Project Summon

jsmcag 2024-04-15 10:49

It's a nice base for a Tower Defense type of game.

Drawing a spell is a fun mechanic, but I have a couple of issues with your implementation: I find it too strict, which gets very annoying when you seemingly need tens of warriors to defeat a single monster. I should be able to draw it anywhere on the screen rather than just the small image on the corner. Given that you are drawing the spell, maybe we don't need a spell selector - we could just draw the shape.

I couldn't figure out what the green spell does.

The game crashed on me after some time, so I couldn't reach the end.

From the little taste I had, there's a good game to be had. Good luck on your future work!

zevsehg 2024-04-15 11:06

Nice art style! Didn't understand what the third spell do. Seems like enemies stopped spawning after first wave. It will be cool to see full game.

krash01 2024-04-15 11:48

Completely forgot to explain the green spell, my bad.

That spell was created as a Rally spell, it lets you position your created warriors to a point of your choosing.

Thank you both for the bug/crash reports as well.

sigmoiddev 2024-04-15 13:52

Overall, a good concept - the atmosphere and the art style felt quite spooky, and the link to the theme of summoning was clear.

I did find though that the actual drawing of the spells was a bit unforgiving. It often failed even when it looked as if I'd done it correctly, and I didn't find the gameplay particularly intuitive (even after reading the tutorial in the description).

I also found that there was never really much incentive; there was never really a sense of panic (I know it's just a demo), but once you defeated the first few enemies, the game felt kind of empty. Of course you'd have difficulty ramping and a reason to progress, but there was no sense of urgency - no time limit or anything.

Definitely a fun concept though - good luck with the game!

krash01 2024-04-15 17:49

Yeah, the gameplay is very basic, the game's main loop was created during the last half of the final day so I was a little rushed for time and implemented the simplest of gameplay. This section will be getting a full overhaul so that it be more challenging and fun.

The spell drawing system is rather simplistic in its backend setup, so a lot of issues still stem from it. This can and will also be improved once I get back on to the project.

Thank you for your feedback :slight_smile:.

owtuvammo 2024-04-15 23:43

Something that tells you how much mana you actually need for each spell when you have them selected would be good.

As others have said, the drawing is a bit unforgiving, but I really, really like that idea.

I like the music, but the end of it makes the loop a bit jarring.

look-for-happiness 2024-04-16 13:01

Nice idea! But it has the following problems: 1. The game seemed to only have round1. 2. The mana UI had bug and it was frozen. 3. The third spell was a bit unclear -- due to the color I thought it was a pastor, and due to the icon I thought it was a stronger soldier, but it was only a pointer. Maybe you can set a flag planting animation to hint. 4. The summoning interaction was interesting at first but later it was getting tiresome. Maybe you can summon 2-3 Goblins once. 5. The camera was a bit difficult to move(small problem).

I hope you do better next time:)

ugly-robot 2024-04-17 19:20

Oh wow, this is awesome! I am really glad to hear you are pursuing this further, I definitely think there is alot of meat on the bones! I am shocked this is a compo game - a 1st person starfighter with a unique magic system and summoning mechanic? So cool

You picked the perfect symbol for the #1, so fluid, feels great to execute. To sfx are lovely, the little characters adorable, and the resource gathering is a surprisingly complex model. Unfortunately, nothing happened after I beat round 1 - I was really wanting to play more!

Some tips: * I think the player should have a small cadre of spells to assist in defending (a melee blast, a fireball, whatever). Of course, you wouldn't have had time to do this in a jam - but for a later release. * Of course, I'm sure you thought of having turret summons as well * Would be cool to have utility spells, perhaps for creating things like lamp-posts, fences, roads for you minions, etc * I think the 2 unconnected dots on the green spell were confusing - I prefer what you were going with as far as single, continuous sweeping shapes for the spells

Sorry, much of those suggestions may be obvious, I'm just excited to see where you go with this!

BTW Spell-drawing is also something I had in my godot game! May I ask, how did you do yours? Mine ended up requiring multithreading, and per-pixel comparison on the CPU (not the best way of doing it - I thought of a dozen different approaches, but had to go with what I could code up fastest). How does yours work under the hood?

krash01 2024-04-20 01:04

Thank you, even obvious suggestions are useful.

Regarding my spell system, I created nodes that I placed around the path of the spell. I then used an Area node that I placed on the player's finger to detect when overlapping, if an overlap occurs, it increases an integer value to detect how many parts of the spell has been touched and its only if that number is above a threshold that the effect happens.

Simple effect with downsides, like not having to actually follow the spell pattern, but worked for the jam.

someone 2024-04-20 16:01

Interesting idea, summoning many fighters is a bit tedious though. Definitely needs instructions in game, I had to come back and read this page a few times before I figured out what to do. Interesting art style for the creatures, the black legs are hard to see because it is so dark though.