At the beginning the game may be too “easy” (just one ball) so I added the ability to add another fireball (limited only by mana). So you get more chances to hit the wizards, but you have to handle more bouncing balls. The barrier is not a perfect line. It could be easy to do it, just detecting mouse-in and mouse-out. But again, the irregular shape makes it more interesting, un-precise and “realistic” imho. You can draw better lines wasting more mana too. I couldn’t (I didn’t want to) add movement, that was the whole point of the jam; unless… I added mana penalty or other drawback for moving. But then it would become closer to just another dungeon crawling game. And the idea was to clear dungeons without moving. Thank you for the thoughts!

The limitation is not applied directly with the mechanic. You can’t move or be moved because you would die, so I removed any moving controls; so I took the “you move you die” literally. Also is part of the narrative in this case. Other games were allowing limited move which is also a valid idea imho. As you progress, each dungeon will fire more fireballs at you (randomly but always from one the 4 torches toward the player). As soon as a fireball disappears another one is fired unless you can push it out through an opened door.

When there are three or more coming at you, you can just draw a circle around the wizard. It just protects him perfectly, but you have to do it quickly!