks.

Which kind of left me with the characters I made "as a prototype" in the end, and still some bugs I did not see for myself. Well, next time I will improve :smile:

hungryroy

08. Apr 2022 · 11:43 UTC

I liked the timed command options and the variance in actions (though I mistook -life +mana for -mana +life more than once, which made some rounds unnecessarily difficult.) It might be interesting to show what options the AI took. I mean, I sometimes have the option to deal 100 damage and I was kind of worried the AI also had something like that! A pretty good base to expand on.

dob

09. Apr 2022 · 04:30 UTC

Cool concept, well executed. Not too complex, and very luck-dependent, but fun and visually pleasing. The sounds were really soft for me - not sure why. Nice work! I survived 8 rounds.

Imaginary

09. Apr 2022 · 18:13 UTC

I like the timed commands. I'm not an enormous fan of the interface for them; clicking would work if it was tapping, but binding 1/2/3 to them would help. That would allow people to speed up their gameplay, as well. Those boxes could be in the UI layer, definitely. Which would give you a little more control over their locations / appearance.
Gameplay was a little slow for me; it seemed that you had a few options (sacrifice life for mana, use mana to heal, do lots of damage at once, block, evade) that were worth a TON more than the others. Overall I consider it a cool concept and if you built the blocks into a deck-like mechanic it could become a really cool game.

eyedromeda

10. Apr 2022 · 10:50 UTC

I really like the concept here, but it's somewhat held back by slow pacing and clunky interface. I think having the given actions on a limited timer would work best if, given you don't choose anything in time, your turn simply gets omitted.

In terms of visuals, I like the blocky wizards and the aesthetic of the environment. The action options could be a little clearer though. Upping the contrast between the box and text, as well as having icons or different colors for damage, life, mana, block etc. could help make them readable faster. The camera movement is nice, if not a little jarring.

The game drags on a little, and I feel like giving the player less starting health to make every action more impactful, or simply scaling the enemies up faster could help. Cutting down on time waited between turns and rounds could also make the gameplay more engaging, but these are all quite easily fixed nitpicks on an already great foundation.

Diego Escalante

11. Apr 2022 · 00:53 UTC

It's a neat concept, Kind of luck based but I had fun! I got through round 8 before losing. I liked the music, somehow it had a very nostalgic vibe to the 00s. I was ok with the blocks that you have to click, but it was not as easy to parse what they would do at the beginning.

Although graphics weren't a huge priority, I think you made it work though. It was fine to me! Nicely done!

LDJam user 279546

11. Apr 2022 · 13:18 UTC

Fun game. I made it 12 rounds. The first option was always a bit cut off on the side of the screen. Other than that, no issues. Good job!

ClaytonRumley

11. Apr 2022 · 19:32 UTC

This was fun to play. I had to go fullscreen to see all the options. Would love to see this with better graphics, effects, and a larger variety of spells/attacks. Pickups from defeated enemies would be nice, too. :)

Great effort for Compo!

sacredbacon

13. Apr 2022 · 01:22 UTC

Very nice battling system with the shifting perspective and the level progression. Music is pretty catch as well. I like the smoke effects with the attacks as well. Nice job!

🎤 Games_by_Tom

13. Apr 2022 · 05:51 UTC

@hungryroy "options" and "AI" are strong words :wink: ... the code for that is very minimalistic and just picks one of three values for damage (that each scale up with the current round) at random. The one-shot is actually something that happened too often for me while balancing this - that should now happen only in pretty late rounds, where losing is "inevitable anyway"

@dob with the sounds being really "soft" - do you mean not loud enough?
(sorry, not a native English speaker)

.

Thank you both for your feedback and for taking the time to play my game!

🎤 Games_by_Tom

13. Apr 2022 · 05:52 UTC

@imaginary and @eyedromeda yes, you are definitely right about the pace, if I had more time I would have also added an option to speed up the transitions and enemy move. And maybe additional difficulty settings, where everything scales up quicker. If I do come back to expanding this game, definitely something I will do (maybe "normal / hard / inevitable defeat"? and with "normal", the player's abilities would also scale up...)
@claytonrumley For that I could also use your great idea with the pickups, like assimilating some bosses main ability

@imaginary for the imbalance of the options I wanted to have some element of luck, I guess I could have put them in three tiers and made sure to pick the choices from at least two of them.
My initial idea actually was to build the game as a deck-based game, maybe I should have gone with that 😅
And for the last point: I did not know yet that I can actually put 3d objects in the UI layer, so I just found out how to do that. Thanks for the tip!

.

Thanks for your feedback and for playing!

🎤 Games_by_Tom

13. Apr 2022 · 05:54 UTC

@eyedromeda and @diego-escalante yes, I was also not super happy with the text on the boxes, that could be more readible and some color-coding would help (like "what does it cost" / "what does it give or do" as two colors per box). Well, if I do come back to it - I will add this to a second version of the game

to you and also to @jzucc12 @sacredbacon : Thank you all for playing and giving feedback, I really appreciate it!

dob

13. Apr 2022 · 06:04 UTC

Yes, soft = nearly inaudible.

🎤 Games_by_Tom

13. Apr 2022 · 06:15 UTC

Hm, in relation to the music - or the music as well?

I did set the default (overall) volume pretty low, did you increase it with the buttons on the top?

mcshirt

13. Apr 2022 · 23:55 UTC

i think the sound adds a lot to the game. i wish the game communicated more to the player. Since there are a small amount of graphics, I would have used more text to communicate what was happening.

Frankey333

14. Apr 2022 · 10:35 UTC

Reading recent comments, I actually think the audio feedback is pretty good (dealing/receiving damage or on blocks/evades). Of course, there could be more, but for a game made in 35 hours, this is more than enough I would say. Even graphic feedback is sufficient (fog/bleed animations and text pop-ups on hp/mana change). I actually quite like this game.
What I would voice negative feedback about is definitely the ability to click boxes while they are invisible, That made me lose one game.
On a positive note, I really enjoy your music, and the simple graphics works actually quite well together ;).

albertnez

17. Apr 2022 · 11:55 UTC

Nice game for such short time! I wish the beginning progressed faster, and the decision boxes started falling earlier too, that's when the game started getting more interesting. Sometimes the boxes felt random, so there was not much of a choice (one was clearly better than the other etc.) One last small details, is that it seemed that the enemy always emitted red particles, no matter if they took damage or did an action?

Regardless, the audio and the cinematics were super nice for a ludumdare game. well done and nice idea!

LDJam user 279610

21. Apr 2022 · 19:10 UTC

Very solid core for a game. I'd love to see what a more developed version would look like.