War of the Necrocaster by TomisGreen

[raw]
made by TomisGreen for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

A tiny necromancy based strategy game

LudumDare_Cover.png

Story:

As De Vermis Mysteriis, the book of the worm, states, there can only be one master and one apprentice.

But once the apprentice becomes master, the old master must go. Thus is the law, unchanged since the beginning of time.

And so, once again, the war of the Necrocasters unfolds.

Instructions:

With your mouse, you can use spell cards to summon undead underlings. Your undead underlings will attack the enemy necrocaster on his bier. To win the game, your underlings must kill the necrocaster.

There are 5 types of underlings: Skeletons, Zombies, Ghouls, Fiends, and Vampires. Summoning underlings uses up Mana. You can also use your Mana to upgrade either your underlings or your stats. Be careful how you spend your Mana!

Team:

Drahmen - art, design, programming

Tomisgreen - music & sound, story, art

Update

Hey folks, @drahmen here. Apologies for the UI issues - I only had a 36 hour window for the entire game, which included coding the entire game, and the pixel art. The UI is the result of that, and the issue is simply the UI being a child to the wrong object in Unity. I went ahead and fixed it as a 'typo' update, as I wasn't aware that it was covering 1/4 of the screen on certain resolutions. It looked pretty good while I was building it for 1920x1080!

As for the balance, the stats were really placeholders that I only had a handful of minutes to tweak. I've left them as-is in spirit of the competition, but I'll probably come back and polish and balance things considerably in a post-judging update.

Love hearing all the comments so far <3

Ratings

Overall 578th 3.569⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Fun 382th 3.667⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 867th 3.056⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Theme 394th 3.919⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 523th 3.811⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Audio 450th 3.443⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Mood 852th 3.292⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 55🗨️

Feedback

PromZona
15. Apr 2024 · 21:06 UTC
Game is good. Had small problems with UI - some panels were above everything, hard to navigate. Art is super cool, tutorial is convenient. But game is short, would like to play against more advanced opponents
LocksmithArmy
15. Apr 2024 · 23:32 UTC
This is fun, great job
WMute
16. Apr 2024 · 03:14 UTC
I like CCG =)
Doonutsaur
16. Apr 2024 · 03:27 UTC
Nice. just wish the texts were a little bigger and brighter.
Ha-kuro
16. Apr 2024 · 04:56 UTC
Ooooo that retro arcade-y style was great! Made the UI feel more unique - just wish we could see our little minions under that "Summons" panel - Nice work
LangiT
16. Apr 2024 · 05:02 UTC
Great work. This was a lot of fun to play, I think we as the player could be balanced more, I found myself rolling over the enemies pretty easily by just upgrading my mana. I wish there were more levels!
Luc-creationallabs
16. Apr 2024 · 06:43 UTC
Your game is in my top games from this jam so far. My only critique is about the balancing - after purchasing just a few mana regen and max mp upgrades, you can simply summon whatever creature and victory is guaranteed. This makes the presence of various creatures useless since you can win using just one in any situation. I understand asking for perfect balanced gameplay for a game jam game is a bit much, but it's the only thing I could point out as a critique. Also the tutorial, this is by far the best tutorial in the games I played - a perfect balance between presenting the information and speed, without sacrificing comprehension. I know many full-release Steam games that don't have a tutorial this good. Well done.
runningopenloop
16. Apr 2024 · 07:03 UTC
Happy this ran on linux for me. However the full screen presentation resulted in some of the info being cut off.. the screen was too wide for my monitor. Perhaps if there was a way to set to windowed mode I could have had a better play experience. Alt enter did get me a window, and I saw more -- didn't see (or notice) the upgrade button on the spawned creatures until I did this... Some buttons I couldn't read all of like the ones to left.

Or maybe my 1680x1050 monitor wasn't big enough?
Deloriand
16. Apr 2024 · 08:09 UTC
Great work and great game ! I like the graphics and the music/sound design ! Same thing as the other comments, maybe a balance is needed ^^. I found myself into two situations : I use the mana upgrades and I won, or I don't and the enemy is summoning way to many enemies at the same time. And you don't have enough time or resources to fully use the last two creatures, which is sad, they look fun to use. But overall great game for this game jam ! Well done !
Moonblast
16. Apr 2024 · 09:31 UTC
![94CDAFB429743372FF2AB002D6151A8E.png](///raw/e01/04/z/63899.png)
It looks like there's a little problem with the UI, but I still beat it! The flow is a bit short but the strategy feels rich and I get to try out different styles of combat, great work!
LDJam user 384819
16. Apr 2024 · 09:31 UTC
Very cool game! I had some issues with the UI scaling causing the summons box to cover parts of the mana upgrade buttons (im on a 2k monitor), but overall pretty neat game! I love the art style
LDJam user 179298
16. Apr 2024 · 10:37 UTC
Spamming skeletons ftw
dekara
16. Apr 2024 · 11:38 UTC
Hey. The game has a neat idea but I felt the excecution not too fun at the moment for me. It was a little buggy ui wise and too easy. The different Summons did not really had an impact. Could easily beat the game with only the first one.
But I think its rather nice, promising concept. With a little bit better balancing, progression and polish it could be a really sweet game. :)
Haha. That sounded rather negativ. Its still a really cool entry for a three day game jam. :)
🎤 TomisGreen
16. Apr 2024 · 11:51 UTC
@dekara Thank you for your feedback! Did you play all 3 opponents? We didn't have time to make them look very distinct, but the opponents get harder
RaimondoSenpai
16. Apr 2024 · 12:56 UTC
Nice idea, a bit too easy probably. Nice arts to.
drahmen
16. Apr 2024 · 15:05 UTC
@promzona, @ha-kuro, @langit, @luc-creationallabs, @runningopenloop, @deloriand, @moonblast, @benjiehotwheels, @dekara, @raimondosenpai: Thank you all for the comments <3 I've addressed these common issues in the update comment (only fixed the UI as it was a 'typo' bug. Balance values were all simply placeholders I didn't have time to tweak)
dekara
16. Apr 2024 · 17:36 UTC
@tomisgreen Hey. Yes I played through the whole game. Maybe my strategy was just right. Updating Mana Regen and mana and just pumping and updating the number 1 summon. :)
Weiiswurst
16. Apr 2024 · 17:48 UTC
I really loved this game. I would love to play a post-jam update with a few more levels! The current levels felt a little easy.
unchain
16. Apr 2024 · 18:02 UTC
The best I tried so far. Super love the pixel art.
tapehead
16. Apr 2024 · 18:07 UTC
Great entry!! Sadly to short
Emememememe
16. Apr 2024 · 19:41 UTC
Great game! I really liked the art style and it was fun. Sometimes the enemy HP bar wasn´t visible which was a bit distracting but otherwise I loved it.
CharmedSatyr
17. Apr 2024 · 00:12 UTC
A fun one! Getting the right balance of summons took some practice!
LDJam user 355344
17. Apr 2024 · 18:57 UTC
Small but funny. I tried to max out my hp and mana, and stream summon 100 skeletons at once, it was fun).
DeltaMain
18. Apr 2024 · 12:02 UTC
Great game! Really enjoyed playing it! One of the best tutorial I've seen here, totally will learn from it! Btw it would be even more interesting, if you made game a little bit harder
ne_mene
18. Apr 2024 · 14:33 UTC
Cool graphics, kinda shallow gameplay as i could just spam the mana upgrades and then spam the first troop leveled up and win every mathch.
Atan
18. Apr 2024 · 18:04 UTC
The graphics are so cool, mechanics are good but i think the game is quite eazy.
RubixNoob13
22. Apr 2024 · 07:11 UTC
I agree with a lot of the other comments here. The graphics are cute, although I was having a lot of issues with the enemy HP bar just disappearing off the screen, so I didn't really know how much HP he had left.

Music and sound effects were a bit repetitive.

The game was pretty easy, either spam small units, or upgrade a couple times and spam small ones. Or, upgrade your mana / mana regen, then spam bigger units.

Pretty good entry. A quit button would be nice so users don't have to Alt + F4 out of the game.
HacksawUnit
03. May 2024 · 18:37 UTC
Very good and surprisingly mechanically deep entry! Music and graphics were great, and the amount of interconnected features and things going on is very impressive. I think there's a bug where mana is transferred between rounds, so I was able to get through it pretty easy... unless upgrades are always meant to transfer? The general balance and flow could use some work, but overall a great effort. Nice job!