Serpent's Souls by impbox

[raw]
made by impbox for LD 43 (COMPO)

Unfortunately it's not really finished.

The base gameplay is working and it's playable and kinda enjoyable for a while. I hopefully will spend some time expanding it out and making the late game and combat more interesting.

Please read the instructions below since they're not really explained in the game:

Instructions

Goal: Sacrifice 100 souls to the Serpent Totem in your starting town to summon the Serpent God before you are overrun by invading colonists (represented by the red at the top of the world map).

Gameplay

overview.png

Each turn you get 3 actions per town (upgraded towns get 4 or 5 depending on the size), and 1 per army.

Spend your actions by activating "Site abilities", click on a site, then click on the ability on the right panel to activate it (you must meet the requirements, usually a number of followers (blue figures)).

Undo a move by right clicking.

Most Site's can only use one ability per turn, unless the ability is marked as "multi-use" in which case you can use it as many times as you like, provided you meet the requirements.

You can build new Buildings on empty sites with 3 followers, or 2 followers worked to death.

If you're out of space, you can Expand your town from the Serpent Totem or Village Square with 10 Followers and 3 actions, this will also grant an increase in Action income.

Activate Relocate to pick up and move units between any number of sites (or place on the world map adjacent to your town to make an army). You can hold down the button to suck up lots of units or drop lots of units. Once you're done, click the Relocate button again to finish. (This whole process only uses 1 action point, but use it wisely)

You can also use Shamans (purple figure) directly, click on one and it'll show a list of Shaman abilities, these work much the same as Site abilities, but they can also require a number of souls, a Shaman can gather souls by killing followers and the like, granting them more powers. If you have a Shaman gain many souls from killing, they can be later sacrificed to the Serpent God by sacrificing the Shaman at the Serpent Totem.

However, sacrificing increases Rebellion in the town, for every Rebellion over 5, a new Rebel (red figure) is spawned in the town, and rebellion will go down slightly. But each turn that ends with a Rebel in the town, the rebellion will increase by 1 per Rebel. You can deal with Rebels by building a Temple and Re-educating them, or building a Barracks and training Soldiers (green figures), if a Soldier ends their turn on the same site as a Rebel, they will kill each other. Temples and Watchtowers can also help reduce Rebellion before Rebels are spawned.

Once you're out of useful actions, End the Turn in the bottom right. However, the Serpent God requires at least one sacrifice per turn, if you fail to provide this, she will make your followers Sick (black figure) and you'll need to heal them.

Ratings

Given 2🗳️ 1🗨️

Feedback

lazinix
02. Dec 2018 · 21:46 UTC
This game is amazing! If it had a save function, I would play this even after the jam is over. I wish I could play more, but I want to get onto rating other games.

I think the method of unit-based actions for each tile is a very interesting approach, and the building tile system is both easy to use and fun to manage. The rebellion system also serves well as a secondary goal for the player, and the limited number of actions per turn makes the game feel almost like chess; the player has to plan and carefully consider their moves before doing anything, which I think really makes the gameplay satisfying and interesting.

If you update the game at any point, especially if it's to add a save system, please let me know!
Dimak
02. Dec 2018 · 23:02 UTC
Very interesting thanks for game :)
Feilkin
02. Dec 2018 · 23:27 UTC
I like the look and feel of it, but it is a bit hard. I didn't read the instructions, everyone kept getting sick, then they rebelled :(
Bart Huylebroeck
02. Dec 2018 · 23:54 UTC
Very intriguing game. I don't quite understand it all, but I was curious enough to continue playing. The cost and actions are all pretty complicated. I built 3 homes, a healing tent and a training hut but now my population seems to get sick quicker than I can heal them. I wish I could choose who to sacrifice so I can kill one of the sick people instead of losing a healthy person to the sacrifice :smile:
🎤 impbox
03. Dec 2018 · 01:17 UTC
@bart-huylebroeck yes, that's a good point, I should allow you to sacrifice sick people and maybe rebels, and also make the sickness spreading a bit less crazy. Thanks for the feedback!
🎤 impbox
03. Dec 2018 · 01:18 UTC
@lazinix thanks very much! I'd love to keep expanding it and I'll definitely add a save function =)
🎤 impbox
03. Dec 2018 · 01:22 UTC
@feilkin it definitely requires reading the instructions unfortunately, it's rather complicated.
I'll try to make a tutorial system to guide you through the first few turns or something.
Chris Covert
03. Dec 2018 · 05:01 UTC
Cool game. Always fun to see a strategy game like this.
ConnorThompson
03. Dec 2018 · 09:35 UTC
Cool game, graphics where really cool. I think a little bit more handholding / tutorial integrated into the game would make this much easier for people to pick up and get involved with but great work!
Fnissalot
03. Dec 2018 · 20:29 UTC
Very cool and a lot of interesting ideas but it gets quite tedious. Might be due to me not being into this kind of strategy game.
Chao
04. Dec 2018 · 11:33 UTC
It's nice to see such a complex and deep experience, very ambitious for the time period. The mechanics were all really cool, though I feel there might have been some balancing issues. After I'd figured out what I was doing I pretty much never had any rebels or sickness. Maybe some kind of random event system would be nice, otherwise it's too easy to figure out a plan and stick to it unchangingly. At that point it becomes less about strategy and more about carrying out repetitive actions.

Once again though, the fact that you even got all these mechanics in in only 48 hours is amazing. Great job.
🎤 impbox
04. Dec 2018 · 11:37 UTC
@chao thanks for the feedback! I actually had the same thoughts about a random event system (I'm adding that now), a "Destiny" deck of cards are drawn each turn (they maybe have random events or random demands from the Serpent God that you must fulfil) that you can use a Seer to peer at and rearrange or discard.
christina-antoinette-neofotistou
06. Dec 2018 · 16:59 UTC
Very deep! @impbox , have you by any chance read Keith Burgun's articles/ books? I see so much coherent game design on your part all the time, it would make sense. Or you're just a talent, that works too. In any case, top marks, and thank you so much for spotting my publishing mistake
🎤 impbox
08. Dec 2018 · 09:09 UTC
@christina-antoinette-neofotistou thanks very much! <3 I hadn't heard of Keith Burgun before, but I looked up their stuff and it's very interesting and helpful! I feel like this game is currently quite broken, but has potential to be really good. A lot of the game design I borrowed from a very underrated board game called "Time Barons" by Jon Perry and Derek Yu which is beautifully elegant, some of which comes through in my game, although I messed it up a lot. I highly recommend checking it out.
christina-antoinette-neofotistou
08. Dec 2018 · 09:12 UTC
@impbox I'm totally checking that game out. I don't know if you messed it up, you know how ludum dare forces you to do everything at once. I too think it's a little unbalanced but the core is very very sound
HitchH1k3r
09. Dec 2018 · 04:55 UTC
I used 111 souls to summon my serpent god!

:thumbsup: I really liked the pacing of learning in this game (I wish there had been more game so I could have learned a bit more about armies, after beating it the first time I started a second game to experiment with moving people around the map).

:point_right: This game reminded me a bit of [Royals](https://ashervo.itch.io/royals), but of course had a different way of managing followers.

:star:Overall excellent job, I really enjoyed playing this!
Jupiter_Hadley
20. Dec 2018 · 14:19 UTC
Complex game! I included it in my compilation video series of games from the Ludum Dare, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/a-epgKaAyrI