Grandóhma by Thijs Tak

[raw]
made by Thijs Tak for LD33 (COMPO)
This is my entry for the ludum dare 33 called Grandóhma.

Quick Guide:
Move you character over fields with humans and start combat. You kills will create bodies. Gather these and move to en empty space. Now create a spawn and it will start swaning new units on your side. The right of the screen lists all the units, bodies and food on the cell your cursor is over. The two buttons next to the end turn button will show the details of your forces (tower) and the humans(castle).

Your goal is to kill all defenders of the castle. Beware that if you attack the castle or even a village (building with no fences) as the start of the game wou will most likely be killed instantly due to the sheer number of defenders.

Any death (even if your allies kill them) will grand you experience. Once you have enough press the mutate button and you will gain one random base stat.
You have three types of attacks. See the details below.

I hope you have fun,

Full Description:
In this game you are the elder monster called Grandóhma. Your task is to kill the lord of the land, hidden safely inside his castle. To overthrow him you must gain strength by killing his people and creating spawn hives where more of your king will grow.

The game works as follows:
You control Grandóhma and her alone. To win against the humans you must start with killing their weaker units, Farmers and villagers. This will net you experience and allows you to gather their corpses.
With the corpses you can create spawn lairs. Here, minions will spawn and attack and harvest the humans on their on, though you can always drop more bodies to speed up the process.
With the xp gathered you can mutate your body, causing one of your base stats to increase randomly.
Following this pattern you must defeat the humans and conquer the castle.

The humans will not sit still either. The more you destroy their people the harder they will counter attack you and your minions. Beware of their knights because one you can best, ten you cannot, until you get stronger.

Controls:
The game can be played with the mouse, but playing with the keyboard speeds things along:
wasd: Movement
Space: combat
G: Get bodies
D: Drop Bodies
S: Create Spawn (Need at least one body)
M: Mutate
E: Enhance (Didn't make it in, sorry)
1: Normal combat
2: Fire combat
3: hunt combat

About Combat:
There are 3 different combat modes:
Normal: You (and your allies if you have them) will face all the enemies.
Fire: You attack once with a powerful attack, draining all your SP. It is very powerful and you gain a lot of bonus exp, but leaves no bodies and is a good way to quickly raise the enemies retaliation level.
Hunt: Only the enemy you attack can counter attack you. Sp cost depends on level and you automatically collect the body of the fallen. Safest way to battle in the beginning.

I'll make a screenshot with the icon explanation later.

Once again I bit of more than I could chew, but I hope you like it. Sorry for the complete lack of sound.

Concerning the source: You need grids by GameLogic to build. I used the grid to display the map on the screen. You don't need it to watch the rest of the code, including the simulation and actual game working.

Have fun playing,

Edit:
I've removed the embedded entry. For some reason it messed up the resolution of the game. The web link is still working though.

Ratings

Coolness 88% 2
Overall 2.71 787
Fun 2.33 855
Graphics 2.02 877
Humor 1.87 763
Innovation 2.78 602
Mood 2.51 740
Theme 3.31 529

Feedback

stahlmanDesign
24. Aug 2015 · 05:23 UTC
I just could figure out what to do. Even in full-screen the cursor and commands didn't seem to match up. When I clicked things there was always an explanation why I couldn't do that. The only thing that worked was cicking next turn. Looks ambitious
facelesstheone
25. Aug 2015 · 11:19 UTC
Controls are very hard to learn ) But the game mechanic is pretty awesome. Very interesting one! )
faemir
25. Aug 2015 · 11:29 UTC
Interesting concept - one of the most ambitious games I've seen in a jam in a while. The controls are a bit awkward but sufficient.
DragonGino
25. Aug 2015 · 11:38 UTC
the begin is a little hard to understand but after while you know your way in the game. there is only that i want to ask? can you beacuase if the map is completely empty there is notting do annymore except you choose for a hard or very hard mode. but i think this game is very good right now but, it can be awsome if you improve it(if you have the time for it)
VVD
25. Aug 2015 · 12:54 UTC
Is hard to know what that UI means, if use different color will be better.
unnamed1334
25. Aug 2015 · 23:47 UTC
Well I spent way to long playing this, over a hour and multiple games won. To break some of the main points down:

Information:
The game does not appear to tell me what to do. However, I consider this is both a good and bad thing. It is bad in that some things felt like needed to be explained. Like if I needed to protect the tower or what made the spawn grow larger. On the other hand, trying to figure out what strategy worked best kept me playing and, if I was just told what everything did, I would have probable breezed through the game and not bothered with a playing any more.

Game-play:
I liked having to attack the smaller towns or random villagers in order to level up to the point of attacking the castle. It did feel strange that you would be instantly killed or be near mortal.

Overall:
The game was probably to big but even with the cut features .

Also, I almost completed the "Unwinnable" mode but the game became to slow to finish(It was taking several seconds to just attack). That might have had something to do with the 500,000 enemies.

Good job on the game.
freaknarf
29. Aug 2015 · 09:25 UTC
The game seems somehow ambitious but after several tries i must admit i feel stuck and a bit confused about what to do. I'm not sure about what is happening ; the mechanisms and inputs are a bit hard to understand so maybe some kind of tutorial would make it easier ... A few more colors could make the game a bit clearer also ! Interesting but kinda complex to me :)
madmaw
29. Aug 2015 · 22:04 UTC
OK, I worked it out. Managed to eat the old lord in his castle. Delicious. I was hoping my spawn would grow so large they started attacking me
dpisarcik
29. Aug 2015 · 23:43 UTC
This looks like the beginnings of a promising turn-based strategy game. I might suggest adding a tooltip component to the UI elements, so we can understand the purpose of each function.
TsN_RaMPaGE
30. Aug 2015 · 03:32 UTC
I had a really hard time figuring out what to do. Eventually I figured out most of the basic actions and how they worked, but with a game this complex some more instructions are definitely needed. Knowing the basic mechanics now I can say that this could turn into a really cool game with some more work and clarification put in. Good job overall!
valid4life
30. Aug 2015 · 05:30 UTC
Like others have said, the controls were iffy but the concept is cool.
Zephyr Raine
30. Aug 2015 · 09:38 UTC
Well, that was interesting, keep working on it and get a graphic designer.
You should explain some of the basics in game too
Tosic
30. Aug 2015 · 10:07 UTC
Very interesting, not my kind of game though... :D
Slashee the Cow
30. Aug 2015 · 10:57 UTC
I'll be honest: I played it for like ten minutes and still had no idea what I was doing. It seems like you put in a lot more mechanics that most compo entries, so good job there, they just aren't really well explained.
los.pixelados
30. Aug 2015 · 11:09 UTC
Nice game, lots of mechanics and interesting concept.
Some keybinds would have been great.
KaiseanGames
30. Aug 2015 · 12:01 UTC
Great innovative ideas. I personally find it a bit too complex, but it's not your fault :) It's me. Keep up the good work.
n8b
31. Aug 2015 · 12:35 UTC
appealing dscription, but I can't see nothing, unity bugs...
iossif
31. Aug 2015 · 13:11 UTC
i think you should have stopped when half the features were done and spend more time on making the game accessible. i feel that it with a few tooltips or a clearer gui this could become a really nice turn based game.
crucknuk
02. Sep 2015 · 12:30 UTC
Nice entry, good job!
DeadFragment
03. Sep 2015 · 14:25 UTC
Very interesting concept with lots of potential.

-Neith
ChaosCult
07. Sep 2015 · 08:09 UTC
Could be interesting, but in present state is a bit too awkward. Moving the main monster tile-by-tile via Move command reminds me of old RPGs, and not in a good way: at the very least, this should be duplicated by Arrow keys, or even better, the monster should just move where I point it to, by finding and following a path, or even teleporting (unless there are events happening automatically when you enter a tile).

But it's nice to see a more strategic game in this jam.
Patomkin
07. Sep 2015 · 10:09 UTC
The idea and planned gameplay mechanics are quite impressive. It seems they didn't get implemented well enough simply because of the lack of time. I'm sure that with a little bit more work and polish the game would play absolutely great ;)