Final Melee

My entry for LynxJam 2023

This is and old project for an LCD style game. Never completed it because the graphic was ugly and for lack of time. To make a game for this Jam I take my old code and refactored it with the Jam tiles. 

The Story

The game is about a war in a classical fantasy world against an evil wizard (yes I read all theTolkien books in my youth), but when all the armies of the world are going to destroy the wizard, left without magic powers after a long fight, he uses a dark power to drain all the vital energy and magic powers from his enemies. Only the three stronger heroes of the world can resist to the attack, but they remain weak like young apprentices: a mage, an archer , and a warrior.  Could they suevive without their magic weapons and all the experience gained in years of adventures?

The wizard will use the drained energy to summon creatures and attack the three survivors, but he needs time to control the new power so it can use it just a little at the beginning, but his ability will increase with time. On the other hand killing the attacking creatures will make return some of the energy to the three fighters.

Instructions

The game turns are time based, every character/monster has to wait some time (depending on his speed) to make an action.

The player controls three characters (an Elf, a Mage and a Warrior), each one has four characteristics:

- the Hit Points (HP) that are the number of damage that a character can get before to go KO, but they also affect the abilty to make and avoid damage  when attacked

- The MANA points, with 1 MANA a character can attack casting a FIRE spell, with 2 MANA can heal himself or a companion, and with 3 MANA he can cast a spell to freeze an enemy, that for a small amount of time will move slower. Casting a spell reduces the available MANA, but passing a turn make him/her recover one MANA point .

- The SPEED value affects the time one character hat wait every turn, the higher the value, the less the time to wait.

- The Experience (EXP) grows  of 1 point every time a character kills an ememy (some powefull enemies can give more). When one reach 12 EXP, the max value of one of the other three charaxteristic is increased by one, and the EXP value returns to 0 (zero)

When it is a charaxter turn, she /he can select one of the following actions:

- change the position from the front line to the back line, or viceversa, with the left and right keys. Characters in  the back line can't be attacked (but the wizard can cast spells on them - not yet implemented at the moment) and can't attack. There alway must be at least a character in the front line,  if all the character in the front line goes KO,  the characters in the back line automatically moves in the front line.

- select one of four available menu actions with the up and down key:

+ ATTACK: only  selectable from the front line, makes you select one of the enemies and attack it

+ USE: shows the available objects. the warriors has a second small sword and a shield that can wear using this command, but can wear only one of this two at a time. The elf can use the bow to throw an arrow to an enemy (only if there are arrows available, a number in the inventory shows how many he has), this way he can try to kill an enemy also from the second line. All the character can have some potions and scrolls, some can be used against the enemies,, other upons the companions. 

+ MAGIC: can be used to cast a spell, CURE can be used to heal a companion, the others against the enemies

+ PASS: pass the turn, if the caracter didn't change position he can recovet 1 MANA point every passed turn up to the max MANA points

There are 6 different magic obects:

- Cure Potion - Can heal a character making recovery all the HP

- Fire potion - Can be thrown against an enemy making same damage, but the enemy can be missed

- Poison potion - Can be thrown against an enemy making same damage, but the enemy can be missed 

- Haste scroll - Can raise of 1 point the speed of the character, but the spell can fail

- Lightning scroll - Can be casted gainst an enemy making same damage, but the spell can fail

- Curse scroll - Can be casted gainst an enemy making same damage, but the spell can fail

Every charater can have 15 items of each kind (potions and scrolls). The Elf can have up to 40 arrows.

Every time  all the enemy on the screen are killed, the wizard summons more and more powerfull enemies, at some point (after a very long battle) he will join the battle. 

Kill the Wizard to win the game.

Controls

From the main menu press the A button to start a new battle, press the A button at the end of the battle to return to the main menu.

When it's one of characters turn, use the the arrows key to move among availble actions, items , magics or a targets. The A button selects an option, B button  cancel the last selection and brings you to the previous step of the control menu.

Jam Release Notes

The game is not completly tested, it could not be possible to beat the stronger enemies (expecially the Dragon and the final Evil Wizard), but you can try. 

The only thing I had no time (and system memory left ) to add was the ability of the Dragon and of the Evil Wizard to cast spells, I'll add this in a future release, with a lot of other improvements.

The controls to select the enemies and the object in the inventory are messed, the change of position of the next selected item/monster is not coherent with the arrow keys, but pressing several times the same key you can rotate all the possible options, so the game is playable. I'll try to fix this in a future release

My main laguage is not english and with age my  vision is declining (mostly for the hours spent at late night coding on my laptop), so please forgive my bad english and all the typo I left in the text.