Hoomans vs. Deemons by Lintfordpickle
Hoomans vs. Deemons
The game is inspired by Galcon and adds extra resources (demons/soldiers) to be managed.
Goal
The goal of the game is to conquer the human settlements. You can do this by attacking them with either peons or demons. A demon is worth 3 peons on the battlefield.
Instructions
You play as the demons, player 1 (blue)
You can move peons and demons between settlements. Peons are represented by white numbers, while demons are represented in blue. Clicking the mouse on one of your settlements and dragging and releasing the button on another settlement will order the units to move.
[Left-Mouse] button moves peons.
[Right-Mouse] buttons moves demons.
The more peons a settlement has, the faster they will reproduce. Demons can be summoned by sacrificing peons at the pentagram.
Notes
The villages and towns on the map are randomly generated each round. You can slightly control the spawn changes using the [Resources] options at the start of a game.
I have found the best results with 3-4 players and medium resources.
Dev
This game was made in Java using LWJGL and OpenGL. I used this jam as an opportunity to integrate and use behavior trees for the first time. My goal was to make a game with a competent AI opponent.
Timelapse
https://youtu.be/-uc5CPPeu-4
| Win Build | https://johnhampson.itch.io/hoomans-vs-deemons |
| Timelapse (YT) | https://youtu.be/-uc5CPPeu-4 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/hoomans-vs-deemons |
Ratings
| Given | 6🗳️ | 6🗨️ |
it feels very difficult to recover from a major loss or counter enemies once they have amassed huge amounts of units. that's not inherently a bad thing but i eventually found myself wanting to restart mid-game every time as i felt it was practically impossible to win at that point and starting over and trying a different strategy from the get-go would be easier.
that said, after a bit of trial and error i did manage to win a game and it felt very satisfying after all the losses that had come before it. the AI is difficult to beat but it's usually at least easy to understand *why* it beat you so i never got too frustrated. cool game!
(minor technical issue: the pause menu doesn't seem to actually pause the game)
There are also some balancing issues (growth rates need a lot of work), which I realized would take more time that I had unfortunately.
There are also some issues with the AI that I noticed - an AI with no castle will not attack, more of the attacks focus on the 'closest settlements' - so depending on the random spawns at the start, you may have it very easy or very hard etc. etc.
I like the idea about the flags on the units, liek a standard-bearer.
About the pause menu - thats a pretty glaring bug, I'll fix it after work sometime this week.
I think I would have liked to know how the population expansion worked so I could base decisions off it (i.e. do 2 settlements with 50 population grow at the same rate as 1 settlement with 100 population?), and some audio would have been nice - but regardless, I had a great time playing, nice one!
Graphics are fine, but some sounds and music would have worked wonders for mood that was now mostly missing.
Good work with the AI, it seemed that it was seeking for my weak points and hitting them.
Good job!