Precious is Life by -banzi

[raw]
made by -banzi for LD 44 (JAM)

Take a role of a mighty ancient vampire in their quest to return the stolen meaning of their life, now hidden in the heart of the fairyland. Battle your way through the wild inhabitants of the fairyland by summoning various creatures to your aid. Upgrade them to more powerful forms, cast devastating spells or heal your monsters to ensure your victory, but beware: each summon, upgrade or spell will cost you your own blood.

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Gameplay: Precious is life is a 2D turn-based strategy card game.

At the start of each battle you have a choice of either summoning a new creature or upgrading the existing one. The creatures you control have various types: melee, flying and ranged. Melee is effective against ranged, ranged is effective against flying and flying is effective against melee. Active creature is highlighted by the yellow background. The actions it can use are on the bottom of the screen. Select actions by clicking on them with left mouse button.

While your creature is active, you can cast a spell, the panel is beneath the character portrait on the right. Click on the icon to the left of the spell panel to change the spells from damaging to healing and back. To cancel the selection of a card action or a spell press the right mouse button.

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Tutorial: - Click on actions/spells using LMB to use them - Click RMB to cancel the action

Made with: Unity, Krita. All the art assets were created in the three days of the game jam.

Ratings

Given 73🗳️ 71🗨️

Feedback

Gyaha
30. Apr 2019 · 03:31 UTC
**Loved** the art, but I had no idea what I where doing :smile:
Sherlock527
30. Apr 2019 · 03:49 UTC
I really liked the art. It did feel a little empty without any audio but other than that, good job.
dannn
30. Apr 2019 · 04:03 UTC
The art on the enemies is bizarre. I liked it. It took some trial and error on the beginning to figure out the controls, but it's a nice game. Lost to the final boss short of one hit on it, so I think it's fairly well balanced. I may have used too much health on the beginning.
🎤 -banzi
30. Apr 2019 · 08:02 UTC
@gyaha Thank you. We didn't have time to polish the gameplay more - there shouldn't have been tooltips on spells etc. But yeah, it is not that complicated. I hope you have managed.
🎤 -banzi
30. Apr 2019 · 08:05 UTC
@sherlock527 Thank you for the review. We had a choice between non-buggy gameplay and sounds. The thing with sounds is that they can make the game better, but if you choose bad ones they will ruin the game (so we rather polished the game more).
🎤 -banzi
30. Apr 2019 · 08:05 UTC
@dannn Thank you.
Rhiannon
30. Apr 2019 · 09:17 UTC
The artwork is so cool. And at first i missed a little bit the totorial, but with the second try you get the hang of it. In case of the mood, there is some sound /music missing. But overall I really enjoyed playing it and get to know what the vampire was missing.
Serious07
30. Apr 2019 · 09:25 UTC
Cool game, The snail sprite made me smile. Showing the damage when you hover the cursor is not the best idea, it is better to display it on all enemies at the same time when starting the turn. Cool game for such a short time.
🎤 -banzi
30. Apr 2019 · 09:54 UTC
@rhiannon Thank you for playing.

@serious07 Interesting suggestion, but we didn't want to pollute the cards with unnecessary numbers, as their visuals are more important. Thank you for playing :-)
ZAX
30. Apr 2019 · 10:00 UTC
Really cool! I like how the art looks like!
keep it up !
NoNameJammer
30. Apr 2019 · 12:36 UTC
@zax Thank you!
Coder Channel
30. Apr 2019 · 13:15 UTC
Awesome experience! It is very interesting to play this game! Very good work!
Luis J. Benitez
30. Apr 2019 · 13:24 UTC
Hard to figure out the controls in the first run. Then the game was smooth. Is lacking some sounds but the art is nice. Good job!
🎤 -banzi
30. Apr 2019 · 23:17 UTC
@coder-channel @luis-j-benitez Thank you for playing and ranking our game :-)
szabe
01. May 2019 · 08:28 UTC
Nice drawings and concept. The turn based stuff is a bit simple, but I can see the theme in use which is nice!
Neowedge
01. May 2019 · 08:47 UTC
Nice art! The game is funny, but I didn't understand de purchase system: I always can summon or upgrade any monster and I saw that your hero lose some life or gain it if you kill others, but... he hasn't life (you die if your monsters die) xD >Anyway, I love this kind of game, so good job!!! Congrats!!! :)
Beelzeboss
01. May 2019 · 08:48 UTC
Takes a minute to figure out. The art is great and the concept is interesting. Great job!
🎤 -banzi
01. May 2019 · 08:57 UTC
@szabe Thank you for playing.

@neowedge Thank you. The idea was that you are a vampire .. so you deal with blood, which is your currency for summoning monsters and making spells and you can also gain some when killing enemies. Without your monsters, however, you cannot defend yourself and you lose. The summoning/upgrading at the start was easier to do and balance in a shorter time.

@beelzeboss Thank you.
roxiemoxie
01. May 2019 · 08:59 UTC
I had fun to fight with my dragon against a rabbit, maybe with sound design it will be better, but congratulation there is a lot of illustrations in this game !
Woett
01. May 2019 · 09:34 UTC
Nice game and I liked the graphics :) I totally understand your decision to focus on perfecting the gameplay over adding audio, and I agree. That being said, this is the type of game for me where I would enjoy some background music or audio effects. On the gameplay, I would have liked to be punished for spending blood. For example, maybe I just didn't quite get it, but was there ever a reason to use the small fireball instead of the big one? As others have said, it wasn't superintuitive how to play the game at first, but I did have a good time once I figured it out. And even though I had to restart twice, in the end I did finish your game and claim victory!
🎤 -banzi
01. May 2019 · 09:45 UTC
@roxiemoxie Thank you for playing it.

@woett If the game was very well balanced and you would always be struggling with your health, then you might prefer to spend less blood on a spell (and do less damage). But in the current setting, you are right that there is probably no reason. Thank you for playing it ;)
8bit beehive
01. May 2019 · 09:56 UTC
this game was fun in the future you can add more cards
jcklie
01. May 2019 · 10:31 UTC
The art is really nice, but I also found some things to improve: it would be nice if you could see the total life of the vampire as a number so that I know how much I can invest. Also, I was irritated by that the vampire has spells, I first thought that are the 3 attacks of my monster. Some tooltips would be nice, also, I would make attack preselected for monsters so that I do not need to click so often.
MrBrooms
01. May 2019 · 10:36 UTC
Extremly nice game but i need more feedback of my actual life and maybe a bit more difficulty :smiley:
josehzz
01. May 2019 · 14:34 UTC
I love the graphics, in the future try to make the spell/actions buttons more noticeable at first I didn't know were to click because the buttons blend with the background.
🎤 -banzi
01. May 2019 · 15:00 UTC
@8bit-beehive @jcklie @mrbrooms @josehzz Thank you for playing, rating and giving us some feedback on the game.
Zanar
01. May 2019 · 15:33 UTC
Art is wonderful and gameplay is nice. I succeed and save my precious (so cute x) ). Well done !
Peppsen
01. May 2019 · 19:12 UTC
Good game, mood was a bit ruined with the lack of sound. The art was really nice. Gameplay was okay, although some things were a bit unclear. Would have been nice with a turn order and tutorial/tooltips. Defend option was terrible, I don't even know if it even worked.
Jin9310
02. May 2019 · 09:45 UTC
This is a very nice and interesting entry. Would be great to have some sounds, but appart from that I really liked that! Overall very well handled card-turned-based mechanisms. Thanks for great experience!
Artyom Volkov
02. May 2019 · 10:29 UTC
I like the idea and art, however, there is a big problem with UX. Firstly, a lack of tooltips, I should have press buttons blindly. Secondly, the UI isn't contrasting enough, as a result, buttons look like a part of the art. The third problem is that buttons too small. Anyway, the gameplay is simple, smooth and enjoyable.
Sergi Montaner
02. May 2019 · 21:48 UTC
The game looks cool and has gameplay that is worth playing but I agree that the UX is not the best.

Appart from what have already been told, I was expecting to be the guy on the left fighting something in the right. It's something a gamer takes for granted.

When the life bar is full it looks just like a piece of background art. It took me a while to find out it was a life bar.

It is not clear what enemies can I attack when there are 2 lanes.

First time you play and have to summon an enemy it is not clear which type of unit it is (melee, ranged, flying)

I love the hippy rabbits :D
🎤 -banzi
02. May 2019 · 22:00 UTC
@zanar @peppsen @jin9310 Thank you for playing.

@artyom-volkov Thank you for playing and for pointing the issues out. Actually, it seems that there is a bug where the button colliders are shifted down a bit below the action buttons.

@sergi-montaner The reason for that was that you are usually fighting the bad guys, but in our game, you are the bad guy (the vampire), hence it was more interesting to put the player on the right. I agree with the rest. Thank you for your input :-).
Sergi Montaner
02. May 2019 · 22:26 UTC
That totally makes sense.
Tay Elenberg
03. May 2019 · 13:50 UTC
so cute! nice game
Yaen
03. May 2019 · 19:36 UTC
Beautiful creature art here, loved those drawings! The twist at the end was super cute, nice payoff.
It's cool that you even managed to get in a world map into a game jam game.

Audio and some more feedback in general would have been really nice and would have elevated the game to the next level, I think. I wish there was some more strategy involved in using the 3 different creatures - they all felt a bit too similar in my opinion.
MasseAlex
03. May 2019 · 23:38 UTC
Nice character design! I liked the combat but was a little confused at first. I didn't know I had to select my character before attacking. Also, I thought I was the rabbit at first because he's on the left. Other than that, really good game. Congrats!
🎤 -banzi
04. May 2019 · 07:36 UTC
@tay-elenberg @yaen Thank you.

@massealex You don't need to select character :D. The one that is on the turn has a yellowish background. Thank you for playing :-)
🎤 -banzi
04. May 2019 · 07:36 UTC
@tay-elenberg @yaen Thank you.

@massealex You don't need to select character :D. The one that is on the turn has a yellowish background. Thank you for playing :-)
Twan Mul
04. May 2019 · 19:53 UTC
the ui could've used more feedback as it's quite confusing to know what your doing. sounds, but also make cards move forwards or back to show attack and defence stances. who's turn is it at what time?
I thought the art was original and added a very nice mood to the game
scottyseus
04. May 2019 · 21:56 UTC
wow this art was awesome! it took a little for me to understand the different abilities, but the combat was awesome! the game wasn't especially challenging, but i liked that in this context because it allowed me to find the twist at the end :)