Top of the Ladder

You are a mighty archdevil, about to use your Infernal Orb to complete the Dark Ritual, and force all the mortals under your thrall! But the humans caught wind of your plan, and intend to destroy your orb before the ritual completes. And to make matters even worse... your water cooler broke and it's really hurting the morale of your goblins.

Balance being a fearsome final boss with the responsibilities of an office boss! Decide what to do about equipment breaking down, worker protests, and misplaced staplers, while still finding time to mow down humans with your mighty fire magic!

Features custom difficulty options for the hardcore gamers!

Controls:

WASD / Arrow Keys - Move
Control - Jump
Space - Attack
1, 2, 3 - Spells

Also supports (at least) Xbox and PS4 controllers!

Made for VimJam2 with themes Boss and On The Edge

Download

Download
TopOfTheLadderWindows.zip 40 MB

Comments

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Personally, I found the game difficult—having to juggle all the administrative tasks and single-handedly defend the orb meant that most of the time I was letting problems pile up, letting the orb be destroyed, or both.

Defending the orb felt off, too. Having knights walk right through you to smack the orb while you're punching them  feels...odd. It feels like they should prioritize attacking you, or at least not be able to walk through you. And the fact that no minions ever enter the orb room means that the minions ultimately seem to only exist to soften up enemies before they reach the orb.

But the concept is great, the art is effectively stylized, and the combat is surprisingly...polished for a game jam game. The three-hit combo was a nice touch; the uppercut seems more disorienting than anything, but the comet punch makes up for it.

Sorry you had a difficult time, difficulty is always tough to judge in jams! The shield knights and thief humans in black cloaks never attack you even if you attack them, it's just the archers and sword knights that will stop to attack you. Generally clearing out most of the humans gives you enough time to solve a few problems, since your minions can usually hold them off for a minute or so. The teleport spell can help a lot too.

Thanks for the feedback!

(+1)

Really cool game ! I though the uppercut was a bit hard to hit and it took me some time to realize there was something I could do in the left part of the level, it wasnt obvious were to stand to interact with stuff. I really liked that you had some choices, like killing you own minions or finding the stapler or killing the miner ghosts. 

Really cool concept, was fun to juggle between beating the crap of those miserable humans and dealing with office drama.

Glad you enjoyed it! I hoped that the tutorial telling you to go to the necromancer's guild and the "PROBLEM" text + pop-ups in corner would've been enough clarity, but admittedly something like a glowing area or arrow would've been better. But you know how it is with tutorialization in gamejam games, haha

(+1)

I did miss a couple of texts at the beginning because I had my hands busy slapping some humans.

3/5,  Almost good. This game has an interesting concept but it's so easy. I just press space on enemies and I win.  Hopefully, you can update the game and make it harder.

Always hard to judge difficulty with gamejams! I tried to lean towards making it too easy rather than too hard. I tried to compensate with the time/HP slider, but I'd have liked to add more difficulty options if I had the time.

Thanks.