Mana Tactics by argensis

A tactics based game based around summoning elementals and protecting your summoner
How to play:
- Click on your units to view their actions
- Most units can move and attack
- Your summoner can summon up to two units per turn if you have the resources. Each unit costs 3 resources of its kind to summon.
- Get resources each turn based on the number of special tiles that you have captured.
- You start with 2 resources of each type. Each captured tile gives you 1 more and increases the amount you can bank by 2.
- Local Multiplayer only, there is no AI

| Link | https://gitlab.com/tonyfinn/ld55-mana-tactics |
| Link | https://games.tonyfinn.com/ld55-mana-tactics/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/mana-tactics |
Ratings
| Overall | 193th | 3.403⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 259th | 3.032⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 226th | 3.129⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 81th | 4⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 298th | 2.726⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 245th | 2.393⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 280th | 2.845⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 36🗳️ | 68🗨️ |
A little clearer indication on which units still have available actions would be a welcome addition as the transparency works better for some units than others. The living tree in particular was hard for me to tell if it has used its actions or not.
I spent some time confused with the info button depressed and thought the game was broken
The core game looks pretty solid to me. Good job :D
@netguy204 Yeah, a magnifying glass cursor to show you can click on tiles was a feature I wanted to add but ran out of time!
> Also, you can add more complex summoning conditions. For example, you can create a much more stronger golem, if you stand not on one mountain tile, but on a mountain which is surrounded with some number of additional mountains on sides. Or if you stand on a tile which is surrounded from one side with water and on another side with lava - you get a very strong obsidian golem sweat_smile. Good luck on this project!
@asatrain Yeah, my original notes had the idea of different combo of elements, so originally Poseidon was going to be water + lightning or similar. But I decreased the number to save on time doing art and having to come up with so many unit distinctions.
I'd have loved to see some simply AI, even if it's something silly like "take random actions", but I can understand why this might be a rabbit hole of scope creep! I could have also really used a mana sink, because I quickly maxed out 2 units per turn after capturing only a couple resources.
Game is easy to learn and easy play, which is rarer than you'd think! The "info mode" is particularly important to this - so all in all, great job!
The game could be nice for a bot programming contest :)
very simple to understand yet there is a lot of variety you can do with your strategies!
Nice to have a game comp that I can play with friends :)
Art style was quite simple but charming.
Overall good work!
Cool game!
- I really don't like that left and right click confirm actions like movement, you should use one for confirm and the other for cancel
- I liked the info mode, but I feel it would be better if it was mapped to one of the mouse buttons when nothing is selected instead of having to switch in and out of it.
- I feel like you could give a map size selection, the map is really too big and it makes feel most places not important. Also I feel the spawning locations matter a lot, whoever gets first to a resource will be able to snowball faster and therefore win (at least that's what I feel like)
- It would be nice to have even a simple AI that moves towards the player, summons/attack if it can and try to end it's turn on a resource. (I know the time constraint isn't great, but you have 4 unit types, maybe it should have been cut down?)
- I think summoning a unit on a resource should also capture the resource.
- I'd like the lake and spring to maybe be a different color, make them more distinguishable. Also you could make the terrain resemble the movement cost more, like the forest seems pretty dense, and mountains near impassable.