In Timeless Ascension you play as Kaelen, a warrior equipped with a divine relic - a staff. This staff allows you to manipulate time (by slowing or speeding up enemies). However, slowing down time damages you over time and speeding up time heals you over time.
While you were searching for other divine relics you encountered a leader of small group (boss). He wasn't pleased with your presence during his own search for other divine relics and you ended up in a fight against this boss.
Now it's up to you and your staff's time-manipulating-abilities to defeat this boss.
*Figure 1: Example of gameplay in action.*
*Figure 2: Menu and user interface.*
Below are the sprites used to create characters and objects in the game:
*Figure 3: Player character animations.*
*Figure 4: Enemy animations.*
You only need your keyboard to play this game. Except for the WASD-Keys, you only need to tap the keys, not hold them.
- WASD: Movement
- Shift: Dash
- J: Attack -> hits in all directions
- K: Slow down time/enemy (you lose hp over time)
- L: Speed up time/enemy (you gain hp over time)
Player:
- Attack has a cooldown of 1.3 seconds
- Dash has a cooldown of 0.5 seconds
- If slow (time-manipulation) is active, your hp can reach 0 and you die (it won't be automatically canceled if hp is low)
Enemy:
- Attacks have a cooldown of 3 seconds
- if slow is active -> attack cooldown 5.5 seconds (slower attacks)
- if speed is active -> attack cooldown 1.5 seconds (faster attacks)
- Gains hp slowly over time
- Chases you constantly
- Stops only when Player stands still and if enemy is close enough to the player/if hitboxes are triggered
Collisions:
- Along the canvas there are invisible walls placed, making the playground a square (almost)
- Player needs to collide with enemy to be able to inflict damage
- Enemy attacks when it's colliding with attack-triggers (which are attached to the player)
- When starting the game, enemy might not be on the canvas -> simply refresh the page and enemy should appear
- Enemy collision: walks around you until a certain threshold is triggered
- Enemy attack patterns: enemy can hit you even if the animation isn't fully played
- Core Mechanics: Implementing the basic mechanics went better and faster than expected.
- Art & Design: Even though I'm not good at drawing, the sprites were fun to design.
- Time Constraints: Implementing all the features I envisioned wasn’t possible due to the limited timeframe.
- Game Polish: Refining the game wasn't as easy as I thought. Especially the enemy still needs more polishing.
- Useful Mechanics: Despite being able to manipulate time, it was difficult to make the use of it feel rewarding.
- Prototyping Matters: Testing early prototypes gives you a solid foundation to build on.
- Keep it Simple: It's better to have a few polished mechanics than multiple (clunky) ones.