echerry 2024-04-16 14:35
Nice entry! I really enjoyed the main mechanics with pentagram drawing. It'd be cool if you'll develop the idea in a small mobile game
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → From Dust
By redoxeide
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 129 | 4.05 | 27 | |
| Fun | 236 | 3.84 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 52 | 4.13 | 27 | |
| Theme | 29 | 4.48 | 27 | |
| Graphics | 362 | 4.00 | 27 | |
| Audio | 341 | 3.62 | 27 | |
| Humor | 558 | 3.05 | 22 | |
| Mood | 471 | 3.68 | 27 |
Nice entry! I really enjoyed the main mechanics with pentagram drawing. It'd be cool if you'll develop the idea in a small mobile game
@echerry I did not even think about it while developing it, but yeah, I guess the controls and gameplay could work for mobile. Thanks for playing!
You’ve made a really nice game! I like that you have to think about the summoning spells to up your level and I think the way you did it with using the lines in the sheet is very creative. I like seeing the puff of smoke after the hits and I think it really adds character to the game.
I really liked playing this was a lot of fun! I can see it go further and be build open with different game modes and stuff. Love how it looks, well done!
Took me a bit to get a hang of it (a tutorial would be nice), but once I did, it was tons of fun! The difficulty curve felt a bit steep, but that might also have been because it took me a while to get going.
Really cool game, I enjoyed learning the rules as I played and it held my attention for a long time
Hm. cute little game. I liked the art and the sounds. the balance seems a bit off. they seem to randomly decide what they have? sometimes they get like 14 speed, and I have no idea how you could even get that much unless your slate is all 3 or something. maybe, if possible, a more expanded on version could also show their board? (I know they probably are just rolling dice for what they have or something so would be a lot of work.) but it feels like after a while they are cheating when they get like 14s on everything.
Anyway thanks for the game was fun to summon my sad minions.
I liked this a lot. Cool idea, solid execution. The boosters could have a little more in-game feedback as first didn't understand what's happening but once I got it it was a very cool mechanic.
@retrific Thank you for playing and for the feedback! I agree, I think some kind of small highlight on the boosters would work too.
@tristan-doell Thank you for playing! I do agree I need to work on the balance but that's just the nature of the jam :)
this game has everything i like! art is gorgeous, audio is nice, and the game adds a really nice twist on the autobattler, making it more strategic.
i can't go past 7 treasures right now but i'm sure i'll come back at this game later and try to beat it!
great entry, well done!
Nice art and audio, gameplay was pretty good too! Great use of the theme
Why did it take me so long to discover a gem of a game like yours? There must be a glitch in the LD's recommendation algorithm! :D Seriously, I'm a huge fan of pixel art, and the way you've polished the art expression is just too good to resist. On top of that, your gameplay is also highly enjoyable, with a great balance of strategy and randomness. It's hard to imagine how you came up with this idea and managed to develop it to such a mature stage. If I were to attempt it, I'd probably be bald by now from all the hair-pulling.
Pretty gameplay and perfect pixel animation!!!! I don't expect play such a good rpg game in this jam until I played your game! Though this game full of things not balance, it's still the most invonation game I played. By the way, I just can get 10 cup. congratulation!
The method of player control is very flavorful and unique. I really like the kind of spatial logic that I was using to try to understand how optimize my summoning strategy!
It was a challenge I really enjoyed solving. I quickly picked up on patterns that felt like they'd be pretty common, but later on (after getting level 2 or 3 marks on the board) I found myself hunting for more unusual combinations to get the most out of the board.
I did find the difficulty of fighting later opponents (after getting to the teens) to feel impossible pretty often. From a practical game-making perspective I can imagine totally legitimate reasons it works this way - the arcadey randomized nature of the opponents is an efficient way to give variety, and it's okay for some enemies to be too strong - the game's gotta end sometime. From a player's perspective, though, it wasn't so fun to get stacked up against an opponent that I could easily tell I'd have no way to beat.
I know it might not have fit well within the jam's constraints, but having some kind of planned "end point" (win the summoner of the year trophy after 10 victories, show a little splash screen / pop-up with congratulations) with the option to keep going afterward is something I would've liked. Like hands of poker, I think it's not too hard to accept that you won't win them all - having the push to win just enough make reaching for a tough victory even sweeter.
One other chunkier bit of feedback on gameplay: I appreciated that the stats were kept in ranges that made mental math easy. The numbers and modifiers were were small enough to make comparing lines of play pretty easy, and scribbling out part of a plan to spot-check the idea was quick (and good call on having an intuitive way to cancel out). All of those were big positives for me, but a significant drawback (for my tastes, anyway) is that it was very hard to evaluate what the stats I got would actually do.
I get that communicating detailed information like that inside the game interface isn't free (and I think the single-screen UI design of this game is really well-done, by the way!) but having tooltips, a collapsible "help" panel or something for the stats would've been awesome. Being able to know "power 8 = 8-12 damage per attack", or "defense 5 = reduce incoming damage by 30%" would've given me a path to get really engaged with evaluating the tradeoffs of different summonings.
I was able to make up some of my own heuristics (speed is incredibly good, I want to try to be close to my opponent's numbers in other categories) but I have a lot of gaps in my understanding. Do health and defense complement each other in a multiplicative way, so doubling down on both is better? Are there diminishing returns at higher levels of a stat? What were the odds that the opponent dodged three times in a row?! (just kidding about that last one)
I can see downside to communicating too much information (players might sink into analysis paralysis trying to make sense of the math behind the scenes) but maybe it's possible to find a sweet spot where folks like me can get what they need to fuel deeper engagement without any big downsides.
Okey dokey, sorry for rambling on for so long. Again, I think the concept and implementation of the core mechanic was super cool, and the presentation of the game was very clean. You did a lot of great stuff on this project, and I can see lots of ways you could expand a concept like this if you'd like to take it further. Thanks for making the game!
This was really well done! I'll admit, it was difficult for my tired brain to understand at first, but that's my fault and not yours. After I understood, the concept makes sense and was pretty fun. This is a great game, and feels very complete for a jam game. I think the idea could easily be expanded on for even more gameplay.
A really creative mechanic! At first I didn't understand how to use the boosters, but when I tried several times, I find it very interesting! It will be better if there are more feedbacks when the boosters are triggered, or designing more special builds of deferent stats? Anyway, I really enjoy your game, thanks for making the game!
The comment of @doctor-zeus is really good and I can't add more to it, the only thing I can add is that from my point of view, it's an excellent start for a bigger game! You have so much possibilities with this concept!
Very cool game, you can easily improve it and release a final version
Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! If you wanted to watch it again in the future heres the vod of the stream (with a chapter for your game)
https://youtu.be/Foe4js2jhJ0
And I'm the host for the ludum dare score chasers tournament this Ludum Dare. Wanted to ask if youre fine if I put some gameplay of the game in an intermission video. Last year for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_eIvjBmIQ
@doctor-zeus Thank you very much for the thorough post. I really appreciate it! I am really happy to read that you enjoyed trying to find strategies for the game.
I do think the balance needs some work. I have a lot of ideas that I want to try to hopefully smooth out the difficulty curve a little bit.
About showing actual stat values, I still need to think about how much more info I want to give the player. I kind of like having everything hidden from the player, but I can see the appeal of having more details. Maybe a toggle in the settings would do it, I would just need to find a way to show everything neatly.
Once again, thank you for your comment. I had a lot of fun making the game, so I am glad people are also having fun playing it!
@ategon Thank you for playing and for the feedback! I would love it if you used gameplay for the video!
So simple & so cool game, i will remember this art style & RPG mechanic)
I really love graphics and sound design of this game! Good work!
It is an interesting concept, but I was a bit confused on what some of the options did, and what difference it made choosing between different positioned elements in the circle. I like the music and the sound effects for the game! Overall great work!
I liked the game idea, you did a great job!
@sodagummy
Hey! Thank you very much for playing and for the feedback! Yeah, I wish I had time to do a tutorial, but the time wasn't there!
If you want a little bit of an explanation on the different stats and what to choose, you can keep reading. If not, that is okay, I appreciate you taking time to play the game and leaving feedback!
There are two different types of symbols on your sheet: stat sigils and boosters.
All of the different stat symbols on your sheet contribute to different stats for your summon if you draw a line from/to them. In general terms, the sword (combat) lets your summon deal more damage per hit it lands, the shield (defense) mitigates some of the damage you receive, the green dashing person (agility) lets your summon attack with higher frequency, and the heart (vitality) affects your summon's initial health.
Boosters are the smaller symbols with roman numerals in the middle of the sheet. If you cross a booster while drawing a line, that booster adds points to the next stat symbol you pick. A booster can also be crossed multiple times.
**Generally, you want to get as much damage per second (dps), that is combat + agility, as possible without neglecting your other stats.** But, just getting as much dps as you can is not always the best option, at least not later in the game where the enemy starts getting higher defensive stats. It mainly depends on what you can get from the summoning sheet you are given.
full_dps_example.gif
In the previous gif, I went for the most dps and the match ended up in a draw. My summon was able to attack almost twice as frequently as the enemy, and it also had a small advantage in raw power, which should result in about double the "power per second" than the enemy. The thing is, the enemy's summon had much higher defense and vitality, which let it resist enough to end the match in a draw. So as you can see, building full damage is not always the best option.
balanced_example.gif
In this last gif I went for a little bit of vitality, taking advantage of as many boosters as possible, and the match results in a win for me because it boosted my survivability enough to outlast the enemy.
Note that it's the same enemy stats and summoning sheet used in both gifs, the only difference is the drawing on the summoning sheet.
Also note that for the previous two examples, I turned dodging off just to make it more deterministic, but dodging is also a mechanic in the game that benefits from getting more agility and vitality. So, building more agility and vitality to try and dodge an enemy that you are not going to out damage might be a viable strategy. It might also not be, because balance is still a wip :)
Thank you for reading! Hopefully this helped you or anyone else interested!