Midnight Mage by SparkyDoc07

Story
As a young mage in the great magical plains, you find yourself lost among the seemingly endless plains. What's worse, the plains don't like you. They send their wolves and warriors, attempting to purge you of any and all magic.
Of course, a strong mage like yourself could easily fight off a few foes; had you not taken an oath of pacifism. Your oath stops you from attacking these foes, but you are a smart one. The oath does not stop you from accessing the magic of the plains, and the plains just so happen to have runes dedicated to stuff that goes boom.
Use the runes. Survive, if you can. Traverse these plains. See you in the morning!

Controls
W, A, S, D for movement
Cursor for screen rotation in horizontal axis
SHIFT or E to place magic fires on the ground (Beware: Some foes may break these magical fires)
1, 2, 3, or 4 to cast spells
ESC or X to cancel spell casting
Casting
This game allows you to cast 4 unique spells. The process of casting a spell goes something like this:
1) Light magical fires on the ground using SHIFT or E
2) Switch to spell-cast mode using the hotkeys 1, 2, 3, or 4
3) A Guide Shape appears, which denotes the locations of magic fires required by the spell. Align this guideline over the magic fires


4) Cast the spell using ENTER or LMB. Remember, the spell will only be cast if all grid tiles below the Guide Shape are lit with magical fire

5) If you would like to cancel the spell cast, press ESC or X to return to normal mode
| Link | https://adityaiyer2k7.itch.io/midnight-mage/ |
| Link | https://adityaiyer2k7.itch.io/midnight-mage/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/midnight-mage |
Ratings
| Given | 5🗳️ | 16🗨️ |
I have changed the keybinds for WebGL and am exporting the project. Thank you once again!
I tried the game again, but I still don't understand how to use spells. The spell screen appears I can move the rectangle, but that it is all. I only managed to cast a spell on E, like fire on the ground. The wolf are also strange, because they can't kill you and the spell points increase by their deaths.
I would have included a tutorial section in the game if I had slightly more time, but for now I will be including these points in the game description. Thank you for bringing this up!
Other than that I had a lot of fun!
- pressing "e" sometimes doesn't start a fire even when on an empty cell. Was expecting that you could run around and spam "e" to start lots of fire and cast cool spells but couldn't get that to work.
- I wanted to change the spell i'm casting while in the top-down view but couldn't without exiting back to the game and pressing another spell key
- being able to stand in the fire and creatures walking through the fire feels strange... in games usually fire = bad
- using the spells could be much more satisfying!
I do like the general idea though of a survival-strategy-magic game!
- You could try to add some sort of objective like surviving a certain amount of time or killing a certain amount of enemies.
- I think some gameplay mechanics could have had some explanation and I wasn't sure why I would need to use the other three spells when the first spell worked just fine.
- I also feel like some music / SFX could have been nice, even if it was just royalty free stuff off the internet.
I felt like it had some potential but it lacked a lot that would be needed to make it shine.
Another thing that would also help is an in-game tutorial, as I had to keep reminding myself what the keys were by scrolling down to the controls in the description. It could use more polish, but the base foundation is pretty neat, so I'd love to see this expanded based on the feedback here so far.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2129902300