Shadow Heart Defender
Originally submitted for Pirate Software Game Jam 15: "Shadows and Alchemy"
NOTE: This game is likely unplayable without hardware acceleration enabled (you will get a TON of lag)
Oh no! You are trapped in a room and cursed: you've been turned into a little orb of light, and your heart has been split into 4 pieces and embedded into the walls that surround you. Evil spirits will appear on the walls and approach each heart. If even a single enemy touches one of them, you're done for!
You have a defense though: you have some leftover bronze pieces and know a little magic. You can transform 10 bronze pieces into a magical tower. Each tower casts a shadow on the wall, but not just any ordinary shadow! It will fire shadowy bullets at the evil spirits! But you don't have too much bronze so you need to be careful. Maybe if you change your positioning you can make better use of fewer towers... Plus, if you wait long enough, you might be able to alchemize some of the bronze to gold. The towers only cost 2 gold pieces instead of 10 bronze, so doing this will help!
Follow me on itch to get more updates! :)
Mac Build note: you will need to show the file in finder, right click, and then click open from the context menu. I didn't sign it with a developer account.
Linux Build note: you will need to manually set the x86_64 file to executable, for example with: chmod +x build_linux.x86_64 (thanks Joe for testing this!)
CONTROLS:
- LEFT MOUSE CLICK - CHANGE LIGHT POSITION
- RIGHT MOUSE CLICK - PLACE TOWER
- WASD/ARROW KEYS - CONTROL CAMERA
MIDDLE MOUSE HOLD AND DRAG - CONTROL CAMERA(alternate control, not recommended because it's a bit clunky and weird in browsers)
Game Design Document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dohugkvp0mPHBVcJ36x0zw8UA02Jq7TNQuPFbyGnibI/...
Download
Development log
- Shadow Heart Defender Post-Jam Update (v0.1.1)Aug 15, 2024
Comments
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Interesting concept, I had fun while playing :)
I reached level 7 and it was fun to see many towers shooting to the shadows but once they spawned in 3 walls at the same time I couldn’t fight back haha
The control camera felt a bit weird at the start but feels normal after the first few rounds. The sounds remind me of old games which I liked but can be a bit shocking at the start due the 3D visuals. And I liked that the size of the bullet depends on the size of the tower.
I would like a grid with smaller squares to put the light in more places but feels ok right now. I didn’t pay much attention to how much bronze and gold you win per round but I didn’t feel I needed a lot of towers to pass the rounds or didn’t feel unfair.
I can see some potential for more fun in this game, like small power ups that affect the light or the power of the shadow, but it’s fun as it is now.
Thanks for sharing :)
Thanks for playing and your feedback! I’m planning on doing some updates so it’s very helpful. Glad you had fun playing :)
Hi :)
I played again the game since I saw it got an update about performance and I can see it :D
I could play it on my old pc instead of the good one, and it runs well if I play it in the browser window instead of full screen.
This time I could give it more time, I could reach round 10 and was a bit intense from round 9 so it was fun. And by that point, the bronze and gold were meaningless because I already put most of the squares with pillars and gaps for the light.
But I saw a few things that could improve the game a little more.
When the shadow of a pillar gets reflected on the corner of the room, it seems to only shoot in 1 wall when it’s reflected on 2, so maybe if those shadows could shoot in both walls, it would be great. It didn’t make the game harder for it shot in only 1 wall but I didn’t know what wall the shadow picked.
I lost a game in round 9 because the shadow got too close to the heart but the shadow didn’t touch the heart. I don’t know if it’s because the hitbox it’s a square and touches the bottom corner, but it would be nice if the shadow actually touches the heart.
(But by the time the shadow it’s that close, it’s pretty likely you will lose so it’s more a visual thing haha)
And the last one, would be nice if you could remove the pillars. I missclick 1 square at the end of my run and I couldn’t fight the shadows well because I used that square for the light and ended up putting a pillar in it haha
But the performance update it’s noticeable, nice update! (^^)
Thanks for checking it out again! It's great to hear that the performance update works!!
Yeah round 10 was the best I was able to do (I'm not sure if it's possible to go past that), so nice job!
Yeah, I originally wanted the corners to work on both but didn't get around to it--I'll add it to the list for the next update (I think it'd be fun to have it work on both).
Good note on the hitboxes, they're definitely a bit too big right now which looks weird/feels frustrating when you lose.
Having tower removal is something I'd like to add too--might be in a later update though.
Thanks again! :)
Good luck with updates :D
Amazing concept. The idea of placing the object Spawner as a 2d object is pretty unique, never seen that mechanic in a videogame before. the only issue I had with your game is nothing you can control, the browser. As a standalone product this has portal levels of ingenuity.
Thank you! That means a lot—I hope I can expand on the idea more :)
This is very fun! I wish there was a restart button so I could try out different configurations of towers more easily. I wanted to keep experimenting and find the perfect layout. I got to round 7 on my best run!
Thank you! Yeah, there's tons of room for quality of life improvements like that :)
A very cool game concept in an clever 2D/3D mix which was fun to play :D
Like the bigger the tower, the bigger the fire bullet, is a nice element of it. Or the sound clue so that you hear when they get to close, with an arcade-game like sound.
I also once had two towers in one shadow and i was scared that only one would shot. Its nice that the 'hidden' Tower was still shooting :D
I also enjoyed reading the story. Poor cursed orb of light. The angry eyebrow on the enemies makes them look cute tho :D
My only critic is that the room feels too bright. It doesnt seem like the orb of light is the only source of light. Maybe making the higher parts of the wall darker could create an cool atmosphere. Or in general making it so that its the brightest very close to the orb.
The whole idea already is a cool game with lots of possibilities to expand it. Maybe with the ability to set an option if an hit means instant death or if the player gets more chances. Or maybe im just sad that my unstoppable defense in level 7 wasnt enough xD
Thank you so much! Super glad you enjoyed it! Really happy you liked the art, sound, and story too--those things were actually kinda came together last minute for the jam haha :D
Glad to see you appreciated the overlapping shadows working--I actually debated a bit whether to let that work or not so that's good feedback :)
Agreed with the walls, I made them look a little too bright and flat, the environment is sorta faked so ended up doing that for the jam--something for me to update.
Definitely tons of room to expand for this game! Glad you enjoyed it :D
I wasn't looking at this one angle lol and they all went there lol.
Very clever and unique concept love this. Also very curious how this works lol. are they like, shadow only meshes? It's really cool, had a great time!
Thank you! Haha yeah, with how things ended up, I definitely made it so you have to keep looking around a lot!
Yeah, there's a handful of different hacky things I did with this game lol. The biggest ones are that there's actually a separate 2D scene and viewport for each wall, a custom fragment shader for the shadows coming from the towers (using raymarching, hence why I kept the towers very simple for now lol), and then some another shader to combine it all. I might get around to making some more detailed post about it at some point.
Thanks again!
I LOVE this idea! Shadows as towers is brilliant, I don't even know how you did that, great work. I really wish losing one heart didn't fail the whole game, I wanted to play more! I'm not even sure how to improve on the concept, maybe be able to upgrade the brightness of the ball or size/type of tower? Great work!
Thanks so much! Yeah, I definitely have tons of room here to expand on :)