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[Mhaine]

Description

Help Hydorah, the famous symbolist, in his quest to subjugate the decadent art forms, nature and eventually God itself. Defeat bandit kings, librarians, ley lines, assassins, ninjas and wizards in order to save a nondescript empire and bring peace to the universe. Upgrade and extend your army with numerous upgrades and six unique unit archetypes. Build formations and try to find efficient unit combinations to complete the task at hand.

Vae Victis Lacrimosa is a turn based strategy game in which you control a small band of soldiers, trying to best armies of much larger size or power.

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Features

- Create your own army! Customize it to suit the missions at hand!
- Choose from 6 unit archetypes and a total of 30 unique upgrades!
- Travel across 5 Story Chapters with unique substories, including a total of 23 missions and 6 bosses

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Controls
Left Mouse Button - Select units
Right Mouse Button - Control units

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Download Vae Victis Lacrimosa

Here it is, Vae Victis, now better, more mature, and more detailed!



Please be as harsh as you can while providing feedback!

[ithamore]

I got up to the 3rd chapter before I had to quit. It was a little challenging at first until I gained enough money and had found a team make up I liked and upgraded all of them as quickly as possible. After that, it was a bit easy.

You shouldn't have the text flowing over all the way to the right, since it will sometimes be behind the end turn button. Otherwise, you could make the button disappear while the characters are talking.

I liked how the characters automatically re-spawned between battles. It helped to simplify the strategy. I also liked the pixel art.

The music should loop more smoothly. It would also be nice if there were different songs for each chapter.

Edit: I beat it but not the harder final battle (why does the Master Assassin regenerate). The battles get easier with a fully maxed team size, but with the excessive amount of extra money I had toward the later chapters shows that the excess was intended.

[flavio]

Great game (globally: graphics, music, design)! I miss something that records (visually) the actions you order.

[Mhaine]

Thanks for your words! As I said, there are some flaws. Sadly, I just wanted to wrap the project up and begin a new one since this game would require a lot of time to polish into perfection. I will patch this and make an another similar game using this framework soon.

The battles get easier with a fully maxed team size, but with the excessive amount of extra money I had toward the later chapters shows that the excess was intended.

Indeed, I just didn't have enough ideas for more upgrades. Originally, you were to get access to some enemy unit types as you progressed, but adding upgrades and balancing them would be hard, so I made it so that the endgame would be easy as long as you learned how to use your troops and upgrade them. Master Assassin was the only bossfight that made it into the final version; every other bossfight are only remnants of what they were to be. Thank you for playing through the entire game!

I miss something that records (visually) the actions you order.

Something like an arrow or shades of characters that have moved, maybe? Actually, this is a great idea. Thanks!

[Brice]

Hi Mhaine!  Nice to meet you!  Thought I would check out your game and leave some feedback.

Also, it is my first actual game. As such, please be as harsh as you can while providing feedback.

That's the best way to learn fast!  Failure isn't bad, it's just data/feedback.  

First off, I really love the atmospheric effects and the music on the board.  That really puts it apart from most turn based strategy games I've seen -- it makes the action feel more real.  I hope you continue to polish and work up the atmosphere effects.

Second, I found it unecessarily confusing to make my first attack.  There was all this text everywhere telling me all these things I could do, but I was failing to do all of them.  At first

It's up to you how to handle this, but some suggestions might be a simple click-by-click tutorial, or something more elegant would be tooltips appearing each space saying what you can do (When over an enemy in range it would say "Right click to attack")

I would also click my guy, and then click a blue space, and he wouldn't move.  Probably because I already moved, but the blue space made me feel like I should be able to move again.

Third, I was a little confused by the ranges.  For example, it seemed like this one enemy was in my attack range, but it wouldn't let me attack him.  Why? Was I out of moves?  Was he actually not in my range?  I wasn't sure.  If there isn't anything left for me to do, I wish it would have told me that all I have left is to END TURN.

Fourth, when I began a new level, I was clicking trying to move my guy, but nothing happened.  I eventually found out it was because I was actually reading text below.  But since my cursor was there, I assumed I could move my person.

For all of these things, probably the best advice I can give is to do lots of playtests.  Grab someone, watch them play, and don't say anything. That will help you see how intuitive things are (or aren't) and ideas on how to fix them.

Best of luck!

[Mhaine]

Thanks for your response, Brice! Sorry for not answering sooner, I did not want to double post since I was already working on a patch for the game. Checked your blog too - I am liking your style, though I must tell you that I am one of those old guys who like the gameplay of some older games, like the Goldbox, more than the casualized style modern games strive for. However, this has little to do with how correct your analysis is. These large clunky UI's are simply not beautiful, and can be made better. I will try to fix this issue in my later attempts at making video games.

Vae Victis Lacrimosa, i.e. v1.1 is now released!


Changelog:
All the issues addressed in the above posts have been fixed. There have been numerous changes and additions, making the game more balanced and a bit harder. Several battles have been changed, dialogues have been remastered, music looping problems etc. were solved. Several small, non-game breaking bugs were eliminated. Graphics have been improved.

[Pishtaco]

Vae Victis Lacrimosa, i.e. v1.1 is now released!

Why "lacrimosa"? If it's "alas for the tearful victims", wouldn't it be something like "vae victis lacrimosis"?

[Igor Hardy]

Tearful "Woe to the conquered!"? What an odd title!

[Netsu]

Yeah, it kinda reminds me how the band 'Rhapsody' changed their name to 'Rhapsody OF FIRE'.
Was the original name too generic?

[Mhaine]

Hey, it is a patch name! Would you have preferred "Vae Victis 1.1" (oh the generic 'Just fixed some bugs' update) or Vae Victis: Lacrimosa (the semicolon strikes back!)? I think not!

Yeah, it kinda reminds me how the band 'Rhapsody' changed their name to 'Rhapsody OF FIRE'.
Was the original name too generic?

Their songs were indeed too generic. Just look at these lyrics:

Ride on the wings of wisdom
Ride beyond the middle valleys
To defeat the master of chaos
In the name of cosmic justice
Peace and love forever

Damn it, one should make a game like this!

[starsrift]

I really like this game.

The music is what really grabbed me, more than anything else. I dunno if Marky Spark is an individual you know or just the formulator of some public domain music, but it's very very nice and I thought it fit the game well.

The gameplay is simple, good, very nicely done. Reminiscent of Disciples, but nicer.

Some bugs/issues:
1) No way to get to the menu screen from in game.
2) Possible to break the game by spending all money on upgrades while you have no units... game then stuck.
3) Possible to break the game by repeatedly buying the same upgrades. This makes most of the health & damage upgrades useless as it's cheaper and better to buy the +25 all health & damage upgrades, except for perhaps the Baroquist +65 dmg, and the Cubist +100 health. The tech trees and graphics seem to indicate this shouldn't be happening, and it seems to unbalance the game, though I've only gotten to Chap 3 so far.
Edit: Hmmm, maybe the damage isn't going up when you buy it for the second time...
Edit #2: The main health & damage ones don't seem to be bugged (except you can pay for them again). The character ones are, however. I wound up taking on God (true ending) with 4 Futurists, 1 Cubist, 2 Baroquists, and he died in the second round. My Futurists were doing 5000 damage a round each (1250 x 4 attacks). The Baroquists were obsolete by that time, doing only two thousand or three thousand, and the Cubist didn't do diddly in comparison. I had also stopped spending money after the House of Flying Daggers - I think I could've upgraded and took God on with 3 Futurists for a more even battle. Oddly, buying the Symbolist to Modernist upgrade twice bugged the unit back to a Symbolist, and then it wouldn't change again no matter how many more purchases of the upgrade I made. I didn't test all upgrades and never used Realists, though I will second time round to see if I can double HP to infinity and break GM's numerical limit(probably a byte?).
4) Enemy AI is stupid and insists on moving to it's maximum range, even if it's a melee unit and that makes it unable to hit my units.
5) Along with all the other stats, it'd be nice to have a # of attacks remaining on the sidebar.

Fluffier issues:
1) I wasn't quite sure what the premise of the game was. I think a little more backstory/introduction could help.
2) Where'd Hydorah go? He's still talking and leading armies after God killed him, but he's not a unit on the field?

[Mhaine]

Thank you starsrift! Great catch on the bug; the graying out of the upgrades was enough to fool even me, but not you, apparently  
A newer build should be up soon; though I hope it was small enough a bug and nobody tried to do something this strange!

Also, can you tell me what you think the premise of the game is? The game was initially supposed to be a parody, like Magicka, but when I saw Magicka I have changed most of the game. I structured it so that it shouldn't make sense as a whole. I don't think it worked well enough in this game, though. Would you have preferred a more serious and branching story with a nonlinear campaign, dungeons and battles, preferably set in a more unique fantasy world for this gameplay? Or would you rather play a game similar to a short story in structure, like Tiny Barbarian?

[starsrift]

Also, can you tell me what you think the premise of the game is?

oh shit ARTGAME!


I'm not really sure, otherwise I wouldn't have said I couldn't follow it. Obviously, you have some art vs religion going on but I've always seen the two as working together - many famous works are religious in nature. There's also some revenge business with Hydorah v God, but it doesn't seem to carry too much.

Personally, I would have preferred a more serious branching story with a nonlinear campaign, though I'm not sure dungeons would've worked with this - perhaps something more along the lines of FF Tactics? I dunno! Nothing wrong with short story structures either.

For your first game, though, it was really well done, and applause!


Also just a tiny note, on some screens (unit purchase screen I think?) you call Realists, Romantics.