Dance Dance Evocation

0x0961h 2024-04-15 22:55

Let me start with some critiques: I would say, I was a wee bit confused by the gameplay loop and only after, maybe, 5 attempts I finally understood what I need to do. Then I'm honestly not sure if anyone can do the summoning without grimoire being opened, so it was a bit underwhelming when it took a good chunk of the screen. Music was nice, a bit repetitive though.

However! I like the idea! Such a fun concept and can be an interesting idea to develop upon. As a rhythm games player I would really love to see high octane fast notes action with chords and other stuff, but all in all, very nice concept and very well done! And of course I can't just ignore the fact that art is also very lovely. :thumbsup:

locksmitharmy 2024-04-15 23:37

that sure takes a bit to get going, but once you understand, its fun :)

edoardo-talamini 2024-04-16 08:32

Thanks to both of you @0x0961h @locksmitharmy !

Yes we are aware that is a bit messy, as we really didn't get the chance to playtest much. Initially we wanted the grimoire to be draggable but, well, time is what it is :sweat_smile:

It would be easy for me as the artist to dump all the blame on the programmer but he really worked his *butt* off.

zablas 2024-04-17 09:02

The font was a bit hard to read so it was hard to understand what dance moves do what but it was fun after figuring it out

bronino 2024-04-17 09:03

It took me some time to figure out how to summon anything but you had a good game idea, I liked it.

cmakota 2024-04-17 09:08

I can see a lot of care went into it, its really polished, from the animated start menu to the screen transitions. As other people mentioned, gameplay was a bit confusing at first, but that is something that can be easily adjusted for the future if you decide to progress with the game.

All and all a nice project, congratulations!

pralista 2024-04-17 09:13

It takes a while to understand the game, but once you do, it's quite fun. Feels like a real Wizard that experimenting the right moves to summon while reading the grimoire

uniowl 2024-04-17 09:23

Very interesting concept! Although the grimoire is a bit hard to read. Also it felt to me a bit slow when I press buttons (I had to wait for animation to complete). But I liked the gameplay anyway, the most interesting of "keyboard sequence summoning" mechanics I found so far in this jam

maxplusplus 2024-04-17 09:23

Interesting game for sure -- I think the concept alone is excellent and the artwork is adorable! Gameplay-wise I would have liked some more hints as to what combos are required for each creature, mainly because I wanted to see as many of them as possible, but I will admit that 9 combinations isn't that many to try so maybe I'm just lazy :sweat_smile: Either way, great job!

baubau 2024-04-17 09:28

Heya! I have to agree with everything that has been already mentioned. :slight_smile:. I managed to summon a couple of demons but I didn't contain them unfortunately. The idea is great and can be developed further. Well done guys!

edoardo-talamini 2024-04-17 11:31

Thanks everyone for the kind words! Yeah the font is not the most readable we know, my fault choosing it lol

@maxplusplus yeah we originally wanted at least 15 creatures but time was pretty strict so we opted to just make 9 but animate them all. We also wanted to sneak some hint for two secret creatures but damn we didn't manage to implement them in time.

maxplusplus 2024-04-17 11:49

@edoardo-talamini extremely fair, I imagine the drawing alone takes ages, let alone animating them as well, so 9 is perfectly respectable!

taximan981 2024-04-20 04:01

I would really really love this game, but unfortunately it was tricky for me to understand, it took so many attempts to even get a single monster, only to run out of mana and be forced to restart. With some added UX (feedback on what I am currently trying to summon, feedback on why it didn't work), I would love to try this game again! Reading the grimiore and making decisions on what to summon was cool, but it made it hard to figure out if I was doing anything right. Overall, really cool concept I would love to see more on!

edoardo-talamini 2024-04-20 22:27

@taximan981 We know we didn't have much time to polish the experience unfortunately, but I do appreciate that you liked the concept. In the end, that's the good thing: that someone likes our ideas :)

daviiiiiiid 2024-04-21 15:12

First I didn't understand why I could not succeed to summon the inferno but I finally made it !!

Its funny to try to get them all, the dialogues and defeat screen are funny. The music also adds something to the game. Well done :)

fupi 2024-04-21 15:16

That was pretty creative! I was verrry confused at first, mostly because that pretty hard to read font + the green demon thing covering up the text + the fact it mostly looked like lore, made me think all the text wasn't important, but when I realized the monster descriptions were clues on how to spawn them, the game got a lot more charming! x)

I managed to spawn all the big monsters and won pretty easily after I learned how to play. The text in the victory screen makes me think that maybe there's another ending and there's something I'm missing? But I'm pretty happy with my ending.

My main critiques are that the book should have a more readable font, and also that you should show the instructions *before* the book itself, since that confused me quite a bit. I didn't know what was important to the game and what was just story. Also, a sound or visual feedback when you get an arrow right would go a long way making this feel more juicy. Overall great job!

edoardo-talamini 2024-04-21 15:37

Thank you for the feedback! Yeah the font is my fault lol

@fupi there was supposed some secrets about the ending but we didn't have time to implement them unfortunately

d34th0ftit4n5 2024-04-22 09:04

really fun game but the flow of the game is broken up by having to flip through the pages of the grimoire, maybe there couldve bbeen more information on each page to help mitigate it. i loved the visuals too, great entry

abominablescience 2024-04-22 10:07

The game works well, there's clearly a lack of clarity on the summons required by stage, separate from the list of summons in order to have a clearer victory condition! I really enjoyed trying different combinations to find the summons and tame them! a great discovery, a game that has a real end unlike ours! continue like this and thank you to you!

sabasa 2024-04-22 14:19

It took me a bit to understand it but it was fun to experiment and summon the different creatures. It's be cool to have a more clear objective on what is needed to summon, maybe in a future iteration this could have levels and in each you need some specific creatures you need to summon for each of them. Btw I loved the wizards dancing animation