LudumData

Edge of the Abyss by piscythe

[raw]
made by piscythe for LD 38 (COMPO)

Screenshot from 2017-04-23 18-04-21.png

If the old gods want to drag us into the abyss, they'll pay for it in their own stinking blood. -Avil-Kai Vaedra, Anticardinal

A survival rts where your army of cultists tries to defend the one of the last remaining chunks of reality from an endless swarm of eldritch horrors. Hold the line for as long as you can!

Web Download Source

Controls:

To select units, click and drag over them. Right click on a location to order selected units to move there. Left click to deselect units. Use the buttons on the left side of the screen to produce buildings and units. Building units requires resources, listed in the top right corner. The bottom right corner has the game timer. It stops when your last building is destroyed so you know how long you survived.

Player Units:

Cultist: Light ranged unit. A cheap source of firepower, but dies quickly if exposed to enemy fire. Health: 100. Range: 150. Speed: 40. Damage: 50/s.

Seraph: Fast assault unit. Good burst damage and the best movement speed in the game, but has a 4 second cooldown. Use for hit and run attacks and surgical strikes. Health: 150. Range: 75. Speed: 200. Damage: 250/4s.

Lantern: Artillery. Longest range of anything in the game, but slow and fragile. Health: 200. Range: 400. Speed: 20. Damage: 50/0.5s.

God Eye: Super unit. Fast, durable, and powerful. Health: 2500. Range: 200. Speed: 100. Damage: 500/0.25s.

Player Buildings (Note: all buildings give 1 resource per second and can attack)

Crystal: Cheapest building. Use if you need more money. Health: 2000. Range: 100. Damage: 25/0.33s.

Tower: Best building for defense. Health: 3000. Range: 200. Damage: 100/0.5s.

Office: Required to build Cultists. Health: 5000. Range: 200. Damage: 100/1s.

Temple: Required to build Seraphim. Health: 5000. Range: 200. Damage: 100/1s.

Forge: Required to build Lanterns. Health: 5000. Range: 200. Damage: 100/1s.

Altar: Required to build God Eyes. Health: 5000. Range: 200. Damage: 200/2s.

Made using HaxeFlixel with the VSCode IDE. Graphics done with Inkscape and TexturePacker.

My record is 18:25 and I will be very impressed if anyone can top that.

Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/edge-of-the-abyss

Ratings

Overall 153th 3.615⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 220th 3.269⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 415th 2.68⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 258th 3.423⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 360th 2.96⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 317th 2.96⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 31🗳️ 47🗨️

Feedback

Steve Johnson
02. May 2017 · 06:23 UTC
I unfortunately wasn't able to figure this game out at all. I'm not an RTS veteran. I kind of figured out how to build buildings, but not how to get resources fast enough to build them quickly enough. And building units didn't seem to do anything somehow.

I am going to not rate this because I feel like I just don't get what's going on, but there seems like depth I just can't see.
KCreanor
02. May 2017 · 07:43 UTC
This is an absolute gem, I love RTS and this is a really fun example of one. The difficulty ramp is perfect (6:30 on my second try, convinced I can make it past the 10 minute mark with some strategic planning!) and the difference between the units/buildings is enough to make each resource spent count. Great game, really REALLY well done :smiley:
Frodewin
02. May 2017 · 10:08 UTC
Great game, but it took me some time to figure out a strategy. The building names and graphics were not intuitive to me to figure out what they are doing. For example I would not know what Office or Cultist is doing without reading the description. The description mentions a generator, which is called Crystal in the game. Pretty hard game, after playing several times I could not manage to survive much longer than two minutes (I started building two generators and then towers, then the attacks started and weared me down :-) I saw that you opted out of audio, but this game would do great with some sounds and voice recordings, probably for a later version?
kasarun
02. May 2017 · 10:27 UTC
I love RTS. I did my best and do a 5min run :smile:

Maybe it lacks a building or a unit to 'tank' damages ; i'd like to have CPU target priorities (closest one until it dies ?).

I enjoyed it a lot, and will play it again !
~~Can you give more details about units specifications (damage, health, armor, range ...) ?~~

EDIT : Thx for details on units :)
🎤 piscythe
02. May 2017 · 18:09 UTC
@frodewin Try putting on a loop of the cultist voices from Dawn of War 1 while you play.

@kasarun Buildings in general are better for absorbing damage than units, and production buildings are better for that than towers and crystals. Units always aim for the nearest target.
Wevel
02. May 2017 · 21:48 UTC
Very good RTS game, I haven't entirely worked out a good starting build order but I'm working on it. I don't think every building should be able to attack or produce money. I think, while in its current state it is fairly balanced, it might be more fun if there was more reason to make each building. E.g. crystal to get money, tower for defenses ect. Also if there where walls to stop enemies then proper defenses could be setup. However, for the time available it has been done very well.
oberynmartell
03. May 2017 · 01:53 UTC
Pretty straightforward but challenging game. My only criticism is balance... is seems that there's only a few paths you can take to last longer. As the position of the placement of the buildings does not affect the outcome so much, the only variables in the game are the buid order and the control of the unities. So I think it removes a little of the RTS aspect of the game.
But still, well done!
Gato
03. May 2017 · 02:40 UTC
Good game! Haha, I thought I was doing well until the bigger monsters came in at 16:30. It took me a few tries to figure out what works well. It was a lot of fun. Great entry!
nilead
03. May 2017 · 09:26 UTC
An RTS in a game jam? NOICE
Scornz
03. May 2017 · 10:05 UTC
I was literally going to say the same exact thing @nilead :) Awesome submission, took a little bit for me to get a handle on things, but eventually, I was crushing it. Nice job!
Samurai Spark
03. May 2017 · 10:38 UTC
Hey @piscythe nice entry!

This is a good working RTS, really nicely done for 48 hours!
The gameplay itself is smooth and the different types of troops and buildings bring multiple strategy elements.
As @oberynmartell noticed the balance is a small problem. Oh and after the 7-8 retry my cultist unit began to move 3 times as fast as before.
But that doesn't effect the fun at all.


Great job mate!
gurkenlabs
03. May 2017 · 10:39 UTC
Very complex and challenging game! I would have wished for some kind of ingame indicator on the effects of units and buildings, but overall your game is a lot of fun.
MewSoul
03. May 2017 · 11:02 UTC
Nice to see this kind of game part of a game jam!

Overall that's pretty pleasing to play for the players who like this kind of game :) There are enough units and buildings to bring a sufficient depth to the game and be able to enjoy it!

It's nice of you of adding some details about all the elements, maybe that could be something to integrate into the game, like a small window that appears in a corner when your mouse is over one of the buttons.

Great work! :)
Fiote
03. May 2017 · 18:42 UTC
About your comment in my game: The first iteration of the game didn't have stuff breaking nor health, so the player would get to a point where he could simply go afk for 5 hours and the game would progress just fine, everything in order. To make it engaging, I added those features. That way the player must be always paying attention haha.

About your game: I'll play it when I get home then I'll rate/comment it ^^
BlueCakeWithCows
03. May 2017 · 23:48 UTC
Wow. Really amazed by how much work you got done in 48 hrs. I'm struggling to get past more than a few minutes, but hearing people getting to 16+ minutes speaks for strategy possible. The lack of audio threw the mood off a bit especially with all the eldritch horrors and cult imagery (nice textures!).

Also, consider adding an easy mode or some hints for people like me who are pretty horrible at RTS :P.
Fiote
03. May 2017 · 23:57 UTC
DAMN, the game has an enrage at 16:30! fuck those guys lol! They simply STOMPED my whole base.

Amazing game! I frankly forgot how much I like TD/RTS. This game reminded me ^^ (took me some ~10 runs to actually get a nice building order).

My tip is: 5 snipers can '2-shot' the first though enemy, focus on that as a milestone!

Second tip: Ignore crystals. It's better to get +75 coins and build a tower.

![enrage.png](///raw/246/1/z/3d5b.png)
🎤 piscythe
04. May 2017 · 05:53 UTC
@fiote I'm glad to see you made it to that bit. I also had a problem where it was possible for the player to reach a state (ex: mass lanterns + fill map with towers) where they could basically just go AFK. My solution was pretty heavy-handed, but it certainly ends games. The way I wrote the enemy spawns means that there's a double enrage at 30 minutes, but no one will ever see that.
Gris
04. May 2017 · 10:51 UTC
Very cool that you got to make a RTS in 48h. I enjoyed it greatly and I'll definately try to make one in the future. Congrats!
Fiote
04. May 2017 · 11:58 UTC
Hmm indeed! It's not really fun to have an infinite game on jams (ops lol). How many minutes you as the developer managed to endure? Got me curious haha
🎤 piscythe
04. May 2017 · 15:04 UTC
@fiote My record is 18:25.
Kosmo
05. May 2017 · 00:23 UTC
It was really tough at first. I had to read the other reviews that suggest forgoing the Crystal and just build Towers before I was able to get a build going. An RTS is real tough to get right, because there's such a fine line between it being too easy and too hard. I wouldn't have made it past 2 minutes without help, and there are some people that got to 16:30 apparently no problem. And it seemed like I was throwing away money every time I built a unit. So just build towers ad infinitum? I assume the 700 unit is worth it, but my whole base got destroyed when I tried to save up for it.

So yeah, without good experience of the game, it's tough to do well. It was satisfying to finally progress, and I'm sure even moreso to get to the Enrage part.

It's also been a while since I've played an RTS, so take my opinion with a grain of salt :) Thanks for the game!
seanohue
05. May 2017 · 03:50 UTC
Really challenging at first especially without reading the guide -- not that that's a bad thing. Lots of depth for a small RTS built in a short amount of time, and I really enjoyed the flavor/art style.
joatski
05. May 2017 · 07:02 UTC
I tried a couple of times doing mostly units or trying to do crystals and died pretty quickly. After I built my first tower I realized it gave the same benefit as a crystal + lazors, so I immediately restarted and did only that, making it ~7 minutes on that try. The lesson is to read the write-up which mention that all buildings generate resources :)

Cool to see a RTS done in 48 hours, but the difficulty curve seemed a bit on the harsh side; you basically have to try and die a few times to learn the rules, and I generally felt like I kept needing to build towers constantly so I didn't get a chance to save up and see some of the higher tier units.
DDRKirbyISQ
05. May 2017 · 07:28 UTC
Hehe, yay, tower defense! I too got reck'd by the 16:30 guys. I assume that in order to get past that point you'd need to build up more economy early and then get even more godhands.

Fun ~15 minutes spent!
matita
05. May 2017 · 09:33 UTC
I'm not a real TD expert, so at first I thought it was too hard and unbalanced (the first tries I managed to survive at most 4 minutes...).

But then after reading the other comments I tried a strategy and got to 16:56.

Well, if it made me try to do better and better it surely means this game is fun!
I'll definitely try to beat the 16:30 wave...

I'm impressed at how many items are in this game, great work!

Here are some constructive critics, just because I think this game has good potential and there are just a few things (IMHO) to make it perfect. Some are just my obsession for the interface, so don't take them too seriously:
* I hate when the seconds are not padded in a time display, so, in the clock at the bottom right corner, 0:06 would be better than 0:6
* items creation buttons in the left side have on hover effect even if I don't have enough money to buy it. It's good only if you make a sound like a buzz if I click on it and I can't afford it
* a tooltip on the items creation button would be extremely helpful, with that it wouldn't be necessary to read your game description. Something like: `Seraph: needs Temple. Health: 150. Range: 75. Speed: 200. Damage: 250/4s.`
* when I'm positioning a building it would be good to have some green and red areas to let me know where I can put it and also a circle around the dragged building to identify the area that it will occupy
* some simple sounds would have been good, even generated by [ChipTone](http://sfbgames.com/chiptone/), at least when my building explode
* a better lose screen, so I can restart without refreshing the page (I played the web version)
justinooncx
09. May 2017 · 16:53 UTC
A bit hard to get used to in the beginning, and surprisingly challenging! It's a pretty complete experience, although plays out more like a tower defense game rather than an RTS, seeing as there was no offensive goal. Not a lot of info was given on the units and buildings, but I suppose it lends some form of experimentation for replay value. A pretty solid entry!
Hackingroelz
14. May 2017 · 13:03 UTC
Really fun game! I'll need to play this some later. Really like these kind of small TDs.

The only thing that kinda bothered me is the lack of audio (even simple generated 8-bit sounds would've helped a lot). Aside from that it's pretty addictive. And it's also cool to see another game made in Haxe (just switched to it recently and I'm really liking it so far).
internetpaulicy
19. May 2017 · 23:50 UTC
I like RTS games and I found this game very easy to pick up. I like how you chose to auto fire and aim it really simplifies the micro so you can focus more on the mysterious macro. The assets are super great. The red and black palette looks fantastic. There is a lot of little details in art - the glowing effects are a really nice touch. I can see the beginnings of a fog of war there at the edge. I was able to select and split my little cultists and I could even micro them a bit away from incoming targets. I was able to hold on for about 6:32 seconds with mainly towers, lanterns and cultists. When the red eyed guys showed up I knew that I had the wrong build. I have since reviewed your tech tree and I will give it another shot. Its easy enough to pick up and has some depth to the challenge. Really great entry. Update: I played again. GodEyes are the way to go. I almost had three and then I made some mistakes. I managed to last until 9:43.