letssnack 2024-04-16 20:50
very fun and unique idea
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → That Time I Reincarnated Into /.../Trials By Summoning Demons With Unique Powers
By deox, boodle, filip-vannfalt, Xpizt and Raz253
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 312 | 3.81 | 24 | |
| Fun | 510 | 3.52 | 24 | |
| Innovation | 59 | 4.11 | 24 | |
| Theme | 96 | 4.31 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 407 | 3.95 | 24 | |
| Audio | 167 | 3.90 | 24 | |
| Humor | 462 | 3.23 | 23 | |
| Mood | 238 | 3.95 | 24 |
very fun and unique idea
Nice unique platforming mechanics! Cool concept with the different traits that you have to build. I especially liked that you had to trade of directional movement as a trait.
Good job, even if it is not completely finished, i felt like i got a good experience out of it!
This is a cool idea that presents a lot of unique situations for puzzles. It was interesting how the second level was essentially done twice, with the third level showing it without one of the summoning circles. My issue with this game is how tedious failure is. On the second level I missed the jump at the end, which meant I had to redo the whole level essentially. On the third level I tried to mitigate this by putting more "right" power into the demon, but then I couldn't jump the ledge at the end. I think there should be a bit more leniency to prevent frustrations like this from occurring, especially since failure means restarting the whole level. The idea is solid and I like the graphics, I think all this game needs to be great is a bit of polish on the level design, and maybe faster movement for less tedium. Good job!
absolutely love the animations they are so cute I spent a long time just creating random monsters very fun! The fact that you can control the monsters too is so fun.
I really liked that there are variations of demons and being able to make mixes as such. I tried putting the game in windowed mode and it disappeared, I guess it made a super small window? Still unfinished, this cool “That time I reincarnated into another world as a dark mage and overslept so now I’m late to the dark lord’s summoning ritual and have to go through trials by summoning demons with unique powers.”
Hahaha the title is so fun, and the mechanics are very interesting and innovative! Building our own monster to help us achieve tasks can lead to a very interesting emergent gameplay, I hope you'll continue to work on it! I also liked the art and music. For the things to improve: - on my screen the game was very small (only took 2/3 of the width), and so the text was hard to read. - You can lock yourself in a wall when grabbed by an invocation (worse when the invocation can go only one direction lol) Good job!
Great idea and incredible cute artwork (that climbing animation <3). If you look for some constructive criticism:
- I got stuck in the second room because I made a dual-right-dual-jump-grab-summon, picked the summoner up and accidentially moved him into the wall with no way of picking him up and moving him back again. You should always check for "legal placement" of the summoner - The picking up-part was slightly confusing at first because while it makes perfect sense picking something up thats to your right side (thereby understanding you suck them up), the summons are lacking a mouth to the left, which hat me try to pick something up using the leg at first and wondering why i cant pick stuff up. I'd either fix this by adding a second sucker or letting the monster be able to pick something up from the sucker-side (and flipping the sprite when moving left, for example). Also, I'd add some visual or auditive feedback to picking something up, that'd instantly make the game feel way more controllable - Also second room: you have a lot of free space to the left; I'd put the text there instead of its current placement where it blocks the summoning ring-menu (also id put the text on a lower layer than the menu to make it feel like it belongs to the world a little more, having it be on top of the menu is slightly jarring - This might just be me, but I'd absolutely switch what S and spacebar do. Space is usually your action button and having it swich characters felt super-wrong to me personally, especially since S is such an unusual action button. Id rather have (S)witch character - especially since the summoner cant jump, so you wouldnt think of it as crouch or something anyways and spacebar to interact with stuff. - It needs a reset-button in case you get stuck in a wall. :D
Those minor things aside, I think its a great concept which altogether feels very polished, really loved it. Will keep an eye on it in case you guys decide to extend on it. :)
Please put more screenshots to the game info because it doesn't seem on your page as great as it really is.
Idea is nice. I like the way I get to choose parameters of a new summoned creature and how it helps to solve puzzles! Music and pixel art work together well to give a mysterious atmosphere.
Well done!
I LOVED the sprites and animation of the little guy and the concept of the game as a whole, keep it up with the great work! I just wished the game was a little "faster" to summon and walk (I had trouble and had to double or triple click some keys some times).
Its very good, fun concept, but the game is critically lacking something like an "R" button to restart the level. You can get stuck in a wall, and then the only thing you can do is restart the game -.-
From what i saw: the summoning menu (left/right/jump circle) should appear on the top of the instructions.
And probably there should be a "destroy demon" button. Overall I really like it, looks and sounds great, but after few tries i just lost patience. This omission makes it really tedious to experiment right now. Maybe you can update?
Really liked the main character animations and mechanics and how he's moving his eyes while you press W and S.
Very good idea that lead to interesting puzzles. Well executed. Maybe I missed it but my demons started to clutter up the level, maybe somehow you could have given the player the option to retire certain demons.
The idea was great but would need quite a bit of iterations to make it fun to play too. Did make it to the end though after a couple of quite annoying soft locks and needs for complete page refresh.
Screenshot 2024-04-23 at 15.12.51.png
Well one of the locks was just hitting esc and leaving full screen but everything was so tiny without that it was near unplayable. The other time I got somehow stuck in a wall and the demon that carried me there couldn't move left to get me out.
Screenshot 2024-04-23 at 15.05.19.png
So the idea is great but executing the "plan" so to say just takes so much time and is fiddly as hell to swap between multiple demons and try to remember which does what. Doesn't really help that the only levels are basically the same thing with a very slight alteration. I think at least an easy way to help with demon power memorization would be to give them different color eyes maybe based on what ability they have the most of. And a way to unsummon them too would be nice (and obviously level restart as it's possible to mess up and lock yourself).
Nice pixel art and animations! The music and sounds fit the mood well too. All in all would be great fun if you somehow made the actual gameplay less tedious and obviously added a buttload of more brain melting content.
Good job! 👍
**edit:** Oh yeah and the controls could be streamlined quite a bit. Of course the game was short now but I kept constantly messing up with s/w/space. First of all, swapping off from a demon could automatically drop what they were holding to not get stuck on an immobile state then needing to rotate through everything again just to drop. Of course if you'd create puzzles with double carrying mechanics needed that would be another case. Both down and up could activate the summon area (and picks in the ring) to make it less fiddly. I would also swap the keys for grab and switch. I think it would also make a lot of sense if switching picked the demon closest to you first etc instead of using the summoning order.
Loved the concept and how you set up the tutorial level to fully explain the mechanics to the player.
I think it'd be helpful if there was some variance in how the demons looked, even just a slightly shifted hue could make it easier to keep track of who is who
Cool little game with a unique take
This is such an interesting puzzle concept. I'm a bit ashamed I didn't managed/had the patience to go beyond level 2 though. I really like the idea of composing the demon required to solve the puzzle, the fact that adding the same traits gives it more strengh gives more depth to the system and it's interestin to the see the variety of combination one could make.
I guess the controls and the platforming feeling could be fine tuned a little bit to improve the experience. As it is I found it quite tedious to redo almost 75% of the puzzle so you can try the end of the puzzle (yes I failed a lot of time to jump at the end of level 2). Maybe some kind of rewind would allow players to experience a little bit easily the capacity of the summoned demon without having to invoke a ton of them. (Is it just me or can you not destroy them.
I played the web version and found the graphics and the character animations quite pretty. The audio was nice and moody too.
All in all it's a great entry ! The problems I'm pointing to above seems to be something that could be easily fixed given more time and the rest of the design seems well thought out. Congratulations !
Please continue this game! The concept is amazing, it just needs some polish. The ability to despawn demons would be nice as well as better controls. One cool feature would be different demon types, like winged demons (extra flap jumps), sticky slime demons (sticks to walls), undead demons (can walk through hazards like spikes), etc. I can see this idea going to steam, Xbox, and Playstation, and making serious cash.
I did see that the moving platforms didn't move the player correctly, but it was purely a visual glitch, and it was on the last play-test level, so it didn't matter anyway.
Innovative idea for a puzzle game! I liked the music as it brought lots of mood even for being a short loop. Graphics and animations were neat and enjoyed the retro style, reminds me of old c64 games.
For the most of time the game worked well. Only bug I encountered was that I could accidentally transport myself into a wall with a demon and only way out was alt+F4. I would have also liked a way to delete a demon as I summoned quite a many in the last puzzle before clearing it.
I could see lots of potential for expanding this game as others have said in so many words in their reviews already. Nice work!