Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

Amulet of DalaxisView game page

GameBoy-style reverse Tower Defense game
Submitted by irmoz (@irmozius), d3tuned / vewn_enjoyer — 4 hours, 19 minutes before the deadline
Rated by 9 people so far
Add to collection

Play game

Amulet of Dalaxis's itch.io page

Rate this game

In order to rate this submission you must be logged into itch.io and have submitted your own entry. Anyone with an account can leave a comment.

How does your game meet GBJam's theme
Your goal is to retrieve your precious phylactery, the old and golden Amulet of Dalaxis!

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

Interestingly, I found it a bit too *difficult*, compared to all the people saying it was too easy. I couldn't seem to take out the tower on the third stage before it killed me (repeatedly) and all my troops.  But maybe that's on me.  (The seemingly-identical tower on the second stage was no problem at all, weirdly)
I also couldn't figure out how to cast spells other than Death And Decay, which may have been part of the issue.  Edit: Oh!  It's right there in the instructions, C to change spells! That made things much easier. :D

All in all, though, I love the concept, and I liked the few levels I could get through.

Developer(+1)

The tower damage bug is the worst one to make it into the submission :( 

Thanks for trying it out! Can't wait to improve on the concept and fix/add stuff!

Submitted(+1)

Honestly, I can't wait to try the debugged version. :D

Submitted(+1)

Excellent choice of color palette! Love it. The game art is also great and I think the game has great mechanical ideas. Great work.

Submitted(+2)

Excellent choice of color palette! Love it. The game art is also great and I think the game has great mechanical ideas. Great work.

Submitted(+1)

Being on the attacking side of tower defense is a great idea, and it looks really pretty

(+2)

The game looks amazing, but what I love most is the concept! A wizard supporting his troops in a tower defense style game is such a great idea!

Developer(+1)

I'm  ashamed that the game balance is so poor because that is my job and I spent so long we only had like 1 day to test and fix a ton of stuff! 

I am actually really excited to do the post-jam updates on this one! Might add more tower types enemies and spells. And add some secrets (I hid a bunch of semi-hidden graves around the world map but they don't do anything yet, just decoration)

Submitted(+2)

Woah, this is very detailed! I love the take on the tower defense genre but from the opposite end, we are the ones being defended against now. The graphics are really pretty, I like the jittery screen as well! I didn't get a chance to play it fully but I might return to this later, it's intriguing

Developer

Thanks! We didn't get to spend enough time on the balance, so it might be too easy - but we intend on maybe doing a post-jam polishing up on this one since there's so much TLC in it :)

Submitted(+2)

Nice choice of palette, commanding the skeletons while you snipe towers yourself is a good shape for this, and the pause-to-zoom is a smart way to handle the short sight line. nice job

Developer

Tyvm! A bit rough but I think we may do some post-jam polish on this one! It was so fun to make

(+2)

I never had a GameBoy, so I can't compare it to actual games on the system.

The way the screen moves is a bit jerky feeling, especially early on when you are free to move quickly. I assume this is part of the feel of the GB games, or possibly due to the mechanic of limiting your view. I certainly died a few times from trying to get far enough to see the tower and then ending up too close.

I died once while aiming Death and Decay. It left the targeting outline behind. When I respawned I was able to cast the spell with a new targeting outline. The old one remained behind.

I played a few times before I got a feel for how to beat the towers. I mainly started with Death and Decay, followed by Necrotic Lance. Then I might step in to finish them off with a regular Fireball. I wasn't great at dodging them, so didn't try to do too much with just the Fireball.

I made it to wave 7, with over 100 Souls. I had already maxed out the Lich and Skeleton Level upgrades, though not done any Spawn upgrades. Considering how many forts there are, it felt like I hit the max far too early. I took advantage of between waves not having any threats, and being able to walk through forts, to walk all the way to the end. It was a fairly long path. It looks like there will be more towers, and more clusters of them, but overall mostly the same as what I've done up to this point. Hitting the max so early really limits how much further I wanted to go. Again, I never had GameBoy, and for classics/retro games I tend to need nostalgia to want to play within the tighter limits of the era. I like the core gameplay. If there were more upgrades, I'd have kept playing for longer. I didn't feel like walking back, so started the next wave from the end. I worked my way backward, destroying about6 or so towers before getting hit. When I respawned I moved forward to see how things were and ran into the enemy troops. I took them out and the wave ended. I was at the point where they had spawned, but I had no troops left to claim it. When I started the next wave, my skeletons look to have spawned at the same point as before. I started killing the troop spawning next to me and then moved on to the towers. Eventually I was hit and joined my troops in moving forward, to claim the fort. I'm now on wave 9, and going to end it here. The bit of fighting my back from the end amused me enough to go for a bit longer than I'd thought.

It fits what I associate with GameBoy games. They were far more limited than consoles of the time due to being portable, and I was never really a fan of that. I think it works well fo rwhat it is, even if it is not a game I'd play a lot of.

Developer(+2)

Glad you enjoyed it, and we'll be on the lookout for the bug you mentioned! This game is definitely an exercise in how much can you do with such a limited viewport resolution, and with a limited control scheme. I grew up with janky games on the NES and game boy, so there's a little more nostalgia for me, but I commend you for sticking with it :)

90% of the jam was making the assets and music and putting it all together, and we basically had less than 1 day to test polish and finalize - so game balance (my forte) actually was the thing to suffer the most. Another day or so and I think we would have ironed out some of the balance issues. We never got to adding another tower type or enemy unit type, or got to really focus on balance. We were dead tired and it was in the wee early morning hours when we submitted, so unfortunately we were both at the limits of our exhaustion.

Taught me that we need to at least be totally done with content/mechanics and just do testing/iterative tweaks for at least 2-3 days before the jam ends. The game map was made in the last 2 days of the jam, feverishly by myself - to replace our test area. I think if we had started the testing and tweaking cycle sooner, we would have gotten the balance much finer. 

Thank you so much for the feedback, I learned a lot on this jam!