FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → Summon Squad

Summon Squad

By 20akshay00, roman-hyacinths and Eranan

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1024.1031
Fun1304.0031
Innovation1423.9131
Theme1294.2531
Graphics924.4631
Audio2303.7830
Humor5733.0329
Mood2073.9831

Comments

ashley-gb 2024-04-15 21:21

Great job folks! This is a fun little game and the art style is so charming ^.^ Only suggestion would be to increase the audio levels a bit, difficult to hear the music.

lyamgtt 2024-04-16 10:50

The art is absolutely stunning!! Great job!

roman-hyacinths 2024-04-16 15:55

Thanks so much for the kind words, @ashley-gb and @lyamgtt — definitely agree on the audio levels feedback!

jzucc12 2024-04-16 19:27

Great art and a fun concept! Good going!

onqdll 2024-04-16 20:56

Love the grainy art! Seen your WIP in discord and was intrigued immediately. My only wish is to have an ability to take summon back, sometimes I miss the square near the end of the puzzle and I am forced to restart it. Other than that I had a lot of fun playing!

sobad 2024-04-16 21:28

Cute!

Very clear visual presentation. The game was easy to intuit, too. And, I liked having to discover the extra functionality of the skeleton on my own. That was a great "what am I missing here..." moment.

The jam-prototype of the game doesn't quite feel "puzzley" until that 6th room, but it's a great demonstration of the concept, and I can imagine it really exploding out with new summons and all sorts of head-scratchin' moments! I think the most exciting aspect of this design is the potential for more emergent mechanics between the summons, having to experiment to discover synergies between them. Very cool.

I couldn't figure out why I had 3 spiders in the 5th puzzle, or 4 in the 6th. Only 2 were needed in both, and I couldn't see any potential "intended solutions" that required more, but I didn't spend too long thinking about it.

Good stuff!

20akshay00 2024-04-16 22:03

@onqdll We did initially have the ability to recall summons exactly because of the frustration of wrong placements, but it quickly became clear that we'd have to design puzzles quite differently with that in mind because it introduces a whole new set of possibilities! I'm glad you enjoyed it regardless!

@sobad Really appreciate your detailed comment! I agree that it started getting interesting at level 6, but we simply ran out of time to make more. I'm glad you appreciate the synergy between different summons, it was certainly the intended vision but we couldn't expand upon it as much as we'd have liked within the jam period. Also, fair observation about the last two levels, some cards are simply red herrings :,).

dreamteck 2024-04-17 11:51

The designs are superb and I really liked the concept of the game!

However, one area for improvement, I think, is character movement. Repeatedly pressing a button to move forward in a long straight line quickly becomes annoying.

Great game other than that!

PS: I did not had any problem while playing on the Web build using Chrome

saryah 2024-04-17 12:21

Super cute love the graphic good ramp in difficulty. Great polished entry.

movealonghome 2024-04-17 12:27

I designs and art are gorgeous it grabbed me immediately, I also find this type of puzzle game very satisfying so was very happy with the find. Its very polished and a minor nitpick might making able to walk over multiple block in one go make the game play smoother.

unless-games 2024-04-17 12:34

Love the aesthetics on this one!

I observed a few bugs with the fireball spawning one block to the right and not being able to break the wall if there is something on the other side of it.

ss2.gif

And the blades getting stuck on room 5.

ss.gif

For improving the UX I think you should allow placing summons on the player since you can step on them anyways.

It would be nice to see a "ghost image" of the summon or a highlight on the tile you are about to place to.

I second continuous movement. Or movement by clicking on an nearby tile, so that the whole game could be played with the mouse (or touchscreens).

Solid entry, I had fun!

20akshay00 2024-04-17 12:40

@dreamteck @movealonghome I agree about the player movement being super annoying, I just couldn't get it working right without having it yeet across the entire room. Glad you enjoyed!

@unless-games Thanks for taking the time to report these issues; we knew about the blades but the fireball not being able to break the wall with another summon on the other side is certainly new x_x. Quite reasonable suggestions regarding the UX as well, we will keep in mind if we revisit this project. Thanks for playing :)

0mbre 2024-04-17 15:28

When I saw a progress screen during the jam I immediately knew I wanted to test this one and I'm very happy I did look for it in the submitted game! It's a very cute and chill puzzle game and I was truly sad at the end that there was not other levels to continue playing!

I just had a small bug the first time I tried to step on a summon where it didn't let me but it probably was due to the web build taking time to load, and I saw the blades getting stuck too but no other bug.

phlip45 2024-04-17 20:39

Really enjoyed this one. Finished a few of the puzzles without using all the cards, but that just makes me feel like a puzzle genius! Loved the art style

capreola 2024-04-18 12:05

Loved the visuals! The cards are super cute. Rhymed hints were a nice touch, though I mostly managed to get by without them. Puzzles were not super hard, but they had a good difficulty curve. I had fun! Great job.

schwede 2024-04-19 19:13

I really appreciate you taking the time to share your game during the stream!

Keep up the good work!

asfdfdfd 2024-04-19 19:36

Love all of your game mechanics. They are simple but well combined together. Great entry!

zimny11 2024-04-19 21:22

I love puzzle games and that one is no exception! I just wish for more levels ;) Awesome art style! Just one feedback: The undo button would be nice, but I get it is hard to add stuff like that in the game jam. Great job with the game!

jaxah 2024-04-19 21:54

Great entry here, The puzzles are tough and managed to find bugs in production XD Overall a great game, crank the volume and let me hear the audio properly! Great entry, good work and well done!

jvdwijk 2024-04-20 00:28

Good entry! The puzzles were a bit interesting and I hope to see more, as it has a really good base for a puzzle game. Especially the last couple of levels were getting really interesting (just a small shame you can skip the skelie).

You can watch back my playthrough whenever you want on here: https://youtu.be/9X9SR_20PuQ

negator2vc 2024-04-20 12:01

Very nice puzzle game with excellent art and some very interesting mechanics using your summoned creatures. Especially those that are needed in pairs, like the spiders. I think you should have used the creature itself as cursor when positioning the creatures on the level or at least give some better info to the player where the card will summon the creature. A couple of times I end up putting the creatures not in the wrong tile. Apart from that excellent entry!

coro-yy 2024-04-20 14:14

What a great game! My stupidity went through the roof on the last two levels, but that's a me-problem. Great great artstyle, audio and execution of the topic.

scriveneroflight 2024-04-20 16:24

This is a wonderful entry. I love the art, the style, the puzzle rooms, and the mechanics. How you incorporated summoning was unique and fun. It would be nice to move/remove the summons as well as pivot them or make it possible to restart without jumping into the abyss... but the only thing really wrong with the game is there weren't enough levels :rofl: I wanted to keep playing! Great work!

coleslaughter 2024-04-22 23:42

[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2124979046?t=00h43m18s)

Thanks for making a puzzle game that DIDN'T make me feel stupid. :laughing:

nathan-franck 2024-04-24 03:09

Great interface! I was able to rock with a touchscreen and a keyboard no problem. Art was very nice! loved the style - though for level design it was sometimes tough to figure out where the pits were. The timing and movement aspects felt like a side-show to the puzzle of figuring out how to solve the room, I almost wished for my guy to just auto-navigate instead of having to press the direction every square and watch him slowely slide around. Though definitely still a great submission! :)

thesecondleft 2024-04-24 19:31

An interesting puzzle with cool summoning mechanics. The graphics are a little off, and in some places it seems raw. Just like the mechanics, who don’t always work as we would like. However, still a good game for jam!

pattedecanaard 2024-04-24 19:53

The game is extremely polished. The graphics are stunning, and there's good sound and music. It's really well done. The difficulty of the levels is progressive, allowing you to learn the mechanics step by step. I initially didn't understand the function of the skeleton because the first level where it appears can be completed without using it. The puzzles were satisfying to solve. It's a really great entry, and I would have wanted to play longer. Well done !

nick-blackwood 2024-04-26 11:02

Love the graphics a lot, though they created an impression that your submission is board-gamey and turn-based. It would be nice if you could move by holding a button and if the square where you're summoning a unit to was highlighted. As already mentioned in the comments, some mechanics didn't work, but overall the interactions where fun and I enjoyed figuring out how things work. I'm sure this can be expanded, maybe there could some way to get/refill cards during a level, or even combine cards to create new units? Anyway, congratulation on a great game!

neontropics 2024-05-02 20:42

I like the graphics and hand drawn vibe a lot! It took me way too long to even get past the first level but once I grasped the mechanics the puzzle gameplay is clever, and was just the right level of puzzling for a jam game. Good job!