Talla and the Tomb of the Takers by ryusui
The charming and hedonistic thief Talla Vestia has run afoul of the powerful and deadly Consortium. In order to pay off a hefty debt to them, she is forced to delve the depths of the ancient ruins of the Zolmeca. Past the dangerous traps, the ever-shifting halls, and the unbreakable security gates lie the altars of the Zolmeca's cruel gods, who will bestow their priceless treasures upon those who can appease them - unfortunately, they can only be appeased with an offering of flesh and blood!
Fortunately for Talla, she's not the first in her bloodline to have dealings with cantankerous deities: one of her ancestors angered the gods, and he and his descendants were cursed with immortality - and the bad luck to have to take advantage of it on a regular basis. Talla's used to having to cheat the headsman's block; might as well get paid for it for a change!
Explore the ruins, gather loot and useful tools, escape traps, obtain the lost Sun Disks of the Zolmecan god-kings, and make your way back to the surface before the dark power of the forbidden gods consumes you. Freedom lies on the other side of this treasure hunt, but what will it cost you that won't grow back?
Keyboard controls: WASD/arrow keys to move and select menu options, Space/Z to select and interact, Shift/X to cancel and exit dialogues.
Gamepad controls: D-pad/left analog stick to move and select menu options, bottom face button (Nintendo B/PlayStation X/Xbox A) to select and interact, right face button (Nintendo B/PlayStation X/Xbox A) to cancel and exit dialogues.
Created in Godot 4.5. 3D assets created and animated in Blender; 2D assets created in Krita and Aseprite. Music was sourced from Pixabay.com. Sound effects are sourced from Pixabay.com and Dillon Becker's Super Dialogue Audio Pack (CC BY 4.0); most of the original sound files have been edited. Fonts used are Vujahday Script and Montserrat Extra Bold.
WARNING: The embedded HTML5 version has some sound and graphics issues. It still should be playable, but the Windows download should be the optimal way to play. I will attempt to rectify these issues in a post-Jam version.
UPDATED 10/10/2025: Version 1.1 is now available with a host of polish and QoL tweaks!
- An Almanac has been added to the main game menu providing basic instructions and controls.
- A Credits screen has also been added to the title screen.
- Strafe controls are now implemented - move sideways without turning by pressing Q/E on keyboard or L/R on gamepad!
- Menus and dialogues now support mouse controls!
- A heading indicator is now visible on the minimap.
- Vujahday Script has been replaced throughout the interface with Cormorant Garamond, improving text readability.
- Various other graphical adjustments and improvements have been made.
- Several bugfixes have been made. (For one, the game now properly remembers how much gold you've looted over the course of the game - old savefiles will still be at 0, but new ones will display the correct total at the end!)
- The HTML5 version should now run without sound glitches. Lighting has also been improved to match the desktop version.
As always, be sure to rate based on the original 1.0 version!
| Version 1.1 (Post-Jam) | https://watercrown.info/games/Tomb%20of%20the%20Takers%20(LD58)/1.1/LD58.exe |
| Version 1.1 (Post-Jam) | https://watercrown.info/games/Tomb%20of%20the%20Takers%20(LD58)/1.1/index.html |
| Version 1.11 (Post-Jam) | https://watercrown.info/games/Tomb%20of%20the%20Takers%20(LD58)/1.11/LD58.exe |
| Version 1.11 (Post-Jam) | https://watercrown.info/games/Tomb%20of%20the%20Takers%20(LD58)/1.11/index.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/talla-and-the-tomb-of-the-takers |
Ratings
| Overall | 471th | 3.411⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 428th | 3.286⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 381th | 3.268⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 584th | 3.321⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 496th | 3.433⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 395th | 3.125⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 346th | 3.111⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 605th | 3.179⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
*-considers adding it in post-Jam-*
I like the maze gameplay, the 3D and the graphism, but the text in embedded version is difficult to read, I confess I've skipped the introduction.
A truly good work in since 3 days !
Font is awful, recommend changing it.
@kitz: Congratulations, you inspired me to add mouse controls to the menu interfaces. XD
@gastoon, @jose-bonilla, @keyjale: 1.1 changes the ingame font from Vujahday Script to Cormorant Garamond. I think you'll find the text to be *much* more readable now.
@daniel123: The game's controls are meant to evoke a classic grid-based dungeon crawler. That said, I realized they were missing something - 1.1 now has strafe controls, allowing you to move sideways without turning.
@anthony-dunlap, @vasea123: The HTML5 embed above has some known issues, as noted in the entry description. Version 1.1 fixes both the lighting and the sound glitch in the HTML5 version.
To everyone else: thanks for all the praise and feedback!
managed to escape after 5 days with 0 deaths or lives lost (not sure how good of a score this is)
minimap is nice, I wish it showed more than one space ahead in a corridor
- traps are easy enough to do and annoying enough to use trap tools
- I would've preferred to be able to skip chat/trap immediately - there seem to be a delay before the key works
- maybe other types of traps besides dance dance revolution would make it more enjoyable?
I was running pretty close to the wire at the end of development: the very last thing I implemented was the "bear trap" sequence (the arm snares were the first trap animation I implemented and were the only one all the way up to the last couple hours of development - I'd wanted to do a third, but didn't have time!) If I do a 1.5 release with some more substantial gameplay and balance changes, though, I definitely intend to add different trap *mechanics* to go with the animations.
Also, since you stated explicitly to have 3rd party assets, do remember to opt-out of relevant categories.
I did most of the graphical assets during the Jam but the Talla model was retooled from a much different-proportioned mesh I was working on beforehand. I hope she still counts - the textures and animations were all made during the event!
I'm aware the game is maybe a bit too easy; my last game (for a different game jam) had people commenting that it was too hard, so I might've overcompensated for that ^_^;