Nuclear Arms 9: Tower of Time by Logicon211




Craig Killbane comes to the sudden realization that he must close the time loop from his past. He seeks out a time portal housed in a tower at the end of time. Unfortunately for him it's guarded by a sinister evil who sends enemies of Craig's past against him to prevent him from reaching the top of the tower!
You must fight your way past waves of enemies, growing stronger after each round by adding new Mutations to your deck. Queue up these mutations (after a brief cooldown) and unleash them at the right time for maximum effect:
- WASD or arrow keys to move
- Left Click or (K) for a regular attack
- Right Click or (L) to use a queued up Mutation power
- (E) to open up the queue menu when available
This game follows the adventures of Craig Killbane. You can check out the previous game in the series in our last Ludum Dare submission here:
Or the entire list of Nuclear Arms games from my profile Here
It was a productive weekend for us. Even after being away for over a year we had most of our crew this time around. It's fun to see how far we can push a different genre for each game we make. We hope you like it!
Credits
Logan Marks - UI Logic, Some Enemies, Mutations, Game Design, Balancing
Chad Gerein - Main Player Logic, Mutations, Game Design
Amanda Marks - Enemy Sprites, Slide Transcriber
Mitchell Maclean - Main Enemy Logic, Mutations, Game Design, Balancing, Jingle maker
Brenden Roach - Story Board, Slide Art, Timey Tim Sprite, Craig Sprite, Voice(Craig)
Taylor Seely - Story Board, Asset Finder
James Burnes - Voice of Craig's AI
Background art curtesy of Unity Asset Store
| Itch.io | https://logicon211.itch.io/nuclear-arms-9-tower-of-time |
| Github | https://github.com/Logicon211/LudumDare54 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/nuclear-arms-9-tower-of-time |
Ratings
| Overall | 218th | 3.929⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 154th | 3.957⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 523th | 3.414⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 456th | 3.8⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 576th | 3.614⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 149th | 3.909⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 58th | 4.167⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 215th | 3.955⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 24🗳️ | 50🗨️ |
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySYamjUD76E
Great work!
Always glad to see a fan. The gameplay video is great too. It really helps to see how people learn our games. I'm surprised you made it through on your first try. Good job :D
Either way amazing game, had fun from the beginning to the end. Great job!
It was quite fun, but I also was getting stuck sometimes
- Difficulty ramps a bit fast (though encourages replayability - beating Timey Tim felt vindicating)
- Wasn't clear what happens if you pick up the same upgrade again until after you'd done it - looked like it would just be a wasted opportunity initially
- Obviously very button-spammy with the main attack, which is okay - but I think you could make it a little less finger destroying by offering maybe two attack buttons the player can 'gallop' with or something?
- The K/L control scheme seemed less punishing, but then I couldn't choose upgrades or anything with my keyboard, which sent me back to using the mouse anyway
Overall this was awesome - mechanics were well thought out, theme closely implemented, vibe was fun, progression was interesting. I haven't finished many jam games and this was one of them - so that says a lot!
Well done team.
Overall, this feels like a real game with a lot of potential. There are a ton of ideas in here - they need polish of course. Movement gets glitchy, UI could be scaled better, and the balance needs some help - none of the powerups really compete with the rapid-fire gun (which maybe you turn into a hold and fire thing so it's not about clicking as fast as possible?). Once I figured out you could kill the bombs I was able to beat the game.
That said, all my feedback is just balance/debugging stuff. The art is fun, music is vibey, and overall really solid. I hope you polish this up!
A few ideas to make it more approachable to a larger audience:
- pre-level delay/countdown to have time to see the enemy positions before the shooting starts
- easy/story mode where the game would restart just the last-failed level, and possibly add some extra health
Didn't take me six hours this time, either. I'll admit I was initially worried. Of course I was hoping you'd enter for 54, but, see, my toddler drooled milk into my mouse (don't ask) and it's only been registering left-clicks about 80% of the time ever since. So I figured it would be challenge-mode-plus this time.
Except that you made it a keyboard-friendly control scheme! What could go wrong??
Barrels is what. I got mopped up hard by the barrels. They even taunted me, where one barrel appeared in the center, and then just as I was about to manu- manouv- maneuver (man my French is bad, is that your part of Canada? Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a house party in Montreal and they had converted their living room into a halfpipe? You guys are nuts, I love it) into position to kill it, another barrel popped exactly into the spot left-of-center. I had all the time in the world, but this is a total barrel-lock: every space will take damage, and no space can clear them. Damn those bears!
After some surfing I realized it wasn't the bears, it was those pesky robots. I started clearing them first, and that cleared the way to victory.
Boss had me worried and was a narrow battle, but I did take him down the first time. His trash-fist homage move that limited my space was a lot to handle, nice touch. It totally boxed me in a few times, and if I didn't have some of the defensive mutation (which I ignored my first few runs) then I don't think I could have soaked up the hits to win.
Overall this was very cool, especially after I settled into the pattern of how I wanted to play. In the past I have sort of enjoyed the megaman battle-network formula, but it never fully clicked for me. An example is "One Step from Eden" an indie game that seems like I should love it: roguelike deckbuilder meets battle network. But it's totally overwhelming! I just can't think my moves through, or even multi-task dodging with reading the "next card" and processing what it means in time to act. As a result every opportunity slips by in a blur and I am not left with that so-important roguelike feeling that losing was all my fault.
But I had a different experience with your game. It took a couple of surfs, but I figured out that I can use the 'E' queue menu/pause moment to plan the next few seconds of battle carefully. I even learned that the UI has some limited support for keyboard input, and if you realllly look carefully you can see that there is a selection which you can move around via WASD and activate with return. So I would pause, line up my next few moves, and think "okay go 1 left then drop the barrel, then move up and double-spam." And this would actually work most of the time!
That's really the first time one of these battle-network variants has let me STOP AND THINK and plan, while still also retaining some of that sweet "oh shit oh shit" realtime dodging fun.
Really nice work!
Glad the UI worked with the keyboard. That was a surprise to me haha, I expected it was gonna be mouse only but I guess there's some hidden keyboard functionality baked in