There's a labyrinth in the heart of the world tree Yggdrasil. Ascend its 9 floors in search of salvation.
Controls
(O) - Item/Confirm
(X) - Cancel/(Hold)Inventory
(Pause) - change palettes, game mode, and BGM on/off (palettes/mode must be unlocked)
Credit
With great inspiration from the excellent Porklike by @Krystman, and sprites adapted from the work of @kirai_s. Game and music developed by @HelloWorldRamen.
Great, will definitely come back to it to at the very least try every item. I keep burning through my items just to pass my turn, have to come with a better strategy like leaving pots behind for that purpose for example. Wonder if death can be killed if I stockpile enough attack items...
My first victory run. Guess I shouldn't have eaten those souls for health an inventory space... I feel I won more by dumb luck than mastery of the game.
Still, here's some insight.
Inventory is four stacks.
Unless you need the inventory, keep rice as a skip turn, on top of a +1 health.
Blinking monsters carry souls.
crabs only move back and forth horizontally.
Bats only move and attack diagonally, move to squares adjacent to them.
Hammer can be used to destroy walls, but can be used offensively to kill a shielded guard.
Jump may seem useless as it doesn't do damage... Except there are a few tricks with it : when jumping over an ennemy, it is surprised and doesn't attack. It can make some space between you and an enemy in contact with you (like shielded or alligators that don't die in a single hit), so you can do things like laying a trap or opening a door.
In the early floors, explore and fill your inventory. keep track of your distance to the exit relative to the distance between start and exit so you can reach it on time when death shows up.
If you have the health, teleporting is a bad idea in the late floors.
Unless you are very lucky and miss yourself, lightning costs you one HP. Even with many monsters on screen, you can often get out of the situation while getting hit for just one HP, so the item could have been saved up.
@RealShadowCaster congrats on the first victory! I packed in lots of little details into the game, so it’s really great to see your thoughts as you figure out things out, especially as I know very little is explained from the start.
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Got my second (lucky) win, with level 9 exit right next to the entrance, and 3 souls left. Thought I'd get some kind of reward... Guess I kind of did.
Here's the new knowledge I got along the way :
I tried to play with death, it's an overall bad idea :
- you can bash it with the hammer for 2 damage and get 99 retaliation damage.
- you can hook it and bring it next to you. Death is justifiably surprised by the bold move, so you can technically still escape if you have a straight pass to the exit away from death or some movement item left.
- jumping over death is actually surprisingly effective when it cuts your path to the exit.
- traps are useless against death, it flies over.
- you can't trap death with a pot, it flies over.
- you can't trap death with a monster that is blocked by a pot. Couldn't see what happened, but I'm guessing death flew over the monster.
Tests with the hammer :
- You can't escape the damn dungeon tree by smashing a hole in the outside border when all hope is lost, the game doesn't let you.
- The game totally lets you hammer the exit stairs into nothingness. Suddenly, for once, you want death to come faster. What was I trying to accomplish again ?
Tests with map.
- using the map more than once on the same level shows more info, but only for the current floor.
1st use shows objects
2nd use shows the walls (greyed)
3rd use shows the whole map (illuminated, full of monsters, in all it's glorious horror).
Will try to stockpile 4 map items to see if there is a secret 4th level of mapping.
Overall, I didn't learn anything that would increase my chances to win future runs. The streak stat feels like it's mocking me : with less than 10% success rate, how am I supposed to get streaks of wins ??? I'm out of ideas about how to win the game. Maybe better understanding the miss mechanic, or predicting the movement of monsters to save on items when every possible movement leads to taking damage...
@taxicomics Thank you so much, I am glad you enjoy it! Honestly, I had procrastinated until the very end of the project to do the music, but it worked out in the end and I'm pretty happy with the result. I actually didn't realize there were only 4 sound channels until that point...
@RealShadowCaster Saving souls provides a change of scenery via the pause menu as proof of your skill/luck/selflessness, but I suppose it is nothing that will aid your success in the labyrinth haha. I wouldn't say you didn't learn anything though, it sounds like you are actually learning quite a few tricks. I hope you can find a breakthrough, before the labyrinth breaks you. ;)
Somehow managed to beat this without losing a heart (glad Thor has a chance of not hurting you!)
And I 100% the game. This was really fun! Maybe I'll try endless mode already... :)
@dtilt_uppercut Amazing! Thanks for playing! Hoping somebody would manage a no-damage run (intentionally or not) is exactly why I included that on the victory screen haha. Maybe one day I'll find a way to squeeze in an achievement system, but for now I will just say, amazing!
I'm excited to see how far people will take it with endless mode. It doesn't affect streaks for normal mode btw, so it's great for diving into any time. :)
@HelloWorldRamen Yeah, no problem lol. The stats screen makes me wonder if a pacifist run is possible.
Endless mode is tough! Having dinosaurs spawn as soon as floor 1 scared me lol, though on the bright side I don't have to hoard souls. Currently, my PB is floor 18 but I think I can do better.
@Hell_Cat, nice find. On my side, I found that there is no 4th level of map usage, you just waste the 4th map. More useful, there is exactly one soul carrying monster every two levels for a max total of 4 per run. Having an item drop from a monster on another item destroys the first.
Extremely fun and very well done! Please keep making great little games :)
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