Tiny Legion by Pedryx

[raw]
made by Pedryx for Ludum Dare 56 (COMPO)

Play in HTML on itch.io.

Story

The world has fallen into chaos, overrun by tiny, mutated creatures resembling animals. Amid the turmoil, you’ve rediscovered ancient handling skills, granting you the ability to control your own army of these tiny creatures. Can you command them to victory against the enemy armies and restore balance to the world?

Description

The game is structured into rounds. You begin with two species, and every two rounds, you gain access to a new species. Each species comes with unique stats and abilities. You can combine species to create new ones, which inherit random stats and skills from their parents, with a small chance of mutation. In each round, you’ll face a random enemy army, with their difficulty increasing as the rounds progress.

Game Modes

  • Normal: Win by defeating enemies through to round 10.
  • Infinity: Survive for as many rounds as possible with no set victory condition.

Unfinished Features

  • Game balance
  • Magic abilities & mana system
  • Creature AI customization and additional AI types

Ratings

Overall 294th 2.875⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 278th 2.8⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 156th 3.375⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 253th 3.15⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 308th 2.35⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 234th 2.625⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 250th 2.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 293th 2.55⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 14🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

lantto
07. Oct 2024 · 11:47 UTC
Really cool concept! I love breeding games with DNA transfer. It's very hard though and I'm not sure what the optimal strategy is. I seldom get past round 3 and have the most success when I don't combine anything at all, which seems counterintuitive.
LDJam user 265796
07. Oct 2024 · 13:39 UTC
Love the concept and think there could be a lot to dig into, but I think it would be helped a lot by better feedback to the player on what's working and what isn't. Not only is there a lot of text to read, but it's not entirely clear what the various stats and properties do.

I _did_ like exploring trying to build the combinations that I thought _might_ be more effective
manabreak
07. Oct 2024 · 14:05 UTC
Like others said, it's a cool concept that really could be developed further. I was a bit too lazy to look at the stats so I just randomly made armies, and won each time. :D
Setter
07. Oct 2024 · 14:07 UTC
I like the concept! Maybe there could be more objectives in the game other than just click in different creatures to see what they could be. A simpler power value of the selected creature would be nicer too.
EpiFai
07. Oct 2024 · 14:17 UTC
Super cool. I myself have wanted to make a game like this for a very long time. So it was nice to find and play this one. You did very well.

A couple of nuances that interfere with the game. It is not clear what happens during breeding. There are a lot of numbers that are impossible to remember in order to understand what exactly has changed and is it good, or not. There are no restrictions on breeding, although it seems that the more you breed, the stronger the unit becomes on average, it turns out that you can simply overfarm. But clicking for a long time without fighting becomes boring.
hotaloca
07. Oct 2024 · 14:20 UTC
This is so cool to see another game with mutation mechanics :) I also did mutation of small bugs like you did in my game :) Anyhow, I like in your game better than mine to do the combination outside of combat, so in this case you can better plan out, and the strategy is not that mixed. I also liked the auto-battle so this makes things simple and easy (eg. you really just need to focus on your team). I did not quite understand how the combination works - are these randomly selected, did I make any improvement (eg. i understand you can check in the stats but it was difficult to follow). I found it hard to compare especially the different actions -- maybe it would have been simpler just to keep one action per bug. (or enable/disable certain actions fully) because in order to judge the bug strength, you just need to simply do too many calculations and averages so you cannot really compare. It would be better maybe to have a few dimensions only and use visualization (like a bar) to see how they stack up against eachother. Anyway nice job! I really enjoyed it.
LDJam user 76491
07. Oct 2024 · 17:24 UTC
Although it's a bit confusing because it's hard to know what the stats actually do during battle, the game loop of merging creatures and watching them fight is gold. I can definitely see a game with this idea being very successful. I got to round 5, it was fun seeing the chaos during the battles.

Good job!
Tudvari
09. Oct 2024 · 15:31 UTC
I really like the basic idea, and I couldn't keep myself from trying to create a god-race or something! :D But after all that trying I couldn't really find a strategy to alter the results to it's favorable to me. It felt a too random. But I guess evolution is kind of random. But maybe I'm just bad at numbers, and I got lost in them a bit and couldn't see the patterns or something :smile: Hmm, yeah, maybe there could have been a bit less numbers on the screen. Anyway, nice job, very good idea!
SdCorpse
12. Oct 2024 · 01:40 UTC
artstyle is funny!)
ruthiepee
13. Oct 2024 · 22:53 UTC
Very ambitious autobattler with a breeding mechanic! It's definitely tough to get all of these things done during such a short jam: programming the random mutations, designing the UI, balancing the special abilities, the battle mechanics, the battle simulation, etc. So yeah, the interface could use a little bit better feedback and clarity but I'm really amazed at what you were able to create in the jam! I got to level 5 or so before it got too tough.
Pachino55
20. Oct 2024 · 16:38 UTC
Very cool concept, very cool game!
vfqd
20. Oct 2024 · 19:38 UTC
Reminds me of the old game Impossible Creatures. Nice idea!~
dp3rucha
22. Oct 2024 · 15:08 UTC
Nice entry. A more differenced sprites between creatures would help. GJ!