Idol Knight

a tactical roguelike for #7DRL 2021  

by Arnold Rauers & Max Fiedler

with additional sound design by Oliver Salkic.

Gameplay

Complete 5 levels of Idol Knight to win the game.

Goal

In order to complete a level, defeat all enemies by using different items to attack, defend and manipulate the positions of enemies. Decent via the stairs tile.

Interaction

Hover over tiles to see which Items can be used. If available click on an item card to activate it. Valid targets are highlighted and you can select which enemy to attack. Click on your character to see a selection of reachable tiles to move to with your current energy.

Energy

Each turn you gain 5 energy which you can use to move or use on available items. Each item has an energy cost and each step you take costs 1 energy as well. As long as you have energy left you can use as many items as you wish. Once you run out of energy or move a turn ends and all enemies take a turn.

Enemies

Each enemy can only use one item at a time. They move in random order and will try to defeat you, even at their own demise. Take care.

Item Description

Sword - Attack and adjacent enemy and move onto its tile.

Shield - Push an adjacent enemy across the game board.

Bow - Shot an arrow across the game board.

Hook - Pull an enemy towards you.

Book - Swap position with an enemy.

Gloves - Throw an adjacent enemy.

Knuckles - Stun and push and adjacent enemy.

Bomb - Throw a bomb on an adjacent tile.

Disclaimer: This game was created in one week and will contain major bugs and issue!

StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, HTML5
Rating
Rated 4.6 out of 5 stars
(25 total ratings)
AuthorTinytouchtales
GenreStrategy, Puzzle
Made withUnity
TagsRoguelike, Tactical, Turn-Based Combat

Download

Download
idolknight_Mac.zip 28 MB
Download
idolknight_Win.zip 29 MB

Comments

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for the first time in many, many games (it is my starting position)

Nice.

I don't know how many runs it took, but I played this game daily for at least last half year, and finally I beat it. Splendid fun, nice mindbender, right in my tastes.

Haha, amazing!

(1 edit)

Completed after 30+ tries, that was really hard. Armour didn't help much :) Overall - great! (But still no answer what the prize is). Tiles and sprites are wonderful. Did you consider some mouse over tile effect?

Thanks. Since it was a jam game we did not had much time to polish.

As a desperate Hoplite player who hasn't recover the Fleece of Yendor from depth 16 yet, this is an interesting take..
do you got any info on Doug's work now ?

(+1)

No, not really. But he did participate in on of the recent #7DRLs with this game: https://magmafortress.itch.io/vlad-the-bleeder

Another very cool game. I think this takes the best of Maze Machina and Guncho.

It would be nice if it could run on smartphones too.

Thanks!

Graphics are really beautiful. Have you done them?

Graphics are done by Mexer http://www.pigsell.com

(+1)

Game is really cool as well.

Hey I have two of your games on my ipad. I love them. When are you planning to release this one on ios?

(1 edit)

Hey, nice. There's no plan for releasing this one right now. We're pretty busy with our upcoming game Card Crawl Adventure right now. 

Really nice game :) Not so hard once you understand what’s happening. My method is to finish my move with zero energy as much as possible. To refill each time the ennemies move.

Nice, thanks!

(+2)

Really fun!

Took longer to learn than necessary - definitely some lack in tutorial or explanation, but at the same time I had fun trying to figure out what to do.

Notes for others:

  • Enemies can either move or act on their turn, not both.
  • Enemies get a turn any time you move at all, OR use all energy via spells.
  • Sword counts as a move, but other spells do not - you can chain spells such as teleport into arrows without enemies moving.
  • You can use all your energy by moving, which is efficient because you only give the enemy one turn and you regain all your energy.
  • Enemies can stun lock you.  Take note of which enemies can use range, and which use melee.
  • You essentially play this like chess: identify moves that don't kill you, ensure you won't get killed on a following turn, and try to threaten enemy pieces while maintaining safety.
  • You'll have to learn interactions with trial and error.  Archers can shoot bombs to explode, grapple hook can pull you into lava.  Knuckle can stun lock against wall, same with shield.  But these can work in your favor as well.  Foreseeing the interactions is really where the big brain plays come in.

I sort of cheesed the last level.  I had knuckle (2), bomb (2), and throw (1) on a corner tile, with some walls to help block.  I could chain all 3 to expend all energy without moving, and use the bomb to stun enemies on the other side, then throw the bomb behind them.  Wash rinse repeat - thinned out the crowd then played normally.  Took me a little over an hour to beat I think.

Awesome and thanks for playing. Sounds like you enjoyed it even with it's rough edges. Thanks!

Please tell me I'm missing something obvious, but how do I quit the game in Windows, short of using the Task Manager to escape it?

I was just wondering the same thing. Having to use the task manager seems excessive.

Only Alt + F4 works right now.

Sadly, even that wasn't working for me last night.

Haha sorry, only Alt + F4!

Really well polished visually but I was heavily confused on a lot of elements, like why I can't swap with some enemies or what role the side icons play. The energy system was also quite confusing, I figured my turn was up when I ran out of energy, having it reset by emptying it was quite unintuitive.

As far as I can tell there's also no way to reread the tutorial. Perhaps I'm just dumb but there's no way I can internalise a wall of text when I haven't played the game to contextualise it. I opened the game page in another tab an now it's not showing up.

Playing more I'm really confused over how other elements work. Like, my cards just seem to vanish without me using them? Also some enemies just don't kill me when they should be able to, is it random?

Hey, you can read the Manual from the settings menu. 

Cards only display when you either have enough energy to use them or there are valid targets. If not they get greyed out. Each tile has different Items associated with them so once you change your position available items also change. 

(+1)

How dare you make such a wonderful game? Who gave you the right, huh?


In all seriousness, this is a really good game, and is a wonderful balance of skill and luck (via spawns). At first I found it difficult, but after 4 hours of constantly playing the game, I think the difficulty is well balanced, though I have yet to beat the game :(

However, you need to fix the menu of the game (pause button), Like I was on the fifth level, and I had clicked the pause button to go to the bathroom. However, I found that once you click it, there was no way to exit the pause, expect for restarting thr entire game, which sucked as I was making really good progress. 

So I sugest you to fix this if you can, otherwise a great game with little to no bugs (that I found.)

Thanks glad you like it! Will see if I can release a post Jam version with some fixes.

(+1)

i love the game i had so much fun thanks for making

(+1)

Wow. How much did it take to make, five days?! It is very polished.

And very hard, too. I can not pass the first round….

(1 edit)

Haha thanks. Yeah, about 5 1/2 days but those were long ass days, not your typical 8h ones. Again I've become faster in the last time since I generally work on similar ideas and have a lot of code lying around that I can reuse. Hextiles, Cards, Interaction flows etc. The most time I spend on was getting pathfinding code to work that was stolen from the internet. But again a lot of weight is always pulled by the amazing graphics and Mexer did them in like 2 days so that's where the real mvp shit is going on ;).

Please, make a downloadable version for PC.

(2 edits)

Sure I can add that.

*Added!