Of Shadow and Light

Thank you for looking at my submission!

Game Design Doc

This game was made for the Pirate Software - Game Jam 15 as a solo project with the theme of "Shadows & Alchemy"

This is my third game jam, and this one went pretty poorly. I definitely over scoped early on, plus life events made this 2 week jam into more of a 4 day jam for myself. Lots of little and somewhat bigger things got left on the cutting room floor, but that's just how it goes sometimes.

Entering this jam, I wanted to learn more about godot signals, gpu particle emitters (there is a small one during tower building), and instancing scenes.

HOW TO PLAY

• Mouse controlled
• Build towers at the yellow building areas
• Towers cost Light, which is gained by defeating enemies while they are in the shadow zone.
• Higher tier enemies, like the ghost and giant, always drop light when defeated - but drop extra when defeated in the buff area.
• Towers can be upgraded in between waves.

TOWERS

• Lighthouse
  
  • Deals minor damage in an area around it every 2 seconds
    
    • Wizard upgrade increases the pulse's damage
      
    • Harvester upgrade increases the pulse's range

• Harvester
  • Harvests Light during rounds. Works faster when enemies are next to it
    
    • Wizard upgrade increases the light gained each harvest
      
    • Lighthouse upgrade increases the speed of harvest
• Wizard
  • Causes large amounts of damage to a random target in range, slow attack speed
    
    • Harvester upgrade increases the range of the tower
      
    • Lighthouse upgrade increases the attack speed of the tower

DESCRIPTION / THEME - "Shadow & Alchemy"

A little more shadow than alchemy. For shadow - the whole game premise was meant to focus on light and shadow. The enemies are meant to be made of shadow, and gain buffs when in areas of shadow. The towers were (originally) meant to also be able to destroy these areas of shadow. This was meant to be a trade off, as the shadow buff areas is your main way of gaining currency - "Light". Without it, killing the enemies gives you very little.

For Alchemy, I wanted to go for the Transmutation side of it. Originally, the upgrades of the towers were going to be based off metals, following the ideas behind transmutations (and the origins of alchemy). The idea here was to be able to merge towers of the same level in order to transmute them into a better one. The merging system never really worked right, so I opted for a less thematic upgrade system during the final day.

CREDITS

- Art, Programming, Music, Game Design, Story, Midlife Crisis, Etc - LGWV (that's me)

CUTTING ROOM FLOOR

• Boss
  • Originally, the final wave of the final level would include a boss enemy which was very slow, but extremely resilient. This enemy was meant to spawn a giant or ghost at the start of the track every few seconds it was alive, at a faster pace when in the buff areas.

• Light Interaction
  
  • Originally, certain upgrade paths were going to be able to destroy areas of shadow, negating the enemy's buff in that area but also preventing you from gaining the extra Light from destroying enemies in that area

• Tower Transmutation
  
  • Originally, towers of the same rank would be able to be merged to higher ranks. The tiers would be represented by metals. My rough idea here was to make it so you could only build 1 kind of tower, like the lighthouse, and getting the other towers would require this transmutation / merge - allowing for certain upgrade paths allowing for unique towers.
    
  
  

• Player Character
  
  • Originally, the player would control a small player character on the map. This character could not fight, but instead had to be in the area to build / upgrade the tower - and I also had the idea of "reloading" the towers by occasionally needing to run to the base, grab Light, and spend it to reload the towers.