Crysterra by Teto
PROTECT THE ISLE OF CRYSTERRA MAINTAIN THE STABILITY OF THE CRYSTAL CORE
In the legend of the Isle of Crysterra, the crystal core holds power so immense it controls the land itself. However, Crysterra is under attack. Shadow beings craving the power of the crystal core have started appearing on the island. It is up to the Crystal Guardians to protect the core and maintain the stability of the island's terrain.
CONTROLS
Select your desired Crystal Guardian on the map or from the left menu.
Choose which action to take from the bottom bar.
Select target square or enemy for the highlighted action.
Action point cost displayed in info box on the bottom right.
Control | Action --- | ----- Left Click | Select WASD/Middle Click | Rotate Camera Scroll | Zoom Camera
OVERVIEW
Ensure the crystal core stays stable.
Prevent an unstable core altering the terrain.
Protect the Isle of Crysterra!
DEVELOPMENT
Code by @ciaranw . Graphics, and sound by @teto .
Jam number four together! Unlike previous jams, we thought about what type of game we wanted to make beforehand since we didn't want to make something we'd already done. Previously, we've done a shooter, a puzzle game and a platformer, so this time, we decided to make something turn based. When the theme was announced, we only brainstormed for about an hour before managing to come up with the idea of the changing terrain as the main interesting game mechanic. By far the quickest we've ever settled on something!
With the concept decided, it soon became clear we'd have to make this a 3d game to get the most out of it. That was already terrifying since neither of us have done any 3d work in Godot before and I definitely do not have the Blender skills to be making 3d assets. It was interesting trying to get the 2d assets into the 3d world but we're super proud of the result!
The island was the main focus for Ciaran to start which ate up the entire first day. Actual gameplay hardly got started until the final day but how amazing the island looked was definitely worth it! As usual, had to cut out some mechanics we had intended to put in due to the time constraints but that's always the way! We had wanted to give the player the ability to alter the terrain at the expense of the crystal's stability to add an extra level to the strategy and make the terrain even more interesting.
UI is not either of our favourite things... So making a game where all the control are from the UI was also time consuming and a bit tricky. For Ciaran, having to specify things that you wouldn't even think twice about when playing a game (like previous things being deselected when something new is selected) definitely ate up time. Personally, I hate having to draw things like boxes and containers and I find it so difficult to make them look good and fit the theme so I ended up being really laazy and some of my "placeholder" UI ended up in the final game...
Since I had completed the bulk of the graphics and UI on the first two days, I was able to spend more time on sound since there was less level design to do than previous jams due to the nature of the changing island (and Ciaran was still frantically trying to do the gameplay). We added background music for the first time as well as making the sound effects digitally rather than recording anything which I definitely preferred. The music is incredibly basic but trying to add anything more complex ended up sounding horrendous so apologies for the somewhat annoying/boring loop!
Overall, another load of new things learnt this jam and we are really happy with how the game has turned out despite not being able to add everything we had wanted.
TOOLS
Engine: Godot
Graphics: Krita
Audio: LMMS
THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!
Post-release Changelog
Fix music not looping
Fix Enemies spawning on same tile causing crash
Fix win condition comparison error
Fix shadows not disappearing on enemy death
Fix visual glitch in central column
Fix enemy stats not as planned
Fix path cost calculation off by one
Fix next turn button not visible unless player selected
Fix crash if send projectile when enemy about to die
Fix annotation highlighting for attacks
| Link | https://github.com/CiaranWoodward/LD49 |
| Windows (Download LD49.exe) | https://github.com/CiaranWoodward/LD49/releases |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/crysterra |
Ratings
| Overall | 1064th | 3.28⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1237th | 2.939⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 853th | 3.213⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 960th | 3.313⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 995th | 3.329⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 862th | 2.902⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1008th | 2.513⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1213th | 2.923⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 63🗨️ |
Something bother me a bit tho. I managed to get to credit on first try, without any harm done to the crystal on top of that.. Was it intended ? The guardians may be too strong, or enemies too weak, since i'm no god gamer myself.
We've made it a little harder now so feel free to have another go!
Nice work :)
Okay... bashful criticism out of the way, let's get to the meat of the comment. There's one question on my mind: how'd you do this in time?
This game came as a total surprise to me, in that I genuinely don't know how it was done nor how it works so well in what amounts to a single weekend. I like the concept and the world-shifting mechanic is a very unique way to handle your defense, setting up a unique compromise where you take damage to avoid an even worse penalty. I feel that some balancing may be in order, but that doesn't take away from the accomplishment-- you have my full attention and I could genuinely see myself playing more of this with more content.
Really, the part that blows my mind is the execution-- the world shifting feels like such a natural part of the game and adds enough variety to chasing enemies that I would want to leave nothing to chance when they got anywhere near the crystal, regardless of elevation.
Aside from this, the art and music (the presentation in general, really) is very nicely put together. I just hope there are more enemy designs on the way.
A part of me wonders if you could also put together levels that leave the levelshifting you control behind, where you attack an enemy crystal nation that controls their own worldshifting crystal to act against you.
Whatever you might have in mind to expand on this concept, I hope to see more of this game postjam!
- I felt like I wanted the ability to pan the camera, rather than just rotate it. Sometimes it was tough to get an enemy in view.
- A few times, I didn't realize that my character was out of AP. I think auto-cycling to the next character could be reasonable.
- Similarly, sometimes I didn't immediately know when the enemy turn was over. Auto-selecting a character might help there too.
- I was having trouble attacking the enemies -- turns out I was just clicking on the tile beneath them rather than their actual sprite. Selecting the tile they're on should probably count as selecting them, and conversely, hovering on their sprite should probably highlight their tile?
- I expected the "end turn" button to just pass the current character's turn, not give control over to the enemy.
I know game jams are always about making concessions about what you do and don't have time to implement, so it's understandable that a lot of the above isn't there (sounds like you were quite busy already). Good job getting in what you did, though! I particularly like the animation when the terrain changes -- it's so smooth and lively.
I did feel like it was kind of limited by the ways it presented information to the player. I never really knew where I could move, or how much it would cost, without mousing over tiles. An overlay would really help in communicating this. As well, with my ranged units, I didn't know where they could shoot, and it took me a while to figure out I could shoot as far as I wanted, so long as nothing was in the way. Communicating this would really improve the game feel. As well, I wanted to be able to click on the units vs only being able to click on their names.
Loved the additional actions that allow you to raise/lower terrain.
Good controls but keyboard shortcuts are very much needed especially for frequently use action like movement. Also movement should be the default selected action.
Great job!
@anchorlight Wow thanks for the in depth feedback! Unfortunately we didn't get time to implement the crater/raise abilities. I probably should have removed it during bugfix. Glad you liked it :)
@adafheyesh Thanks for the feedback, those kind of subtle QoL things are really helpful to know about :)
@nardandas Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I wish some kind of overlay was easier to draw. What exists is definitely a compromise, but great to know where the pain points were. Glad you enjoyed it!
@negator2vc Glad you liked it! Although the ability to raise/lower terrain wasn't actually implemented :cry: - The island just gets unstable occasionally :P
@shakedimus Thanks for the feedback, good to know! The kind of mechanics you mention were planned, but unfortunately didn't hook them up in time. @teto also informs me that she did actually put enemy descriptions in there... just I didn't hook them up :face_palm:
@basset-romain Thanks for the feedback, yeah I agree the camera is a bit janky... I don't really have a good feel for how to make a good 3d camera (so if anyone has any good resources, lmk) Maybe I just overcomplicated it by making it rotate around a point :P
@tekk Yeah the pros and cons of an unstable island! Was hoping to get a better way of keeping the island stable, or making permanent modifications so that you could be more confident in your positioning! Would definitely be on the table if we were to make a v2!
@real-flamingicecubegames Thanks for the feedback! For our first 3d game we were very happy with how the visuals turned out! Resource management would be a cool expansion!
Like others have pointed out, I would have loved to see more! Once you get a grasp on the controls, the game feels a bit stale and slow when it's just move to the enemies and attack. I would have loved to see the terrain moving around having more of a role in the game as well, since for now it sort of just looks pretty sure without feelings like it impacts much.
Still, overall a very solid jam submission!
I really like the simple graphics 2D/3D, it looks nice :)
Just one thing that frustrated me was I never know wich Crytal Gardian I selected with left menu, adding them numbers or colors would have helped.
But well done !
I wasn't fan of the music tho but this is a matter of personal taste ;)
Good job !
Firstly, I noticed the terrain could not be changed from the comments and while playing, which is a shame because this is imo a more important mechanic than the guardians being able to move or attack, since it's the one mechanic that ties to the theme and is pretty unique compared to other games of the same genre.
Secondly, as others stated, the camera was a bit cumbersome from time to time, when the target is close, it works decent enough, but when they are far away it's difficult to control the camera to frame them correctly
Finally, the selection of entities and validation of actions were super sensitive, as in most of the time clicking would not do anything, I would have to click ~20 times for an attack to finally trigger, despite the target cell not being red. I eventually noticed clicking directly on the enemies' sprites worked better for attacking them, but even then it was very finicky.
The game looks awesome, and the concept is interesting enough that despite all those issues I would still like to try an improved version with all the mechanics in and better controls.
But Guys, you can't expect everyone to have godot so try to release to release a windows version!!???
Overall game idea is cool but I didn't like the controls. Choosing actions, tiles, players, moving camera was uncomfortable. It needs some work but it has a lot of potential. Thanks! Good luck!
I wasn't really sure what it is or what I can do in the beginning, and at some point there were no enemies I could shoot... But I feel like this could become a really cool game.
The art was a nice touch, and the audio was easy on the ears. Really great work with this entry!