Power Surge, a magical top down shooter

Power Surge 0.2

LINK: http://powersurge-0-2.bitballoon.com

You are a mighty wizard but you can never have enough magical power! Enter the Arcane Vault and collect as many magical Essences as you can. But watch out for the Guardians of the Vault!

Power Surge is a top down shooter about a power-mad wizard with a scoring system inspired by Super Crate Box. This is an early version which uses mostly modified freeware art as placeholders.

Controls

Move with WSAD

Cast Spells with Left Mouse Button (Uses the blue mana bar)

Teleport with Right Mouse Button (Uses the orange energy bar)

Use the next Essence with Space (Restores mana and gives you a new spell)

Essences and Spells

Fire: Hurl fireballs

Ice: Freeze your enemies

Light: Charge up a deadly beam of light

Metal: Throw a spinning blade that returns to you

Lightning: Charge and release a shock that jumps to 3 targets

Known Issues

Enemy pathfinding sometimes doesn’t work

Difficulty and enemy spawning needs an overhaul

Regenerating the obstacle map might cause framerate drop

A health bar will be awesome, dying from the first hit is bad.

delicious. all them old elemental spells. damn difficult tho. health could do, but id say more destructive spells

Thanks for the feedback!

I have thought about a health bar since it was present in earlier versions. But I removed because I repurposed that UI element for the Special Ability (teleport) Cooldown and I figured it didn't really add anything to the game except make rounds last longer. I think it's better to have shorter rounds in simple score attack games like this, especially when there's not a lot of conetent to experience anyway.

I'll look into the difficulty a bit though, since I've solved some AI bugs that should make the game harder then it is now.

New Version!

Biggest addition in this version are the Surge powers. Surge powers are triggered when you activate a new Essence.

Fire: Leave a trail of flames on the ground

Lightning: 4 deadly balls of lightning orbit around you

Frost: a frost nova freezes enemies around you

Light: a blinding flash

Metal: a spinning mine is placed that shoots shards of metal

Changelog v0.2

– Added Surge powers that trigger when activating a new essence

– Fixed some AI bugs

– Walls can’t be destroyed any more, I don’t think it added anything significant to the gameplay but required regenerating the obstacle map

– Changed how the Metal spell works

–The Light beam can’t go through walls any more

– Press ‘G’ to activate Cheat Mode

Known Issues:

• Difficulty still needs work
• Sometimes the wrong Surge power is activated
• Some Surge powers need a bit of rebalancing or maybe overhauls

It was a little hard with dying on the first hit.. maybe make it a couple hits?

Also have option for health bar next to the mana bars

Otherwise pretty cool

Wizards are weak but they are clever and use force fields and elemental barriers to shield themselves from harm.