FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → The Summoner's Trial

The Summoner's Trial

By RokaDoka and avaclava

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1134.0842
Fun1633.9441
Innovation1903.8542
Theme504.4141
Graphics5033.8242
Audio4573.4339
Mood5233.6140

Comments

hazard-game-dev 2024-04-16 05:28

Great game, very polished.

dorren 2024-04-16 09:57

love the summon mechanic really satisfying, Great job!

kekluck 2024-04-16 10:06

woah what a banger game! Feels super polished and fun. The summoning mechanic is super satisfying especially because of the audio design on it. Great job!

rokevicius 2024-04-16 12:10

Love the summoning mechanics! Also pixel art is great!

enad96 2024-04-16 15:52

This was great! Perfectly fit the theme.

unbreakable 2024-04-16 15:55

Nice polish. It reminds me a bit of Vampire Survivors. Good stuff, had some good fun with it!

kamizenki 2024-04-16 15:55

Nice game! love the gameplay.

vinzbad 2024-04-16 17:13

Great game, love to see another take on the draw your spells input method. But you have much better graphics than me ^^ Unfortunately it's very hard on touchpad because my laptop disables the keyboard when using it and then I can't dodge enemies when drawing a spell.

hotdog 2024-04-16 17:22

Very fun game!

herka 2024-04-16 17:22

Best one so far :) Nice to have a one-card tutorial in the main menu and the concept is strong and well implemented, I guess it just misses some music but overall super nice

sam-minh 2024-04-16 17:38

I love the summoning mechanic on this entry. The gameplay is good and veried. Tehre are a lot of summons and possible passive bonsues to stack. I like to experiment with different builds and see what the game has to offer, which was cool to explore in this game.

Also, I love that the liens resemble the creature you will summon. <3 for the fishy

tyler-walton 2024-04-16 17:44

I have gotten pretty good at hastily drawing pitchforks. Impy gang, I liked Fishy a lot too.

Some small thoughts I had while playing were to have the input key displayed when picking something up and on the UI for the book. Full disclosure though I didn't read the page before playing and just thought the books were a passive system. I did end up going back and reading the page and found out you can use the books which ended up making living longer wayyy easier. I also would have liked some way of knowing I had enough mana to summon without looking at the mana bar and guessing how much mana it costed, maybe a color change on the player's book or an icon on the cursor of the current summon appears. I ended up just mashing left click.

Fun game, well done

roman-dubrovin 2024-04-16 19:06

It's a really good game!

poutine-studio 2024-04-16 20:46

WoW. That's a really interesting idea! I love how it replicates drawing runes. It's impressive! I would have like to know what each summon did before choosing them. It would enhance the strategic element of the game. I also like how to summon you had to multi-task. Try to not die while summoning, good luck! I also loved how some of your summons were not able to move forcing you to stay in the same area and not just constantly be on the move. It made it harder but more interesting. Very good game. Good job making it in 72h!

weefairyfabi 2024-04-16 21:35

First off, the opening transition is so so cute, it already feels so polished to have a loading screen like that! The idea for this game and the way you interpreted the theme is super cool, I love the rune drawing and summoning while running away. Absolutely amazing job you guys!!

wookuzi 2024-04-16 21:41

Great GUI, sprites and effects. Cool concept.

klemen 2024-04-16 21:42

I love the models, and the concept of summoning, very nice experience.

koolruz 2024-04-16 21:47

Really liked the summon mechanic - It reminded me of old DS games that would use the touch screen in interesting ways as part of the gameplay!

I did have a really hard time reading the UI of the summoning mechanic at first - Even though the dot that you currently needed to move towards had a big glowing red circle around it, my eyes kept landing on the other marker which showed where you were needed to go *after* the current dot. I'm not sure why my brain kept skipping over the big glowing red icon (and it is probably a *me* problem,, rather than a UI problem), but I figured I'd pass along the feedback - It might have been a little bit clearer to only indicate which dot the player immediately needed to mouse over.

Overall though, nice job! :)

thetatautau 2024-04-16 22:23

Very polished game! The gameplay is fun, intuitive, and there is a good variety of ennemies and bonuses.

The game is a bit messy, though, as we have to draw spells and dodge the ennemies at the same time, while the invocations does not protect the player as much as attacks in similar games (cause they can't be controlled and won't necessarily attack the closest ennemies). It's especially true for the archers (arrows are hard to see behind the invocation UI), and with the fast ennemies that stick to the player until he dies while the invocations are attacking something else.

The single use spell are not convenient to use too. IMO it would have been better to cast them immediatly when picked (like in vampire survivor). There is already enough things to manage.

The graphics and animations are simple but well made and consistent, with an impressive polish for a 3 days jam.

Overall it's a very good entry, congratulation!

kirass 2024-04-16 22:54

I like this game! You guys are great!

james-greenleaf 2024-04-16 23:13

Really nice game! Love the art style and mechanics. I think the enemies move just slightly too fast though. I couldn't move fast enough to get away from those grey dudes.

baluj 2024-04-16 23:41

Good game, although the clock-like ticking sound makes me very nervous.

ganca 2024-04-17 20:25

Presumably good

orangedragon 2024-04-17 22:11

Awesome game! A nice twist on the autodefender mechanics that makes it not so "auto" anymore :D And it's a 100% hit in the mark with the theme! I like it! Great job!

fishmasterino 2024-04-18 16:35

Great game ! It got me pretty addicted trying to achhieve a good score

dekara 2024-04-18 19:55

Really Cool Game. Very polished and consistent. The problem I had not nowing what the summons do. Some where clear others not. Also without protection against projectiles it gets really hard. :D Really good Job for the Jam.

litterattus 2024-04-18 20:00

Love the drawing while moving bit. Cool game.

anifan-gelati 2024-04-18 20:59

It turned out to be pretty comprehensive in 3 days. Balance is a bit broken, some enemies are a bit too fast for my liking, but still funny

fatal-exit 2024-04-18 21:36

Great bullet heaven/horde survival game. Very unique mechanic and probably my favorite game this jam so far thematically. The ranged enemies feel quite overtuned compared to the melee ones, but tbh it's amazing for a jam game, well done!

rokadoka 2024-04-19 08:29

@fatal-exit we have deffinetly thought about tweaking up the archers as they really do feel slightly too powerful @anifan-gelati the balance was the last thing we were implementing kind off so it came out a bit janky, the "dog" enemy and archers in particular are the biggest problem from what we have gathered.

blue-pin-studio 2024-04-19 09:07

Awesome game! I went from not knowing how to do anything to summoning towers like crazy haha

It does get pretty hard pretty fast so my celebration was shortlived

flatgub 2024-04-19 13:02

Really fun little game!! The summoning mechanic was wonderful, the whole game felt like an interesting cross of Vampire Survivors and Okami. Great job!

ping78 2024-04-19 23:05

Amazing game. Love all the animations. The only nitpick I can think of is that it be nice to cycle through summons by clicking on UI. Really well done!

brainles-etertainment 2024-04-24 20:07

It took some time to figure out how to play (I usually skip tutorials), but once I got it, everything became more fun.

thesmellofoxygen 2024-04-26 21:38

Very fun! Played eight lives and the farthest I got was level 6 (score: 13310). I wish I was just a little faster or had a dash, or that my summons body-blocked for me. The robot enemies move so quickly! I liked impy and the xp magnet the most. The summon mechanic was very fun and fast, and at first I thought "this is so easy, I'll never mess one up" but in the chaos I missed nodes every now and then.

utopia 2024-04-29 00:41

Wow this is super addicting, I wish there could be a score lol.

hawkin 2024-04-30 02:33

This feels so polished! All of the transitions, between the title and restart, make restarting from death almost enjoyable :P

The combination of pattern drawer overlaid with a bullet hell is pretty effective. I find it challenging, in a good way (that challenges many parts of my brain and hands at once). The only thing that felt unfair (and seemed to block me from getting beyond Lvl 2 or 3) was the grey guys that moved faster than I did. Once they started spawning, it was pretty much game over unless I had really optimized my start.

You could experiment with other difficulty curves that allow the player to build up more upgrades before turning on the "big guns".

Really fun game though!

2024-05-04 19:42

That game had some neat mechanics and was quite the blast! I enjoyed it!