Kids, Don't Do Wild Magic by ErikU
Hi there, and welcome to my game! It's called Kids, Don't Do Wild Magic, inspired by the Wild Magic subclass of Sorcerer in D&D 5th edition.
You are locked in a duel with another mage in an arena, and your job is to be the last one standing. Use your spells to lower their health to zero while maintaining yours by dodging their attacks! The trick is that you follow the school of Wild Magic, and the more you cast the crazier (and usually worse!) things get. But that doesn't concern you - where would be the fun without the bewildering arcane aberrations?
Controls
W - Move forward
S - Move backward
A - Strafe left
D - Strafe right
Hold Right Mouse Button + Mouse move - Horizontal camera control
Hold Shift + Space - Enter casting. Disables movement.
While Casting
Hold W - Flamethrower
Hold S - Throw fireball
Once More!
Hold Shift + Space + W for the flamethrower.
Hold Shift + Space + S for fireballs.
Wild Magic
As you cast more spells, your wild magic will go up. This will increase the range of your flamethrower and the explosion of you fireball, but can also come with side effects! Look for 11 unique effects to take place as you go about your battle.
Your Opponent
Your opponent is crafty ice mage. Watch out for their ice lances and ice meteors. They also have the ability to teleport - listen for the distinctive sound this spell makes.
If you're having trouble, remember these tips for good fire magin' - Stay evasive. Don't let yourself get hit by those lances and slow moving meteors. - Get close. Your flamethrower can be devastating, if only you can get close enough. - Use their avoidance. Your enemy will try to avoid you if possible. Use this to your advantage by backing them into explosions. - Charge up. Your attacks become much more effective once you've charged up your wild magic. You'll know you've reached your full power when the sky goes dark!
Ratings
| Overall | 569th | 2.911⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 632th | 2.5⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 489th | 2.852⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 624th | 2.63⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 308th | 3.37⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 444th | 2.5⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 416th | 2.4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 559th | 2.5⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
The controls were a little too awkward for me. Why do you have to hold right click to move the camera? why do you have to hold space and shift to cast spells?
I found it was too hard to predict where the fireball was going to land (given the camera angle, distance, and depth perception) to use it intentionally.
The other mage has clearly better spells imo. He can actually shoot right at you, spawn ice right on top of you, and teleport away.
I won on my second attempt by just spamming spells randomly and hoping one of the wild magic things would help me.
And he can summon a boulder right over you to take half of your hit points.
- The lack of a fluid camera control makes both the navigation and aiming much harder. Having it move smoothly based on mouse movement would be a big improvement.
- I agree with the other comments that the controls are pretty awkward. Since both spells are press+hold to cast, I think having an explicit "spellcasting mode" was redundant; simply blocking movement while casting either spell would have accomplished the same thing.
- Given the clunkiness of the player's moveset, the AI opponent's abilities felt fairly overpowered. I found myself often getting sniped by boulders with very little time to react and get out of the way.
- This is more of a technical point, but whatever was used in order to do the mouse aiming made it so that in the web version (on firefox at least) pops up the browser warning for an element having taken control of the mouse every single time you right click. This could probably be fixed by capturing the mouse all the time, and handling the different modes internally to the game if needed.
Overall, I feel like this would have benefited from a fairly reduced scope, but you did manage to make the battle feel pretty hectic, haha!
If you are interested, please check out my LD40 game [Escape Infection!](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/escape-infection)
After some time, get to understand how to attack and walking, but i have never beat this damn ice mage! :)
Also, too hard control player with this controls (especially on notebook without mouse?)