FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → SUMMOGON

SUMMOGON

By nash, Finde and httpsterio

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3243.8037
Fun7573.2736
Innovation6193.3336
Theme5503.7236
Graphics5323.7936
Audio84.4836
Mood1014.1436

Comments

leozero 2024-04-15 18:58

Very nice game ! I loved the atmosphere with the background voice. I brute force a little bit :sweat_smile: but it works :stuck_out_tongue: The graphics and sounds are nice ! Well done :slight_smile:

andrewkennedy 2024-04-15 19:01

The voice over was outstanding - great quality audio capture, and a believable performance that came off as genuine.

I found the first round to be way harder than the next 2 - the stair-step pattern read very obviously to me as the row, but I never quite grasped the symbols in the upper-left corner.

I would perhaps recommend not locking the cards until they're all in the right spot. My first attempt I got a bunch wrong, and when resetting the board, I realized that the correct cards were locked in place. This made it really hard not to just drop each card in each spot, since it would guarantee that you would find the answer quickly.

Well done!

nash 2024-04-15 19:11

@andrewkennedy Thanks for the detailed comment!

We went through several iterations of how correctly placed cards were showed to the player. At one point, we even had a version where the cards in the right position were visually locked. We decided to go with something in between - where it may be that the player does not even notice the locking but it could nudge some players to the right direction.

The jam setting was taken into account here. People only spend a couple of minutes playing these games and some players may not be a fan of puzzle games. So we decided to take the middle groud here. Most likely, outside of the jam we would not have implemented locking at all.

meepster 2024-04-15 19:40

Amazing Game submission!

The sound design was very satisfy! The puzzles were quite simple but for a game jam it seems reasonable not to make things to hard for the player.

This game gave me some vibes similar to Inscryption. Would be curious if it had any inspiration on your game.

Overall great work!

nash 2024-04-15 19:55

@meepster Thanks for the comment!

You are right, Inscryption was a big inspiration for the music of our game (Diablo 2 was another one). I guess when I look back, maybe it has at least partly inspired the general mood of the game too!

worldofmush 2024-04-15 20:41

Wow voice acting was so good! Reminded me a lot of Inscryption with the vibe. Really amazing experience, I was blown away with how much mood you setup with the voice acting and audio

lyamgtt 2024-04-15 21:39

Love the puzzles and the art it really nice as well! Love all the work on the symbols!

vidim888 2024-04-15 21:54

Similar to other commenter - with locking mechanic the game becomes a bit weird. Starting from second round I understood that ladder would tell which row it is on and the number of options there is so small that it takes literal seconds to try them out one-by-one.

Do symbols in top-left corner even mean something? It's kind of weird that first round it was based on small blood splatters instead of actual symbols. That's partly why I didn't really looked into them much in second and third row because early on your game established that those symbols are just for cool visuals and not something game related. So in future rounds I wasn't trying to pay attention to them anymore.

I like the feel and vibe you were able to create with simple voice acting and visual/sound effects.

yakkocmn 2024-04-15 23:02

This was really neat! I'm always a big fan of "solve an evolving puzzle as you go"-type games, and the audio and narration added a lot to the atmosphere (love those slick card dealing sounds). Like some of the other comments mentioned, I brute forced the first puzzle (that later gets revealed under the deck) because I overestimated how difficult it would be. I noticed lines and arrows pointing in different directions and got side tracked looking for some sort of connection there, and I think (if time had allowed) it would've been neat for the hint under the deck to add a third feature or flip the puzzle on its head. Great work!

mhanicos 2024-04-16 07:41

It was an adventure, I love it! But sometimes I just brutforce the puzzle, if there was something like a timer and the time decreased when you make the wrong choice, it could have been more suspenseful

sobigdrasil 2024-04-16 09:34

Woah i liked that one! It certainly has this menacing Victorian feeling (mb that's the music). Again, i see people mentioning that but i kinda tricked(brut forced) my first round and the 2, 3 got a bit better but i still got some cards that i wasn't sure about. Also for some reason sound on itchi doesn't work for me so i downloaded the game. Mb it's because i'm using opera browser? not sure Anyway, amazing idea with a sound leading your hand, i liked it a lot! And the sound of card is very satisfying, thank you for that small puzzle

spica 2024-04-16 13:40

First of all great game title xD At first I thought I grasped the rules of the game during the second hand... I didn't. But, having narrator talking to me was a very, VERY cool detail that made the whole process more engaging. Good job! Also, I really like the card design

doonutsaur 2024-04-16 14:47

playing puzzle as a storyteller progressively interacting with me is REALLY cool. nice job!

oatsbarley 2024-04-16 14:55

Fantastic! The VO was great, and the art-style is really nice.

merb1000 2024-04-16 14:58

It's a fun game you have here! I liked how the puzzles built on each other, I at least found them to be a good level of difficulty. I think the game could benefit from more graphical stuff. While the VA was good, it wasn't to interesting to listen to it over a black screen. The cards and table itself looked nice and played well. Good job here!

evgenii-victorovich 2024-04-16 15:04

The sounds in the game are amazing, I liked solving puzzles using cards. Hoped to see summoned demon at the end, but for now I enjoyed the game.

pigeonic 2024-04-16 15:08

Really cool voice acting, would recommend some subtitles with it. Nice concept!

nash 2024-04-16 15:13

@pigeonic Thanks for the comment! During the last day of the jam we investigated implementing subtitles but it ended up being a real rabbit hole and we did not have time to finish them. We will prepare for the next jam with some subtitle support if we will end up having voice acting as well (and I guess now that we added them once we cannot do a game without them never again :).

peachtreemcgee 2024-04-16 15:21

Very good game, would recommend the option to enable subtitles. Locking the correct cards was very helpfull in figuring out the pattern, but it did lead to some trial-and-error near the end. Perhaps the option to "verify" the current layout, having the correct cards lock in at that point might provide a better sense of satisfaction.

kallico 2024-04-16 15:28

The voice acting was great, however the voice player had a possibility of overlapping if you tried to move a card.

It may have been too hard to solve otherwise but I Kind of wish the cards in the correct place were able to be moved to give you more autonomy in solving the puzzle

velvetlobster 2024-04-16 17:57

very impressive voice over

oh I thought something wrong happened that I was not seeing anything, but very clever transition there.

the voice interacting so vividly, responding to your moves really builds a strong vibe.

it even alternates between sentences when talking, you feel really immersed in this.

cant resist going brute force with this.

the second one kinda made the brute forcing a lot easier with the new notations being more obvious.

the third did not add too much difficult to it, but I really liked the ending.

man the atmosphere in this is awesome. But I gotta be honest that I solved all puzzles brute forcing my way lol.

wonder what the something is.

Screenshot 2024-04-16 145506.png

arzi 2024-04-17 11:31

I kind of accidentally brute forced it :sweat:

Visuals and the sounds and everything support the feel of the game well!

squeele 2024-04-17 11:43

Great work on the mood! The voice acting really elevated the atmosphere.

I think you found the right level of difficulty for a bite-sized jam experience. Short, but satisfying! Congrats!

httpsterio 2024-04-17 14:16

@PeachTreeMcGee Thank you! I agree that if we ever choose to do a voice acting heavy game in the future, we'll definitely have to figure out subtitles!

We played around with different options for verifying the correct pattern and while I agree that other options could add to the joy of discovery, we ended up wanting to simplify as we didn't want to leave any players stuck on the first level :)

willhoit 2024-04-17 14:55

Great little puzzle game! I loved how the tutorial was integrated into the play experience. I wish the later puzzles hadn't given me hints about what card were correct though...

woona 2024-04-17 16:45

I like the creepy vibe: the ambient sounds and card art add to it. The puzzles are quite simple, I had no problems understanding what to do. I think you can even solve them by chance.

The game feels very polished. Great job!

But... who drank all the samogon?

alessandro2024 2024-04-17 20:59

Interesting concept, but there needs to be a more logical way of figuring out the puzzles, right now it's essentially guesswork until the game sais it's correct.

paulhocker 2024-04-18 03:35

Fun puzzle game. Thanks for making it.

mantodea 2024-04-18 11:04

I like this game's art style and the gameplay, it gives me a feeling like some game i played before but i forget

twtwoface 2024-04-20 03:07

Very high quality game with great graphics! But in my opinion the best thing about it is the audio component! A little unclear about the connection of cards on the first level, but in general it is very pleasant to play! (special score for the title :D)