The Acolyte's Handbook

ditam 2024-04-16 19:31

Hello and welcome everyone! I've made a rather simple game this time around, as I was very short on time due to other responsibilities. This was made in around 17 net hours, including a complete pivot in my scope around 6 hours in. (My original idea was that the spells would include gestures that you had to draw out freehand, but my mouse-drawing prototype was getting out of hand in complexity, while also not being particularly fun to use, so I decided to just cut my losses and switch to stationary candles.)

I'm looking forward to receiving your feedback, especially about the handbook as a game mechanic. I'm working on a larger game that features a similar manual that you have to repeatedly consult (or eventually learn by heart), so if anyone has any strong thoughts about the mechanic, do share, and don't pull your punches.

Share your final scores below!

In the upcoming couple of days I'll try to add a basic in-game tutorial, so you can just jump in without having to read this submission page.

cope 2024-04-16 22:36

I summoned goat. Goat appeared. Good game.

beebster-games 2024-04-16 22:37

The play screen showed up in the upper right hand corner. It was way too dark for me to play.

Sorry brother

cmakota 2024-04-16 22:40

It is a cool mechanic, I believe it would do well integrated as a system in part of a bigger game. The typing part was interesting, would be fun to try and implement it as mic capture, so you would have to light the candles and then say the words out loud.

Overall great idea, congrats!

valentinwb 2024-04-16 22:46

First of all good job on the overall mood of the game, the sound effects are spot on. About the handbook mechanic I think it could be cool to have it as an overlay or at least placing it on the screen in a way that does not prevent the player from interacting with the game view. Congrats anyway and good luck for your project !

monika 2024-04-16 22:47

Scored 4280

This is cute. I could see it being a fun memory game with more polish and pressure. The art is nice and it mostly feels good to play. The chanting is very satisfying.

Notes: 1. Text is very dark and low contrast. It was hard to see things. 2. I would have liked to be able to turn the pages with the keyboard. Don't know if I missed it or if it isn't there.

kallico 2024-04-16 22:52

Impressive considering how little time you had, but there's not much game yet. I think the handbook UI works well for the prototype. If you're going to have players memorize summoning commands, it would be nice to see them built up from a logical structure of elements. More complicated for more advanced summons. Either runes or a constructed language maybe?

klemen 2024-04-16 22:54

the text is not as visible but the gameplay overall is fun and enoyable! Hope to see more of it ;)

noobman64 2024-04-16 22:55

Nice game, specially for only 17 hours! Trying to sift through the pages in a hurry can be fun. I don't know what its name is but call it the "reference manual" mechanic when I see it in games. The clicking was easy to figure out but It took me a while to realize I'm supposed to type as well. Maybe some UI emphasis could help with that. The sound design and mood was very eerie, and the visuals were clean. Well done!

My final score was 3520 (7 attempts at 247 seconds)

lehmy 2024-04-16 22:58

Nifty little game, i liked it. First of all I can completely understand your problems with the recognition, we also tried that, but scrapped it later (still working on it *cough*). As you were asking for the mechanic of the almanac: The looking up stuff can lead to nice game mechanics like your game presented here, but you need to keep the organisation of the book in mind. If there were more entries, the clicking through would be to tedious and probably would become pretty annoying over time. For this little game it's fine, but for more entries I would be frustrated to navigate with the arrows.

The art is simple but fitting and i liked it. Only the Book itself felt a bit lacking in comparison to all the other assets. Some light texturing (like the spot of the summoning) would probably make the book feel less out of place, but its just a minor thing.

Overall I found it enjoyable and actually played two rounds of it, good job.

ian-mcd 2024-04-16 23:23

got 3660. Cool little game great work. loved the sound effects and the sppoook

daviiiiiiid 2024-04-18 10:53

Very funny invocation words ! Also liked the ho ho ho sound when summoning

ldrow 2024-04-18 10:54

Nice expressiveness. The font is a bit hard to distinguish in the dark, and it would be more convenient if clicking on the candle and flipping through the book could also be done with the keyboard.

redphoenix2412 2024-04-18 16:22

Nice idea! Maybe you could have included a few more creatures to summon. And the text is very hard to read on the dark background. Beside that: Cool little game!

ffffchai 2024-04-19 13:24

If I had a summoning grimoire, this would be it. I love the cutouts and was pleasantly surprised to see what was actually summoned.Nice work!

flogram 2024-04-19 13:26

Very cool sounds! Especially the summoning bass.

edoardo-talamini 2024-04-19 13:29

Gorgoth is my friend now

pabloabraham 2024-04-20 06:24

Nice game, though navigation could become tedious with more entries. The art is simple and fitting, though the book could use a bit of texturing. Enjoyed playing it—good job!

thelastslowpoke 2024-04-23 12:04

Scored 3600 in the one only try. Very cool vibes. I love the style you went for. For some reason capital letters are hard to type. Actually, the game doesn't feel very responsive to typing in general, which is kinda frustrating in a game that wants you to type fast. I don't care though. Great job on delivering something cool in this limited time you had!

meranolean 2024-04-23 18:14

Hey! That's very innovative idea with writing right spell and setting candles in a right order! I felt like I'm real cultist :) Keyboard delay made it a bit inconvenient, but that's a small problem.

Thank you for your game!

batisdark 2024-04-24 22:22

Here is my feedback: * holding shift to type has some kind of delay. It would constantly get me lower case first, unless I hold shift for a second or two, not sure why (though later I noticed that it doesn't mater anyway) * I tried to click the book multiple times instead of pressing tab. Its quite strange that some things made by mouse, some by keyboard and they don't mix (even though feels they could be mixing, like click on the book to open it). * There are no tip to press enter to trigger the summon.. I thought I am doing something wrong at first. * Black text on dark blue is really hard to read! There could be something to make test pop a bit more. Especially at the first screen before we are already in the game.

Other than that - loved the idea, look and mood of the game! Sounds were great too!

frank-gevaerts 2024-04-26 19:10

A nice little game! 17 hours isn't a lot, and getting something *finished* in that time is excellent!

Sound and graphics work very well together to set the mood.

Of course, with more time, there could be some extra things in it, such as have something "fun" happen when you get the magic words or candle order wrong ("fun" to be defined :) ). The one tiny thing I noticed that would improve UX is that the book could "rotate", i.e. when you're at the last page and you click right it could go back to the first.

I'm sure you've thought of those things already of course, and refinements not being there if you basically had one day is not surprising. Good job!

ditam 2024-04-29 20:33

Thanks everyone!

@cmakota mic capture with spoken words is an intriguing idea. Maybe with the right speech recognition library pulled in it could even fit into the Jam's confines. On the other hand, I can also see it ruining any serious atmosphere in exchange for some bonus points in innovation. But I'd love to try playing a game like that.

@valentinwb - you're absolutely right in that there's really no reason not to have both the book and the play area open at the same time. It was more of a game design decision to not do them side by side: I really wanted the action of consulting the handbook to be heavy and meaningful, both to build atmosphere, and to hopefully motivate players to learn some spells by heart. But as I mentioned in my top comment, I'm carefully reviewing the handbook mechanic itself, and what you're saying feels like a very reasonable request.

@kallico - Having "meaningful" runes or some sort of logic to the words was very much on my roadmap, but it was one of the first things to go when I faced time constraints. For example, I figured that changing single words could unlock more powerful versions of the same creature (reusing assets for these would have been a neat jam-friendly bonus). Most importantly, this would allow for a "discovery mode", where you can guess valid summon phrases that are not yet in the handbook - my first concept had a handbook with mystery pages that you had to unlock/fill. But the scope had to be cut heavily, so instead we ended up with these nonsensical but moderately funny one-liners :)

@klemen - Thanks! Re: seeing more, I always dream up post-jam versions of my submissions, to which I never get around... but never say never!

ditam 2024-04-29 20:52

@lehmy thanks for the detailed feedback, I really appreciate it! Regarding the organization of the handbook, in this case I intentionally went for a "clunky" UX where you have to turn the pages one by one - I wanted to evoke the feeling of frantically rifling back and forth the pages of the book. Also, flipping through the pages being so time consuming was meant to be a motivation for players to memorize spells to gain a competitive edge - but I guess without a scoreboard, and given all the other shortcomings of the entry, few people attempted multiple rounds - you might have been the only one, heh.

So this was a balancing act between forcing the handbook to be in the focus, while not being so annoying to destroy gameplay. But for the general case (and the other title I'm working on) for this handbook mechanic, I'll definitely prioritize usability.

@thelastslowpoke and @batisdark - I think there's some bug involving shift and capital letters (I am processing keyboard events manually, which in hindsight was probably a bad idea, and I should just style and overlay some standard HTML inputs instead) - but actually you don't need to properly capitalize the spells at all :)

ditam 2024-04-29 21:06

Thanks for submitting your scores @monica @ian-mcd @thelastslowpoke and @noobman64, I've added a leaderboard to the bottom of this submission page!

thelastslowpoke 2024-04-30 12:27

I mean, if we're keeping scores... I feel kinda obligated to be first :sweat_smile: simsalbimm.PNG You decide if it counts ;p

ditam 2024-04-30 17:19

@thelastslowpoke I don't see why it wouldn't! (List updated.) This is _exactly_ the kind of viral traction we need! 5330 is very respectable btw, I'm not sure if I could do better myself!