NECRO RUSH by helviett

SUMMON YOUR ARMY OF DARKNESS AND LEAD IT TO BATTLE AGAINST THE CRIMSON CULT!

Fight enemy cultists and their summoned units!

After two sleep-deprived days and one too many cups of corpse-fueled brew, we're thrilled to present our creation! Join us in a riotous romp through the shadowy realms of necromancy swarmed ruins of the ancient kingdom, where the evil cultists don't rest and neither do we! 💥✨
Minions
Zombie -- Despite their looks, they're fast!

Golem -- slow and powerful, mind your distance!

Bonuses

Boot -- increases movement speed for both masters and their minions!
Potion -- negates all damage for a short period of time!
Skull -- provides your army with extra damage, but enemy attacks hurt more!
Controls
WASD - moving
| Link | https://helviett.itch.io/necro-rush |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/necro-rush |
Ratings
| Overall | 359th | 3.773⭐ | 152🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 368th | 3.681⭐ | 154🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 614th | 3.341⭐ | 153🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 199th | 4.158⭐ | 154🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 312th | 4.086⭐ | 154🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 365th | 3.581⭐ | 150🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 417th | 3.326⭐ | 143🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 462th | 3.685⭐ | 151🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 137🗳️ | 267🗨️ |
The second level was quite challenging. At first I was not sure how to be successful, since I tried killing all enemy zombies. In the third level I noticed, that it oftenc comes down to be lucky because killing the enemy necromancer instantly kills his zombies.
Really nice entry :)
Running away from the enemy seemed to be slightly too powerful of a tactic. It separates the enemy necromancer from its minions and your minions can easily take the necromancer down. This seemed to work on all levels.
But overall, very solid entry.
Really great and beautiful game, I really like how you made the zombies. I don't now if it was intended, but at first I thought they were the bad guys trying to get my brain, so I avoided them. But then I realized that I was summoning them ! It was very funny! Thank you for this great game! ;)
The sprites and animations are exceptionally well made, and very charming. They're what drew me here, and they really sell the game for me.
The gameplay reminds me of Boneraiser Minions. I like that you can resurrect enemy necromancers, and it feels good to find a patch of new graves. Potions are a nice buff, and often feel like a worthy treasure to find. I like the tension of straying too far from your pack of minions to find more graves. Like someone said above, kiting is a very strong strategy, and leashing the enemy necromancer away from their zombies is a fairly simple way to cheese the game.
I couldn't help but feel like the game lacked a bit of player agency, though. The gameplay loop felt like "walk around->find graves->avoid death", without much choice in between.
What if you had an inventory for potions, and could save them for a crucial moment? Maybe a potion that turns you into a Golem? Another option would be to break the necromancer spawns into separate waves, and give the players some upgrade options for their troops when a wave is done.
Anyways, I hope the constructive criticism proves that this is a great game, and has very good bones to build upon. Again, the polish on it is very impressive. Fantastic submission!
It's one of the best ludum dare games I've seen so far.
love it, especially the cute sprites and animations
had a blast playing
Last level was a bit difficult - I wasn't able to find a lot of ghouls and immediately ran into two enemies that just kept following me with their hoard

Very interesting! What a great design!
This game is a good example of taking a simple concept and executing it well!
Loved watching my army slowly grow bigger and bigger, taking over the entire map.
The art style and music were also very charming and worked together nicely.
Overall Amazing work!
I love how simple it looks and how interesting it plays! So far one of the most polished and fun games I've played here.
Just one minor suggestion, the walk animation feels a bit slower than the movement.
Great simplistic gameplay with a great deal of polish. Really well done. I feel like the "Overlord" difficulty was actually easier than "Necromancer". The golems in the start really gave them hell. :grin:
Otherwise, I really liked it. Good job!
I couldn't complete overlord. :cry:
Was fun to play, although I agree with others that the moment to moment gameplay wasn't crazy engaging. Maybe steal some ideas from my game and allow you to revive corpses (maybe with less health and damage output since you're "recycling" them?). I like just having to touch the gravestones...maybe I'll see what my game feels like slimming it down with that feature.
Love the clean graphics.
That said, good job on your first LD entry and welcome!
the environment could use some love though. Nice perimeter wall, by the way. Cool entry!
Here is my playthrough:
https://youtu.be/IE_okw5nwxU
I love the humorous description!
The whole thing works well, it's a good game!

Only critique I have is that on the last level, I had to wander around for quite some time before more graves began appearing. Once they did, I managed to clean up the last two rival summoners. One idea to maybe expand what you have is to have the different summons actually fight each other as well.
All in all, pretty fun game!