Debts in the Depths by LDJam user 412745
Summon armies of minions, collect gold and fight against monsters in the ever-changing dungeons in this auto-battler roguelike. Can you beat the mighty red dragon and steal its hoard (to pay off your debts)?



Tools used * GameMaker * Aseprite * Jsfxr * Ableton Live 12
Color palette * Comfy52 - https://lospec.com/palette-list/comfy52
Fonts * Pixellari - https://www.dafont.com/pixellari.font * Pixeltype - https://www.dafont.com/pixeltype.font
| GameMaker project repo | https://github.com/Hannula/Depths-LD-57 |
| Play in the browser on itch.io | https://reaktori.itch.io/debts-in-the-depths |
| Graphics Assets for free use | https://reaktori.itch.io/debts-in-the-depths-asset-pack |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/debts-in-the-depths |
Ratings
| Overall | 20th | 4.091⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 6th | 4.106⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 79th | 3.652⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 106th | 3.742⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 24th | 4.265⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 36th | 3.914⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 115th | 2.943⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 64th | 3.836⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
The game has a good sound track, nice crispy SFX
Punchy animations - I especially like the level transition that has you busting thru walls!
Impressive shop system that seems to give you upgrade options in accordance to your money level.
The Heart system was a bit unclear? One time I lost the level, and just lost one heart. But the next time I lost heart, I lost 2 hearts and lost the game? What was the logic behind the heart loss.
A bit of constructive criticism I had no idea what invest did and wasn't entirely sure how some units were different from each other, some sort of tooltip to show stats/details in the shop would have been nice. Also I would have liked more of an visual indication of when my own units died, maybe something like a kill feed or a ghost floating up from where they died with their unit types head on it, though the latter might add to much visual clutter.
Fantastic job well done overall!
During the first few levels I didn't realise I could use my mage to shoot, and the difficulty felt challenging but reasonable. After I realized though, I never had to think about my plays. How investing works isn't really communicated in any way, so I didn't know what it did at the start, but man, it's is absolutely op. All levels were super easy when I just spent (almost) all of my money on investing each shop. Just collecting all the gold from the investments when you've bought a lot of it took like a minute each round, was getting 20k+ at the boss. Investing definitely needs nerfing, but I also felt like the mana attacks were also quite strong. Maybe they just felt this way because the levels were so easy with all the money I saved up.
Regardless, super impressive. Definitely 5/5
I thought that this is a jam game, but when i saw that this is compo... Man, you are really a pro! It makes me proud that such a talent participate in LD!
Good work!
Feedback:
- "Click Here to Continue" - Wants to click on all screen (not only button side)
- (bug) Cursor under tile:

Feedback:
i would remove no-mana friction. allow to shoot just maybe do less damage if no mana or something. Dont make player feel useless/blocked.
Sound is a bit too loud by default.
Add keyboard left-right movement on A/D and shoot on space, next round on space too.
The last boss killed almost my entire party, impossible to go more than 23 waves :p
Really solid game with a lot of depth, monsters leveling up, your shots can attack enemies or heal frinedlies, etc. Not to mention the juicy pixel art. The only thing I despised was the mana meter, it was very hard to keep track of it with all the action on the screen the can even hide it sometimes. I really think a simple 1s cooldown could have worked better. With that said 5/5 game
Just beat 20 levels — this is the first jam game that really pushed me to complete its challenge. Super fun to play! I did feel that Spellpower might be a bit overpowered — I poured all my money into it and was able to spam it to clear enemies pretty easily.
Playing the mage made the auto battle phase really fun. It's a great way to extend the formula.
Healing your units was even more engaging than just trying to shoot enemies.
I think you could meaningfully expand on the concept of positioning by making the terrain matter more and maybe add a rock-paper-scissor mechanic to units. For me the best strategy seemed to be to just clump everyone to a ball of destruction.
Awesome job!
Making music is probably my weakest game dev skill, so it is often easier to first make a song, and then build a game that fits the vibes, rather than the other way around! Sounds crazy, I know, but it works for me!

Beautiful pixel art, lots of great juice like busting through the walls on level transition and very fun core mechanic. Great work!
Thanks for the game!
An amazing gaming experience, until I passed the 20th level I thought the game was too simple, but after 20 everything changes. I spent 20 minutes of my working time and I don't regret anything!

Great work!
Overall fun experience, I really want to try this more than once! Good job!
@radonkalmor You should be able to turn the game full screen on the itch.io web version, or by downloading the windows version and pressing alt+enter!