Strongmen! by TomBom

made by TomBom for LD18 (COMPO)

Strongmen! (with vital exclamation mark) is a tactical strategy game in a similar vein to games like Civ and XCOM.
Except you have no weapons yourself, and have to pick up baddies from behind to use them cunningly...

Level 8 is the last "unique" level, which just repeats until you die.
The title music was randomly generated !1111!!!
I used a tool called Ramugen (http://homepages.tesco.net/gregskius/ramugen.html) to do that, which seemed ok, but I'm not convinved random music is ever gonna be anything other than surreal... hence not using it in-game.

Anyway, my first game jam game...done! woo!

EDIT: This is an XNA game, so you'll need to get the XNA Restributable 3.1 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=53867A2A-E249-4560-8011-98EB3E799EF2&displaylang=en if you don't already have it

Windows	http://www.dustyneuron.com/Strongmen_1.0.zip
Source	http://www.dustyneuron.com/StrongmenSource_1.0.zip
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=2604

Ratings

Coolness	9%	72
Overall	3.57	19

Audio	2.42	74
Community	2.50	99
Fun	3.43	21
Graphics	2.80	90
Humor	2.83	37
Innovation	3.86	10
Theme	4.36	1

Feedback

Riley Adams

23. Aug 2010 · 03:06 UTC

Good fun, nice use of the theme!

Jamin

23. Aug 2010 · 16:48 UTC

Doesn't seem to run under Wine. I'll take another look once I've rebooted into Windows.

blitzgren

24. Aug 2010 · 13:48 UTC

I played this for a while, it was really interesting. I liked the it was a really simple idea turned into interesting gameplay, nice work :)

KilledByAPixel

24. Aug 2010 · 18:43 UTC

Nice work! It was fun trying to figure out a strategy but I couldn't come up with a good one. I almost beat level 3 after several tries but eventually had to throw in the towel.

Alan Lynn

26. Aug 2010 · 14:16 UTC

I played all the way past level 8. It was quite fun, but would need some new content (new enemies types or something) if you wanted to make the game any longer than it currently is.

Once I had 3-star units, I would bait an enemies into shooting me at a diagonal, then use my 4 space movement to get behind it and pick it up. It removed the need to use 2 units to capture an enemy, probably making the game too easy in the process.

After a while, that barfing animation started making me feel sick. You might want to consider changing it to something else.

pekuja

05. Sep 2010 · 04:22 UTC

Well, I liked the use of the theme, but I didn't quite grok the combat system. I tried walking against the enemies, but it wouldn't work. It only worked a couple of times. Do I need to surround the enemy before it works? That seems kinda weird, but that's ok. The game should explain that though.

Thanks for pointing out Ramugen, by the way. I want to take a look at that. :-P

🎤 TomBom

08. Sep 2010 · 14:39 UTC

Thanks for the comments everyone!
I guess I messed up a bit on the whole not telling people how to play.. here's a long-overdue explanation for anyone who reads this far:

How to play
----------------------
Move your good guys to grab & lift up baddies from *behind* - take not of which way the baddies are facing!
At the end of each turn any carried baddies will splatter *anything* within range - goodies, baddies, and baddy factories.

Note that when you're carrying a baddy around, your guy will use the baddy as a shield, and won't get hit by anything.
Your guys get a promotion star when they succesfully grab a baddy, increasing their HP and MP.

Tips
----------------------
Lure each baddy with one goody, then grab them from behind with another goody.
Sacrificing troops can be essential - your squad will get new recruits each level to make up a total of 4.
Promotion stars are crazily overpowered (as Alan said), so you might wanna try just leveling one guy up, rather than spreading them around.