LudumData

On My Signal! by brolga

[raw]
made by brolga for Ludum Dare 59 (COMPO)

A game about defending your shape kingdom in a winter war.

Signal your troops to fight for you through masterful positioning and timing.

Fire your archers whilst your frontlines defend you.

Upgrade your team as the enemy grows their army.

How to play

  • Position troops by clicking and dragging
  • Use SPACE to start Archer aiming
  • Press SPACE to lock in direction
  • Press SPACE to shoot at aimed direction
  • After winning choose card to improve your team (upgrades are for all troops of displayed type)

Color Indicators

  • Red: Hit and took damage
  • Green: Knockback but healed
  • Blue: Knockback but no damage

Troop Types

  • Archer (High damage and ranged but hits both teams, long cooldown)
  • Square (Medium damage, knockback, health and speed)
  • Shield (Low damage, medium-high knockback, high health, low speed)
  • Heal (Heals both teams but half for enemy, low knockback, low health, low speed)
  • Bomb (Medium damage, high knockback, medium health, medium-low speed)
  • Assassin (High damage, medium-low knockback, low health, high speed)

How will your army shape up?

Genre: Roguelite, Strategy, Physics, Preschool-level Art

Screenshot 2026-04-20 123027.png

Screenshot 2026-04-20 122913.png

Patch notes

As of 21/04 - Changed targeting to look at closest valid troop - Increased oscillation speed of archers - Improved upgrades to only give useful upgrades (e.g. no upgrades for troops you dont have) - Reduced enemy difficulty - Fixed positioning mode bug where UI glitches if you spammed space - Fixed cooldown being increased instead of decreased when upgrading lol

Source Code https://github.com/xjalder/on-my-signal
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/on-my-signal

Ratings

Overall 225th 3.158⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 204th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 169th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 277th 2.333⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 257th 2.789⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 162th 2.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Mood 255th 2.711⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 12🗳️ 13🗨️

Feedback

mdotedot
Apr 20th · 05:16 UTC
Nice simple entry. At first I thought it was a tower defense - overhead - game, you twisted my mind and I was surprised in a good way! Well done.
nathmate
Apr 20th · 06:55 UTC
The arrows being so slow is a bit frustrating, though it is amusing when you hit your own units by mistake.
LDJam user 428640
Apr 20th · 07:32 UTC
During the positioning phase, if you press Space too quickly, the placement box will persist for the rest of that round. The combination of upgradable block collisions with the Archer is interesting, but the Archer turns too slowly and can't adjust its aim after locking on. Plus, the fact that you lose as soon as your units are gone puts the Archer in a somewhat embarrassing spot. It leaves the Archer feeling a bit out of place. Overall, well done! I can feel it's a game with enormous potential.
MountainGoose
Apr 21st · 06:03 UTC
Fun, pretty entertaining watching the blocks fight it out! Solid design, I definitely struggled with the cannon but my troops mostly survived :D
MossGames
Apr 21st · 11:48 UTC
Enjoyed this game, very cool! Different mechanics are introduced progressively a tutorial in game would have helped but an interest concept regardless!
FoxEcho
Apr 21st · 15:05 UTC
A very unique design. The combat with colliding geometric shapes is interesting.

Right now, the pace of each level feels a bit slow to me, and the cannon is quite hard to control. Still, the game feels like it has a lot of potential. I think it could be even more fun with a higher level of polish.(I know compo only has 2 days)
LDJam user 407524
Apr 21st · 20:10 UTC
Unusual idea, and decent implementation, not sure how its related to the theme though and felt a bit too difficult for my taste
JHax
Apr 22nd · 11:16 UTC
Very different from anything I've played before, think it works really well! Feels good to sort of start to get the hang of it and there's a nice sense of building momentum too!
vikingx84
Apr 23rd · 05:51 UTC
There is something so interesting about this game, I would like to see what the game will look like if it is further developed.
pkenney
May 03rd · 03:43 UTC
Wow this game is such a cool core idea! The mostly-autobattler with the addition of the archer is a nice design space to explore, and the classic "one of three" end-of-round roguelite thing is a great choice, too. Leaves me some room to explore army builds but constrained to make do with the cards I see so that I would get to see a variety of runs if I played over and over.

But I think it needed bit more iteration and some polish to really capture the potential of the design. The systems are all here and the game is fun, but the lack of audio was particularly noticeable when it's an auto-battler that leaves me mostly just watching -- some sounds would really liven it up and give me a chance to better understand the action by conveying information. But I think the #1 thing is that, for my personal taste, every single element of the game needs to be sped up by about 10x. Everything from the round length to the archer reload-and-fire speeds, to the time-to-kill on units, to the animation revealing the three choices and the time to cycle through phases. Each element of the game is slow enough that eventually my desire to further explore the interesting strategic space was worn down by all the waiting.

That said, I think there's something really cool here. Intriguing entry!
Gecko64
May 04th · 11:46 UTC
I really enjoyed this one, i got quite far a couple of times (Bomb units were 100% the best). A very solid compo with quite a lot of depth for 2 days. A couple things I'd add but I do get you only have 48 hours, I would definitely find a way to speed up the movement of the cubes and gameplay in the earlier and later levels. Good job!

PS. I did find a bug were you could pick up the cube and start and ram the cube and drag wherever you'd want it.
dk5000p
May 04th · 11:46 UTC
I initially thought this was tower defense also, but then noticed I did not have a tower with health. Having to time the archer shots at the right time was a nice twist.
galareteg
May 04th · 14:43 UTC
Interesting idea, but I think it needs some work. Solid entry for a compo though. Aiming the archer was painfully hard, I think it would be nice if the shots were a bit faster to make it easier. I also think the game is quite RNG heavy, the planning doesn't matter that much since after a few bounces it all devolves into chaos. I can definitively see it being fun with some additions, but it's a really cool start for a 48h game.
LDJam user 352490
May 04th · 17:41 UTC
Tried a few playthroughs, and it's a cool concept! It also has a pretty steep difficulty curve. I never got past the third round, but it did seem like the arrow was best to save until an enemy was pretty close to the archer (otherwise it tended to hit my own units as often as the enemy). And I'm not sure how much the positioning seemed to matter that early in the game, but it at least seemed to help to place the healer in the back.
ChuChuGeralt
May 04th · 18:17 UTC
Loved the idea, I'm a big fan of tower defense games! Hated the archers, tho (lol). The game felt balanced overall, but at some point I stopped using the archers because it felt like they were doing more friendly fire than anything else! Fun entry.

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