Grave Wrangler by Bearacus
Index
Story/Concept
In this gripping arcade-style 2D shooter, step into the boots of the Grave Wrangler, a once-honorable cowboy whose desperate plea, for the power to bring back a dead loved one, was twisted by the nefarious Lord of Hell. Now, armed with dark necromantic abilities, the Grave Wrangler must navigate the sun-scorched deserts of Arizona, where poorly buried bodies lay unrested beneath the shifting sands.
Summoning the undead from the very floorboards of abandoned saloons, the Grave Wrangler faces hordes of vengeful spirits, all while struggling with the guilt of his unwitting pact. With each wave of enemies, uncover the tragic stories of those laid to rest.
Harness the powers of death itself to cleanse the land and confront the Lord of Hell's malevolent schemes to cleanse the expanse of the Desolate Deserts.
https://youtu.be/W4ewh_SlfTo
How to play:


In this game You control WHERE the Enemies are summoned from by placing their respective Summoning circles in the Game Board.
Some Summon charges are required to be placed in order to start the round. While the Optional ones give You the option to make the round harder if You choose to. In future patches We aim to make, adding these optional charges, worth Your while with extra score at the end and gold for upgrades(which we couldn't implement in time for the Ludum Dare but plan in the future)
You can headshot the Enemies!
Controls:
- Keyboard [WASD] for movement
- Mouse + R-Btn to click and place summ rituals in planning phase
- Mouse + R-Btn to Aim and Shoot
Goal:
Survive 12 rounds that increase in difficulty each round.
Notes
Hey y'all, Bear(@bearacus) here, stepping in for Cake(@cake) who worked hard on this one and is, at the time of me writting this, having some well deserved Zzz .
**All assets (models, textures, sprites, animations, etc...) and code were made uniquely and solely for Ludum Dare 55 "Summoning" , within the 72 hour time limit!**We really liked our concept for the LD55 theme "Summoning"! And have some big plans for this game following the game jam. We can easily see ourselves expanding on Grave Wrangler we some features, We believe, could escalate this game's potential up to eleven. To name a few: - "Scoreboard" || As a means to incentivise players to opt into using the non-required summ charges to maximize the final score. - "Gold System" || In conjunction with the following feature - "Upgrade System" || Using the aforementioned gold, acquired from clearing as many Summoning circles as possibles (another form of incentivising the player to not just use required Summ charges) The player can purchase upgrades that could span from Stat boosts, other ways of dealing Dmg to enemies, Weapon modifiers, etc... And other tweaks We wanted to squeeze into the game that We thought of during the game jam but couldnt find the time to focus on them and instead stored them into the backlog
For now, enjoy Grave Wrangler 1.0.0 and if You could rate + comment, sharing Your feedback and showing us how You reached the victory screen, We would greaty appreciate it!
Roles:
Diogo (@cake) : Programmer
João (@bearacus) : Artist
Tools:
Aseprite
Unity
Visual Studio
SFXR
| Web - Scroll up! Play it on this page! | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/grave-wrangler |
| Grave Wrangler - Windows | https://originalcake.itch.io/grave-wrangler |
| Grave Wrangler - Web (Itch) | https://originalcake.itch.io/grave-wrangler |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/grave-wrangler |
Ratings
| Overall | 785th | 3.4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 608th | 3.42⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 828th | 3.1⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 566th | 3.7⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 597th | 3.72⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 729th | 2.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1024th | 3.021⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
most important thing i like is headshots it's why i liked it, animations\style is very good for a jam game imo i like it a lot uh... i don't like placing summoning circles because mouse cursor doesn't change from crosshair to maybe something else it's minor... i really can see it being played or even bought with some improvement.. yea what i wanted to say it seems very polished, like interesting but not 100% working mechanics seems to have been removed & everything that's there works very well...
imo: i really don't see a point of placing spawn zones if there no debris... leaderboard, score and gold... doesn't seem that important to me as capitilising on summoning mechanic... like debris can be generated, map can be changed (collision seems to work very well? and simple pathfinding like going over a stone is easy to implement)... like some interactive elements on the map? explosive barrels? summoning circles can show how much they summon & that can be different... this got great potential imho except ...haha it's hard to adapt for android mobile... for example you can disignate zones & like clicking on them will order the hero to move there and moving can be on cooldown... bit shooting & doing headshots (the thing i liked the most) won't work... maybe make shots do more damage but ...so player click the phone screen once 1-2s... not clicking for some time can charge the damage... or it can be a gun that can be bought for gold & equiped