Midnight Mage

Welcome to Midnight Mage!!!

Background:

This game was created for the Ludum Dare 55 under the Jam category, with the theme of Summoning. After playing around with various ideas, my friend and I decided to stick with a classic survival game with elements of magical combat. However, taking inspiration from the game War of Wizards, we implemented a unique twist on the magic survival game.

Our primary idea for this game was to strip away a user's ability to attack foes directly; instead relying on a strategic placement-based real-time combat system. This is done through the in-game concept of lighting magic fires in certain shapes to activate certain spells. Our objective with this idea was to hone our skills in grid-like game architectures. We succeeded, to some extent, considering that we managed to implement 4 very different spell types (which could have been more, had we a. planned our Jamming better, or b. focused on improving gameplay over graphics). We hope to use our learnings from this game to improve our game development pathways in the future.

Story:

As a young mage in the great magical plains, you find yourself lost among the seemingly endless plains. What's worse, the plains don't like you. They send their wolves and warriors, attempting to purge you of any and all magic.

Of course, a strong mage like yourself could easily fight off a few foes; had you not taken an oath of pacifism. Your oath stops you from attacking these foes, but you are a smart one. The oath does not stop you from accessing the magic of the plains, and the plains just so happen to have runes dedicated to stuff that goes boom.

Use the runes. Survive, if you can. Traverse these plains. See you in the morning!

Controls:

W, A, S, D for movement

Cursor for screen rotation in horizontal axis

SHIFT or E to place magic fires on the ground (Beware: Some foes may break these magical fires)

1, 2, 3, or 4 to cast spells (given in-game)

ESC or X to cancel casting spells

Casting

This game allows you to cast 4 unique spells. The process of casting a spell goes something like this:

1) Light magical fires on the ground using SHIFT or E

2) Switch to spell-cast mode using the hotkeys 1, 2, 3, or 4

3) A Guide Shape appears, which denotes the locations of magic fires required by the spell. Align this guideline over the magic fires

4) Cast the spell using ENTER or LMB. Remember, the spell will only be cast if all grid tiles below the Guide Shape are lit with magical fire

5) If you would like to cancel the spell cast, press ESC or X to return to normal mode

Note: Due to errors faced by some people using WebGL builds of our game, we have modified the keybinds for 1) placing magic fires and 2) exiting spell mode. (14:22 GMT, 16 April 2024)