FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD51 → The book of time magic

The book of time magic

By senso

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1553.6177
Fun1753.4877
Innovation1133.6777
Theme1533.7975
Graphics1443.7477
Audio1143.5977
Humor473.7275
Mood1393.5375

Comments

senso 2022-10-02 20:23

Ok , Where done again :)

Keep in mind i'm not an artist but i learned alot in the last 6 months.

matt-green 2022-10-03 02:30

I really enjoyed the 2048 type game. It was pretty intuitive and I found myself playing it for quite a while.

The enemy progression wasn't super clear and I did have some questions.

All in all, this felt more like an unfinished "finished" game than a completed game jam game. And I mean that as the greatest compliment. I would expect to see a game like this in an app store and play it when I was bored, overlooking any minor issues. Doing it in 48 hours is bananas.

The opening was funny, but I did get worried at one point because I didn't know how long it was going to be and there was no timer or skip.

haydads 2022-10-03 04:54

Cool game. Very impressive graphics and audio. I got a bit confused about what I was meant to do. Couldnt really work out how to upgrade the tiles. Great submission though

lancival 2022-10-03 05:02

The intro was really great, but it would be nice if there were some more instructions about how to play the game - it wasn't obvious (to me) that you should be merging the squares. Also, is there a way to get rid of smaller numbers? When your attack increases, lower numbers stop spawning, so you can't merge away any that are still on the grid.

senso 2022-10-03 05:38

Thanks fore the feedback @haydads i thougt it whas self expained so stupit of me :)

senso 2022-10-03 05:42

@lancival thank you fore the feedback! The smaller ones fill your board you need to get them out by casting. You can also die :) (rougelite)

senso 2022-10-03 05:47

@matt-green thank you fore your explaned feedback. If only we had more time. Next in the to do list whas enemy hp bar like in double dragon om botten right. Thérèse is No skipping Bobs intro 😂(took me 11 takes so listen to it )

haydads 2022-10-03 05:49

@Senso not like that at all, just took me a while to work it out

m11 2022-10-03 08:10

Great intro, and a really impressive amount of content for a jam game!

senso 2022-10-03 08:51

@m11 Thank you i worked realy hard on this one almoust no sleep :)

henrik-ganard 2022-10-03 12:47

Great game. I love the aesthetics and the art style. And the intro, that was great. Thanks for making this game.

xpycm 2022-10-03 13:03

Nice graphics, especially I love torches in the main menu.

captaindreamcast 2022-10-03 13:05

I leveled up all the way to level 4, which is already pretty high level for a magician. Bob really got quite powerful with all those 24 and 48 fire/ice spells.

The story was funny and I thought the voice acting was charming. The gameplay was a fun take on the theme. All around a very impressive entry.

senso 2022-10-03 13:34

@henrik-ganard Thank you for the kind words

olddog 2022-10-03 13:35

Very fun game, I will always focus on adding and subtracting numbers, and then I can play it until the end, very interesting, goodjob

senso 2022-10-03 13:35

@xpycm Nice made them in a few minutes with a little luck that the turned out this way.

senso 2022-10-03 13:37

@captaindreamcast Thank you fore your feedback, Bob feels strong because of you :)

senso 2022-10-03 13:40

@olddog Strange isnt it that adding those blocks feels nice :), Thanks fore your feedback

dekajoo 2022-10-03 20:51

Favorite compo entry so far, well done !

senso 2022-10-03 20:58

@dekajoo thanx you fore that complement!

lustdante 2022-10-03 21:44

Oh my goodness. The narration was awesome! The joke was spot on (time -> timed). Twice in a row, I ran into a bug where game loop froze except for the character animations. This happened when I tried to cast lightening spell (since I saw blue enemy) and arranged yellow tiles vertically.

thegamearchitect 2022-10-03 22:33

good job!

lone-wolf 2022-10-03 23:36

> It's been quite a while, I should probably stop playing now

> Untitled.png

> ehhhh, a few more clicks...

> Shoot, number 10 cards, my collection is all messed up again...

> Dangit, I finally died, it was too hard to balance getting rid of my old health sets with keeping down the monster population

Nice work! One thing that might be nice is an indicator of how much health you're going to lose from enemies at the end of every 10 seconds, would allow for more intense situations where you're balancing an extremely fine line between healing and fighting

Good voice acting/filtering btw!

senso 2022-10-04 06:29

@lustdante thank you fore the feedback. Will look intro the “bug”

senso 2022-10-04 06:36

@lone-wolf i see a 512 tile Nice! If only we had more time i could give enemys the hp bar and damage indicator. I also had great idea fore the extra effect on Each spell. Getting it to work as it does now whas maximum with also had to do te sound and art.

senso 2022-10-04 06:37

@thegamearchitect thanks for playing buddy.

pusheeneiro 2022-10-04 08:51

Nice concept, and great voice acting.

senso 2022-10-04 08:53

@pusheeneiro thank you for playing my game.

bridgeonastick 2022-10-04 08:57

That was really fun! The narration in the beginning was really well done. Levelling up and powering up the spawning blocks is cool, but it makes it hard to get rid of the two's if you only spawn threes. The enemies didn't really put up much of a threat, eventually you just get too strong. Good entry though, keep it up!

senso 2022-10-04 09:06

@bridgeonastick thanks for playing and your feedback. Wish there whas more time to do the “end”game content.

matt-ravenhall 2022-10-04 09:22

Really game combination of ideas. Difficulty might need some scaling, as I eventually started to one-shot everything before it got onto the screen. The narration is also a really nice touch.

selkieharbour 2022-10-04 11:33

Liked the idea of the puzzle-combat & great voice acting! ALLELUIA

aryaman 2022-10-04 11:45

Nice game and art... They seem cool

senso 2022-10-04 11:47

@matt-green ty for playing my game ! Yes the enemy scaling could be better. You made Bob to powerful :)

senso 2022-10-04 11:49

@selkieharbour Thank you fore the feedback.

senso 2022-10-04 11:50

@aryaman Thank you for rating my game !

fedir 2022-10-04 11:57

Great combination) And awesome audio

senso 2022-10-04 11:58

@fedir thank you 🙏

venfola 2022-10-04 12:02

Good idea well executed! Graphics are nice, the gameplay works and all the information is clear. Needs some balancing though as quite quickly enemies are killed before appearing on the screen.

mrmaico 2022-10-04 12:25

This is weird. At first I was confused, then I understood how to play. Then I thought, hmm this is quite slow and too easy BUT I still played for far too long. Then I died on purpose.. and get resurrected? OK OK maybe 10 more minutes :smile: It was weird because I felt that it was too easy but I also couldn't stop playing. You somehow created a quite addictive little game. Good job.

ategon 2022-10-04 13:54

Pretty nice merging game! The gameplay loop was fun with the option to do things like save up a lot of medium size tiles or merge them all to have a lot of short term power. One thing to add in if you continue post jam is increasing the numbers of everything on the board when there's the level ups instead of only new spawns as there's a period where the player can't merge much (and then lingering tiles)

nyxkn 2022-10-04 13:55

Was quite confusing at first, but then went quite smoothly once figured out. I thought difficulty was a bit too easy and there wasn't any sense of danger. One annoying thing was when tiles changed from being multiples of 2 to 3, because then some 2 tiles were left over and couldn't be combined with anything. A clean replacement of all tiles would have worked better probably. Art is quite nice and game idea is solid. Might just need some better balancing to make it more fun. Game had a great mood and good amount of polish. It was only missing better instructions. Well done!

ch33sybacon 2022-10-04 14:09

Really liked the art style! It was a nice simple game

kevin-du 2022-10-04 14:11

Good job! it would be a great mobile game. (btw, the AI is a little weak. I can't die.)

fae-pdf 2022-10-04 14:12

timed magic.jpg

Ah, the brutally efficient magic of "number go up". You channelled the addictive, skinner-box element of 2048 into a cute little aRPG package. Balance feels very strange; I killed one of the late game slimes with an attack that did very little damage, I think. I'm not entirely sure if code-wise, the enemies really take into account the damage dealt to them. The game is very easy as a result, and starts feeling a little hollow. I do enjoy the idea of the timed spells that consume the results of your various combinations, though, that's a neat little design idea that gives rise to interesting decision space! I tried to make a spell reach 1024 and levelled up to level 5 before I could. The story in my mind was that I was trying to resurrect my dead significant other with a particularly powerful life spell.

On that note, the game somewhat lacked an endgoal, which would have given it some more direction, I think.

You're using nested reward schedules that feed into one another to great effect; combining your 4 colors to the next bigger number, using that to kill the enemies to gain XP, gaining XP to level and make even bigger numbers. Having 4 colors with a little elemental triad going on is smart as well. I enjoy how the game pushes you to rotate your spells, because having big number blocks makes it harder to combine your blocks, and thus harder to get newer blocks and go higher faster. Every time you use your biggest blocks, you get a burst of action where you're combining frantically.

I enjoy the base value of your blocks going up with your level. It gives rise to this nice little pattern where you have to "get rid" of your old multiples which you can no longer combine now that you levelled up, which forces you to stay on one spell and "use up" all your spells of that type until you can get rid of that pesky 1 or 2 value block that's eating up space. If the difficulty was more balanced, there would be genuine risk-taking to this management: since every spell cast is 10 seconds, there's a very real cost to trying to use up every block of one color just to get rid of a weak spell.

You really piggybacked on the affordances from 2048 here, not telling us that only same-value blocks can combine - it felt instinctive.

All in all, an interesting, rather fun entry. Well done! There's a lot of character to the artstyle and the voice acting is really charming as well! Great job!

jose-bonilla 2022-10-04 14:57

Hi, I think this a great concept for a full game. I enjoyed it. My main concern is that instructions were not clear. I was about to submit my rating when I read in other comments that you could **merge numbers**! So once I read this, I played again and I obviously found it much more enjoyable. You should really work on this - you don't even need to modify the game, you can just update this page (like, right now!) and it will greatly help you with ratings.

Two issues I found: 1) I somehow managed to drag a tile out of the playing area, this should not be allowed; image_2022-10-04_095629541.png

2) I managed to get a 3 on a tile somehow - this should not be allowed, right, being powers of two? Sorry I don't have a screenshot for that one!

Also, let us skip the intro/voiceover. I found it a bit annoying that you couldn't skip it, and the sound had way too much reverb effect, I couldn't understand some of the words.

Best!

senso 2022-10-04 17:00

@venfola thank you for the feedback! Balancing is needed indeed

senso 2022-10-04 17:02

@mrmaico yes this is what I tried to do get you a little hooked :) Thanks for playing.

senso 2022-10-04 17:07

@ategon thank you for leaving your feedback. I do agree with you if your stuck with a 2 is not that nice. had some good ideas for that but no time :)

zimny11 2022-10-04 17:27

Great game! Love the voice acting :) I'm not sure if I'm missing something but it would be nice to have some info about the progress (if there is a win condition). Also, heal spells are showing a bit too often and clogging the spell book. Cool art style too. Nice job!

senso 2022-10-04 17:39

@fae-pdf you played long I see :). Do agree it’s not a game with endgame content. Please don’t forget that everything is made in 48 hours by only me :)

senso 2022-10-04 17:41

@kevin-du thank you for playing my game :) I do agree the enemys are a little weak. ( or Bob super strong I say job well done :)

senso 2022-10-04 17:45

@jose-bonilla thank you for breaking my game what have you done ( hahaha ) Thank you your feedback is valuable!

senso 2022-10-04 17:55

@zimny11 thanks for your feedback ! Had so manny plans but no more time :) this is the best I could do on this time .

james-joubert 2022-10-04 20:19

This game is fabulous!

It took me a while to realize that I could combine the different colors to make the spells stronger. But I was unstoppable once I figured that out.

I just wish the enemies moved a bit faster, or spawned more frequently. I never used the healing spells, and I was killing things that weren't even on screen yet.

But really love the overall concept.

senso 2022-10-04 20:48

@james-joubert thank you verry much for the feedback.

sirdorius 2022-10-04 20:51

Pretty cool once you understand how the spellbook works. I had a hard time understanding that I was supposed to be merging the same numbers. Also is quite annoying that some low level spells can't be cleared easily if you level up.

scidev 2022-10-04 23:37

This game is so addicting with the combining logic. And I love the voiced sound effects, so funny lol. I spent way too much time on this game lol.

Although, I must complain that between level ups the new cards sometimes being incompatible with the old cards (such as any prime number, like 3 or 5) and this leads to small cards that you can't effectively use or get rid of, but this is kindof a nitpick.

Also mention of the name bob reminds me of a few years back when I made the game "Bob the time travelling square" lol

senso 2022-10-05 05:51

@sirdorius thank you for the feedback.

senso 2022-10-05 05:54

@scidev thank you for playing to long :). Will have a look at your Bob :). Also will check out your game :)

nash 2022-10-05 14:27

This was an interesting jam game! Really fun twist on an over used 2048 game. Actually, I found myself not playing a lot attention what happened on the top half of the screen. I just did not feel like I had to. If I kept combining numbers the game almost played itself. So in the end, it actually felt a lot like a standard 2048 game.

Massive bonus points for voice acting. I cannot stress enough how big difference it made that the games started with this voice acting monolog. It really sucked me into the game and I wanted to know more. One of the best single ideas I have seen this jam!

senso 2022-10-05 14:46

@nash wow thank you for your kind words!

serxiolas 2022-10-05 21:43

Good entry! Nice voice acting and concept.

senso 2022-10-05 22:21

@serxiolas Thank you for your feedback.

misterstripey 2022-10-06 01:46

**THIS IS A STORY ABOUT BOB**

Hey, I enjoyed playing this on stream!: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1610268632?t=01h27m53s

Great job with this game. Like I said, I really enjoyed the chill matching gameplay that let me get into the zone and not worry too much about the specifics of combat. You even went above and beyond with the PRO voice acting intro. You've got talent - thanks for sharing your game!!

senso 2022-10-06 07:56

@misterstripey wow that means the world to me you can’t even imagine how much! Ty Ty Ty.

maksim-chugunov 2022-10-06 14:57

Someone probably pointed it out, but the only thing that kept screwing me is when new numbers appear, like I have a bunch of 3's and I start getting 4's and cant match anything and just can't play basically. Before that game was too easy. Despite that was very fun to combine numbers and make big spells, only wish it was more difficult

senso 2022-10-06 15:44

@maksim-chugunov thanks for the feedback . Enemy’s needed to be a little stronger. Exuatly I wanted that you would die at the point of the 3’s , so when you resplendent you have 3,6,12 and so on . Made a miscalculation in a last minute tweak unfortunately.

msplanlos 2022-10-06 15:55

The graphics are so interesting! Enjoyed playing it! (:

senso 2022-10-06 16:59

@msplanlos ty for playing my game and leave me some feedback.

stefan-laimer 2022-10-07 12:10

Really cool concept, I enjoyed it a lot. The intro was really good (amazing voice!!). I just wished the difficulty would ramp up a lot faster. But I feel like the game has a lot of potential!

senso 2022-10-07 14:36

@stefan-laimer Thank you for playing my game. As for the difficulty scale : good call needs tweaking.

rickylee 2022-10-07 23:06

Fun game! ^^ I think it just keeps going forever? I stopped when my power was like 5K it didn't seem like it was going up anymore. Its a fun mechanic I had fun playing, and the dialogue is hilarious :smile:

senso 2022-10-08 04:18

@rickylee 5k then you played a long long time :) Ty for taking the effort of leaving me feedback. Much appreciated!

nardandas 2022-10-08 07:59

I really liked the idea, the art was really nice and the voice acting was cool. I felt that the 2048 type gameplay could have some more feedback, as I really didn't understand exactly why some of my things were being turned into different things. I think when tiles turn over, maybe an increased pace would help with the wierd pacing as you upgrade from 1-2-3-4, or maybe that upgrade path could just follow the 1-2-4-8 pattern. I liked the simple elemental matching too, made the gameplay a little more stressful!

dhim 2022-10-08 12:31

Screen Shot 2022-10-08 at 14.11.34.png I played for far too long as well, The game of shooting enemies is slow but in the meantime, it's only really an excuse to continue playing a 4-colour 2048, which is a very nice game! The mechanics work quite well as you are not really stuck, but you can't get all to a high level. I had fun, trying to max several of them.

Unleashing a big 256 Red is a bit underwhelming! It would be awesome to have more of a kick!

I am of two minds about the progression of the tiles you get with you the level-up. The odd 3 and 5 make it impossible to continue your progression, so at some point, I had to try to sacrifice the odd 1, and 3 left that were hindering me. But on the other hand, that was challenging to clean ( you have to stop playing a bit, to avoid getting more of the colour so you can fully clear it)

Having somewhere what the monster are weak to (maybe by hovering them) would be nice, as I could never remember (however it was never challenging enough, so any decent sortilege would go through monsters)

Having an indication of the next tile to disappear, and which just appear would also help (maybe a small border, or a fade of the colour)

Very strong entry! If you wish you can check mine, it's also a tile-matching-based game!

sofignedova 2022-10-08 19:12

I want to see your game in the best in compo. I played your game on the stream!

senso 2022-10-08 19:45

@nardandas thank you for the feedback

senso 2022-10-08 19:47

@dhim Yes great idea ,mega impact on bigger spells. ! Thank you for the helpful feedback.

senso 2022-10-08 19:49

@sofignedova thank you for playing my game on your stream seeing you play helps allot in feedback analyses. Hope I’ll be in the top to :)

jean-baptiste 2022-10-09 02:32

Wow very nice mecanic of adding color to create more powerful spells. I didn't quite understand it at the begining, maybe a quick visual tutorial could have been nice.

Great voice over design, it creates a captivating mood instantly.

Maybe the whole thing is a bit too slow paced, but you're constrained by the theme.

Congrats for this game i had some fun playing it !

senso 2022-10-09 04:29

@jean-baptiste It deals a little slow because the enemies are a little weak. If the are a lot stronger it feels to fast :) I do agree something needs to happen to make it a little more challenging. Thank you for finding the time to play and rate my game.

zwodahs 2022-10-09 12:50

This game might the few that I wished that there are more mechanics. I thought the game was easy until the non 2s shows up. Those really screw up the math a lot. I thought that the solution might be to allow them to be add up, but I suppose that would be too easy.

For a first submission, this is really good, congrats.

senso 2022-10-09 16:02

@zwodahs thank you for your time. Appreciate that you took the time to write me a review!

dining-philosopher 2022-10-10 14:53

Well done, I kept going until I built together a 256-sized block of health (although I only afterwards realized that green was health). I find the best mechanic in this game that leveling up introduces bigger tiles that cannot be combined with the others, encouraging the player to try and clear one color to the point where all of the old tiles have been eliminated. Combining tiles at will is a bit too flexible though, taking much of the challenge from the game. The original 2048-style combining or perhaps combining two colors into a new one would make for some more interesting player choices.

vhalenn 2022-10-10 15:32

Really cool game ! I like the mood and the color choices ! It would just have been nice to have a skippable introduction.

senso 2022-10-10 16:04

@dining-philosopher thank you for the helpful feedback. Hope I can find the time to make this into a real game.

senso 2022-10-10 16:08

@vhalenn i realy appreciate that you took the time to review my game. There is no skipping because it took me to much time to make the intro ( actually i forgot ) :)

jrevel 2022-10-10 16:32

This is a good use of the theme ! I like how the 10 seconds theme imposes a pace that is slow enough to allow puzzle game mechanics to work with a gameplay that is more action based. I would have liked the mechanics to be a bit better explained, because I did not understand anything before I watched the comment section and discovered that the colored rectangled could be drag&dropped. It should either be explained in a tutorial or there should be feedback on hover, to show that they are interactable. Other than that, cool game, I liked it !

senso 2022-10-10 19:16

@jrevel thank you for playing my game. Feedback 📝 thank you 🙏.

bosco 2022-10-11 00:35

Fun and intuitive! It broke the first time i tried to play, the numbers on the tiles never increased. Refershing fixed it though. Game gets a bit easy after a while, but the quick feedback of the ui is nice, and making numbers go up always feels fun!

senso 2022-10-11 05:08

@bosco Ty for playing my game and that you made time to write me feedback.

n-n 2022-10-11 21:07

Cool game. Even without the tutorial, I pretty quickly figured out what to do. The only thing I didn't like was the blue and turquoise tiles. I often got them mixed up with each other, which wasted time. But everything else is great. Nice job :)

senso 2022-10-12 05:10

@n-n thank you for the feedback.

sameidandpw 2022-10-12 06:05

That was awesome, thanks for the game. I liked it so much that I even installed several versions of the game, even though I usually use https://sona9bet.in/app/. It's fun for me, though you can make money. If the joystick also worked well, that would be cool.

sameidandpw 2022-10-12 06:06

That was awesome, thanks for the game

senso 2022-10-12 06:44

@sameidandpw Much appreciated!

enderswype 2022-10-14 13:06

nice game, mouth sfx are funny ahha, the game is a bit slow to be honest and i also got the but of summoning 3 at some point, nice entry tho, i played it for quite a long time ahah

senso 2022-10-15 01:07

@enderswype Yes I know you play quickly to long :) Thanks for playing!

vykri 2022-10-16 23:38

Hey, thanks for making the game! I played through it and recorded my thoughts.

https://youtu.be/fIvakl42lrQ

senso 2022-10-17 18:04

@vykri Thank you for the feedback, appreciated the depth of feedback. The enemys needed to be a lot stronger so you need the heal and die somtimes that would clear the book. Last minute tweak made it to easy :( I’ll make this better if I finish in the top 💯 :)

epeachyband 2022-10-19 04:29

Voiceover is cool, sweet gameplay.

Thank you for an entry!

senso 2022-10-19 16:53

@epeachyband thank you for playing !

oldcezar 2022-10-20 22:14

Cool game with really pretty artstyle, gameplay is cool although a bit slow. I've got to 32 before odd numbers started appearing and I didn't wanted to give up on my big numbers so matching started to get harder. I also really enjoyed that little plot twist at start of the game :) Overall, really nice game!

senso 2022-10-21 06:15

@oldcezar thank you for those kind words.

vphyre 2022-10-21 16:02

Creative game. The mechanics of selecting the spell based on the enemy's weakness, as well as the spell grouping mechanic, are interesting. The graphics are functional, and the sound is nice (especially the voice). The gameplay is pretty solid. Good job.

senso 2022-10-21 16:35

@vphyre last minute thank you for playing my game.