Don't Level Up... Yet! by Alex Bryant

[raw]
made by Alex Bryant for LD 40 (JAM)

Gather 'Soul Essence' from defeating increasingly difficult enemies.

The more soul essence you have, the stronger the enemies and the more they drop.

Except, you also spend Soul Essence to level up which means enemy difficulty drops again.

The goal is to get to the strongest enemy you can! So don't spend all your essence at once!

This was made for Ludum Dare 40 Game Jam. The game is nowhere near done as I had a lot less time available than I thought, but here it is anyway! Enjoy!

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Controls are binding of isaac-like.

WASD for movement

Arrow Keys for shooting!

Capture.PNG

Capture3.PNG

Ratings

Overall 794th 3.196⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 583th 3.304⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 963th 2.696⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 747th 3.217⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 899th 2.864⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 15🗳️ 32🗨️

Feedback

🎤 Alex Bryant
02. Dec 2017 · 01:42 UTC
Lets get this going!
Phyrsos
05. Dec 2017 · 01:14 UTC
Your game is not accessible guys ! :( Would be glad to play it... come try ours ! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/lamattractive
Feedlipe
05. Dec 2017 · 01:14 UTC
Hey sir, don't forget to set your game as public on itch.io, so we can download it! :) You can use this link because it is your account, but we can't!

Warn me as soon as you fixed it. Looking forward to play your game.
🎤 Alex Bryant
05. Dec 2017 · 01:35 UTC
Thanks guys! I feel a little silly now, was in a rush before heading off to uni. Looking forward to trying other submissions when I'm back!
Timestop
05. Dec 2017 · 03:53 UTC
I like the 3D cube art, it's really cool!
Thy Duck
05. Dec 2017 · 04:02 UTC
The game is pretty nice. However I don't really see why it's a bad thing to level up?
shinyogre
05. Dec 2017 · 04:03 UTC
Basic, but fun.
Maxwell
05. Dec 2017 · 04:04 UTC
I think I get the gist of it! Looks pretty nice, I like the character model, would've loved to see more of the artwork though. Still a good job!
🎤 Alex Bryant
05. Dec 2017 · 04:15 UTC
Thanks for the responses!

@thy-duck Yeah I didn't finish implementing the end goal so it's not really obvious but when you level up the enemies level goes down which not only slows your progress getting to a higher enemy level, but also sliws down your rate of essence collection. So spending 25%-50% essence at once is the more efficient way to play.

Still needs a lit of balancing though
SecondThread
05. Dec 2017 · 04:20 UTC
The wizard looks great and the death animation is cool, but the enemies are just cubes, and the controls aren't given anywhere, so I have no way of attacking them or leveling up at all...
sidewalksleeper
05. Dec 2017 · 09:25 UTC
I enjoy the concept, but I think the game is too easy. There should be a clear incentive to level up (despite all the drawbacks), you need to reinforce that risk-reward balance. But overall, I liked your game. Good job!
eldogg
05. Dec 2017 · 09:33 UTC
I like the enemy path finding and the levelling up mechanic.

I got too powerful though and wasn't under the threat of getting hurt, so some faster enemies perhaps could mix things up.

I had good fun!
🎤 Alex Bryant
05. Dec 2017 · 09:38 UTC
@secondthread
Yeah, I got the controls on the itch page but I know that's not enough. Didn't help that I spent 12 hrs on a c++ project for an internship the day before submission but again, that's me for leaving a real deadline late. Certainly on my list of things to add! Thanks for your comment!

@sidewalksleeper & @eldogg
Yeah balance is definitely going to need to be tweaked. I didn't even plot out the formulas on a spreadsheet/graph to get a concept, I just rushed it out. Enemies do get faster for each level, but it's negligable atm until levels above 100 really, makes the player speed stat useless until that is fixed. Thanks for your feedback!
tvtom99
05. Dec 2017 · 09:43 UTC
Great game, played for about 15 min :) It's good fun!
rsim
05. Dec 2017 · 09:50 UTC
I just played the WebGL version and I'm not seeing any way to level up? I had around 4000 points but was still Level 0, and couldn't find any key pressed that made it level up.
🎤 Alex Bryant
05. Dec 2017 · 09:53 UTC
@rsim Thanks for playing. Yeah the level up method (along with everything else) is not well communicated at all. Although it requires pressing the + buttons on the stat panel (bottom left)
Johnsey
05. Dec 2017 · 11:24 UTC
Pretty nice idea! Everything moves smoothly and the color palette is well chosen. Maybe, the controls would be better if you avoid the hand movement from the keyboard to the mouse. For example, putting shortcuts on numeric keys, so you can shoot while leveling up stats. It has a great potential. Well done!!!
Hagge
05. Dec 2017 · 11:45 UTC
basic funny
Pedrowzee
05. Dec 2017 · 13:42 UTC
This is super fun. I could play it for hours if there was more to it.
Beebo Studios
05. Dec 2017 · 17:28 UTC
Made me addicted way too fast. Excellent graphics and nice balancing. Music or sounds at least would have been cool. I could see a multiplayer and some new designs for stronger boxes. A save-current-game option would be cool for the addicts among us... Thumbs up!
🎤 Alex Bryant
05. Dec 2017 · 21:56 UTC
Gald you enjoyed it so much!

Great idea @Johnsey I hadn't even put a first thought into the controls it wad just a "this will do" moment when adding I the few lines of code so I could test it. And it just got left how it was. Numeric keys with a visual indicator on the stat-box sounds good though. That or a 'pause' menu for it as an alternative that uses mouse but i feel like pausing would ruin the fun. Thoughts?
Gruhh
06. Dec 2017 · 18:34 UTC
I liked the concept! The design is interesting and polished has potential. I think it would be interesting to change how to level up, perhaps using a key for each feature (this would need to be tested), or pausing the game the moment the player makes the choices. Congratulations for the game.

Gostei do conceito! O design está interessante e com polimento tem potencial. Acredito que seria interessante alterar a forma de aumentar de nível, talvez usando uma tecla para cada característica (isso precisaria ser testado), ou pausar o jogo no momento em que o jogador vai fazer as escolhas. Parabéns pelo jogo. :flag_br:
falak
10. Dec 2017 · 12:13 UTC
Simple but rally good!
abcdef65g
11. Dec 2017 · 23:40 UTC
The game was fun, albeit it lagged pretty badly when the enemies joined into a large army chasing me around, making the game almost impossible with the low frame rate! The concept is good, and you should definitely polish the level-to-difficulty trade-off to make it better.

One thing that intrigued me was the fact "leveling up" means picking a stat to boost. I tried a couple of different stat spreads, but BRate and Regen seemed the most advantageous, and the others almost weren't worth the cost. Additionally, ramming into enemies was more effective to kill them at higher levels than shooting at them (which sort of enhances the utility of boosting health! XD).

A couple of suggestions. Perhaps add a limit to the number of enemies spawned at once, or stop making them spawn right in front of you (which happened a bit too often!). Also, there should a keyboard command to level up! Using the mouse in the game feels a bit clunky while enemies chase you around.

Overall, it was fun and has potential to be even better! Good work.