Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → SPELLBINDER
By eugene-b, nadia-pixel and ThunderDum
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 1080 | 3.02 | 41 | |
| Fun | 1190 | 2.43 | 41 | |
| Innovation | 1078 | 2.74 | 41 | |
| Theme | 552 | 3.71 | 41 | |
| Graphics | 212 | 4.25 | 42 | |
| Audio | 433 | 3.47 | 41 | |
| Humor | 1041 | 1.81 | 37 | |
| Mood | 647 | 3.48 | 41 |
looks really cool from the screenshots!
Unfortunately when I play via the zipfile, I see the purple spell book and press PLAY, and then it goes black, but the music still plays, seems to be a bug, maybe you can fix and reupload?
really love the color scheme, and even the font face used for the itch.io site too!
Absolutely stunning!!
The map design look really nice. I like the art
This is a fun idea! Great job :)
The web player in the top doesn't work for me :(. I get a 404 not found error.
The game doesn't seem to play on the web version. Pity! It looks cool.
I loved the 2d pixel art! Great job!
Art stile is really cool though!
Loved the feel and atmosphere of the game.
Art style is lovely. Didn't really see the challenge in collecting elements or what the elements actually did. Might want to add colliders to the church too so player can't walk on top of it. Instead of just defense and attack repeated over 5 slots. Instead have Attack, Defense, Attack Speed and 2 other unique attributes
I apologize, but I simply couldn't grasp how to play (and yes, I read the description). I didn't understand how to gather resources, what they influence, or how to add additional creatures to the battle. A good tutorial is needed here. At the same time, the game boasts a fantastic visual and audio design.
Game has beautiful art, when collecting the items from the map it seems to only give me the green one. Concept seems solid and I think if worked on a bit more it could be a fun and interesting game. Well done.
This game looks and sounds pretty cool but when I tried to collect elements from altar I get only leafs and lose all battles that I participated because I couldn't buff my warriors. This experience was pretty confusing but I think after improvements it could be really good!
Game seems very cool, i like the graphics and sounds. Unfortunatly i couldnt figure out how to collect any element other than "luck", no matter at which altar i was. Maybe with a good tutorial it would be easier to understand.
Such beautiful pixel art! Really great job with that it adds a ton to the mood and feeling. I was a little confused on how to gather things from the altars, on my first battle I just seemed to have some? and then when I went around trying the second time I could only gather the green one over and over again. Very weird. Also, I lost every battle... Perhaps more precise instructions of some sort of visual/audio feedback would help make collecting stuff more clear. Either way great job getting this together!
the game felt so junky, whenever i interact thing i always get the leaf element. and i dont really know what to interact like why dont you give it and outline or something like a sign for interactable thing whenever the Player are near. i don't feel like i'm walking in the world with the character, i mean how did walked on the roof as if it was just a paper. i don't even what the character with Left Mouse Click. I'm Sorry even though the Art are Fantastis the Audio Sound Great, It need a proper Polished.
dragon.png
These graphics are unbelievable—truly incredible and spectacular, especially the dragon. It's not just this dragon (which would take me over a week to create, and at just 1% of this quality), but the entire visual aspect of the game. Furthermore, the game is very enjoyable, and the combat sequences are well-executed. To offer a suggestion, I would make the tutorial a bit more guided, as I initially found it difficult to understand. Apart from this minor point, I must extend my congratulations to the two developers. What a great game, congratulations!
@matt-swieboda @escyll @brandsma thank you for your feedback! Try playing in on itch.io, the link is in description
flying is so dope, simple but so much more fun. As everyone else is saying, the artwork is truly incredible, great work!
I couldn't exactly tell what was going on with the summoning battle, but I presume when the monster was flashing red they were being attacked. Health bar and maybe an attack animation would be nice, I'm sure you intended more but ran out of time. Also when flying or walking I ended up bumping into collision boxes that were too big, like for the dragon, etc. Just some tweaking making them smaller and more accurate would go a far away.
Overall amazing work, don't know how you got all that really high quality artwork done in such a short time!
Almost an RPG. My hero is stuck at the feet of a dragon. I couldn't get out. Huh! Thanks for the game
Nice art and music! Sometimes something is blocking my character and it's hard to understand where I can walk.
The pixel art is absolutely stunning, and the dragon design is particularly impressive! I can understand how the summoning battle mechanics might need some clarification, perhaps with clearer visual cues for attacks and health. Adding polish to the collision detection would also enhance the gameplay experience. Overall, this is a fantastic entry with incredible visuals and a promising foundation.
Definitely need to polish the movement, but the concept is cool and I like where it is headed. Also controls and purpose isn't very intuitive in the game. Very stylized though.
I had a little bit of trouble understanding what was going on in regard to the battles like some of the other commentors, but you did a great job nonetheless. Perhaps a tutorial of some form inside the game would be helpful? The pixel art is fantastic!
I was a little confused on what to do at first. I was just enjoying flying around wondering what all the pretty structures were for lmao. Suddenly a battle! Which I promptly lost. But after that I caught on that I had to collect elements from the structures in order to make my warriors stronger.
I will say, the game is pretty grindy, which im not a big fan of. Like I spend all that time gathering resources to make a big warrior, but then they're gone after 1 battle even if they survived? And that's not to mention all the resources lost from failed battles. Which means most of the game im just sitting there spamming E to gather resources.
Another hinderance here is the timer. Sometimes I need more than a minute to gather what I need. So I would go gather, fail the battle on purpose, then gather more. Other times, I already had a ton of resources and wanted to get to the fight right away, but had to wait the full minute.
I think that the early levels were a little more interesting because you had to carefully balance your limited warriors. Something that would help a lot with this is health bars, because as is, it's hard to tell just how tanky your warriors are OR just how good their damage is. That sort of feedback is important to a player when they have to spend resources on defense or attack stats.
The later levels are kinda tedious because you have so many warriors to summon, which not only means gathering more resources, but also having to drag down resources for every single warrior during summoning.
Also, is there a final level? I got to level 11 before softlocking myself with a silly bug I found...
infiniteCatGlitch.png
I found out that spamming the "next warrior" button lets you summon A LOT of warriors lol. But yeah, unfortunately I softlocked there so that's where I stopped.
Overall it's a very well made game with appealing art and music, very well done on that! But I would say it needs work on the core gameplay loop.
It is visually fantastic, the dragon and the autels are gorgeous ! The music also fit well with the atmosphere of the game !
However, we miss way too much informations about the elements and the monsters. - We can choose between 5 monsters, do they have different stats between them ? I tested each of them and they all get kill by the same amount of hit. - We have 5 elements and we can attribute them to attack or defense, is there an element that give more attacks or defenses than another element ? or do they all give the same buff ? - I see the enemies are in different colors. Maybe in some similar colors as the elements. Does this indicate some kind of weakness depending on which element we did put in attack ? Are they stronger against some elements ?
There are currently just too many unknown variables. That being said, I know there is often not enough time to put a tutorial or more feedback in the game during a gamejam. I would suggest to put some additional information in the page description at least, so that we can understand the game a bit more and enjoy it !
The pixelart is very beautiful cool palette and interesting environment
@lyamgtt @triplecubes @gamesplusjames @zenorke @escyll @pigeonescu @enver-arco @emty @suksu @roman-dubrovin @jo-bettaque @shugor @racts-studio @milq @semenov @ruslana @josion @chrispy977 @jonathan-fischer @courtneylapin @gcake @yanato OMG I am amazed by how many of you commented on our game! It is so rewarding to understand that there are people who actually played our game and enjoyed it (partially). THANK YOU ALL A LOT for playing, leaving comments and ratings!
As the artist of the game I don't have enough words to describe my gratitude for all of your kind opinions. I am truly in heaven each and every time I read that you liked my pixel art.
I would like to say, that yes we ran out of time and maybe jumped over our heads in the first place. So now it is really crucial to get your feedbacks to create better game experience. We already took a lot of your advices to improve our core gameplay, add some challenge into collecting elements and add more info about it. As well as improving warriors creation process and battle scene.
It is only our second Ludum Dare and honestly I did not expect so many comments, especially in the first days.
So thank you all again and good luck!
I got the idea of the game, but playing it was really hard — there's too little time to collect elements, and most of that time is spent fighting the controls. And since your strength directly depends on diversity of the elements, it just means it depends on how much of the map you have covered. So really felt like fighting against the controls.
On the other hand, the art is incredible, this entry looks fantastic. The game was fast and didn't let me just stand in one spot and look at it, so I'd been making screenshots to peacefully look at them later :D Beautiful work, nice technique, fun creature designs!
The music and the overall mood came very well together, too. I can see this turning into a much more enjoyable experience with more polish!
Music is top-notch. Graphics are very good as well, with the only exception being the inverted pentagram — a false symbol that derives from the true one representing Christ’s five wounds. That being said, there is a lot of creativity in this game, and I like how you’ve paid attention to the details. Flying is fun, although it was difficult to know exactly where to search for the elements.
Quite simple mechanics, didn't understand collider system, my character just ignored them in flight mode, and then was stucked on the ground. The art is pretty nice, my respect to artist. Good entry!
saw your comment on our game and had to check this out after seeing the amazing artstyle. I'm seriously impressed by the art you managed to create in such a short amount of time. I have to admit, it took me a while to understand how all aspects of the game function. I really would have loved a little more visual feedback on my actions and maybe a short tutorial on how everything works, especially with the book. I totally understand that it's a big ask especially considering the short time limit. All in all, I'm very impressed, and I think you guys did a great job!
Great art ! Especially the statues, they are awesome.
The music is cool and and helps a lot with the overall atmosphere of the game.
Unfortunately, in terms of combat and summons, I never really understood. We have no counter that tells us how many monsters we have left to summon. And during the fight, I never saw the stat bar of my monsters and enemy monsters
The art looks great - one of the best looking jam games I've seen so far. The gameplay left quite a bit to be desired. It was really difficult to move around, I kept getting hung up on colliders and invisible walls. For a 2d top-down game like this, I'd recommend making the colliders separate from the sprites so that you can only collide with the bottom part, and find a way to make the player slide past collisions rather than sticking.
In the battle screen, I wasn't able to find any combinations of warriors and elements that allowed me to defeat even a single enemy; does it matter what the enemies are?
I also ran into the bug where you can keep clicking the "next summoner" button.
I loved the art, mechanics and music is a nice chill. Collision boxes could be improved though, it's sometimes hard to tell where you'll hit the solid.
Well done!
The atmosphere created by the soundtrack and pixel art is really good.
Collecting goes well, and I like the power of flying, though perhaps there's a sound missing that validates the collection of an item. Preparing for battle offers no indication of which warriors have been selected and what advantages the various elements can bring. I wasn't able to make a fight with a victory to defend my island.
Anyway, good job!
The pixel art here is out of this world, such amazing quality especially on the altars. Kudos to the artist there!
The gameplay however I felt left a lot of be desired. The collisions are all over the place making it so you are required to fly (which was fun to fly around and explore!). There needs to be more feedback, like a item collection sound and attacking sounds in the battle portion. The drag-and-drop mechanic in the spellbook gets really tedious and could be streamlined.
Overall the game has tons of potential and would love to see an update! Great work!