[Game Release] Lightcore Guardians - A Tactical Roguelike Built With Solar2D

[iamjet]

Hi everyone!

I’m excited to share that Lightcore Guardians, my latest project built entirely with Solar2D, is now live on the App Store!

Engine: Solar2D (formerly Corona SDK)
Genre: Turn-based tactical roguelike
Platform: iOS
Download: ‎Guard the Tower App - App Store

About the Game

In Lightcore Guardians, you lead a squad of 3 heroes to protect the Lightcore Tower against waves of enemies. Inspired by games like Into the Breach, it blends classic tactics gameplay with a roguelike upgrade system.

Key Features:

• Turn-based chain-attack mechanics with deep positioning strategy
• Over 50 handcrafted levels and countless random events
• 9 hero classes, 100+ skills, and roguelike upgrades
• Beautiful pixel art & intuitive UI
• Built completely in Solar2D

Why Solar2D?

As a solo developer, Solar2D allowed me to:

• Rapidly prototype and refine the game’s core mechanics
• Deploy with great performance on iOS
• Use Lua’s flexibility for creating chain-attack systems, level generation, and UI

I’m really thankful for the power and simplicity this engine offers — I couldn’t have finished this game without it.

I’d love your feedback!

Any comments, bug reports, or thoughts are welcome — especially from fellow Solar2D devs. If you like the game, a review or rating would mean a lot!

Let me know if you’d like to know more about how specific systems were implemented — I’m happy to share code or breakdowns.

Thanks, and happy coding!

[Kan98]

Congratulations, looks so amazing!

Love pixel style.

[iamjet]

Thank you

[hagi]

It looks really nice @iamjet ! Congrats!

Disclaimer: I’m not a heavy player so the feedback may be stupid, especially I’ve played only tutorial

Confirming every action seems to be… iritating a bit Maybe an option to speed it up in settings?

Also after my hero moves towards enemy I automatically tap on the enemy to kill him… but it doesn’t work that way, I have to choose attack type first. If I have only one attack type maybe I could just tap the enemy?

Something seems to be off on the right side of the top bar, especially the “eye” numbers.

If you’re open to questions… as a beginner I have few beginner questions:

• how do you cope with iphone/ipad resolutions, do you use “adaptive” scale configuration?
• what is the folder structure for your code?
• what is your approach to “classes”? metatables?
• what external libraries/tools do you use? do you use something like SSK2 or everything is custom code?
• do you keep state in some module required everywhere or use properties on scenes (assuming you’re using composer)?
• do you use widget.* library?
• why “buy me a coffe” costs more than “unlock full game”?

probably too many questions…

[petiflas]

Looks very cool! I would really like to play it, isnt there an Android version?

[iamjet]

Thank you for playing my game. I’d love to answer your questions. First, regarding resolution, I set different resolutions in config.lua based on different screen aspect ratios. Regarding data, I store all data in .csv files and have written a map editor to edit the data. I also use some widget libraries, such as buttons. Finally, “Buy me a coffee” is more expensive than “full game” because coffee is really expensive.

[clang]

Thanks for sharing!