The Spellswapper of the Dark Forest

ellaris 2023-10-02 13:37

- Nice idea, I like the creature and weapon art and effects. - I felt there was no reason not to spam shoot, especially once you get some guided missiles which follow your cursor forever and you become invincible. Maybe have a second loading bar when the second bar loads the next spell does x2 damage or something. - There wasn't much going one, at the beginning you discover new spells but after awhile it became repetitive, once knowing some of the spell effects I knew what I was lucking for. I think it would be nice knowing the loading speed for each spell to compare easily, because 15 bullets is more than 1 but not better if each bullet has the same loading time (a choice between interactivity/precision/dps)

yellowkamel 2023-10-02 23:22

On the easy side, but very cool! Liked it a lot. Alwys "in the dark forest" :smile:

thaprofesional 2023-10-05 11:19

Really cool graphics, appropriately crispy sound effects and a cool feel. Highlight was the music it was exceptional.

Difficulty ramped up well. Never got bored / had fun the whole time. Felt kind of tense towards the end.

Furthest I got was wave 11 :)

tempestcognitor 2023-10-05 11:42

Really enjoyed it, the combos were fun to play with. The music is chill but kind of ominous, I felt like I was in a last stand sort of situation. Made it to wave 17 in the end! image.png

tygrak 2023-10-12 09:12

@tempestcognitor wow! that's extremely impressive and blew my record out of the water!

salier 2023-10-12 17:46

Damn I loved it, this hit right into the types of games I like. The small deck-building by replacing spells fit quite well into the theme, and works quite well. With three for a synergie out of four slot, it can be challenging to keep both a synergy, spell with modifiers and spell-type. Awesome entry.

nougato 2023-10-12 17:48

What an inspiring vampire survivor concept! With limited space and a really cool mechanic, I loved it ❤. Great job on the animations; I felt the difficulty truly escalated past the 10th wave. Well done !

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tygrak 2023-10-12 17:50

thank you guys! @nougato haha yes it is kind of inspired by vampire survivors -- instead of only moving and not shooting, you only shoot and don't move :D

jack728 2023-10-12 19:48

Great game! Very fun and polished. One complaint is that a lot of important information is on the edge of the screen, where you can't see it because your attention is on the enemies in the center. Some important information, such as which weapon is next and if it's ready to fire, is unfortunately difficult to read. Displaying this information in the middle of the screen, or close to the player character, will make it easier to read. The cooldown system could be improved on as well. The way I understand it, the cooldown is based on the next weapon. If a strong weapon is next, you have to wait a while to use it. If a weak weapon is next, you don't have to wait long before shooting. This is sometimes annoying (I actually died because my laser took too long to load, even though I just used a weak attack which didn't help me fend off the enemies). I think the cooldown should apply after using a weapon. For example, after clearing out a lot of enemies with a strong weapon, you can afford to wait a while before shooting next. After using a weak weapon, the cooldown should be short, regardless of which weapon is next. This is just my opinion, though, and I may even be wrong about how this system works. Overall, this is a great game and I enjoyed playing it!

archeroffaith 2023-10-12 20:08

Very good game, I enjoyed every second playing it!

gilborn 2023-10-12 20:19

I think this is the game I spent the longest time on in this LD!

The different spells are great, the stohic guitar sounds fit very well and the gameplay is fun. The must to give a spell away created cool dilemma situations with uncertain outcome.

Made it to wave 16. Great entry!

fabula-rasa 2023-10-12 22:06

Quite fun to play! The Earth laser is what killed me. Should have known better - stick with gold, always stick with gold :laughing:

I liked the variety of spells and their effect. And different enemies as well. You achieved a lot in compo time! The guitar music gave me an Old West vibe, and gave the gameplay a nice background.

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kanity 2023-10-13 00:23

Can't seem to get the game to work, it opens as just a black screen. I can hear the music, but nothing is happening (tried clicking and pressing buttons as well): notworking.jpg

minibetrayal 2023-10-13 00:39

I'm not very good at this type of game, but I enjoyed it. Good fun, well done!

snesgaard 2023-10-13 17:36

Very fun with the randomized spells. Think it would be interesting to expand on the idea by maybe varying the level geometry.

tygrak 2023-10-13 18:13

@kanity hmm strange, I am not really sure what could be causing that -- if you'll have extra time would you take a look if running the included executable ".console.exe" prints anything out into the console?

kr4ft3r 2023-10-13 22:02

11? You call that a high score? :D Screenshot 2023-10-13 235157.png

But ye, you have clearly reached mastery of game design (and jamming, considering how well rounded the game is). Guitar is lovely touch as well.

While reading the game's description and some spell descriptions there were moments where I though it will be a pain in the ass where I have to put in some effort to understand, but on contrary everything went smoothly and I really felt like the spell set was my own personal thing. The spell replacement part felt like an interesting decision, as is the way it should be.

There is really nothing to criticize here considering it's a 48h game, apart from that I don't understand why a dark forest would have this checker pattern floor, but somehow it doesn't feel completely out of place, really good job.

kanity 2023-10-13 22:26

@tygrak it says: Godot Engine v4.1.1.stable.mono.official.bd6af8e0e - https://godotengine.org OpenGL API 3.3.0 NVIDIA 441.20 - Compatibility - Using Device: NVIDIA - GeForce GTX 1060

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defrag 2023-10-14 04:02

This was one of the few LD entries that I desired to fully explore. I was intrigued by the prospect of different synergies. I elected to go with a Gold build, which carried me through wave 17. I occasionally had what seemed to be a bonus cast - ie, an extra salvo of three gold tornadoes would be fired when I expected the next spell to trigger. Maybe that was a part of the synergy? As it was, I only saw the synergy kick-in as an extra bullet/tornado/whatever being fired in a salvo. I also don't think I understood what the 'ultra' or 'quick' was trying to tell me. The systems were interesting, graphics and audio helped sell the story, and the CGL was fun.

Did you have a favorite build to go use when testing this?

defrag 2023-10-14 04:03

Sorry, reading back through the out-of-game instructions, I now see that I can hover over the spell types to see what the synergy benefit is supposed to be. I think my experience of spells sometimes double-firing was a bug then (not an unhappy bug, mind you).

tygrak 2023-10-14 09:54

Thanks everyone for playing the game :)

@fabula-rasa Wave 18! Incredible, I think you have the high score now!

@kr4ft3r Thank you so much! I have been using the "dark forest" as a sort of unifying thing between my jam games for some time (I made 8 dark forest games now already :D), though most of them do have a bit of a darker aesthetic that didn't come through in this one haha

@kanity Ah, I was hoping it would give some error message, thanks for trying it! I'll have to think about what could be causing that

@defrag The "ultra" and "quick" are basically modifiers that improve the spells :) -- ultra increases damage, quick cast speed, there were a few others in the LD version too I think. Hmm, the double casting is strange, yeah the gold synergy definitely shouldn't have been causing that -- I am actually still working on the game and I had a few instances where I felt like something similar happened, so I'll have to do a deep dive and try figure it out.

Also, if anyone would be interested in how the game looks now, here's a recording I made a few days ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwElfI4ck8k

furtive-pygmy 2023-10-18 20:15

Love the game, well polished and enjoyable to play. Music and art was simple yet effective. Will probably give this a lot of playtime when I get some free time, great job!