LD52 Moonlight by Fis

made by Fis for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

Hey everyone,

This is our seventh entry for Ludum Dare 52’s “Moonlight” and we’re very proud of what we have accomplished, as always! :3

We made a Hack'n'slay planting simulator game where you play "Loomie the Lightbringer", a blessed creature with the power of the moonlight.

Your goal is to help restore the light in this dark world by destroying your enemies and planting & harvesting light flowers as soon as possible.

Movement: WASD

Close Combat Attack: Left Mouse Click

Ranged Combat Attack: Right Mouse Click

Dash: Left Shift

Space: Plant new Flower

Planting costs 3 HP - a fully growns flower restores 5 HP.

The more the plants have grown, the more attractive they are for enemies to detect.

With less life you are less attractive, so you need to protect the flowers.

Dash, Attack and Shoot have 2 charges and recharge every 2 seconds - use them wisely.

Collecting flowers and defeating enemies grant score.

Sadly we had not enough time to implement a leveling mechanic, we wanted to make a roguelike stat boosting system.

Changes:

2023-01-09 - fixed retry-button not showing up and intro-screen being skipped

2023-01-11 - added version v0.1.1 to urls, changed enemy behavior and fixed score multiplier, rebalanced flowers and attack cooldown

Have fun as always & thanks for playing :D

Best regards @nivbeth, @fis & @fluffymadness

Web 0.1.0	https://flask.games/games/ld52/0.1.0/
Windows 0.1.0	https://flask.games/games/ld52/bin/Moonlight-0.1.0.exe
Linux 0.1.0	https://flask.games/games/ld52/bin/Moonlight-0.1.0.x86_64
macOS 0.1.0	https://flask.games/games/ld52/bin/Moonlight-0.1.0.zip
Web 0.1.2	https://flask.games/games/ld52/
Windows 0.1.2	https://flask.games/games/ld52/bin/Moonlight-0.1.2.exe
Linux 0.1.2	https://flask.games/games/ld52/bin/Moonlight-0.1.2.x86_64
macOS 0.1.2	https://flask.games/games/ld52/bin/Moonlight-0.1.2.zip
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/ld52-moonlight

Ratings

Overall	352^th	3.574⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Fun	353^th	3.456⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	498^th	3.152⭐	35🧑‍⚖️
Theme	468^th	3.614⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	145^th	4.2⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Audio	234^th	3.559⭐	36🧑‍⚖️
Humor	508^th	2.638⭐	31🧑‍⚖️
Mood	225^th	3.729⭐	37🧑‍⚖️
Given		16🗳️	29🗨️

Feedback

keip

10. Jan 2023 · 19:50 UTC

nice little game. good work

Mickson

10. Jan 2023 · 19:55 UTC

I had a lot of fun playing this! The art is very cute, and I enjoyed the challenge of not always being able to see the enemies and using the attacks strategically. Good work!

DGSpitzer

10. Jan 2023 · 19:56 UTC

Very cute character and interesting mechanic! The more flower the player planted the weaker the character will be, and actually pretty challenging to play! Good job！

很可爱的游戏角色和机制！花种的太多会大幅提升难度（降低角色的血量），其实还蛮难的！超级赞！

tetrapteryx

12. Jan 2023 · 00:27 UTC

The character art is very cute, and I like the overall mood! I think maybe there could be a bigger incentive for planting the flowers, because I felt like I was better off focusing on fighting enemies if I wanted to prolong my life. The drawbacks of planting and maintaining a flower were enough to make it a less appealing strategy. One option might be to not give any points for killing enemies, so the flowers are necessary for progress.

Bo Dangles

12. Jan 2023 · 10:58 UTC

I really like this game. The aggro system combined with the risk and reward for sacrificing health now for health later was fun and interesting. I also liked the design of the main character. If I could change one thing, it would be to add a couple sound effects. I know its a game jam and can be hard to get everything in, but I think they would add a lot here. Great entry!

Metzkermeister

12. Jan 2023 · 15:16 UTC

Very cute art and quite a fun game, managed almost 50k on my first try!
The only thing i really missed was some indicator for when the player takes damage.
Some of the underlying mechanics really remind me of our game for this jam, even tho they are pretty different ^^
Overall good job!

Sam Cousins

13. Jan 2023 · 14:15 UTC

Very nice artwork and fun gameplay. I would maybe add a little more feedback on player damage & healing but otherwise great

darkenezy

13. Jan 2023 · 14:37 UTC

Sprites and music are pretty neat!
The character however is much faster than enemies, so it's super easy to kite them.
- Score sometimes shows as broken
- Game isn't getting harder as you progress
- Idk if level / time affects score you gain, but I managed to get some insane scores on my first try. At this point I was getting like 1m+ points for a little group of enemies. You could probably make enemies have more HP as time progress
![photo_2023-01-13_17-33-18.jpg](///raw/1d8/d4/z/565c1.jpg)

BurnsDesigns

13. Jan 2023 · 15:09 UTC

Okay, after seeing 1m+ in the comments I dont feel so good about my score.

I found a good rhythm of planting and eating the flowers that could keep me going for a long time.

Copito

13. Jan 2023 · 15:24 UTC

fun game with a cool visual style and art direction. I felt like some forces to push the enemies apart and stop them from clumping up too much would have helped along with time scaling on difficulty matched to upgrades, but I'm sure that was just a question of a bit more dev time, Nice game I liked it!

pepnou

13. Jan 2023 · 17:13 UTC

Nice game, the sprites are cute and the light handling looks good. Maybe add something to passively loose life, as you can just run in big circle to avoid ennemies. Too bad that you didn't have the time for the leveling system, it would have been nice.

Great entry!

LDJam user 246128

13. Jan 2023 · 17:32 UTC

Neat little game. Enemies are cute!

A bit sad that you couldn't add leveling and perks in time, it would've added more variety in gameplay.

imyellowfish

13. Jan 2023 · 17:45 UTC

Fun and very balanced mechanics, Great graphics and music. The plant action provides greater risk and gain, combined with enemy waves, this creates some interesting strategy and play styles. Great work!

I guess more upgrades and enemy variety could be added for more in depth combat experience? Current enemy only chase and attack, so I focused on not getting surrounded, while use ranged attack to weaken them before they approach. Aside from more hp, maybe you could harvest some weapon or cooldown upgrades from them, or even some rougelike style combos!

pazzi

14. Jan 2023 · 07:29 UTC

This game was super adorable! the controls feel nice, and the dark mechanic encourages to constantly cycle skills for maximum vision control! I love it ^~^

I.K.

14. Jan 2023 · 11:20 UTC

Great art style, I love it! Other than that the light source setup helped a lot in shaping the overall atmosphere of this game. The design of the lifesteal and player gain being tied to each other is effective and it challenges the player in terms of handling, which is very inspired design. But the monotonous monster AI and the player's much higher speed than the monsters and that OP ranged attacks don't make this design work very well, and I basically didn't think to plant flowers in my playthrough, just going around with the monsters to get a high score.

🎤 Fis

14. Jan 2023 · 22:30 UTC

Thank you so much for your feedback!

The missing sound effects are definitely something I would not allow again in the upcoming gamejams, them being absent made it feel a bit off I fully agree.

The score in v0.1.0 is actually missing the trailing zeros in the hundreds - the millions are not separated as I thought this score won't be easily reachable. But yeah - the score increased incredibly fast being exponential, this was striped down in v0.1.1.

This time we definitely used much more time in talking about how to make the game instead of focusing on implementing the important gameplay mechanics first.

profan

15. Jan 2023 · 00:23 UTC

Curious little game, the delta between planting a flower and gaining the HP back being a whopping 2HP didn't make it a very interesting proposition though really, especially given when planting a flower you'd be very likely to get swarmed by a bunch of enemies right away too :D

And if you'd ended up with 1hp, you're kind of dead already since you can't plant more flowers to gain HP back at this point (since it costs the aforementioned 3HP to plant a flower).

And as others have said already, having sfx for the attacks and enemies would have added a lot to the experience :)

The art and music is really cute though, and overall style wise I think it's quite cool!

LDJam user 242971

15. Jan 2023 · 03:19 UTC

The game seems a little easy, but I love the light mechanics. The art and music worked out well.

MiltonNH25

15. Jan 2023 · 03:46 UTC

Good job with the game. I liked the art for the character and ghosts and the song was well done. The cooldown on attacks was interesting as it encouraged swapping back and forth between them but felt limiting when trying to defend your your flowers as you just had to wait to get them back. I liked the flower planting but I wish there was more reason to plant them once you reach your max hp. It would be cool to see this game with some extra progression and scaling difficulty.

sakura_magika

15. Jan 2023 · 09:41 UTC

really cute character design! i like the cooldown based combat with two attacks, and how the attacks create light that reveals enemies. i think it would have been cool if the flowers made more light too.

if you continue working on the game, would you consider implementing a "twinstick" style keyboard only control scheme, where arrow buttons do attacks (8 directions), and maybe shift+arrow is ranged attack? just an idea; i'm not great at using the mouse for these kind of games heheh :(

kikiriki367

16. Jan 2023 · 09:57 UTC

Its a nice looking game with great lighting. Like people mentioned the scaling difficulty is very much needed but i see youve redone the enemy AI for version 1.1 so thats fixed in a way it seemed. Like not being able to run in a circle and make a stack of enemies to mowe down for score :)) So the fixes are going in the great direction i like the mechanics so gj.. And just to prove that i did play a bit and that i know what i mean by not getting harder for sure :))

I decided that it was enough and that i can call myself the best player of this game, 1st place medal please!

![score.png](///raw/a01/9/z/5686c.png)

Chase of Bass

16. Jan 2023 · 15:23 UTC

The art work and design was soooo good in this -i loved the enemies expressions when you hit them! The lighting and color along with the music set the mood nicely. Game play was challenging and fun -really nice work on this! :D

JakeJet

17. Jan 2023 · 21:03 UTC

Really nice art and mood, just seemed a little easy. Really cool game though!

LDJam user 278660

18. Jan 2023 · 02:41 UTC

画风挺可爱的，每种行动都有 cd 挺有难度，如果能够加上音效就更好了。非常好的工作，爱来自中国

zactyl

18. Jan 2023 · 02:45 UTC

Pretty neat game! I really liked the aesthetics, and the combination of the nice sprites and the lighting set a nice tone for the game. I liked the hit reactions and dying animations for the enemies, but I wish there was some kind of audio indicator as well. I really liked the process of planting the flowers to heal once they were fully grown though, it makes for a nice balance of risk and reward.

magus77

18. Jan 2023 · 10:11 UTC

i love the mechanics and artstyle a lot. the AI needs some work tho

![moon.png](///raw/e07/d1/z/5699d.png)

when walking in circles around the mobs, they round up in very small groups that can easily be wiped with 2 or 3 ranged shots. Another strategy is just keep walking in a straight line and fire a few shots. The projectile doesn't dissapear nor does the damage wear of after hitting the first one, killing off all enemies in the line or group equally .

Also when planting 1 seed and just walking away, all enemy AI only ever spawns at the first seed, leaving you available to harvest the other 4 seeds :-)

great result for the LD52 tho! looks and gameplay is smooth <3

Cagil Ozdemirag

20. Jan 2023 · 19:30 UTC

really enjoyed the characters look and the animation. UI is simple and clean! I think the core gameplay is nice once you get the hang of it, but it s becomes rather easy to dodge or cluster the daemons! I was not particularly fan of the very limiting darkness. would have like it slightly larger or larger fall-off area before pitch black. or at least needed some auditory cue when daemons are right there but cant see them.
nice risky harvesting mechanic though. well done. will play the updated version as well ;)

AndideBob

20. Jan 2023 · 21:44 UTC

What a fun little game with a lot of potential, the mechanic of planting your health to get it back increased is a cool idea, however once your health is full and you play rather careful you don't really have to use it anymore. Some more enemies and actual character development on levelup could make this a really interesting game though. Either way, for a jam this is really impressive, graphic and gameplay wise!