Lowland Keepers
Lowland Keepers is a game made in less than 5 days for the Card Deck Jam.
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Concept
Build a team and create synergies to face ever more powerful enemies.
- Drag & drop your characters on other card to attack or interact.
- Enemies give you mana when they die. Try never to end a turn!
- Build powerful synergies and break the game.
Credits & assets
- Background and decoration (💜): rafaelmatos.itch.io/epic-rpg-world-pack-free-demo-ancient-ruins-asset-tileset
- Monsters: https://ghazi.itch.io/rpg-monsterpack
- Icons: ghazi.itch.io/fantasyiconpack
- Font family: fontenddev.com/fonts/lychee-soda/
- Font family: dafont.com/fr/pixel-operator.font
- Sounds from my previous game: twotinydice.itch.io/forward-escape-the-fold
- Me: game design, code, UI
Comments
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This is great fun! I ended up with characters who could cause burn + poison damage + heal so i felt pretty unstoppable which was lovely. Will you be continuing with the game? It's amazing what you've achieved in only 5 days already!
Hey! thanks for playing, glad you like it :)
No, I don’t think I’ll continue with this concept. I don’t believe it would work for a commercial game. But I’ve already got my next game in mind and I’ll be using some of these mechanics for sure!
Thanks again for your kind words :)
Ah great stuff, I'll keep an eye out for it. :)
Great game. I did a poison, fire build with the mana thief. The skill that makes the poison guy poison everybody for +1 made it a breeze. Best skill for the thief was to get copies of the mana I steal if it is just one.
This one was 5 minutes
Solo Vel sweep (succubus lady), unloseable, she just went over 200 health (205/206) and the game completely and totally freezes, can't interact with it at all
I mean I know I broke it either way, but real shame not being able to go further
Oh yes, there are definitely bugs. In 5 days, I haven’t had time to really test the game properly.
Cinq jours et tu nous ponds un petit bijou comme ça? Ajoute deux jours de finition et c’est prêt à mettre sur Steam!
RE; "Try never to end a turn!" — I feel like ending the turn when all enemies are stunned is a better strategy a lot of the time, to replenish mana safely instead of burning through everything while you can’t be hurt anyway. Otherwise you start a turn with bigger enemies about to attack and barely anything left to fight them. Abilities that are improved on stunned enemies alter that dynamic, though, and Taunt can really throw a wrench into your tactics if you don’t suppress it before it activates, so it’s a tricky puzzle to solve as the game progresses.
If you can get down to a single enemy, stunning it and ending turns repeatedly can let you farm blues before heading into the next fight. Though I wish we got a free recharge at the end of each stage since we already have to choose between healing and upgrades :)
At first I thought you would necessarily want a party of four for the extra HP, but since the enemy group scales with the size of your own, Jasper & Flame make an invincible combo if you can survive long enough to get the right upgrades.
Having only those two means no one is competing for the same mana color, and Jasper can keep Flame fed with blue until he becomes mostly self-sustainable. After a few burn-stacking and AOE upgrades, Flame can clear the board insanely fast while Jasper intervenes every so often to replenish mana (mainly by tripling the leeching on 1-blue enemies). Now I get what you meant by never having to end a turn! 155 overkill at level 20 killing 3 to 4 enemies per action feels pretty satisfying, except for how long it takes to resolve all the effects triggering and the constant screen shake :P
Quick bug: texts.room-loot-goal is missing when opening a chest.
Hey! Thanks for your messages and for :) Ca fait plaisir ^^
Yes, you’re right, there are a few problems in the design, like the ones you’re talking about. It’s funny because it’s a concept I’ve had in mind for a long time, and making this proto brought me face to face with a lot of problems I hadn’t thought of.
I also think that the game lacks synergy between characters, even though this is supposed to be the heart of the gameplay. And it either becomes too overwhelming when you have a lot of effects, or loses its tactical dimension because you don’t really need to think anymore.
Annnyway, I’m still very happy with the final result and proud of the game. I think there are also some good ideas that could be used in future games ^^
Thanks again for your comments. It’s cool to read :)
I have more experience in the board game space, but I completely understand having great ideas that very quickly prove to be impractical when you get to play the first prototype :P My very first one in fact was all about character synergies and boy was it broken! But it had a certain charm that I was never able to capture in my subsequent iterations on the concept. There’s a beauty in smaller prototypes like these where we can explore fun ideas without sweating about everything being super tight :)
There are definitely upgrades that create synergy between some of the characters, like having one that burns and another that adds poison to burning enemies, or one that stuns and another that deals extra damage to stunned enemies, but getting them isn’t a guarantee and the fact that some of them compete for the same color makes it difficult for the player to fully utilize them.
I could go on for hours about potential changes and additions, but I better stop before the game designer in me fully awakens :D Anyway, it’s impressive that there’s already so many party configurations to explore and the balance isn’t totally bonkers with so little time to playtest it. Kudos!
Well done! I like the direction this is going. You are a good game designer.
Thanks!
Really cool and polished concept, I could tell immediately it'd be right up my alley.
Am I crazy or is there no way to actually play the mana draining "starting hero"He’s great as far as I’m concerned, with the right upgrades. With some of his damage options, you can basically get free kills on red enemies on top of fueling the other characters’ attacks faster. Until he gets those, however, his usefulness is more situational since you’re wasting a red on getting something else without progressing the fight.
If you mean unlocking him, the game won’t offer you new party members if you already have four. Maybe it does when one dies along the way, though; I’ve only had full wipes so far ^^’
My point is you can't win the first fight with him because he does no damage, despite being available as a starting card
Oooh yeah he really shouldn’t be a solo pick. The game only lets me use Velrach on a fresh save. so it hasn’t been an issue for me.