Wrath of a Dying God by piscythe

[raw]
made by piscythe for Ludum Dare 50 (COMPO)

The world is ending. Only a single bastion of the light remains. Without your last sacred core, you will die and all shall be consumed by darkness. The vicious beasts are endless, and your mortal allies cannot hold out forever. All that is left is for you to lash out with the last vestiges of your power and carry a legion of the bastards with you to oblivion. This is the last stand. No retreat. No surrender. No hope.

Controls: Mouse, Hotkeys 1-4. Left click to use abilities, right click to cancel.

Drama aside, I suspect there may be a way to hold out until you get bored...

Screenshot from 2022-04-03 19-36-59.png

Screenshot from 2022-04-03 20-00-56.png

Ratings

Overall 101th 3.826⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Fun 23th 4.13⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 368th 3.152⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Theme 163th 3.913⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 460th 3.065⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 498th 2.773⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 28🗨️

Feedback

Papaya
04. Apr 2022 · 13:22 UTC
Surprisingly good enemy variety and upgrade depth for a game made in 48 hours, well done! Card UI can be hard to read sometimes (the bright blue cards). Pre wave 20 is also too easy, and at wave 24, the black tentacle enemy literally wiped my base singlehandedly as my spells and troops deal no damage to it LOL. Other than that, I had a lot of fun, thanks for the game.
LDJam user 258850
04. Apr 2022 · 16:33 UTC
Really Really good! I made it to wave 29, those void enemies are insane, feel like I shouldn't have made my smite too slow when I should have kept it wide and fast :') If you took the game further maybe having the option to rebuild/upgrade the buildings would be good? Anyway great submission!
Corporation
04. Apr 2022 · 19:13 UTC
Nice idea with picking upgrades, where some give positive and negative effect, I think this is something that can be investigated further. Really was missing sounds here, they would give it much more feeling. Also funny how our vision of theme is kinda simmilar. Good job!)
Brandless
07. Apr 2022 · 09:21 UTC
Black enemy OP, but great game.
A.D.Chaos
07. Apr 2022 · 09:26 UTC
Well balanced game. You did a great job! I got a god mix between wiping the enemy waves and loosing some of my buildings. Just until those tentacle enemies appear. There I lost the rest of my base without a chance :D
The healing spell felt a bit too weak at the beginning. You are not able to heal someone because they die by two shots. Later in the game, then you have units with more HP, it is a better tool. Would have been better to have the troop spawn as second upgrade and the healing as third. Else of that, I enjoyed the game very much.
Jibberwocky
07. Apr 2022 · 09:45 UTC
This was incredibly addictive I got to about wave 20 a few times and wanted to reset to play around with the different bonuses. Balancing the different powers was actually really interesting, my only notes are that heal always feels like a waste of time, the regular units die too fast to benefit form it and in order for it to be effective for angels and buildings I ended up investing so many points my other powers weren't holding things off, maybe if it could heal units past their max? that might also help with the fact that Angels seem to just melt when up against the black hole enemies.
QuadApe
07. Apr 2022 · 09:52 UTC
Got to wave 30, very addicting game loop!
For the feedback: heal feels severely underpowered until you get an angel, as enemy units tend to focus just one game before attacking next. I feel like heal over time could fix that.
Also, it would be great to have some transition before showing upgrades screen to not accidentally click on power you don't want.
Other that that, great entry, had a lot of fun playing!
SunJet
07. Apr 2022 · 10:21 UTC
One of the most favourite type of games which take me away from the real world for hours. Great job!

P.S. I lost at 23 wave
Frib
07. Apr 2022 · 10:35 UTC
On my first attempt, I think I "beat" the game at this point ![woadg.png](///raw/fbf/54/z/4d545.png)

My smite nukes a quarter of the map and three-shots those big bois, so my angels don't have to do anything. I haven't seen any new types of enemies in a while and I don't think the current ones gain any strength.

I really liked the difficulty ramp up, holding back those black bois was quite tense for a few rounds and I lost most of my base, but after that things only got easier. I had a lot of fun playing it :D good stuff!
Lex
07. Apr 2022 · 11:45 UTC
It's a shame you didn't have audio, the game is great.
Brandless
07. Apr 2022 · 11:47 UTC
I got to wave 38 but then my dumb defenders kept luring the black ones to my town.
LDJam user 240168
07. Apr 2022 · 12:52 UTC
Incredible game! Cool mechanics, addictive gameplay. Loved those enormous armies of enemies, I don't recall being actually afraid of something in games for a long time! Tried the strategy of using the Order/Angel ability to spawn troops behind enemy backs to distract them and unleash Smite, seems to work pretty nice but got quite repetitive after many waves. Really wish there was sound, that would make the experience even better. Audio indication of ability recharge would also be cool, since I've found myself moving the eyes constantly from the battlefield to the abilities panel and back, that takes time & energy and is in general a bit tiresome. Overall an amazing game, great job!

P.S. I tried the Linux version and it fails with an error (see the second screenshot). Presumable the executable should be called `WRATHOFADYINGGOD.x86_64` instead of `WRATHOFADYINGGOD-LINUX.x86_64` - I renamed it to the former and it worked nicely after that.

![2022-04-07-154011_1920x1080_scrot.png](///raw/82a/a3/z/4d5ae.png)
![2022-04-07-154046_591x148_scrot.png](///raw/82a/a3/z/4d5af.png)
Brandless
07. Apr 2022 · 13:52 UTC
Now I've gotten past the first appearence of the enemies and it suddenly got really easy, boredom is inevitable. I got to wave 201
🎤 piscythe
07. Apr 2022 · 16:06 UTC
@frib @brandless good job! I knew we'd have some "winners" in here since I screwed up the endgame balance. Honestly if you make it to wave 50 that counts as a win but eventually you will always get bored and leave. Thus your defeat is InEvITabLE.
Frib
07. Apr 2022 · 18:12 UTC
@piscythe I managed to break the game shortly after my post. I reached level ~180 or so by spamming map wide smites which oneshot the entire enemy wave. While doing that, I also spammed orders. And I noticed that they at some point got stuck on the visible edge of the map.

I'm not sure what happened (as it was at the invisible part of the map) but I think the enemies were unable to spawn because my order people were blocking the way, maybe? I could still nuke the enemies with smite, but after 20 or so minutes of doing nothing, still no enemies showed up at all. So I guess it was a stalemate and I'm deducting a point from the theme rating

j/k it's still an excellent game
Plasmonic
16. Apr 2022 · 08:07 UTC
Great job, good fun! Would have been nice to be able to see the area of effect of the smite.
TheBlitz
16. Apr 2022 · 08:47 UTC
Hi, how am i supposed to run the game on a MacBook? I downloaded and extracted the folder but I can't open the .app file
Tygrak
16. Apr 2022 · 09:46 UTC
Super fun game! I really enjoyed the roguelite-like picking of upgrades. I lost on wave 25, those void demons got me! Great job making it!
Kamuniaft
16. Apr 2022 · 17:09 UTC
Liked that you are constantly upgrading - that allows you to make a build and develop favorite strategy. Made it to wave 25 and was extinguished be big black creeps (kinda moving black holes i guess :)), but i think i"ll try again later - this tower defence stuff is really addictive :) Cool game!
🎤 piscythe
16. Apr 2022 · 23:05 UTC
@theblitz I have never owned a Mac and have absolutely no idea if that build works.
someone
16. Apr 2022 · 23:53 UTC
The Linux version requires renaming to detect the pak file.
I only made it to wave 12. I just couldn't do enough damage. Possibly bad luck with the upgrade RNG.
Some audio would have been nice.
Good game though.
Bea
17. Apr 2022 · 01:18 UTC
Nice game! I got to wave 23, and couldn't do a thing against those big dark swirly enemies! Really liked the enemy variety, gave some tasty strategy to this. Simple graphics made big piles of them easy to differentiate too.
BougieBirdie
18. Apr 2022 · 18:28 UTC
I can't put my finger on it exactly, but this game makes me very nostalgic for browser games of the 00's

I did have an issue a couple of times where I was trying to attack an enemy and clicked right at the end of the round. Twice I managed to buy an upgrade without being able to look at them. Maybe if there was a brief delay between the end of the round and when the upgrades become selectable then that wouldn't have been an issue for me.

Great game!
Team Watt
18. Apr 2022 · 21:29 UTC
The game was really well orchestrated, and the massive waves of troops gave me some feeling of urgency to save these tiny folks.