Village Defence

(Created for the Bitter Jam - May 2020)

Terrifying, acid-spitting monsters from unknown places beyond the valley are swarming into your village. As the only citizen who has a sword and knows how to use it, it has fallen to you to protect everyone for as long as you can.

Controls
Arrow keys: Move your purple avatar around the village.
'Z' key: Start the game, attack in the four cardinal directions, and go back to the title screen once your game ends.

Entries for the Bitter Jam were required to use only the following set of 8x8 pixel tiles:

I also tried to take on the two optional challenges:

1. All tiles must be laid out on a single-layered, regular grid.
2. Do not overlap any graphics.

All together, this made the limitations feel like a ZX Spectrum style 8-bit home computer, although I took the liberty of imagining a "widescreen" version.

I really rushed things near the deadline but it is technically a playable game. I spent a few minutes patching the worst parts and tidying it up a little, although it still has an intermittent bug which I can't seem to track down, which will crash the game eventually. I haven't had a chance to do any kind of balancing or much testing, so the speed with which the difficulty ramps up could be quite off.

When I sat down to begin the jam, I had in mind to make a ZZT-style action RPG. By the end of the first day (of three), I realised that I had been wildly overoptimistic. But I persevered and worked to incorporate what I had into something more achievable. My final goal was still an overreach, especially since I was also using an unfamiliar development environment (Pixelbox.js), but I'm glad that I stuck with it.