The game is set in a dystopian future where an oppressive AI has taken control of the world, maintaining its dominance through 13 massive pylons that distribute power and control across the globe, a symbol of terror for all inhabitants. Each tower is heavily guarded by automated drones, mechanical beasts, and brainwashed human enforcers. The world is bleak, with humanity struggling under the iron grip of the AI, which calls itself “Dominus.”
\nThe AI’s regime is known as the “Dominus Network,” a name that signifies its total control over all aspects of life. The Dominus Network’s primary objective is to ensure that no one can challenge its authority. It monitors all communications, controls all resources, and enforces its will through the power of the pylons, which keep humanity subdued.
\nThe rebels, known as “The Vanguard,” are a determined group of freedom fighters who have united with the sole purpose of destroying the 13 pylons and bringing down the Dominus Network. They are a team of specialists—engineers, hackers, strategists, and soldiers—who work together to build units capable of withstanding the AI’s relentless defenses.
\nI wanted to build an auto-RTS/clicker type game that’s easy to pickup but esculates quickly. I was interested in the concept of an RTS where the player can select the stats for each unit type like an RPG. The inspiration for this game comes from Paperclips (a great web clicker game, please search and try it if you haven’t) and C&C Tiberian Sun.
\nI didn’t have too many bugs when building this, only fixing some unusual TypeScript issues with Closure. Object properties were being renamed which made Enums not work and some mapping I was doing with the stat names.
\n","source":"hseager/exilium","stars":2,"comments":[{"at":378820176,"author":"Jonathan Vallet","login":"jonathan-vallet","gh":5329099,"text":"Nice game, I loved the idea of armies confrontation.\nSlow at start, at the end it becomes fast we have to play many actions, it’s fun!\nYou have beautiful assets for units, why didn’t you reuse them in shapes? instead of having plain color shapes, it would have been much nicer!
\n","games":["13 Steps to Escape"]},{"typ":1,"at":378950471,"re":378820176,"author":"Harvey Seager","login":"hseager","gh":27302661,"text":"I’m glad you enjoyed it. That’s a good suggestion about the icons in the shapes; I added the icons near the end of development and didn’t consider it. There might be less visual clarity using the icons for units especially for mobile where they are quite small, and I might have to change how damage is visualized but it would have been worth a try! I did consider adding other flat SVG icons for each unit to improve them, but ran out of time in the end. Thanks for the feedback
\n"},{"at":378854507,"author":"Cliff Earl","login":"Antix-Development","gh":17822130,"text":"Very nice, I’m fond of these games. The UI on the right was not great because you have to keep scrolling about to deploy units, then scroll about to get back to research. I think there is enough screen space to have more visible without scrolling too much.
\n","games":["Badluck Butter Chicken Goes To Outer Space","Badluck Butter Chicken Flies The Unfriendly Skies"]},{"typ":1,"at":378951510,"re":378854507,"author":"Harvey Seager","login":"hseager","gh":27302661,"text":"The overall UI was on the top of my list to improve but I ran out of time in the end. The need to scroll is definitely valid criticism and I could have used more of the screen space as you say, especially for desktop. Thanks for the feedback!
\n"},{"at":378891202,"author":"Steven Lambert","login":"straker","gh":2433219,"url":"https://stevenklambert.com/","twitter":"StevenKLambert","text":"Interesting game. I think you did a good job of your goal of something that escalated quickly. There were many times I just barely got a deploy out before the enemy crossed the line.
\nThe scrolling between tech points and the unit upgrades was rough as it would prevent me from looking at the enemy, and there were times where I would have a tech point available but it wouldn’t let me move the slider. I did like that the unit range made the shape bigger, I thought that was pretty clever.
\n","games":["The Encroaching Darkness"]},{"at":378911253,"author":"Lewis Nakao","login":"lewdev","gh":1469960,"url":"https://lewdev.github.io","twitter":"lewdev","text":"I liked how simple it was to figure things out. The pixel unit icons were great; perhaps the dev could have reused the icons instead of shapes.
\nThe concept is easy to understand as you can see units coming in and you need to drop units to counter that. It’s semi-idle. I saw an auto deploy option, but I think I had to wait a bit longer for the auto deploy to kick in so I added units manually.
\n","games":["13attle TanKs"]},{"typ":1,"at":378951302,"re":378911253,"author":"Harvey Seager","login":"hseager","gh":27302661,"text":"Good suggestion about the icons as the background for the shapes. The auto-deploy is slow to start with and the spawn speed can be upgraded. It was a pacing and balance decision to make it slow, I could have made the game longer and crazy auto-deploy battles into late game which does sound like fun, but I wanted players to see the damage to the towers early in the game and for there to be some strategy at the end in defeating the last couple of towers. Maybe next time! Thanks for playing
\n"},{"at":378930579,"author":"Slava","login":"hostmepanda","gh":45483857,"text":"I’ve enjoyed playing the game and managed to finish it. The atmosphere is cool and the game process is captivating from the first few seconds. Unf. I didn’t manage to rate the sound since I didn’t enable it. But yeah awesome job!!
\n","games":["Escape 13th floor dungeon"]},{"at":378944165,"author":"Miguel Ángel Pérez Martínez","login":"zlash","gh":1052438,"twitter":"zurashu","text":"I had a lot of fun! It felt a bit easy for me and I’m not sure I ever understood the difference between skill and tech points, but played it until dominus was defeated!
\n","games":["Escape from Planet XIII"]},{"typ":1,"at":378950944,"re":378944165,"author":"Harvey Seager","login":"hseager","gh":27302661,"text":"Thanks for playing and the feedback, I’m glad you enjoyed it.\nAt one point I renamed skill points to tech points and must have missed a reference… sorry about that!
\n"},{"at":378951430,"author":"Benjamin Boyd Austin","login":"bbaustin","gh":18755168,"text":"Fun game! I could defeat Dominus!
\nUsing different shapes for the different units was clear and easy-to-understand (although I do agree with another commenter that it would have been nice to use the cool pixel art you had for each unit, as well).\nRegardless, I thought the using border width to signify HP also worked well.
\nOne minor nitpick– it wasn’t always clear if my unit would hit the tower. The units sometimes seemed to “jump” to hit the towers. Maybe it would be helpful if there were vertical guidelines leading to each tower..?
\nBut yeah, fun game! Nice job
\n","games":["PicoBuddy"]},{"at":378961753,"author":"aselitto","login":"aselitto","gh":17676172,"text":"Very cool concept and great work designing the concept. The game works well and its fun to build up new troops.
\n","games":["Dekatria Mansion"]},{"at":378965906,"author":"sdeseille","login":"sdeseille","gh":106524,"text":"I appreciated the concept of that game. It is simple but well designed.\nFor my first play. I managed to reach level 20. So even if it’s an rts it is easy to understand game mechanics.
\nI like the moment I spend in that game.
\n","games":["13 The Damned"]},{"at":379015654,"author":"Javi Agenjo","login":"jagenjo","gh":393515,"url":"http://tamats.com","twitter":"tamat","text":"I enjoyed the game, the gameplay feels very good. It is a pity that the presentation is so raw. With some particles would had been more fun.
\n","games":["Deep13"]},{"at":379056117,"author":"Ryan Malm","login":"Rybar","gh":145812,"text":"Good Tower defense style effort, I wished for more action/visual feedback during combat, and some sounds would have made this more enjoyable.
\n","games":["Six And Seven"]},{"at":379143020,"author":"Aleksey Litvinov","login":"mightyaleksey","gh":5006221,"url":"https://jsalterego.im/","text":"Looks simple at glance, but very addictive! Had small issues with scrolling on mobile, when center with configuration appears.
\nCongratulations on submission!
\n","games":["Spirit Hunter"]},{"at":379156351,"author":"Asiel Díaz Benítez","login":"adbenitez","gh":24558636,"url":"https://mastodon.social/@adbenitez","text":"would be nice if in every level increase one of the pylons is destroyed
\nthe controls are not good in mobile/touchscreen, often tapping in a place causes accidentally sending the unit in the place it appears, one must swipe/drag for the position to be updated before releasing
\nI liked the game overall
\n"},{"at":380036839,"author":"John Edvard","login":"johnedvard","gh":656024,"url":"https://reitgames.com","twitter":"ReitGames","text":"I played this game longer than I thought I would. I didn’t understand what to do in the beginning. I just aligned my troops against the enemy, and then realized it’s a battle. I like how the game progresses, and it feels just right. The graphics for the infantry, tank, airplane, and ion canon are good, and easy to understand/read. It would be nice to have similar graphics on the map itself, but I understand we only have 13kB. Some sfx and sound would also help elevate the game.
\n","games":["Bubble Burst"]},{"at":380083296,"author":"Roman Miniv","login":"RomanMiniv","gh":50551993,"text":"We succeeded in returning freedom to humanity!
\nFrom the beginning, I did not immediately understand how to deploy my troops, but after a few tens of seconds I did (because I immediately started playing, instead of reading the description before the game).
\nI liked the story of the game. It was interesting to develop your combat potential, as well as to follow the enemy on the battlefield. You also need to follow the place of deployment of troops, somewhere for defense, and somewhere for attack.
\nI love how the towers gradually collapse - cool effect!
\nLoved the background too! It would be fun to have a moving background, moving clouds, the sun, something like a parallax effect for example :).
\nIt was fun, congratulations!
\nP.S.
\nCommand & Conquer: Tiberian Sun is my childhood game :).
\n","games":["How it started"]},{"at":380184884,"author":"Samuel van Egmond","login":"SamuelVanEgmond","gh":95985602,"text":"Interesting simplified tower defense game. I was so busy deploying my troops I missed the progress elements (the progress bar and the towers slowly collapsing). I would have liked that a bit more evenly, i.e. towers on both sides so it actually becomes ‘tower defense’ instead of ‘health bar’ defense.
\nI also felt the campaign was too long which made it feel like you did not make much progress. Perhaps start with one tower each and after you win a level towers are added.
\nOverall fun to play, could do with some sounds and effects.
\nGood work!
\n","games":["The King's Crowns"]},{"at":380241990,"author":"Homer Dilpleu","login":"HomerDilpleu","gh":66157330,"text":"I won the game :) It was fun to play and very well made! I would have appreciated some punchy background music to fight all these enemies :) Well done!
\n","games":["Unloved 13"]},{"at":380327524,"author":"Igor Khotin","login":"invider","gh":5694089,"url":"http://www.ikhotin.com","twitter":"chaostarter","text":"Such an addictive game built out of a few simple elements. It shows that you don’t need a ton of content for a strategy game to be captivating and it is totally possible to squeeze that into 13k.
\nA little of feedback could improve the game immensely. And it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Keep the simple shapes for the units, but add simple particle effects when they fight and die + maybe some sound effects. And the battles will be much more interesting to watch.
\n","games":["Liminal Gap Runner"]},{"typ":2,"at":380400196,"author":"Victor Debone","login":"debone","gh":763457,"url":"https://javascri.pl/","twitter":"javascripl","text":"Hello! Thanks for your submission to js13k!\nI’m sure you’ve worked hard on your game, but I’m not aware of how much time you spent on it, so excuse me if things I mention were in your mind, but got left out in the rush of the month or just because you hit the 13kb limit :)
\nFirst i was unhappy about my units just disapearing on top of the screen (unaware that they are destroying the infrastructure of the enemies)
\nBut it turned out, that the game is pretty balanced. Nice core mechanic.
\nMusic/Sfx would be great
\n","games":["Aargh! Triskaideka attacks!"]},{"at":380454175,"author":"Jasper Renow-Clarke","login":"picosonic","gh":26137750,"twitter":"femtosonic","text":"The game looked pretty good, the graphics worked well, although the balls were a little simplified.
\nI liked the concept, and how the game played out.
\nFor me the game pace was very slow, not sure if it was my PC or if the game was intentionally slowed down?
\nThe right-side looked way more developed than the main game board.
\nAll in all a fun but slow game.
\n","games":["rollermaze"]},{"typ":2,"at":380494684,"author":"Joep van Duinen","url":"https://poki.com","twitter":"joepvduinen","text":"The game has an interesting and engaging concept, with fun core gameplay. The pace can feel a bit slow at times. The settings are really cool, and it would be nice to see the graphics show more of it. Adding music, sound effects, and more visual feedback could elevate the experience even further.
\n"}],"results":{"theme":{"rank":102,"min":1,"score":2.35,"max":4.2},"innovation":{"rank":114,"min":1,"score":2.47,"max":4.47},"gameplay":{"rank":35,"min":1,"score":3.44,"max":4.29},"graphics":{"rank":128,"min":1,"score":2.5,"max":4.76},"audio":{"rank":144,"min":1,"score":1.24,"max":4.34},"controls":{"rank":80,"min":1,"score":2.88,"max":4.24},"primary":{"rank":114,"min":6,"score":14.88,"max":24.47},"label":"Overall"}}