digitaliliad 2024-04-16 15:42
Absolutely LOVED the monster character designs. The music was subtle but groovy. The draw mechanic was so smooth. Good job team!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Chain Reaction
By ategon, Icecubegame, isaac tumor and Vulkaara
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 380 | 3.75 | 58 | |
| Fun | 582 | 3.44 | 58 | |
| Innovation | 128 | 3.93 | 59 | |
| Theme | 48 | 4.41 | 59 | |
| Graphics | 319 | 4.07 | 59 | |
| Audio | 363 | 3.58 | 57 | |
| Humor | 726 | 2.78 | 51 | |
| Mood | 625 | 3.50 | 57 |
Absolutely LOVED the monster character designs. The music was subtle but groovy. The draw mechanic was so smooth. Good job team!
That's a really cool control! The monster variety is a bit too much to remember tho, and I think that the gameplay would go much smoother if the spell book is always be displayed on the screen, and prev/next page should be on hotkey (maybe Q/E).
I love the concept, drawing to do magic is awesome. Also the art is amazing! This is a drastic suggestion, but I actually think the game might work a bit better without a player avatar? It could be cool to focus on drawing sigils and manipulating the horde of monsters and not worry about running around. Anyway, just an idea I had while playing. Awesome entry!
The art was insanely well made and the summoning mechanic was very cool. I wanted to test what would happen if I go all the way to the left and down and it teleported me seamlessly which was pretty cool. At first I didn't realize that the enemies would draw agro to me if they were in the circle, but I figured out afterwards and watched them fight. Some sort of ramp up on credits you earn so you can purchase stuff faster would be a nice suggestion. The game overall was very good!
Fun idea! I feel like the symbol drawing could be a bit smoother. Sometimes I feel like it gets stuck or something, and isn't drawing what I want. And I get that there is a time limit for the highscore, but I would have liked a separate game mode without time limit, just to see how crazy I can make this ecosystem. The monster designs are cool! Would be nice if the different monsters have different strength (maybe they do?) but it's Ludum Dare, so totally understand things like that didn't get in. The dashing and knockback feels nice. The music sounds cool, though feels a bit out of place. Well done on a good game!
I loved it! After you told me the monsters flipped when you hit them, I just kept doing it LUL
Thank you for watching the stream and sharing your game with us!
The system and gameplay is very interesting. I am just missing feedback on the summons killing each other
It is simple but fun! The upgrade mechanic gave it a bit of replayability, and the leaderboard made me grind for a better score a couple times. The music also is really catchy. At first, the combo system felt a little random for me, but later I've started being able to set up combos!
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Woah what a unique concept, loved playing this. I love all of the different sprite art looks great, and that music was banging!
Such intelligent design. This game is an incredible example of what a hard-working group can achieve in such a small amount of time! https://youtu.be/8RRyww-COCM
Great entry @ategon! I really like the design and it's interesting gameplay. I would loved to have more feedback from the monsters when they are fighting. Otherwise, awesome job with the graphics, music and coding :)
What a fun concepts!! It was really interesting seeing all the different patterns summoning all the different monsters. I don't think ill ever be able to take first place unfortunately :( 2nd.PNG
Thanks for dropping by my stream! <3
here is the vod if you want to rewatch
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2123241621?t=0h24m38s
I rather like this one, great music, great pixelart! Hello from the stream!
I really like the BGM and art style of your game. Your work is the most unique "draw to summon" gameplay that I have ever played. It reminds me of the Chinese word "cultivation of gu". I don't know how to explain this word intuitively. It is somewhat similar to arranging several monsters in a container, and these monsters will compete with each other and in the end only the strongest one will survive. This is a slightly dangerous and curious process, but your art design greatly dilutes these emotions and makes me feel a very interesting game.
Very interesting concept! The graphics and music are great too! Only feedback I could give is that it might not be completely clear when a summon fails or succeeds, especially when there are already a lot of creatures on the screen already. Maybe a sound effect or an animation would be enough. Other than that I think it's a pretty good game!
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I guess I can enter the public leaderboard in 5th place π
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I think the only issue I had was that, because lots of symbols are closed paths, I thought these two were too and couldn't figure out why I couldn't summon them until the penny dropped:
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(In my mind the missing lines were just hidden by the lower resolution graphics)
lovely work! I particularly enjoyed the music!
Quite fun! Very good sound design and nice graphics. Maybe only missing some "successfully summoned" sound. The drawing mechanic is unique and well-implemented. The whole game feels super-polished. It's fun to play and fun to replay. I only wasn't sure how to summon the last guy until I realized it's an S not, and not two triangles :laughing:
Sometimes I wished there was a way to just cancel a drawing in progress, but I guess that would take away the time penalty for making a mistake.
I didn't do all that well, but here you go, my score:
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Pretty fun! I like the sprites they are well done and the monster designs are fun and varied and I especially liked that track that plays, it's super catchy lol
The concept is pretty fun and I like the whole aspect of paper rock scissors, I did my best to try to lure the monsters into fighting each other but I wasn't able to get a very high score on my tries
I gotta say tho drawing is somewhat slow and there have been a lot of moments when I would draw over the symbol I just drew because I'd expect it to spawn, and I couldn't quite get quite get used to the waiting time. I would prefer if it was a bit more fast and there was some sort of sound effect to indicate that the pattern has been recognized.
I couldn't spawn one of the guys but then I realized I was doing the symbol wrong, it would be helpful if the instructions were just a bit bigger so it would make the pattern a bit easier to read.
With some polish I think this could be pretty awesome! Good job!
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Looks like it's a viable strategy to just spam the first two triangle shapes π I really enjoy the music, even if it doesn't capture the sorcery/summoner theme. I would really like some indicator of what creature I just summoned and maybe a counter on what types of creatures are currently on the battlefield. I also don't see the "Chain Reaction" part of the game yet, but maybe I just have to play a couple more rounds. The +20 time card seems pretty powerful to a point where it kind of feels bad to have anything else as an option, and I never used the dash.
Very cool game! A bit hard to get the hang of it but it's very fun and creative!
Great experience! It is a very interesting mechanic to basically herd hostiles together so they can fight each other while you scoop in to get the loot. Music was awesome. Art is also great. The upgrade mechanic is well thought out and balanced. Really polished for a jam game!
I couldn't pull off any of the slashed through summons on my trackpad. There are a LOT of mechanics going on here. Honestly a bit overwhelming.
Great job! The art is incredible, I really liked the character designs and the color palette used, as well as the visual effects. I found the music a little annoying, maybe it's something very particular, but I found it too frenetic for the atmosphere of the game. The idea of ββthe game and implemented mechanics are very original and fun, well done! xD
Great work! I had a lot of fun running around and summoning creatures. I also had some trouble with the slashed through summons on trackpad. It might help to have some sort of indicator of how long I have to draw the shape before things execute. Loved the art and creature designs - especially loved how you clearly indicated the shapes they were made of
Nice game! I liked the music & art - both simple but fit the theme well. The mechanic was cool. There was definitely a learning curve to remember all of the different shapes and combos, but it wasn't too hard.
I'm not sure I understood the 'beats' mechanic (or maybe it didn't work?) For instance, putting water up against fire and it seems the fire won? Almost like only one of them was actually attacking?
But I enjoyed it - I played through a few times, it was fun and I felt like I was actually getting better! Nice job!
It would have been good to have some actual sounds as well as the music (but also understand that's one of the first things to get cut when you are running low on time in a Jam!)
Nice one!
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@ciaranw The rock paper scissors was implemented backwards on accident so it does the opposite of what it says in the book
Enemies will only attack the element category thats coded for them to beat and ignore all other enemies (so in the game fire is coded to attack any spirit enemies including water and water will attack any body elements like earth, salt, etc. only)
A took me a few tries to figure it out (I wasn't drawing the *right* kind of triangle), but once I got the hang of it, I liked everything about this game.
The music is a banger, and I love the sprite work as well. Tons of strategy in choosing what to summon and having a leaderboard is awesome, it's very addicting. This could definitely be turned into a full game. Fantastic submission, and great work.
Excelent job. I had a lot of fun palying this game. The art and music and mechanics are excelent. For now this is best game I played.
I really liked how this game handled the theme, as well as the combat. It isn't your cookie-cutter combat, you make the thing that wants to kill you battle for you, that's awesome! And the graphics are so cute I want just to squish them. Well done!
Good solid entry, liked the snapping for the summoning drawing. The visual very good as was the audio. The gameplay took a bit to get the hang of but I got there in the end.
yo the way the monster sprites have the symbol that was used to summon them tho???? such a good design choice! music was dope as heck for sure too haha
i wasnt too sure the point summoning more different monsters of the same type like why not just spam the 3 basic shapes? one reason i thought is maybe if you start drawing the wrong shape or mess up drawing what you want, you can still recover. im just not sure if theres more to it i'm missing.
overall really awesome game!
I really like the graphics in this. They remind me of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The music has a good vibe but sounds kind of unfitting for the game. Gameplay-wise, I didn't notice that there was a timer the first time until it hit me with a time's up. The symbol drawing UI felt somewhat uncomfortable. I can give two reasons. First, that it feels unresponsive due to the lack of graphical feedback. I think that adding a particle effect under the cursor and a graphical reaction from the nearest node would help. Second, when playing on fullscreen (2560x1080 in my case) the travel distance from node to node feels too long. I think that maybe the scale of the symbol drawing UI should be kept constant regardless of the screen size. Otherwise, good job!
A wonderful game! The first time i see it, i think it was not that good, but after i play it, it changes my opinion. The sprites are pretty good --- not only they are simple, but they play good role in this game. I really like this game, thanks for your work.
Nice twist to summmon your own enemies. It is a bit hard to get into because there is a lot to memorize and multitasking going on. At first I did not notice the cards at the bottom of my screen and was waiting for upgrades the whole run. Really love the enemy design!!
A frustration of mine is that initially I did not seem to understand how to correctly start drawing; nothing happens when I click/drag with any of the mouse buttons. Turns out that it is only after a line has been established that any visual hint starts to emerge β and the entire drawing mechanic does not work on the web version (I'm using the trackpad on macOS). This made me revisit the game several times before I figured out that specific rough edge, and that only the local version works for me.
Apart from that, I appreciated the game once I got into it. On top of the ordinary drawing mechanic is a nice combination with alchemy-based automatic combat, with decent graphics and audio, a well-thought-out help book, and the added fun of global rankings. I'm also intrigued by the tarot references :crystal_ball:
[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2124420925?t=03h31m02s)
The soundtrack was too much of a bop for me to focus on anything else. :laughing:
So interesting! The concept and theme really blended well nicely for this game. At first I was a bit confused on what was the best way to get more points, but after playing for some time, I kinda figured it out.
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Not the highest rank ever but hey, the game was still super fun, and that's what it's all about. Awesome job!
Great game design! Love the art style. I'm not sure if GUI for monsters summoning need to hide in the left-bottom corner. I feel like move mouse just to see it is a bit annoying. Besides that, awesome game!
Cute game! I loved the 'life sim' bit of it where after a while the creatures would continue popping up as if summoning or birthing new ones. I wanted to keep playing! Great dragon warrior-esk graphics!