Etherium

Made in 36 hours for Ludum Dare 43. Theme: Sacrifices must be made.

Genre:

Arena/Platformer

Description:

Professor Bambo, the great scientist, was able to find the 5th dimension, and to pick out a new type of energy from there - he called it etherium. Of course, our hero could not stop himself from studying the unknown. And so, he discovered that etherium could behave like a normal physical object, or like an electricity, in some sort of way, and every device powered with this mysterious energy was working far better than before!

But nothing went unseen for the dimension itself, and it decided to destroy our professor.

In order to banish the intruders, our pacifistic (and weaponless) professor will have to sacrifice every single ability he manages to duplicate from them.

You are the one, who’s gonna help Bambo destroy waves of etherium-possessed enemies using his new etherium shield technology, and you are the one, who will lead the world to technological progress!

P. S. Funnily enough, the only thing that was in common between Etherium and Super Crate Box originally was the overall sub-genre, but the more we delved into the intricate problems of creating an arena battler within harsh time constraints, the more solutions similar to those from SCB emerged: no time to implement real AI? Let’s make those enemies cycle through the level; Want more variety and challenge? Add “berserk” monster versions. Etc. Good thing the main twist of copying single-use abilities of the enemies stayed intact, haha.

Controls:

• Left/Right – Moving left/right
• Up or Space – Jumping
• Z – Use shield
• X – Use attacking ability
• Escape – Pausing (in-game)

Credits - Team TAG:

• Tay Elenberg (@tay-elenberg) - Art, Animation
• Anglain (@anglain) - Game Design, Sound Design
• Gil4 (@gil4) - Programming, Game Design