Changelings' Lair by Haighstrom
A Dungeon Keeper type game. With a statue of a fat bear you need to protect for some reason.
I was a bit over ambitious for this LD and I reeeeeally ran out of time, so sorry for the bits that aren't working so well / seem a bit unfinished. I had a huge list of other things I wanted to add (especially more things for the player to do) but sadly I had to wrap it up. Will defo keep working on this one post-compo, so let me know what else you'd have liked to see in your feedback. :)
It's just about all working and sort of balanced! I didn't much like the theme, but I added some small nods to "shapeshifting".
There are some instructions in-game, but based on some feedback below that people can't work out how to play:
HOW TO PLAY
-Your objective is to protect the bearshrine through various waves of enemies.
-You do this by building rooms which attract creatures to your dungeon
-You have to choose which of your Creatures to "shapeshift" into Workers, so you can mine gold (you do this by casting "Morph Worker" on them)
-Your units will do stuff like use rooms and fight enemies on their own, although they are a bit thick sometimes (since their AI was written by me)
-The unit stats are all hidden to you, the player, so you have to watch them carefully during fights to see which ones are good (generally the more expensive the room that attracts them, the better they are)
Tips:
-Creatures spawn automatically from your portal
-Workers can only be created by casting "Morph Worker" on a Creature
-Workers ONLY gather gold from mines, they can't fight or do anything else
-The Mine lets Workers gather Gold
-Creatures do various tasks, including fight enemies, but DON'T mine gold
-The Library attracts blue blobs and lets them gather extra mana for you (i didn't have time to make an animation for this, sorry it's not obvious)
-The Healing room heals injured Creatures
-The other rooms just attract stronger Creatures
-Building more than one of the same room will mean it's more likely to get the creatures it attracts (e.g. get loads of libraries if you want blue blobs)
-Only 3 guys can use one room at the same time. So for example if you have 6 Workers, you need 2 Mines.
The best way to start each level is:
-Buy a Mine
-Cast Morph Worker on a Creature
Now you have a Worker gathering gold. Probably want a library next to start attracting blue blobs, and gathering Mana. Then it's up to you.
I was a bit over ambitious for this LD and I reeeeeally ran out of time, so sorry for the bits that aren't working so well / seem a bit unfinished. I had a huge list of other things I wanted to add (especially more things for the player to do) but sadly I had to wrap it up. Will defo keep working on this one post-compo, so let me know what else you'd have liked to see in your feedback. :)
It's just about all working and sort of balanced! I didn't much like the theme, but I added some small nods to "shapeshifting".
There are some instructions in-game, but based on some feedback below that people can't work out how to play:
HOW TO PLAY
-Your objective is to protect the bearshrine through various waves of enemies.
-You do this by building rooms which attract creatures to your dungeon
-You have to choose which of your Creatures to "shapeshift" into Workers, so you can mine gold (you do this by casting "Morph Worker" on them)
-Your units will do stuff like use rooms and fight enemies on their own, although they are a bit thick sometimes (since their AI was written by me)
-The unit stats are all hidden to you, the player, so you have to watch them carefully during fights to see which ones are good (generally the more expensive the room that attracts them, the better they are)
Tips:
-Creatures spawn automatically from your portal
-Workers can only be created by casting "Morph Worker" on a Creature
-Workers ONLY gather gold from mines, they can't fight or do anything else
-The Mine lets Workers gather Gold
-Creatures do various tasks, including fight enemies, but DON'T mine gold
-The Library attracts blue blobs and lets them gather extra mana for you (i didn't have time to make an animation for this, sorry it's not obvious)
-The Healing room heals injured Creatures
-The other rooms just attract stronger Creatures
-Building more than one of the same room will mean it's more likely to get the creatures it attracts (e.g. get loads of libraries if you want blue blobs)
-Only 3 guys can use one room at the same time. So for example if you have 6 Workers, you need 2 Mines.
The best way to start each level is:
-Buy a Mine
-Cast Morph Worker on a Creature
Now you have a Worker gathering gold. Probably want a library next to start attracting blue blobs, and gathering Mana. Then it's up to you.
Ratings
| Coolness | 45% | 1350 |
| Overall | 3.57 | 185 |
| Audio | 3.23 | 231 |
| Fun | 3.46 | 232 |
| Graphics | 3.38 | 310 |
| Innovation | 2.91 | 585 |
| Mood | 3.27 | 237 |
| Theme | 3.50 | 374 |
I have fun from unlocks\ new morphs, but I can't speed up the game. It do game very boring after one loose
I think I would have liked the Guide to explain more of what I'm supposed to do instead of what everything is, but I think I got the hang of it after I realized which units were mine, and that it's inspired by Dungeon Keeper.
Also, my game also has a Bear! Yay for Bears!
The placement of the rooms didn't seem to matter that much.
Maybe the enemies should prioritize your workers so you should place your mines as far away from the enemy spawn and the bear idol. Maybe the player could even design the layout of the dungeon rather than placing rooms in pre-determined locations.
Now what i liked about this game.
I loved watching all the creatures wander about inside the fortress.
I think the economic side of this game has some potential. It was fun to get miners and see the gold go up faster and faster. There is also an interesting risk in having too many miners as you can't have as much fighters and libaries to generate mana.
I find the graphics in this game in general to be really charming. They remind me of dos games in the early 90's.
Overall this is a good game with a lot of ambition. I would be interested to see you develop this further. I'd also like to thank you for your comment on my game. I found it very informative and it motivated me to keep working on it and gave me some idea how to improve it.
It's a really simple but cool game! Only thing that I could mention, in other hand, is the speed of the game. A possible solution could be a speed up button!
Good entry anyway!
I liked the graphics and music, most of the graphics are good enough for even a longer project. Maybe a better fighting visualisation or something would have been nice, but I can't really complain about anything else.
Except when I click outside of the window, it would be nice if it didn't read the key input. I lost my progress because of that ;___;
The execution is very neat, I love the pixel art, the music and the sheer volume of content.
I found a bug though that made it fairly easy to win the game (unless that is by design). When I heal the bear, it does not cost me 10 mana but instead it gains me 10 mana. So it means I cannot lose and I can easily rack up mana points to get more workers to get more gold to get the good rooms to kick out the heroes.
All in all one of my Compo favorites of LD35. Great work, would definitely be worth pursuing further. A well made, low resolution content-rich Dungeon Keeper game would be something I could see people pay for. I might.
I think with some work this game could turn out great as a longer project, but I just didn't have time to make everything the game needed in such a short space of time! I did want the pace of the game to be slow, but currently there's just not enough to do. I think letting the player dig out their own rooms is a must, really, and maybe some of the exploration that Dungeon Keeper had would be good to some extent too. I'll get on it post-compo!
I noticed this bug, Cerno_b. It's actually that there's no check you have enough mana to buy Heal, so you can spend it and go into the negative. But my text class is so bad that it can't render negative signs (so there's just a space before the first number)... I'll fix this later.
try our game plz
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=90749
I think there is potential here, but it needs a little polish.