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Per Signum
Per Signum
By apoly, Batisdark and
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 161 | 3.94 | 50 | |
| Fun | 57 | 4.07 | 50 | |
| Innovation | 232 | 3.69 | 50 | |
| Theme | 202 | 4.10 | 50 | |
| Graphics | 506 | 3.58 | 50 | |
| Audio | 386 | 3.37 | 49 | |
| Humor | | | 2 | |
| Mood | 399 | 3.67 | 49 | |
Comments
I'm so impressed by this. You put in so many details in such a short time. I quite like the sound effects and art too! At some point I was expecting without many enemies then just got totally overloaded lol. Was still super fun. Great work!!!!2026-04-20 22_27_15-Untitled_ - Ableton Live 11 Suite.png
This was a really fun little territory control game! I found the core loop of placing down nodes to take land from the enemies a fun one. I also liked the card-based queue of actions, but I'm generally a sucker for deckbuilding games. Very nicely done, and I'd love to see something like this extended with more enemy types, the ability to draft certain cards into your deck, and all of that jazz.
Lots of fun--I played it until I cleared the map!
slippers
2026-04-21 06:55
I really loved this. It was very satisfying ending up with a horde of destroyers and just steamrolling through the final bits of hostile territory.
Those are my stats:
apoly-bat.JPG
I rarely find myself wanting more from jam games, and usually 15-20 mins is a perfect length for me, but I ended up not ready for it to end :smile:.
Thank you that was really fun!
I hate tower defense games :laughing:, and I'm also notoriously bad at them. But I did quite like this even though I felt a bit hampered by the deck building balance between exploration and offense and had the game snowball on me twice feeling rather helpless at that time. Maybe I started going north too early, but if that is the case, maybe the level design could have been helped a bit by a mountain range or something forcing me to explore the other areas first.
Play-through with more comments: https://youtu.be/-Pw-5mv6X-U
Screenshot 2026-04-22 095515.png
This is a nice simple strategy game with a satisfying loop. Pausing periodically to place cards was a great way to add some structure without being overwhelming.
apoly
2026-04-22 01:09
@richjbaron thanks for playing the game! The north path is not what we expected people will take first, as it leads to a lot of enemies, we'll add this to our description to push them towards exploring areas around the base first.
@breadstick thanks for playing the game! Different enemies and all the deck building mechanics would be nice, that's true. I admit I only figured that we should do all the deck building stuff just today, and that would've been a quick and easy improvement to the whole game.
@slippers thanks! Yeah, building up forces and then steamrolling is very satisfying, I agree. I'm glad that you finished the game and enjoyed it!
@local-minimum thanks for playing our game! I'm going to watch the video this evening to find all the useful pointers, thanks for making it! Yeah, exploring the north early is definitely not a best thing. Unfortunately we didn't have mountains or other impassible terrain to do a proper level design, but we could lure to other areas better I think.
@googlefrog thanks for playing the game! 15 and a half minutes is quite a decent time and you've unlocked everything it seems.
Really nice entry! Its decceptively compelling :D I found myself with a horde of enemies I wasn't ready for by the time i went north. I probably should've gotten whatever was in the east because the west artifact was great!
What a wonderful game, I liked it from the first session, and I decided to play it completely, every detail in your game is beautiful
sbeif
2026-04-22 11:26
Very cool game, I found the perlin noise a bit in contrast with the art style of the cards and units but it was fun and definitley more compelling than I expected, with a quite a bit of content. Luckily I followed your advice, otherwise I would have been destroyed! I'm particularly impressed by the ai of the strykers, they had a very natural looking movement that managed somehow to seem completely random while actually going exactly where they needed to. Well done! Screenshot 2026-04-22 132005.png
2026-04-22 11:47
That was really cool! took me 24 minutes and 515 killed enemies to win. I think I found all the upgrades. I'd play a full fledged game of this. But the soundtrack did start to drive me a bit mad after a while xd
Very nice game!
Something interesting. It looks good
ao-85
2026-04-22 20:16
Really nice entry! It’s deceptively compelling I got completely hooked! 😄 I learned the hard way that heading north too early brings a horde of enemies I wasn’t quite ready for. I probably should have explored the east first, but the artifact I found in the west was absolutely worth it! Great job!
I'm in! I love the concept of mixing deckbuilding, territory expansion, and tower defense. Give me more, please! :D
To try to be constructive, maybe you could make the start clearer with more distinct options and choices. Giving the player a first major objective (get the blue crystal?) and marking it on the map could help provide some context.
Thanks for the ride, I had a lot of fun!
anchry
2026-04-22 20:33
Went insane from the soundtrack, I put out enough destroyers to level the whole map just because i could before finally revealing what i assumed was the last structure to win, had a lot of fun. Really well done!
msipp27
2026-04-22 22:41
gets boring pretty fast
zakchaos
2026-04-23 05:03
really enjoyable!! gave me memories of command and conquer! enjoyed scouting and destroying enemies, some more diff enemy types and upgrade could be really cool if you decide to work on this game over time. I look forward to seeing if you build more onto this!
dazylude
2026-04-23 14:27
Pretty fun and quite polished. I like the turn based action economy (with cards and crystals) and RTS mix!
blues
2026-04-23 18:13
cute little game. i really like the fog of war mechanic
A really cool combination of deckbuilding and tower defense! This concept has a lot of potential for expansion. Maybe you could release an expanded post-LD version someday. I’d definitely play it :D
Neat premise overall, and I did really like the overall execution, even though I'm not a fan of card-based gameplay in general. Only real issue was late game trying to get my destroyers to actually stay in the north. They would spend a fifth of their time fighting up north, and then rather than stay on hand for the next push, would immediately run for the south, despite their being no enemies.
But I don't feel that issue majorly detracted from it, it was fun overall. Well done!
joegreen
2026-04-24 10:34
Didn't get it at first, but then it hit me. Really unique gameplay with cards and controlling territory. Awesome job!
frogg
2026-04-24 20:07
Well done! Fits the theme extremely well.
yanato
2026-04-25 16:04
Nice game.. may be I wanted more levels:/ It costs 16min to complete this one
catanus
2026-04-25 16:07
uff, that was a long run, but really captivating. Thanks for the game, it's good!
Screenshot 2026-04-25 190643.png
fractal
2026-04-26 16:25
Very cool game! Not super difficult but quite satisfying.
hulien22
2026-04-27 04:41
Screenshot 2026-04-26 214007.png
Creative mix of rts + card game, had a really fun time with this one! Great work!
wizard
2026-04-27 17:57
Really enjoyed this one, felt like the kind of game i would waste hours playing in the computer science room at school. Took some time to ramp up and unexpected rushes of enemies kept me on my toes. Really fun. Can't wait to play some more.
jimbly
2026-04-27 20:36
I win! Screenshot 2026-04-27 133418.png
That was neat! I was _not_ expecting it to be turn-based from the screenshots :laughing:. It worked really well though. I wish when placing drones it snapped to the nearest valid position, I felt like I spent a lot of time with the cursor red, slowly moving it towards the nearest thing waiting for it to turn green (and, maybe that didn't even matter, but I assumed the closer I placed the drone to the edge, the further it'd run...). Was fun seeing the hoard of enemies coming at me when I finally went North, I'm glad you had that advice on the page :laughing:.
2026-04-27 20:53
@sbeif The Stryker AI is actually partly random! There's some random-like wandering behavior as part of the tank behavior that's weighted together with the targeting behavior (and turn-around behavior when hitting the fog). We actually discussed improving the tank-to-enemy pathing during the jam but opted against it for other priorities.
2026-04-27 21:02
@flowerfield-games yeah I agree that in retrospect it might have been better if we in-game visually encouraged players to go to the minor objectives first! I think we wanted to leave it open to the player what to do but I do think designing it so we at least nudge the player to the west/east would have been a good idea.
Thanks for playing!
2026-04-27 21:08
@profugo-barbatus yeah that sounds frustrating! we decided to have the units completely move themselves and the tanks' default behaviors include random wandering which can result in stuff like that.
Strategically that's kind of frustrating so that's something we might want to change if we did this again. Maybe we would allow for some input? Maybe we can allow the player to assign a home base to the tanks.
2026-04-27 21:15
@jimbly The drone placement and its associated UI were implemented pretty late in the jam, so they are a bit rough around the edges.
Initially, drones could be placed anywhere outside of the fog, but that made them stronger than the signal towers. To address that, we restricted placement so drones are offset a certain distance from walls and move away from the closest base.
This can feel a bit awkward at intersections between multiple circles, but the cursor should remain valid anywhere outside of the fog, even if the placement behavior is not always the most intuitive.
Thanks for playing!
2026-04-27 21:16
@yanato it would be great to have had time to add more levels and more enemy types and card types! Thanks for playing!
@beastpanda If I were in your position, I'd allow spending one or two points during the deployment phase to redeploy instead, letting you move them anywhere you could otherwise spawn them. So if just one unit is out of place, its probably not worth it, but if you've got a bunch, then your energy reserves would let you bring 3-4 into action over spawning 1-2, so long as you had old units to redeploy.
nekuake
2026-04-28 10:44
I got to win in about 14 mins! Quite challenging at the end! And feels sooooo polished so good job :3
the only issue I found is that sometimes the audio glitches a bit with a lot of units but it's not a problem at all.
dk5000p
2026-04-28 15:43
Liked the overall game flow but would have liked a few more choices. Good use of theme.
I feel like this game really goes well with the theme. The signal aspect is nicely integrated into the mechanics and not just added to fit the theme. Overall super fun gameplay! At first I did not heed the warning and headed straight north, learnt from my mistake and then had to change my strategy xd very cool entry!
Nice entry! Would love to see the deck building aspect get more fleshed out
jamieok
2026-04-30 18:28
Had a lot of fun with this! I particularly like the randomness of the drones and where the combat units choose to move. It adds a bit of uncontrollable chaos on top of the strategy of choosing what to spawn each round. I expected the Booster to increase the range of pylons spawned by drones, so the drones and boosters felt like they kinda performed the same task without much difference. The audio was a bit repetitive, some slight variation on each shot sound might help dial that back a bit. Overall, a real cool submission, great work!
Not sure why the audio doesn't work for me, so I can't really rate you there. :(
I overall liked it! I think it started a bit slow -- perhaps the drones need a little bit bigger of a radius so that the overall early pace picks up? And the escalation at the end seems REALLY abrupt since Destroyers are so powerful. But if the only thing I can complain about is pacing, you're in a REALLY good place. Well done!
Oh, turns out all audio in my browser was broken. Fixed it, tried again. Music is really solid! Sound effects aren't bad but something about the way you mixed the audio makes them not quite fit in with the music? Really a minor thing, not really a complaint.
ciaranw
2026-05-04 12:00
Nice game, I had a fun time playing it! I think the progression was good, just as I was getting frustrated with the basic drones I unlocked the level up, which was nice. I followed your advice and explored the map before going north, which meant I had a good satisfying army behind me to re-take the comms matrix. I found the AI of my own drones to be a bit annoying at times, it would have been nice if there was some way to get them to move around. Also I think I found it to be a bit easy once I had the rhythm down, I don't think I lost a single signal tower. Nice entry though, I enjoyed it, it looks good, and the music suits it well!
Screenshot 2026-05-04 124709.png
yuwei
2026-05-07 06:11
Solid atmospheric exploration.