Nexus Conquest by Blazejmg917

[raw]
made by Blazejmg917 for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

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DESCRIPTION

Test your luck at planetary conquest in this sci-fi tactics and management game! Play as an intergalactic arms dealer as you summon soldiers and send them out on contracted missions. Manage your army and complete the objectives to earn money you can spend on equipment and EVEN MORE SOLDIERS. Will your business die out like so many before you, or will you become strong enough to rule the galaxy from the shadows?

LORE

The planet Phaerys IX is locked in an endless war. Summon trained mercenaries from across the galaxy using the Nexus Rift---a wormhole that acts as a strategically important trade port---and loan your band of mercenaries to other summoners across the galaxy to fulfill contracts for cash as you grow your company. Be careful which soldiers you choose, they're trained with specific weapons and won't easily learn new tricks. And remember, flesh is weak, but wealth is forever.

ITCH PAGE

https://blazejmg917.itch.io/nexus-conquest

CONTROLS

Fleet

  • Navigate Menus: Left Mouse Button

  • Open Inventory: Double-click a unit on the right side of the screen

  • Change your squad: drag units into the open space on the mothership from the right side of the screen to add them to your squad, or drag them out of the space to remove them.

Combat

  • Move Cursor: WASD

  • Select: Space

  • Cancel: Tab

  • Pop-Up Info for Weapon/Equipment of Hovered Unit: 1,2,3,4 (for each of a units 4 slots)

GUIDE

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Fleet

  • Main Fleet Screen: Select one of the four main structures, or double-click a unit to open their inventory

  • The Rift: Use the unmatched powers of the rift to summon new pawns for your ever-growing army

  • The Black Market: Purchase gear to strengthen your favorite units so they can survive for... slightly longer than usual

  • The Med Bay: Send your soldiers here to recover from their injuries in battle. But be careful, your soldiers can't fight for you when they're being treated and will be unusable until you return from your next mission

  • Inventory: Check your units' stats and equip them with gear to make them more valuable assets

  • The Mothership: assign units to your current squadron, and select one of three contracts to loan your troops out to a summoner in need. The contracts you choose will determine your next mission, so choose wisely

Combat

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  • Combat is deadly, wounds linger after battles, and the dead cannot return. Choose your moves carefully and remember: Every life has its price

  • Each mission has a clear condition you must match to earn your reward, so pay attention and strategize accordingly.

  • Rout Mission: You must clear the battlefield of all enemies to succeed. Leave no survivors

  • Defend Mission: You must guard a strategic point for long enough to succeed. Stand firm and hold the line

  • Seize Mission: You must take over a valuable position from the enemy to succeed. Move fast and strike hard

Bug Fixes

  • Resolved major bug causing unit name/portrait generation to crash game
  • fixed missing/incorrect tooltip/item displays for weapons/items/contracts
  • fixed unit persistence bug
  • fixed heat buildup and bugged active items
  • fixed weapon selection/missing keyboard shortcuts

Credits

  • Jack Grace Systems & UI Programmer - Fleet, Designer
  • Faye Glynn Systems & UI Programmer - Combat, Designer
  • Haley Barnette Systems and AI Programmer - General
  • Charlie Lomax Systems Programmer - Units/Weapons/Equipment, Designer
  • Max Eddington Artist - UI & Character, Designer
  • Maverick Middleton Artist - Environment & UI, Designer
  • Mitchell Dunning Artist - Equipment/Weapons, Designer, Concept Artist, Musician
  • Landon Sugar Composer, Sound Designer, Musician

Ratings

Overall 493th 3.644⭐ 54🧑‍⚖️
Fun 590th 3.441⭐ 53🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 880th 3.039⭐ 53🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1154th 2.608⭐ 53🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 514th 3.817⭐ 54🧑‍⚖️
Audio 283th 3.71⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Humor 821th 2.61⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Mood 600th 3.528⭐ 55🧑‍⚖️
Given 77🗳️ 95🗨️

Feedback

Thomas Gelman
22. Apr 2024 · 07:43 UTC
This game is very well made! There are some small things regarding UI. In particular I think the tool-tip/pop-up transparency should be more opaque as it can be kind of hard to read the text, and similarly tooltips can occasionally be displayed off-screen, but overall this doesn't really harm the experience that much. The gameplay loop is spectacular, I honestly could have kept playing for another hour! The tactics are kind of simple, but there is much possibility in that simplicity, and I found it super engaging to get paid, upgrade my fleet, and get paid again. The audio and artwork is also incredible, great work all-around :ok_hand:.
AJ Atkinson
22. Apr 2024 · 21:13 UTC
A great start to a tactical rpg! Maybe a little loose with the term summoning, but the theme is only one category to rate. I really enjoyed the game, it's well polished and has a great level of detail, lore, and charm to it!
MisterCarson
23. Apr 2024 · 02:11 UTC
An absolute banger through and through, the artwork is kinda goated. Great work!
kleinzach
23. Apr 2024 · 02:19 UTC
I love the art and music, absolutely wonderful. The gameplay felt a bit slow though, especially without mouse controls.
🎤 Blazejmg917
23. Apr 2024 · 02:31 UTC
@thomas-gelman thanks for the feedback! Updating our tooltips to work a little better is definitely something we'd like to improve in the future, as it was kind of thrown together and breaking up until the last minute. I'm very glad to hear that you enjoyed the game though! We put a lot of work into that gameplay loop so it's great to hear that you enjoyed it!
🎤 Blazejmg917
23. Apr 2024 · 02:33 UTC
@aj-atkinson thanks for the feedback! I'm happy to hear that you liked it! And yeah, with the lore we had it's very clear in our heads how this game is super summoning-themed since you're essentially a summoning middle man pulling troops out of the rift and forming contracts with other summoners, but we didn't get as much of a chance to make that explicit in the game itself. But I'm glad that you enjoyed it!
🎤 Blazejmg917
23. Apr 2024 · 02:34 UTC
@mistercarson thanks! I'm really proud of what our artists accomplished, so I'm glad to see that other people appreciate it as well!
🎤 Blazejmg917
23. Apr 2024 · 02:35 UTC
@kleinzach yeah we had originally had the idea of toggling a setting between mouse and keyboard modes in the battle segments to alleviate that, but we didn't get around to it with the time we had. We'd def like to go around and do some more balancing fixes to speed that up in the future, but I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the game!
Cafe Spectrum Studio
23. Apr 2024 · 02:53 UTC
AAA Game
Air Dinghy
23. Apr 2024 · 08:01 UTC
Great little Tactics RPG. Well done.
Ty Victorson
23. Apr 2024 · 08:42 UTC
Art looked great! I liked the song and the SFX, I think there could have been some SFX for the weapons as well but that's a minor gripe! One thing I think you could improve on is letting the player just select the unit rather than having to navigate with the WASD keys, same with dragging the mouse to look around the map. I really enjoyed the game nice work!
kawa-yoiko
23. Apr 2024 · 09:35 UTC
This is impressively contentful! Although I did not figure out how to restart a mission from the fleet after I failed the first one, I did find the game delicately set-up and tuned, with an intelligent AI and some decent challenges. It appears that there is an abundance of variations on every element, with a lasting, far-stretching gameplay, so this surely has potential to be a great crossover of turn-based strategy and management games!

The help text was long and written in capitalised letters, so it was a bit hard for me to grasp everything at once, though it gradually became clear later. Some revisions on this might be helpful.
MissingPixel
23. Apr 2024 · 10:10 UTC
Cool game! Art, audio and polish were all very well done. I did find the game play to be somewhat lacking however. Since my own units lacked much sustainability, I would occasionally low roll and fail to kill an enemy, only to die immediately after. As a result, the best strategy was to wait at the edge of enemy attack range, then to for them to randomly decide to move towards me. Needless to say this left waiting through most turns. This can be solved a number of ways such as Player health, Attack range, AI, Mechanics, etc. Regardless, this game was pretty cool and I can clearly see how much work was put into it. Great job!
Sozey
23. Apr 2024 · 11:38 UTC
I really like this entry! As others mentioned, UX could be improved but this is still an amazing game, with beautiful graphics, great audio and fun gameplay. Good work!
DeerofBlue
23. Apr 2024 · 14:07 UTC
Wow! Insane graphics and the art style! I like the old school "taking-turn" combat mode, and audio design really creates a good "retro" feeling. Good entry!
Martta
23. Apr 2024 · 14:58 UTC
Wow, the production quality for this game is through the roof. Even without the buying of upgrades etc. I would have been impressed, as it takes lots of time to implement turnbased games with unit and weapon variety. Very good entry! I wish someday I could get 7 friends to join me on my game jams. :D
Creeper Nade
23. Apr 2024 · 15:16 UTC
"I can do this all day"
WhenYouCantFindAFriend
23. Apr 2024 · 15:54 UTC
Great Job! Love how much detail you put into the lore of the game! I was a little confused about what I should be doing because there were so many options for the player. But I'm a little out of touch with RPG terminology I think. But maybe some reminders or instruction/options can be displayed in future builds. But overall great job and I love the audio!
Ueighti
23. Apr 2024 · 15:56 UTC
I like the art! Nice job
zirconcode
23. Apr 2024 · 17:46 UTC
Best soundtrack I've heard so far, I think the font in the action menu was a bit hard to read at times, a packing experience, great work!
Eranan
23. Apr 2024 · 19:10 UTC
Fun combat and strategy system and interesting art-style.

Some of the tutorial presentation could've been staged a little gentler.
The music is really nice in terms of writing but the levels are a bit high for the more intense parts of the in game loop, the lower freq levels in the menu music were also very strong and overwhelming for headphones.

Overall a good experience though!
JackCallahan
23. Apr 2024 · 22:19 UTC
Very good work all around! The art is very fun and the music/sound effects are great. I quite enjoy the strategizing options provided to you through the control of multiple units. The different level types also present quite interesting challenges.

I did find myself a little confused at the beginning, just grasping the controls over my troops. Also, I found that the game at one point just did not allow me to make any moves. I thought I would just bring this up in case anyone else has encountered a similar thing.
RossK
23. Apr 2024 · 22:54 UTC
Well done!
JoshAnthony1990
24. Apr 2024 · 02:50 UTC
This was a massively ambitious game to pull off for a jam! Polish-wise, this is top notch! Art, SFX, and music are fantastic.

This falls short on the theme, for me. There's not any difference between "summons" and "hire for cash", and I feel the theme could easily be absent and the game wouldn't be any different for it.

Mission 1 felt way too long; it took 10+ minutes before I got to the fleet action part of it, and with so many enemies I went down to 1 badly-wounded unit, which ensured my demise on the next mission.

Overall, great job!
Diego Escalante
24. Apr 2024 · 05:31 UTC
It kind of throws a lot at you all at once, and I really wish I could use my mouse as input, but dang, there's so much to this game, and all of it feels well made and polished! Really great achievement to complete a game with such scope. Well done!
Kamizenki
24. Apr 2024 · 14:15 UTC
Love this strategy game, amazing music! but the first stage is very hard for me to complete. Good work!
marrs
24. Apr 2024 · 17:40 UTC
Solid game with good music! Enjoyed playing it.
Himiko Morena
24. Apr 2024 · 23:30 UTC
I liked the game, I thought it was fun, I like strategy games, I found it very intuitive apart from the controls, it would be easier to move the characters with the mouse, but in general it was very good
LyaMgtt
25. Apr 2024 · 09:05 UTC
Absolutely love the art style!! Well done :)
Custodi
25. Apr 2024 · 15:41 UTC
got tired from reading the tutorial, but understood everything once i started playing. cute artstyle and nice gameplay!
Nicso
25. Apr 2024 · 21:57 UTC
That's really impressive for a jam, nice entry 👍
HerryFabien
26. Apr 2024 · 20:58 UTC
Really nice and polished game even if not in the theme at all but would have benefited from a first mission being less grindy. Especially since the AI isn't acting so it isn't making itself vulnerable if he has the same range as you
Merb1000
27. Apr 2024 · 14:41 UTC
Very well polished game, a great showing from the NCSU alums (and current students? There's a few names I don't recognize from my class). My main critique is that it would be nice for combat to be a bit more streamlined, I spent a lot of time moving my troops turn after turn and waiting for enemies to end up in the right position. I'd experiment with a few factors: number of enemies, enemy aggression, new enemy types, etc. until you find a nice balance that keep the player consistently engaged.

The upgrades/mothership system was unexpected and very well made. Definitely not a detail I expect from a jam project. Teamwork is a learned skill and its very clear that this group worked together very well to create a lot for this project. Great job!
unless games
01. May 2024 · 14:01 UTC
Nice graphics and music!

There is a lot of depth and detail here but the game falls a bit short at the level of fundamental controls and pacing. Think you should make it work with mouse or at least let the player step through the crew with keys instead of having to navigate to them for selection, this was by far the most hectic aspect for me and it makes the game much slower than it could be.

There is a bit too much moving around as well without any interesting choice to make or action to have, you could make smaller levels or somehow let the player move multiple units together to help with this.

Either way, it's an impressing entry, especially considering your team size which I imagine could have been hard to coordinate.