How to Play

Try to survive as long as possible or defeat the most monsters!

Movement: WASD (Keyboard) or left joystick (Gamepad)

Transform: Space bar (Keyboard) or south button (Gamepad)

  • Transforming increases your damage output for 10 seconds but reduces your HP to 1 for its duration!   One hit while transformed and it's game over!
  • You can only transform when you see the flame fully burning around your character (30 seconds after the start of the game or your previous transformation ended).

The player attacks automatically with three types of attacks:

  • Fireballs: Thrown toward the nearest enemy (faster and piercing when transformed)
  • Orbiting flames: Spin around the player, defeating any enemy they touch (faster and more numerous when transformed)
  • Flame blast: Destroys nearby enemies every 3 seconds (larger radius and more frequent when transformed)

The player's hit points are shown as a bar under the player sprite, and it reduces in size the more damage the player sustains.

Story

The Survivors of the Flame are a mysterious order of fire mages who seek out ancient artifacts from around the world.  While exploring the ruins of a great civilization, you are ambushed by kobolds, nagas, and orcs!  Use your fireballs, fire blasts, and orbiting flames to fend off the assault!  When things start to get dicey, transform into a fire elemental to unleash a fiery doom to all who dare stand against you!

Background

This game was created as part of the CGDC Speedgame: Hardmode 2024 game jam, with the theme "Strength through Weakness."  I chose to integrate the theme into this game by giving the player the ability to become much more powerful but at the cost of their life, turning the mage into a truly glass cannon; the speed, frequency, and count of attacks are increased, allowing the player to plow through hordes as long as they do not get hit.

At this time, it had been around two years since I last did Unity game development and programming, having focused much of these years on exploring UX design.  This was a welcome opportunity to get back into the code and building out a game jam entry.  I've also been interested in creating a Survivors-like game for a while now, so it was great to prototype one as part of this game jam. 

Known Bugs

If you hear the hurt sound continuously and see the health bar decreasing when not touching an enemy, you're poisoned!  Touch another enemy to transfer the poison. (Not really, there's an uncommon bug where a defeated enemy is still considered touching the player, but getting hurt is a workaround to stop taking damage ☺).

Resources Used

  • Sprites
    • Tiny Tales Human NPC Advanced (mage sprites)
    • Tiny Tales Elemental NPC (elemental sprites)
    • Tiny Tales Monstrous Uprising NPC (enemy sprites)
    • Pixel Effects Collection Volume 1 (orbiting flame, flame blast, transformation flame, enemy death explosion)
    • Medieval Fantasy Characters (fireball)
  • Map
    • Ruins - Rogue Adventure
  • Music
    • Ovani Sound: Metal Volume 2
  • SFX
    • Medieval Fantasy SFX Pack (fireball)
    • RPG Magic SFX Pack 2 (flame blast)
    • Mega SFX Pack (player hurt)
    • Epic Voice and Music Pack (enemy death)
  • Font
    • HF Gold Complete
  • Tools
    • Unity
    • Visual Studio Code
    • Github Desktop
    • Aseprite
    • Tiled
    • Audacity
    • SuperTiled2Unity
  • Itch.io Art
    • Adobe Firefly




Comments

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Great game, Matt! Really dig the music and the sprites. In fact, while playing it made me think of what a Survivor-like would look like and play using sprites from the game Shining Force! So I see myself making a prototype in the future!

Also, love the backstory! I could see this game being expanded on in the future!

Glad you like it!  Yeah, the Survivors-like mechanics can breathe new life into a lot of retro games!

I really like the different ways your character auto-attacks and choosing when to use the power-up. Cool mechanics! The core is fun, and it feels like it could easily be extended further (if you wanted).

(+1)

Thanks, I appreciate you playing it!  While I may or may not extend this game, I do want to take a lot of what I've learned to build out some other Survivors-like prototypes I have in mind.

Super satisfying! Could use an HP bar though. :)

Thanks for playing!  The HP bar is right under the player, and it decreases as they take damage.  However, it sounds like it could be more noticeable. :) 

*Checks the game again* OH THERE IT IS WOW I'M BLIND. That said I think maybe centering it makes it harder to realize it's going down when you get hit and thus what it is? Like surely I noticed that the first time playing but just didn't process it. Or the game just full on glitched for me the first time because my computer is a toaster lol

Glad you found it! :D  But yes, I can see how it can be less noticeable that it's going down while centered since you don't have as much of a point of reference with a bar that small.

One thing I wish I had time to have improved is the indication that the HP went to 1 when transformed.  Right now, it reflects as a single pixel-wide health bar, but it's not really visible with the flame effects and attacks everywhere, so it might seem like the health bar disappears.  I also didn't want to play "Zelda low hearts" sound when transformed, because that would be annoying, though possibily appropriate for the non-transformed mode. :) 

Had a good time playing it! Getting chased by a big group of meanies and slinging transformed fireballs at them feels amazing. Would love more content and more player agency other than waiting for the transform button to come on

Thanks for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed the experience!  Yeah, I wanted to add a lot more to it like choosing randomized weapon upgrades and more weapons while leveling up, but had to solidify the gameplay that I could ship in this timeframe.  Maybe for a future Survivors-like I work on!