Zirrrus

@Moncolin I just checked out the new upload, still only a black void. I also couldn't download it via the itch app, I think you forgot to mark the platforms the file is for. The RenderTexture issue happened to me a long time ago, not sure what exactly was the problem back then...

I just downloaded it on itch. After the start button and a blinking yellow arrow(which disappears after clicking on it for a bit) I only have a black screen with some oceanic sounds in the background. Are you using RenderTextures? I once had a problem where they stopped working randomly and had to assign them using a script to make sure.

Thank you, @Travis and @ryanfb ! Thank you for recording a playthrough - watching somebody else play is always super helpful! I wrote down quite a few notes on things that need tweaking based on it. I especially noticed that you didn't upgrade any towers...did you actually know about that option? It's mentioned in the help text but not really signposted at all. What aspect ratio did you play at? I built the entire game with 16:9 in mind(not really on purpose), even the camera placement. I wanted to put in the ability to rotate the camera anyway(towers sometimes block the tile behind them). I'll also add a little bit of zoom. Also a good idea! On the white background distinguishing the shapes of the towers is pretty difficult. And the gems are not unique enough either to help there. I want to stay close to the original cyan-ish color but a slight variation might already be enough.

This game is a lot of fun, looks great and is funny. Good stuff! My issues with it are entirely on the technical side: The way you interact with stuff is a little weird in my opinion because you can pick up stuff even when not holding down shift but your cursor wanders in strange ways. Setting the cursor position to the middle of the screen when you press shift might be a good idea, it confused me every time that I had used my mouse to aim my view but the cursor was apparently off somewhere in the corner of the screen. While it was a little janky to me, I never actually had problems with picking up stuff and placing it in the cauldron. The book is a bit different, that often did not want to do what I was trying - clipping into the floor, not flipping pages in the right direction... Messing with the people was really fun but sometimes it was difficult to tell what had gone wrong with the cure or if it had worked partially. Maybe have people with more complex requests be a little more patient and let you try twice so you have to both undo your mistakes and cure the original affliction. Overall a great game though!

The art is really cool, those glowing (eye)balls inside those drones look really weird and creepy. I always enjoy an "old crt screen" aesthetic, the only thing I didn't like was the glow on the font, that was a bit too intense for my eyes. Because I had chosen the easiest difficulty at some point running past enemies seemed like a better strategy than shooting all of them(there is a place where they are all bunched up). That revealed that they apparently keep tracking you across a very long distance, not sure if bug or feature, but hearing shots being fired while far away from any enemies was a bit strange.

Really cute and at the same time pretty dark, very nicely done! The only issues I had were the walking thing and the text of the quote ghost being a little too fast. You can also take a peek at the beautiful pink sky through the walls(at the little recesses/doorways) but those are all really minor things.

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I uploaded an updated version of the game to itchio, it contains the changes I've made over the last week. There are now also versions for Mac and Linux, although saving and loading levels does not work because I've designed that system with Windows in mind. Not sure yet how easy it'll be to fix. Hoisted! Looking forward to the showcase weekend!

Another enemy type: the Healer. It heals all enemies in range and itself, which can make it quite tricky to deal with, especially when two of them are in range of each other. (A bit difficult to see but it shrinks a bit as it loses health, then gets bigger again as it heals.) Atlantic provided me with a "chopped up" version of the music and I built a system which tries to make the music more intense as things get exciting. It's not quite finished though. In addition I increased the amount of sound effects, including 20 disgusting slime effect which I don't know what to do with yet.

@Ben X Thank you for the feedback, already made some changes based on it. Jellies now shrink in size as they take damage and I made it a lot clearer when the basic towers are shooting as opposed to just tracking their targets. Today I put in a new enemy type, the...Bloater? As it takes damage it gets bigger until it finally bursts, covering tiles around it in jelly, preventing you from building on those for a short time. Oh, and area-of-effect towers are now less useless as they slow down enemies within their range, also negating any speed boosts from slimed-up path tiles. I hope to get in a few more interesting enemy types, until now they really were only slightly different magic-missile-sponges.

@Ben X Oops, completely forgot about that! The game is released-ish! https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-5/rate/149759 https://zirrrus.itch.io/jelly

It rained a lot today, so I actually had a little bit of time to work on the game. I wasn't in the mood for putting out one of the numerous important fires though, so I worked on a fun shader thing: Thanks to the #wizardjam slack, they made me be less afraid of writing shaders. It's used to color the tiles on which a lot of slimes die. Those tiles also give a speed boost to passing jellies, so they might slip by your toughest defenses(or not...).

You can now win(and lose) the game! I also started putting in sound effects, to hilarious, headache-inducing effect. There are still lots of places that need attention but I won't have much time over the next few days. If necessary, I'll just post a build of what I have so far. It (mostly) works but isn't very fun and far too easy.

Today a whole bunch of interface stuff got finished. When placing towers you can see their range, you can select and upgrade towers... Oh, and I put in the music Atlantic made for the game!

I wrote a first version of the spawning script today, that still needs a lot of tweaking. I also created more enemy types(currently there are 5), most of those still need proper models and textures. Now I probably need to start balancing...oh boy. No clue how to do that. Then there are still a bunch of small/not so small things to

Took a bit of a break today and spent some time in nature. I came back with 2 sheets worth of notes about the game. The tower behavior is pretty much finished, now I just need to polish them up(the gems are pretty much just "glued on" right now). The basic and sniper tower use the same behavior, just different numbers(damage and attack frequency) The missile tower shoots little homing magic missiles that even switch target when the original one gets killed before they arrive. The area of effect tower does a tiny amount of damage to all targets in reach. Tomorrow I'll work on enemy types and the script that spawns them.

That is a really cool and unique mechanic!

This looks interesting. How will you actually interact with the Testos? In the gif it looks like they are on auto-pilot.

This is good, I like this.

Thanks! Not much to show today. I hooked up a bunch of important logic. Jellies can now have armor(negates damage until depleted) and damage absorption(reduces the damage each time they are attacked). Towers now cost money. You get some back when you demolish a tower and each slime killed gives you some. Each time a jelly spawns an "energy meter" goes down and they can't spawn if there isn't enough energy left. Your base takes damage from slimes that reach it. I also started working on the different "attack modes" of the towers(single shot, projectile and area).

Wow, stunning visuals! Those rocks are amazing.

Whoa, that looks wild! Really cool idea and those walls...

I dig the 45ish-degree-kind-of-weird-perspective, it fits well with the crisp lines of the sprites. Nicely done!

Hey, we're integrated editor buddies! Cheers! (I also put a map editor in my game, though a very simple one).

Wait, is the furniture physics enabled or is a script moving it around? If it is, does it need to be? If you want it be able to be pushed around and stuff you can set the Rigidbody to kinematic and then toggle that off as soon as a collision with the player is detected, for example. But stuff falling through the floor is pretty mysterious, so it fits the theme. The furniture looks great btw! There appears to be some issue with the lamps(normals reversed/only one layer of faces on a thin surface?) though.

@One8Two8, yeah, I started doing that. But setting the scaling handles correctly is still a bit of a mystery to me. Just some art stuff today. The flickering is a bit intense on some of those crystals. The charging effect only really works for the sniper tower. While the crystals help, I need to do something to make the towers stand out against the background a little more. Ambient occlusion helps quite a bit but might not work for/on older rigs. I think I should probably close the actual game loop tomorrow and then work on the spawn system and more enemy types.