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A tile-based puzzle game in which you must help the ancient warriors perform their sacred ritual. Transform between the Warrior, the Ogre, the Phantom, and the Serpent, using their special abilities to interact with the environment around you and get the warriors to their goal.
A few of the puzzles have some major flaws that mean there's a super simple way of solving them. As a bonus meta-game, you can try to figure out how I *meant* for you to solve it!
Arrows to move. R to reset the level.
Tools used:
- Phaser (first time using this)
- Tiled
- Sublime Text 2
- Gimp
- Photoshop
- Ableton Live (and an M-Audio Axiom 49 MIDI controller)
Source (needs to be tidied up): https://github.com/sftrabbit/TempleShifters/tree/master
Things I wish there had been more time to do:
- Fix the puzzle flaws
- More puzzles involving formation movement
- More puzzles involving the blue character
- The render order (the characters appear above the tops of the walls)
- Some nice particle effects when shapeshifting
- Sound effects (moving, falling, level complete, etc.)
- More wall tiles so they connect together better
- Add environment details (actually had things in the spritesheet but didn't have time to add them)
- Level select
- Level names
All in all, however, a mostly successful second Ludum Dare for me!
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 84% |
| #54 | Overall | 3.93 |
| #85 | Fun | 3.80 |
| #109 | Audio | 3.56 |
| #125 | Mood | 3.55 |
| #154 | Graphics | 3.74 |
| #169 | Innovation | 3.64 |
| #481 | Humor | 2.17 |
| #601 | Theme | 3.15 |
Comments
Cool concept! The first game I actually enjoyed even though I got stuck a few times
Wow, I wasn't expecting much at first, but the clever use of a simple mechanic and the level design made this a pretty good game!
I like puzzles, but the puzzles were really easy. I liked the FFV style graphics. Music was good enough to set the mood. Overall, good job!
woow, I loved this game, the level design and the concept, just needs a restart level button :)
Wow. That's some _really_ nice game design you have there. Very good introduction levels and a way to build up the player experience by giving them consistently more difficult challenges while introducing new gameplay concepts. I am honestly impressed.
I also loved the tileset (old-school dungeons) and the sound. Very nice!
If I had to pick something to improve I would say the user interface. Adding just a border and a bit of text would make the whole thing more complete.
I like the graphs! Good level design job. Music are nice also. Congrats!
I can't run it :( the browser keeps complaining:
GET http://josephmansfield.uk/TempleShifters/phaser.map 404 (Not Found) -- will definitely be back here. the music I can hear is awesome!
okay, this is probably some chromium issue; got it working on opera!
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'm glad to see the difficulty seems to ramp up nicely. I think there's definitely a couple of "aha" moments in there. Wish I'd had more time to explore some of the puzzle mechanics more. And @Jod - totally agree, would have loved to have a background and some level select/menu screens.
That was amazing! I love sokobanish puzzles; 5/5 on every aspect! If I had a limited number of tries I would have to spend much more time; some puzzles were quite tricky; I await full version with more levels :)
ps also I love the way the game explains itself with initial levels. sooo cool!
This one is really enjoyable. Very neat puzzle game with cool retro graphics and nice music. Very easy at the beginning, then gets tricky.
Great puzzle design. Liked the idea of having to kill off your guys to get through a level. Would have liked to not have to repress the arrow keys for every step.
Phew, I got to the end. The Phases I went through: "A Puzzler! Neato!"
"Man... I think this is to easy"
"Oh hey - that's a nice twist"
"HOW DO YOU SOLVE THIS?!"
"Alright I'm getting the hang of it"
"Oh no... will I be able to finish this? How could I dare to comment otherwise? ;__;"
"Wait... it's over? Kewl. :D"
The mechanics are simple, yet lead to complex puzzles - that's a nice feat to achieve. I liked your game very much. Although you probably spend too much time on the earlier levels and then lacked time for later ones. As the game ends after having introduced several new mechanics which where explorered only once or twice. It's an awesome game, but for it's length it would've probably been better to cut some of the early levels to get faster to the shapeshifting. However when the player get's there the shapeshifting-theme is quite present and imo very well interpreted. I liked it! Want more of it! :D
@Fumiko Totally agree - I both wanted to gradually teach the mechanics and also explore everything deeply, but I simply didn't have time to make more levels to explore the shapeshifting well. For me, there are a couple of stand-out levels: the one where you're first introduced to sacrificing a warrior, the one with green/white where you have to change their formation to get the statues out of the way, and the one with the line of red shifter circles. I would have loved to explore these kinds of things more, in particular combining the formation mechanic with the shifting more.
Imressive!
Sign on all comments above, amazing work
Love it, for it simple and great level design
I have a question to you, if you can answer me. How do you create such levels? With growing up difficulty and so perfect player feels? I want you expierence :D
@Insality That's a difficult question. I'd say there were two things that helped:
1. Being able to quickly make levels with Tiled
2. Having a set of simple mechanics that you can introduce gradually and combine in different ways
If I had just had one mechanic, let's say the "altar" mechanic where you move against the thing with the hand on it and it allows them to keep moving while the one walking into the hand stays still, I certainly could have explored it further, but it wouldn't have had the same feeling. You'd learn the rules, and then it would just be level after level of applying the same rule in more complex situations. To make the learning experience fun, you need to introduce new rules that all interact with each other.
One of my favourite moments, when you sacrifice one of the warriors, was just a happy accident. I had the mechanic of needing to cover the exact number/colour of goals, and I had the mechanic of them falling down the pit, and then I realised I could use these together. I think it works especially because by that point I had set the pits up as a bad thing, and then that level twists it on its head.
There are some mechanics that I think *don't* work well. If I were to develop this further, there would need to be some tweaks to the statue pushing (perhaps areas of the floor where you can't push it?). Currently, it's just too *free*, so doesn't restrict the solution space sufficiently.
Nice concept for a puzzle game. I loved the sacrificing mechanic and the temple theme. Maybe you could have emphasized the transformation graphically a bit more. I didn't realize they transformed (other than color) before I read it in the description. Puzzles were fairly easy but not the easiest I've seen in this LD...
Good game, great ambience, well done!
A very lovely game. Great job for the small amount of time available. I especially enjoyed the music :)
Haha, so mean, i got to kill them to proceed.
I like the twist on the sokoban idea, well done!
Really nice entry - interesting mechanics, good level design, nice aesthetics.
The kill-to-fit idea is quite fresh, and the mood is set up great!
Got frustrated on hand-altar levels though...
Very nice puzzles!
As the others have said, the first levels are more though out, so the end was pretty abrupt, but it was still very entertaining. You might want to put some visual indication in the game that the 'R' key resets the level, as people might not read the description here before playing.
Very atmospheric unique puzzle game.
Congrats for your cool entry!
I kept wondering how it fit the theme until the later stages. Nice interpretation and solid game!
P.S: I felt bad for the extra templars :'(
Veeeery good. Please continue making this thing. Concept is kinda like my game. (The going togatger part. On my game tiles have to be connected tho.) You even made pixel animations. That's a nice thing for an LD. Well done! (Music really puts you in the mood!)
Awesome! really great game! I got stuck and needed to restart on some of the levels, It would had been nice if you could just reset the level your on. But overall great job!
@knason Thanks, and you can! Just hit R and it should reset the level!
It's an awasome game. But when I started it, I got a white box. If I push an arrow, I got a character.. I think the game has a bug at start :/
(Note: Please read the instructions of my game the next time! ;) )
I see where you're going with this shapeshifting thing, it's a smart puzzle game you've made there. Difficulty ramp up pretty nicely too! Good job!
I got stuck a few times (especially on the level where you can drop in the hole but I loved the game! I like figuring out puzzles. nice work!!!
Fun gameplay and game mechanics, with a nice difficulty curve. Love the visuals and moody music also.
Very nice mode and consistent visual style. The background music also added a lot. How many levels are there? I didn't manage to finish it
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Some nice twists to the puzzles, not what I was expecting, and it didn't ramp up too fast. Nice music too. The only minor nitpick I would have is the input buffering, but other than that, what's there is well done.