April 26th-29th 2013 :: Theme: Minimalism
Ludum Dare 26 — April 26-29th, 2013
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In Crystal of Shadows you are defending the crystal from some shades that were attracted by the mushrooms that some faes left nearby. The fewer mushrooms you have, the fewer shades will come in the future, and because they drain power, the power reserves in the area can't handle this many for very long. Minimize the number of mushrooms but keep enough so you can kill the shades that attack.
Hints:
You can move mushrooms with the hand tool.
You win the game if you survive a round that starts with fewer than 10 shades.
Tools Used:
Language: C#/XNA
Javascript Conversion: JSIL
IDE: Visual Studio
Art: Photoshop
Sound Effects: Microphone and Audacity
Music: autotracker and OpenMPT
Map Editor: Tiled
The Javascript version will run in Firefox or Chrome but Firefox is a little sluggish and has some sound problems so Chrome is recommended.
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 74% |
| #457 | Humor | 2.38 |
| #457 | Overall | 3.26 |
| #484 | Innovation | 3.21 |
| #496 | Fun | 3.05 |
| #584 | Mood | 2.84 |
| #615 | Graphics | 2.95 |
| #670 | Audio | 2.51 |
| #994 | Theme | 3.05 |
Comments
I started the first time a little lost (thinking it was a standard tower-defense game) and then came back to see your description (how to win) and it made more sense. Once I was playing with that in mind it is an interesting game.
Cool take on tower defense. Great game. Btw. JSIL? I never heard of it. You mean I can make my XNA games run in the browser?! I think I just peed myself a little out of pure exitement. :D
A refreshing take on the tower defense genre that unfortunately seems somewhat underdeveloped. The mechanics are interesting and have the potential to make for a more compelling game, but the experience doesn't seem to be balanced very well; I didn't get the feeling that I was being challenged very much, and the act of juggling mushroom types, which seemed to be the game's focus, didn't feel very urgent because I was never in danger of losing the crystal resource.
Tower defense cool. Not seen JSIL before interesting. Impressive all the lasers and fireballs, fun to watch once set up.
Took some time on good connection to load (about 30 seconds). Very interesting concept, I like how you have to keep reducing the numbers without compromising too much. It could be more challenging if there were different types of shades, as I beat it in 4 rounds, but overall it was very enjoyable.
Already the second great take on the tower-defense genre. Well done.
Nice effort put into this game, even though its not a genre I play much. I did note it ran very slowly in my firefox when things started to get going. Still good effort.
Very nice concept. You basically reversed the tower defence game. I really enjoyed slowly relearning to play. I wonder what other genres could benefit from such a reversal?
I lost my first game, but the second game I just started by removing all my non-yellow mushrooms. I won shortly there-after without loosing a single crystal. Yellow is OP! :p
Cute little TD! The various mushrooms seems too strong to me, though!
Cool, very new TD-approach! Not that easy in the end. Funny animation of the shadows :D Good job
Interesting variation on the tower defense theme and the mechanics tie into the compo theme. Sound effects play at a very loud volume. Thank you for sharing!
I really enjoyed playing this interesting take on TDs. I liked how I had to work my way down to a minimum of strategically placed mushrooms. Good job!
nice idea but must say that I didn't needed to do anything in order to win the game; just pulsed "go" and after all the shadows died, I won xD
I liked the music thought
PD: it also ran slow in Chrome D:
@Tsuki_Usagi I think you either found a bug or misunderstood the winning condition. You haven't won unless you got the dialog that says "The shades have stopped coming! You have saved the day!" Yes just pushing "go" in the beginning will result in all the shades getting killed before they get to the crystal but that's not sustainable. The colors will drain over time based on the number of that color mushroom and eventually you can't push go anymore without deleting some mushrooms.
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This game is excellent. I really love the way you twisted the tower defense genre. Definitely very creative and fits the theme well.