Aetheric Twilight
Shadowy creatures are running amok. Configure your alchemical engine to defeat waves of enemies.
Aetheric Twilight uses a pipe puzzle to control the actions of your character in RPG-like combat. Tiles connected to the correct elemental source will automatically charge and activate during combat. Tiles that synthesize multiple elements have powerful effects, but may be difficult to fit into your engine.
Check the tooltips for more information on tiles and enemies!
Controls:
Left Click: pick up tiles
Right Click: return tiles to inventory
Scroll wheel: rotate selected tile
Shortcuts:
A - select straight pipe
S - select curved pipe
R - rotate clockwise
Q - rotate counterclockwise
Left Arrow - Decrease combat speed
Right Arrow - Increase combat speed
Tips and Tricks:
Don't neglect blocking!
All tiles start charging at the same time at the start of combat. It can sometimes be helpful to manually stagger tiles by picking up and re-placing them during combat. This is especially potent for tiles that provide a limited duration buff or debuff.
Credits:
Design, Code, Art, Music:
- francescoBot
- RobotGamerDev
- dstears
3rd party assets used:
- Fonts
- Pixel Operator - https://www.dafont.com/pixel-operator.font
- UI sprites
- Kenny - https://kenney.nl
- Kenny - https://kenney.nl
- Sounds
- Kenny - https://kenney.nl
-
Ovani - https://ovanisound.com
- Free Sounds Library - http://www.freesoundslibrary.com
- SubspaceAudio - https://subspaceaudio.itch.io
Game Design Document:
Import MacOs / iOS Note!
This game was developed using the Godot Engine. Due to a bug with Godot's HTML5 export, running this on Apple devices may not function correctly.
Development log
- Aetheric Twilight v1.1 polishing update10 days ago
- Aetheric Twilight released!Jul 31, 2024
Comments
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Sincerely hope you'll expand on this, maybe an "endless" mode of some kind, even if that means I'll have to throw money at you for the full release. It's immensely fun.
HOLY CRAP IS THIS GAME AWESOME! I've been playing this several times a day for a few weeks now and just know found out how many levels there are. I was of the assumption that this was an endless game just getting harder as the grid grew. Amazing job!
:D Congrats on reaching the end! It makes me so happy to hear people are having fun with it.
This is beautiful
Excellent.
Yes
Nice! Triple steam is a solid strategy.
Very good game.
As mentioned by other players, some QoL could be nice.
I liked playing and I will probably come back to it.
Thanks for playing! Do you have any specific QoL suggestions?
A way to clear the full board.
Removing with right click without the need to left click before.
When you have more than one object of one type, stack them in the list (for example if you have 3 T pipes) that would reduce the scroll when searching for something after clearing the board.
And maybe a way to replace one piece with an other, if I have a straight line and want to switch with a T for example.
The main idea is to reduce as much as possible the number of actions required to do something.
And forcing the tooltip to stay on the screen would help too.
Art style is excellent. Volume sliders got some good use out of them. Everything seems to seamlessly come together, but I found myself wanting to be able to move the source nodes around, or flip blocks instead of rotating them. The first grid size upgrade was a welcome sight, considering. Cross-pipes and x-pipes are the most valuable pieces. Played several times. Only managed to get the second +2 size upgrade once.
The title splash looks good but is very busy. You made want to fade it out a bit or overlay a semi-transparent colour over it to make the title buttons stand out more from it. I think the main issue with the actual gameplay loop is that the amount of health you need to start each round with increases - since enemies always manage to deal damage before you can put your defenses up. This is also why defense/healing is pretty much superior to any other combination, since it increases the health you have to start the next round with.
Thanks for the feedback. Increasing the maximum health after each boss may be a good idea. As you said, the enemy DPS goes up as the game goes on and the player will bleed health faster in later waves.
Being able to flip tiles or move the source nodes would give the player more freedom, but we have to be careful about making the puzzle aspect too easy. There needs to be some friction between what the player wants to do and what they are able to fit in the limited space.
Thanks again for giving detailed feedback!
👨🍳 You were cooking something good when you made this game. I always loved the storage puzzles from Professor Layton games, but this brings it to a whole new level when there's more than one way to go about it. Now it's time for me to go back and play it some more!
Thanks! I'm glad to hear players are finding multiple ways to win.
This is a fantastic idea! Loved and figuring out how to maximise the four different elements. Would play for hours on mobile!
Thanks for playing!
That's a good start for a more fleshed out game! Nice job for a 2 weeks jam.
After many runs, some potential QoL improvements that come to my mind:
- Having the option to clear the board, putting all the tiles back into the inventory
- Right-clicking on a tile on the board to put it into the inventory
Focusing on heal or/and armour seems currently the easiest way to win.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the suggestions. Also thanks for the screenshot, it's cool to see how people chose to build their engine! Playing defensively is quite strong right now, perhaps more DPS-checks are needed.
Pretty solid game!! Good foundation to build on. I think when you place stuff it needs to be more clear what benefits you are getting. Also the UI for placing/rotating could be more clear. But seriously good job! keep making games!
Thanks for the feedback! We'll keep player communication in mind if we update this in the future, that's a good point.
I am the friend, this is fantastic! Played till the end and left wanting more
Thanks for playing! Smiley is happy to have a friend. Congrats on reaching the end!
what an amazing game. Already playing for quite a while with a friend on discord. I really hope this gets developed further cause it's rather addicting!
Glad you liked it. Thanks for playing!