FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → Tiny Summons

Tiny Summons

By jeremy-ryan

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall264.1650
Fun394.0150
Innovation34.5950
Theme224.3450
Graphics34.6051
Audio94.2549
Humor593.6648
Mood304.0549

Comments

drpepperisgood 2024-04-15 07:12

cute game, cool idea, wish more would happen when one team wins over another, like additional funds for the next round or something.

jcmonkey 2024-04-15 13:48

shockingly i managed to beat up unicorns and other things with 5 bears. i think the bees that the bears summon are super great and OP. kind of hard to spend more point when there is a twitch 30 second cooldown after you speak a command thing. so thats a bummer for single player.

100th-coin 2024-04-15 18:06

The wobbly animations are fantastic! Making a game played via twitch commands is also super cool and unique! I kinda wish the music would swap between "team forming music" and "battle music". It gets a bit repetitive as it stays on the same track the whole time.

My strategy is a bullfrog and 6 bears, because if they can get some bees between them and the foes the bees keep spawning and become unstoppable. Or maybe 10 hedgehogs...

I will say, the 90 second wait between rounds can get a bit boring, and since the gameplay is entirely in the team setup stage, (watching the match unfold has no inputs, so there's no skill to it) it's especially uninteresting when nobody else is in chat. The fights are fun to watch, but the 90 second wait kills the momentum.

It would be cool if every few rounds had some random modifier, like "+50 team points!", "Everything throws rocks", "Both teams get one free Dragon", "Frogs are half price!", or "Both teams collaborate to defeat the boss!". Something to spice it up, you know? I found myself quickly wishing the game had more to offer.

Anyway, with all that critical feedback out of the way, I do want to say that the artwork is fantastic as always. The design of the unicorn and bullfrog is great (all the characters for that matter). I love large guys with tiny faces. The little extra motions on the "cards" and text in the team forming screen is a great way to make the team forming screen look extra polished.

rakowu 2024-04-15 18:29

Fun to play xD nice idea to make a twitch game :D

itsboats 2024-04-16 03:43

love the arts <3 i wish more people come play hehe theres a lot of potential for this especially with doing twitch predictions and channel point redeems. there could even be special events for when people raid or follow! the currency should def increase based on number of active users too so then fights could get really big when theres more people

diego-teran 2024-04-16 05:31

Pretty cool concept! The art and UI are amazing!

godknows 2024-04-16 12:58

Very cool game, I think it would be cool if it scale based on user count. Thanks for cool game!

wendel-scardua 2024-04-16 14:24

One meta-suggestion I have is to try to submit the game to other streamers (https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all/tags/ludumdare), because it would make more likely to have more people playing at once :)

congeesetador 2024-04-16 16:33

I had a blast playing this cozy little game! Love the art style and music, the little bouncing animations for the enemies were really funny to watch run around and fight each other, I could see myself playing this game for hours just because of how simple yet fun it really is, when you get multiple people playing at once I bet it gets really challenging because you'd have to actually cooperate to summon the creatures in. Really enjoyed this game! Good job!

pandalk 2024-04-16 17:39

Fun game, I really enjoyed the concept and the mood was just perfect bears are op !

Not sure how the concept would handle many players at once !

justcamh 2024-04-17 00:01

Fun little game, I'm glad I dropped in and gave it a try! I love the social element of it being on twitch, adds a lot to it, like playing smash with friends but actually I don't have any friends! :heart:

jdeedubs 2024-04-17 20:52

Once again, I'm in awe of your creativity in these game jams.

Really incredible art, super cute music, and simple, clean design. This is such a clean way to implement an auto-battler. As mentioned above, having each side gain more resources as people used the !join command would be a really neat way to scale based on viewership (though maybe not linearly haha), and having crazy round modifiers would probably keep people playing multiple times. But this is just wishlisting, really.

Truly fantastic game, and immaculate executions. Thanks for sharing!

cody-holt 2024-04-17 21:44

Loved the game! Awesome idea to make the twitch integration. Bear is pretty strong!

monika 2024-04-17 21:49

Fantastic!

Is it possible to add the user names who have joined each team directly to the game screen? (And remove them when they leave the stream?) I found it hard to keep track of how many people were on which side.

I'm also starting up a list of games with weird setups that I'll post to the main feed every few days. The comment system gets mad if I post the link in comments so I won't, but do you mind if I add you to it?

sheepolution 2024-04-17 21:50

Really cool that you made a Twitch Plays game! The art style and music are cute and it all just works! The only complaint I have is that it would have been nice to see how many players in each team, or at least have some way to bond with my team members. But other than that it's a simple but solid Twitch Plays game. Great job!

jeremy-ryan 2024-04-17 22:08

@monika You are certainly welcome to add it to your list if you want to, but I don't think I need the traffic as much as other games might (I'm already at 20 ratings).

Definitely had features I was hoping to add, like showing players on teams, but had to cut some scope toward the end of the jam. :slight_smile:

monika 2024-04-17 22:15

@jeremy-ryan Of course! It's also to benefit players. If people already gathered people for multiplayer games, they can find a bunch in one spot.

euler-moises 2024-04-18 03:50

How interesting! A game to play on Twitch. Really a very original idea. Beautiful graphics and a little music that matches the game very well. It gets a little overwhelming after a while, but the objective of the game was successfully completed in my opinion. Congratulations!

matt-ravenhall 2024-04-19 07:54

Really cool idea to have the game be Twitch-based, and the art style and animations fit perfectly.

The game also works pretty well as a solo experience, I wonder if it would be a bit of a mess with multiple people making multiple summons?

tiny_summons_screenshot.png

kanity 2024-04-20 01:37

It's pretty inventive to make a game as a stream with stream commands, that was such a nice and fresh experience :) Peculiar how twitch itself added some limitations: for example, I wanted to summon a few bullfrogs in a row, but twitch didn't let me send the message as it was the same text in a short period of few seconds.

On about the 4th try, finally my team won! xD

victory!.jpg

The art is adorable. All the creatures are too cute. I just want to hug them and squeeze them and pinch their cheeks.

I wonder how long this game will be up though, as it's heavily connected to twitch.

Overall, it was fun ^-^

digital-bacon 2024-04-20 04:14

Interesting concept, cute graphics. Good work!

malcontento 2024-04-21 05:22

Awesome concept! Tbh I wasn't even aware about twitch games, hahaha (I'm not a regular on the platform).

digitaliliad 2024-04-21 21:38

What an undertaking for compo - to get a whole game with twitch integration up in 48-hours is incredible. And you still had to make everything else as well, like the art, music, etc. This feels like a huge achievement, great job <3

ex3d0 2024-04-22 20:23

Really unique concept! The art and audio are adorable. The idea of a twitch based game is extremely unique and I have to commend you for that. The only real criticism I have is that it's unclear if attempting to join a team has gone through, as there's no confirmation whatsoever.

mrtroy 2024-04-23 00:24

This game is soooo cute! I tried this strategy and it never won...

Lil bun wit the big boyz! Screenshot from 2024-04-22 17-21-40.png

ungarblapp 2024-04-23 02:57

Absolutely love the aesthetics and art style, so cute! And the music is perfect! Twitch integration is not something I was even aware of up until this point, good work on that.

Overall just great work, such high quality in every respect!

denilseven 2024-04-23 22:33

This game blew my mind! Like, a game played on Twitch using chat commands? And it was made for the Compo as well?? It's so brilliant Besides all that, the graphics and music are *epic.*

Great job! :smile_cat:

zuhairghias 2024-04-24 03:21

Super unique idea. Hoping to see more games in this format in the future. Congrats on the awesome submission.

chybby 2024-04-25 11:25

Really fun playing this with a friend over twitch. Super cute graphics. Eventually we decided that bullfrogs were OP and ranged units were essentially useless as they would just run in instead of hanging back.

zirconcode 2024-04-25 15:48

Very innovative, all around great feeling, noticed I could switch teams whenever and play against myself

langotriel 2024-04-26 15:22

Fantastic submission, super innovative and a great use of the theme. Stunning work and the fact that it's a compo makes it all the more impressive. Great work!

thyoi 2024-04-29 12:21

tiny.png This is definitely the most creative game I've seen in ludumdare. good job!

jeremy-ryan 2024-04-29 18:22

@thyoi Aaaaah thanks for playing and for the amazing fan art! Love the little frogs!

johnnysix 2024-05-01 21:50

This was very cool, being able to control the game through the chat. Another player joined at same time also which was pretty cool. It was interesting mixing up the different characters and stats.

If you continued it beyond the jam, it'd be cool to see health bars etc. and perhaps a way for a team to build up more summoning points over rounds if chat players continue over several rounds.

dreamcastgh0st 2024-05-02 08:51

Extremely cool, ambitious, and unique! I can imagine it being lots of fun if I had my friends online, I'll be pestering them to try this soon.

From the little I played around with it, I feel like it could maybe benefit from just a little more content-- something like more unit types, or ways to make them more 'situational?' Even little things like having multiple 'stages' with obstacles, so maybe different circumstances benefit certain units more.

Honestly, I'd like to see where you take it, if you decided to make a post-jam release with more content.

polygraph-polypraphovich 2024-05-02 19:10

I really loved this interesting idea! This is really cool and innovative game! Good job!

jiri-hysek 2024-05-02 20:41

Finally! I got lucky and ran into another person on Twitch so I could play it against a human too :) It's fun, I like you can strategically react to what the opponent summons during the summoning time. The graphics, audio, and level of polish are stunning!

archaeognathus 2024-05-02 21:00

I am so amazed by how far you managed to bring this with python. So many things that I was not remotly aware of as beeing possible. Unfortunetly I couldn't find an opponent, but it was a great joy and inspirations nevertheless :D

paul-nadan 2024-05-02 22:33

I really liked the variety and balance of the different summons, it was a lot of fun just to see which compositions would win against each other. I think one potential issue is that the fact different units counter each other means there's an incentive to wait until after your opponent commits, which can leave you both waiting for the full countdown every time, but I'm not sure there's any good solution to that. The music is mellow and pleasant, and sets the tone as a bunch of friends rough housing rather than a fight to the death. The hopping/bouncing animations are really effective at maintaining the upbeat tone, and the UI was intuitive. The descriptions are also pretty hilarious. Overall this was a super cute and fun entry. Great work!

cassowary 2024-05-03 18:09

I played this yesterday (vs Jiri Hysek briefly :slight_smile:), it took me a while to be able to put together a team that beat the opponent but I eventually did it! Making a Twitch-plays LD submission is such a clever and unique idea. Graphics are really cute and I like the variation in the different unit types. The scope is a bit small due to jam-constraints, but an expanded version would be really cool to see.

alchemic 2024-05-04 00:00

Incredibly cute! Everything is so polished and smooth. I like how everything is animated by just wiggling around lol.