PRAY FOR TESLA by slovnoslomo
Good news — we still have one tesla-generator.
Bad news — it's half dead...

PLAY IN WEB →
! NO INGAME TUTORIAL !
HOW TO PLAY:
Defence tesla-generator by streaming it's power to the turrets.
Wave lose energy with the distance, but you can change it's direction with Reflector and enhance it with Amplifier.
CONTROLS:
Build Options — Right Mouse Button
Confirm Build → Left Mouse Button
There are 3 types of structures — Turret, Reflector and Amplifier.
Note you can build only on plain ground.
Number above tesla-generator is your lives. Number below is your energy (100 max).
Fullscreen mode is recommended.
I am looking forward to your structures, highscores and feedback!
| HTML5 (web) | https://itch.io/embed-upload/548905 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/pray-for-tesla |
Ratings
| Overall | 184th | 3.561⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 291th | 3.246⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 151th | 3.509⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 353th | 3.474⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 41th | 4.175⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 195th | 3.304⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 10🗨️ |
I just love the mechanics, right click to change que tower insted of select in a inventory save alot of time.
The game hit the theme very well, congratz!
Amazing, really!
Thoo I couldn't figure out how the Absorber worked so I just placed a few down around the star ^^. but my highest record was around 300 ^^
I was also impressed with the amount of content, I managed to get up to the shield enemies and I really wasn't expecting anything other than larger waves of the small kind, great work.
I managed to get up to wave 28.
Some notes:
I may have been more interesting to make the player have to release the tesla charge. Like, the generator charges up, indicates that it's done, then the player clicks on it to release it. That way you could save your charge for a big wave and you would have to actively pay attention in a way that wasn't just building things.
Also there is a bug (I think) where you can accidentally pick up buildings. I'm not entirely sure how to reproduce it, but I think it happened when I hit left click to often. It seemed like the buildings I picked up in this way stopped working.
Also, those demolishing ships were a little cruel.
Speaking of sound, I was really excited about doing some SFX and music for the game, but (as usual) it was to late.
And yea, now I understand that structure mechanics are not obvious, so I made a post update with theese rules!
@rafael-souza
Thank you for mentioning that RMB-to-build feature. I'm personaly very like this interface finding and it's a pleasure that someone appreciated it :)
@jhandsy
I really like the idea of releasing the charge! Definitely will test it.
@filogc
Using only turrets wont work well with this power-up mechanics and I tried to deliever that idea from the start. Maybe thats why it feels so hardcore. Anyway, you are right in the way it needs a lot of balance tweaks and difficulty progression.
@brorawr
Yea, after all feedback I want to rebalance it to be a little more fast paced. So player would build more structrures (that are less powerfull) and make more interesting choices. Oh, and I will add to your feature-list a randomly generated maps :)
The increase in difficulty could use some work. In the beginning there were a bit too many enemies, and once you had gotten past that spike it got a bit too easy. I got to level 36 my first run when I understood what I was doing. Balancing is difficult though, and it's not that bad here. I can see that you said you want it to be more fast paced too, so that sounds good.
The idea is very cool, and I really like how you designed the buildings to make it possible for the player to really find fun combinations and structures. It felt very satisfying when your turrets all got powerupped and cleared a dangerously close wave.
Music and sound would be a nice thing to add, but it works pretty well without it. The graphics are very satisfying on their own, but sound would really make it feel "complete".
Apart from the difficulty and the lack of sound, this feels very polished. I hope you keep working on it!
Well done!
I assume shielded ships require to be fired from behind, but it feels kind of overpowered right now. other than that - nothing bad to say.
There is a bug where you seem to pick up an item when trying to place a new one. It happens when you set its direction with the right mouse button. Then, when placing a new item of the same type, the old one "sticks" to your mouse. You can put it down again but it doesn't work as it should.
Thank you for the feedback and for the bugreport!
Actually I think if I continue making this I would start from the scratch due to not perfect architectural decisions (jam-style) :)
I wish the amplifier effect was more noticeable visually. I had to play around with it a bit until I understood how it worked, since the power wave doesn't get stronger visually at all. I'd suggest adding a small pulse wave around the amplifier itself!
Other then that, most of the other comments covered what I'd say. Nice entry!
Thank you for response!
I have tried a couple of different solutions of visuallising the Amplifier impact (masks, circle segments, shadows) but all of them did't worked very well. Probably doing something like a Reflector effect would be okay, thank you for the idea :)
Visuals of the energy waves didn't always seem to match the amount of power that the turrets received -- it felt mostly like a process of trial and error to figure out how to efficiently power turrets. But this was fun!
I take it that you were possibly after that clean, smooth feel from mobile apps, wordless and simplistic; still, I think this time the whole deal went too obscure. In game tutorial would be nice, of course.
I was getting a bit frustrated, not knowing why the game wouldn't let me place the turrets where I wanted them, and only *after that* I understood that pale purple shades in the background were actually obstacles. And even now, after wave 12, I'm *still* unsure how you should turn the amplifier and does its angle matter at all.
Well, enough of nitpicking. The game was good, and you should feel good.
Congrats!
Thanks for the game! Psychodolphins ride on rainbows!