Soul Harvester by Accatosh
About: Survive from monster waves as long as possible by shooting them down and harvesting their souls. Use those souls to become more powerful. Note: This game does not have any audio.
Keys/Instructions:
Shoot - Left click
Walk - WASD
Aim - Mouse
Open menu/shop - Q
Harvest- E
Credits:
- A* pathfinding
- Glowberry, color palette
| Itch.io | https://accatosh.itch.io/soul-harvester |
| Post LD, Itch.io | https://accatosh.itch.io/soul-harvester-postld |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/soul-harvester-2 |
Ratings
| Overall | 703th | 2.983⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 540th | 3.133⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 808th | 2.19⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 607th | 3.362⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 659th | 2.845⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 656th | 2.037⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 709th | 2.857⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 41🗨️ |
Love the art style and the animations ^_^ For some reason the unity player didn't load on this page, but it was fine on itch.io.
I was missing sound to really get into the mood thou
I actually really like how fast and direct the gameplay control feels. Generally this style of game is bit slower and more forgiving, but I actually think it's pretty interesting for it to feel closer to Quake or something in terms of fast movement and the characters near-hit-scan projectile.
Good work!
- The action component has quite a lot of potential! Having to balance between keeping yourself safe and gathering souls for upgrades is a nice twist. However, the reaction time required in order to avoid hits is rather on the low side, especially if the hit is coming from above or below(I suspect it's because I can't see as far vertically as I can horizontally). If you're also moving into the hit(which can happen quite often!), reacting in time is extremely difficult. Nevertheless, it's quite fun!
- The shooting is okay, but it can get tiring when there are a lot of enemies around since you need to press the shoot button for every shot. I wish I could simply hold the button to shoot, even if it comes with a reduced fire rate!
- Most, if not all, enemies appear to spawn in the corners of the arena, with no warning. I ended up simply sticking to the centre of the arena, only moving away to gather souls, since there wasn't much pressure for me to move otherwise. The enemies can press you to move, especially in the beginning, but it tapers off rather quickly.
- The goblins feel like their hit-box is twice their size! Maybe it's because they're swinging their swords at me, but it still caused me a lot of grief, since it's nigh impossible to dodge out of their way if you're running into them from above or below. Very interesting movement pattern, though, you never know if you have an opportunity to collect a soul with them around.
- The slimes often end up shooting at me from outside the screen. It certainly keeps me on my toes, but it's also frustrating to just run into one of their projectiles by accident.
- The warlocks are fine. I think they're the most "fair" enemy in the roster, while still being quite threatening. I wish there was more indication of when they're going to teleport, though; not knowing if I need to shoot a warlock or anticipate their movement peeves me a little.
- At some point, the game difficulty has stopped increasing. At that point, the fun evaporates quite quickly. More enemy types, a higher enemy density, and perhaps even a lower wait time between waves will definitely fix it, though!
All in all, there's a lot of potential hidden underneath! Keep working on it, and I'm sure the game will shine by the end of the jam! Good luck!

I see the player have the problem of going **faster when walking diagonal**, to fix that you could use **".normalized"** when passing the axis input.
Also, I would be really **grateful** if you could explain me how to do the **life bar** beneath the enemies, I tried to do it in my game and didn't find a way...
(Oh, and it could be inserted **beneath the player** too, it would be great to know how much hp is left to decide whether or not I should **buy life**).
It is weird that the player walks faster diagonally since I actually use ".normalized". I will have to investigate this problem further.
As for the health bar, I learnt how to create one through a video called "2D Character Hitpoints in Unity / 2022" by Distorted Pixel Studios. It is very clear and I hope you find it helpful.
As for the problem of normalized this is what I've done for mine:

Hope it helps!
If you add more to your game after the jam, I'd love to see more "quality of life" upgrades in the shop. Maybe things like being able to hold down the fire button, absorb souls automatically or at slightly longer range, shoot faster, learn new damage spells, and maybe even dodge ranged attacks. You've done a great job designing some very cool ideas here!
* The addition of music and sound is quite nice! The music and the sounds fit into the game okay. My only issue was that the sound of your own shots is different depending on which direction you're going and which direction you're firing. I suspect the game's trying to see where the shot appears relative to the character and then balances the audio to indicate that. It's not bad, but the sounds can get quite cluttered and (in the case of your own shots) a little bit disorienting.
* Now that there's a re-spawn point in the centre, it's harder to simply stand in roughly one place while fighting off mobs! I like being on the move most of the time!
* The new enemies certainly pose a new challenge! The crystals tend to cover a slime while it shoots me, while fireballs need to be harvested before they re-spawn. I do think there are some kinks with their design, however:
a) Sometimes, more than a single crystal spawns, and they end up covering each other as well. In certain situations, this leaves little room to get inside the shield to kill one of them, and I shudder to think what havoc _three_ crystals, arranged in a triangle, can wreak. I was thinking, maybe the shield could shrink a little bit as it absorbs shots?
b) The crystals only ever seem to cover slimes(and sometimes goblins, when they stumble inside). Why not warlocks as well? You'd have to take their teleport ability away while they're inside a shield, but surely it'd be a step up in difficulty?
c) A small issue I had with the warlock is that their teleport conceals their destination now. However, if you tag them with a shot(so that the health bar shows), the bar will not disappear, making the stealth virtually useless after the warlock is damaged. Granted, in later waves, one shot was all it took to bring one down, but it's noticeable in the early waves.
* The addition of a dash is quite welcome, but I wish I could dash in the direction I'm going, not towards the cursor. My cursor is usually pointing at an enemy I want to kill, and getting closer to an enemy(and, thus, risking to just get hit by the next attack anyway) is probably something I don't want.
* Attacks have scaling damage now! It can get quite tough to survive later waves when a stray shot can take off 5 HP when you have about 20. I'm not too sure how to feel about it, though. The damage scaling will certainly outstrip my capacity to upgrade health eventually. Since mob health seems to scale too, it can potentially outstrip my own damage, as well(though much later than health).
* Only having the shop open between waves is a nice touch. However, the conditions for a wave to end seem rather finicky. I'm not sure if I have to kill every mob or if it just happens after a period of time, but often I'll get the pop-up in the middle of fighting mobs, or it'll appear just as the fireballs spawn. On that note, shouldn't red graves be considered enemies if they spawn fireballs?
* The time between waves felt too long. Perhaps you could add a button to start the next wave?
That's about it, I think. It's definitely come a long way, and it's quite a bit more fun now! It just needs a few kinks ironed out now!

(I could've sworn I harvested that grave!)
Anyway, I am very impressed by your score and it is the highest I have ever seen. Good job!
Once again, thank you!