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A jam submission

The Ruined KeepView game page

Kill the demons and possess their bodies to survive as long as possible.
Submitted by primortis — 51 minutes before the deadline
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The Ruined Keep's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Mechanics#1633.5003.500
Theme#2003.5423.542
Fun#3563.0423.042
Sound#4022.5002.500
Aesthetics#4303.0423.042
Story#4922.0002.000
Music#6341.4171.417

Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How many people worked on this game total?
1

Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Universal LPC Spritesheet Generator, Tazo_2D,JMO Assets, Sherbbs Particle Collection

Link to your source?
https://primortis.itch.io/ruined-keep

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Comments

Viewing comments 23 to 4 of 23 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

really nice idea. and a really great way to represent the brief. goodJob!

Submitted

Nice idea with the mechanics! I died a lot before scoring my first kill but eventually managed to possess a couple of enemies. Congrats on your first jam submission 😎

Submitted

Really nice game and awesome mechanics! Although for me it is a little too hard. There are too many enemies spawning and I feel like they are predicting my movements because I run into a lot a projectiles. :D Apart from this, I think it's pretty cool, well done! :)

Developer(+1)

Yes the AI has a somewhat predictive aim. It doesn't work at all ranges correctly but it still makes it much harder than shooting at the player's current position. When I added it I also significantly increased the player HP and movement speed but maybe not by enough. 

Submitted

Great submission! Overall I found this to be a lot of fun; the concept is pretty neat, constantly cycling through new corpses to upgrade the spells and survive turned out to be pretty enjoyable. I love how hectic it eventually gets too :D

It would be cool if in a future version there was some kind of visual indication of which bodies you could still possess - I found myself clicking frantically on piles of bodies in the late-game hoping I could hop into at least one of them 

That aside, like I said before I really enjoyed this! Thank you for submitting! :) 

Developer

Glad you enjoyed it. I was planning on just deleting old bodies after a while, which would help that issue, but ran out of time. I am actually surprised I haven't encountered performance issues, considering I don't delete any of the dead units. Highlighting some of the bodies is a good ideas as well.

Submitted

Great start! Might want to move the camera closer so the sprites are bigger. Liked the projectiles. Looked great.

Submitted

It is hard! Nice submission overall but I died a lot xD

Submitted

Great job with your submission! I think the core gameplay mechanic is interesting and definitely can offer up a lot of cool things later if it's expanded on. I do think there needs to be a bit more balancing with the spawns, cast times, movement speed and probably some other things, but that's all understandable. Good work here and keep it up!

Submitted

Interesting concept! I liked the gameplay loop, and the variety of abilities to use. 

Nice job!

Submitted

I love arena type games.  Spent most of my time circling big mobs of monsters while shooting at them and running.  Like someone mentioned below, Id more recommend left mouse button attack/shoot then the numbers, and maybe right button to transfer.  When dying I ended up having to quit, but a would be nice to have a score or time.  Wasnt sure on how to upgrade the spells.  Felt like I was shooting peanuts at the monsters, lol

Developer (3 edits)

Yes, I think that clicking on a spell icon and then aiming would be nice as an additional way of aiming for the future. There is a timer in the top right that stops when you die, but I agree that a real death screen would be better. 

As for the upgrades, yes they are not explained very well, just implied in the tooltip when you hover an icon. Basically when you possess an enemy a second type you upgrade their spell. Eg if you already have the lightning spell and you possess a skelly it gets upgraded to longer stun and longer chain lightning. Red Lizards upgrade the fireball to have slightly larger radius, and the wolfkin upgrade the ice spell - longer and stronger slow. Now the damage also gets upgraded. You also will deal more damage when you possess stronger enemies(enemies that have spawned later). That's another thing that's not explained anywhere. 

Submitted

I enjoyed the mechanics, although the game needs a bit more balancing. I'd have the player be a bit faster, as chasing down enemies is too frustrating. I'd space out the spawn rate or have them endure less hits. I got overwhelmed really quick and I didn't even manage to kill the first mob.

I think it would be a great addition to allow clicking on the spells, as need a hand on the mouse for clicking corpses makes it hard to get t the spell slots with the other hand busy on moving and attacking.

Also whenever I died mobs just kept attacking me and nothing happened. I'm not sure if I was doing something wrong.

I think this has great potential to be a really fun game. Nice job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing, yeah I didn't have time to make a post death screen, so had to leave the AI wailing on you for eternity. 

Submitted

It was actually quite funny, just seeing the enemies gang up on me and feast on my dead corpse lmao.

Submitted

Definitely a good idea on the theme. Gameplay needs tweaking and balancing, although it's a nice framework for improving on it.

Submitted

This was challenging, but well-made. My primary issue was the enemies constantly ran away and were able to quickly shoot projectiles. When I got their projectile abilities the cooldowns were too high to make it worthwhile. The enemies also deal massive damage. I think if the player character was a little faster at chasing them down that would balance it out some more, or maybe a way to dash to close the distance? Still, overall I liked it, it's fun, challenging, and makes you hate the enemies.

Developer

Thanks for playing. The player is 25% faster than enemies but it might be not enough, so I will probably bump it up to 50% for now and after the jam I can try adding a dash or something.

Submitted

I can see great potential in this game. The issue is that the enemies that shoot at you are to hard to fight. You cant catch them and dodge at the same time, then hope to swing and hit them. The only enemy I was able to kill was the melee enemy. You need to improve the starting speed of the player. They should have the ability to either catch the shooting enemies or have some cover on the map to keep you safe from them while attacking the other enemies. However, a few tweeks and I can see this being really fun. Good Job on the submission. 

Developer

Thanks for playing. The player is 25% faster than enemies but it might be not enough, so I will probably bump it up to 50% for now and after the jam I can try adding a dash or something.

Submitted

Congrats on completing the jam! I had fun with this, but it is definitely difficult. Some ability to speed up, or way to knock enemies back to create a bit of breathing room would be awesome.

Submitted

It's rather difficult, especially when you run into spell casters first that attack you from a range...

I didn't last very long. The first time I did manage to get one spell, but that was it...

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

I just couldn't get a single kill to get started! those enemies were just too overpowered for little ol' me ;-(
nice idea though, would have loved to get those juice fireballs!

Submitted

Challenging game, and different attacks.

Submitted

Great concept, Switching up the different types of attacks.
Realy fun game mechanic!
Well done!

Submitted

Great idea!

Submitted

I like the body swap idea. Got to try a bunch of different types of attacks, which was pretty cool, even if I wasn't very good at it. The sprites looked good too.

Viewing comments 23 to 4 of 23 · Next page · Last page