LudumData

Reapers & Retirees by Carraka

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

screenshot4.png

After decades (or centuries) of dungeon crawling and monster slaying, four elderly adventurers have finally retired to spend their twilight years in relaxation and peace:

  • Raol Eon, a shifter ranger: He's losing his sense of smell and his hearing is going as well, but he continues to hunt...for time alone to gaze at the moon. The hunt is never-ending, for his nurses are determined to teach him how to use a tablet.
  • Balthasar Wildstone, a half-elven wizard: He's amassed a vast array of eccentric oddities and an even vaster array of ridiculous stories as to how he obtained and lost them. Given his tendency to misplace (or explode) his keepsakes, no one believes even half of his tales.
  • Þôb Þùnartilat, a dwarven bard: He may have given up adventuring, but he has yet to give up drinking, strumming the lute, or stealing from the other party members and apologizing profusely when they notice.
  • Jolie Cooper, a human fighter: After her career in the army, she's ready for anything, as long as she takes a nap first. Maybe a nap in the middle too, and definitely one when it's all over.

The four squabbling heroes must put their differences aside when faced with their most challenging adventure yet...accepting their inevitable fate. Some of them are ready to die, but they won't go without putting up one last fight via the tried-and-true tower defense strategy: building stuff that fights for you and then running (or wheeling) away.

All art, music, and writing was created for this jam in 72 hours by a team of six people as tired as Jolie. We could not get the web version to work, but please enjoy the download.

INSTRUCTIONS

The tutorial was introducing bugs, so half of it was removed before submission. Here's what you need to know.

This game combines tower defense with real-time strategy. Select a hero to move them around and build, repair, or upgrade towers that will help you defeat enemies. Building towers requires bones, a currency that heroes can pick up from dead enemies. Before bones can be used, a hero must take them back to the retirement home for "processing."

Enjoy, and check out the bug-fix and post-jam versions, especially for an improved audio experience.

LD-50-screenshot1

ld-50-screenshot2

Link https://daring-owl-studios.itch.io/reapers-retirees
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/reapers-retirees

Ratings

Overall 496th 3.667⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Fun 843th 3.241⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 547th 3.462⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 321th 3.963⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 125th 4.411⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 368th 3.648⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Humor 158th 3.944⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 526th 3.648⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

Niklas Zhaga
06. Apr 2022 · 09:26 UTC
Cool idea, I will check out post jam version for sure. It's now enough time to check all your game now, especially if you have such long intro with no skip option in dialogues.
Btw, Neutral Tired alignment - is mine :laughing:
DieAnto
10. Apr 2022 · 21:55 UTC
I like the idea but it isn't really fun to play in my opinion, the intro and dialogues are just too long, I have to admit I couldn't learn how to actually play the game because replaying it just takes too long, other than that the music's fun, it kind of stresses me out a little but it was original and I liked it, and also I really liked the graphics and characters, maybe four of them is just too much but as I mentioned I couldn't really learn to play it because of the intro.
JOZGames
10. Apr 2022 · 22:26 UTC
Eu até sei ler inglês, mas os diálogos são muito longos e não da pra pular eles quando você vai jogar de novo...

Eu acho uma pena, eu queria jogar de novo...
Bea
10. Apr 2022 · 22:27 UTC
Seemed cool, but at my resolution, the dialogue box blocked me from clicking the build button.
BoxedMeatRevolution
10. Apr 2022 · 23:18 UTC
The art style and the music is really nice! However, the pacing felt too fast during the game, so it was hard to focus on placing towers and reading the dialogue at the same time. I felt like I missed out on a lot of your quality writing because of this :frowning2:.

Some key quality of life improvement I can think of are:
- adding an option to skip the intro sequence would be (as mentioned in previous comments)
- tweaking the hitbox/collision logic to be less sticky (it was a bit frustrating move the heroes around as the kept sticking to the towers)

Also, looks like there is a bug where you can't move your heroes after the first playthrough, so I had to close and re-open the game to see all 4 endings.
fc85057
10. Apr 2022 · 23:37 UTC
Mood/atmosphere is excellent. As a player of (TT)RPGs, I love this concept and the characters. Art is beautiful and the music is very appropriate. The general idea of the game and the mechanics with the different characters is great as well.

I did have some visual issues with text outside the dialogue box and largely blocking the "Build" button. It was also unclear when the tutorial ended and I was expected to keep going (although this appears to have been addressed in the game post). Also encountered bugs where I was not allowed to build towers, saying the area was obstructed, even though it wasn't. Without a way to return to the menu in-game, this meant Ctrl+Alt+Delete to deal with the bug.

Great concept and atmosphere; will be keeping an eye out for the post-jam version!
Aumbra
11. Apr 2022 · 05:06 UTC
Loved the game! The art and style were great and I thought the characters were really well done. It was a good take on a tower defense too. I think with just some more technical and level polish this could be a full game. Great job!
wolfpredator
12. Apr 2022 · 20:19 UTC
I'm realy wait post jam game. Raol Eon in my heart.
JoeyRosicka
13. Apr 2022 · 04:31 UTC
I love the idea of a tower defense game that's heavy on the dialog, though there was definitely the issue of the dialog tearing you away from the gameplay all of a sudden, particularly when characters die. I oftentimes wasn't aware that a character died and dialog was happening until a few seconds after it happened since I was still concentrating on the gameplay.

I know you mentioned adding better tutorialization which is great - a slower-paced start would be lovely so that I can get more of a chance to get used to picking up and returning bones, building multiple towers, and putting characters on repair duty.

The writing here is wonderful - the game has a lot of charm because of it!
zimny11
14. Apr 2022 · 16:05 UTC
I love tower defense game! Interesting take on the genre. Amazing art style and awesome music!
Kamuniaft
17. Apr 2022 · 05:31 UTC
The artstyle in this game is just amazing, I totally love it. Characters looks super tempered and stylish. I liked the concept of those retired heroes and the narrative is quite hilarious. Talking about the narrative - it was a bit too much for me - and the reason is that it was quite hard to switch from tons of microcontrol to reading. I made it to wave 7 (from 3rd try) and I wish the game is slowed down - it took like 2-3 seconds for a creep to reach maps center, and I as a player at the same time had to switch between different characters, deploying orders, which failed to be done, cause my heroes being stuck collided into some other tower. Overall - gameplay could use some simplification and UX improvements imho, but the music and artstyle are awesome! Great job finishing the game folks!
gamescodedogs
17. Apr 2022 · 18:49 UTC
Sweet game! I like the graphics and music, they give a very cheerful mood! But it was difficult for me to understand the rules and I need a button that causes a wave and skips dialogues.
Thanks for making this game!
lilkrit
18. Apr 2022 · 18:04 UTC
Hilarious game. The artstyle is great too, and the characters are cool.
The only thing I didn't like is that the dialogue took forever... a way to skip it would be nice for next playthroughs.
Emaigualmc2_art
18. Apr 2022 · 19:26 UTC
Artistically it's a great game, I love the style and character design, the UI is very well done and the music is great xD. The first time I opened the version with bug and it was impossible for me to play since the text banner occupied the entire lower part of the screen, therefore I could not select the construction option. When I entered the version without bugs I was able to play it and I felt that the texts were too long, despite the fact that the story and the idea are great and they have a lot of work. I think that making the tutorial shorter and the story presenting it as the level progresses would make the gameplay more fun. Great job! Congratulations!
LDJam user 58658
19. Apr 2022 · 13:57 UTC
An amazing concept -- the theme is really front-and-center! The genre is also a great fit for the theme and enhances it mechanically (it's why we went with tower defense for our submission as well, heh)! The gameplay is kept fresh by having to juggle the different characters, resources, and mechanics. The individual characters are a treat to control and watch; not only are their designs wonderfully quirky, but their personalities come through in their dialogue very well.

Overall, congratulations on a great submission.