candlesan 2024-04-15 08:12
I am super impressed! This game is oozing with style. Great music, sound, visuals. The mood, style, presentation. This is very well done!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → SUMMONING
By xk-the-name
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 27 | 4.15 | 59 | |
| Fun | 31 | 4.08 | 59 | |
| Innovation | 257 | 3.00 | 58 | |
| Theme | 65 | 4.05 | 58 | |
| Graphics | 53 | 4.13 | 59 | |
| Audio | 52 | 3.80 | 57 | |
| Humor | 3.25 | 6 | ||
| Mood | 26 | 4.08 | 58 |
I am super impressed! This game is oozing with style. Great music, sound, visuals. The mood, style, presentation. This is very well done!
This is a very polished entry, even the very intro is perfection! The sword "throwing" gameplay is cool, though I ended up accidentally selecting some updates while clicking frantically to attack the enemies.
Incredibly impressive game, especially for a compo entry. There's really not much else to be said, the game is super fun and super replayable!
Well done. Wish it would be longer
LD is not LD without checking xkoster's entry!
I did three runs and for me the progression was very steep. Enemies becoming thick too fast and you have only one option to get +++damage each time. Otherwise you can't do anything to them at all.
Maybe I was very unlucky with power-ups though.
Still, great entry and jaw-dropping result for a solo COMPO dev. You are setting the bar for enthusiast game developers very high :)
Awesome take on the vampire survivor formula. The only downside is that there not much incentive to take risk, but it makes the game pretty chill... so it's not that bad :grin:
Audio is very impressive for a compo submission, very well done overall!
It was a lot of fun! Great work! :D
Very good execution of Vampires mechanic! Interesting sword upgrades. Was very fun to play! Well done)
Nice VS clone, liked the balance
Very nice to play, enjoyed this! Like the progression and the really satisfying enemy 'pop' on death!
I liked the addition of having to stay still for the bonus pentagrams, shakes up the usual "run forever" gameplay of VS-likes.
Loved the intro animation! This game really feels complete, which is incredibly impressive for a compo game. Love all of the extra polish: the intro animation, the dialogue, all the upgrades, and even the bonus mini-sigils... the sheer variety of upgrades!! And most importantly, the basic attack spell with the homing missile dagger is badass and really satisfying to get combos with. Absolutely amazing work!! Perfection.
I'm always a sucker for survivor-like games, and yours is truly outstanding and sophisticated. I'm absolutely hooked on your game, to the point where I nearly blew off a bath call from my girlfriend, LOL! And to be frank, the difficulty and feel of your game are spot on. As a pretty hardcore action game enthusiast, I know how challenging that is to nail, let alone within such a tight timeframe. You guys have pulled off a miracle, my friends!
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Very addicting! Took me a while to kill the boss, almost 12 minutes for a single playthrough. I think the progression needed more balance, enemies get tanky too fast. Overall good work!
Very nice looking, the intro screen art style and everything felt really polished. The gameplay felt engaging and i kept looking for new different power ups although at the end it ran a bit stale as i was not getting new things and i could almost stand in one spot due to the push back power up. Impressive work for such a short period of time, grats.
Very cool game and very addictive. I tried too many times to kill the final boss, but with no luck. Great game, good job.
Very awesome game! I especially liked the graphics. Enjoyed it a lot!
Here my feedback, I hope it's helpful.
1) Enemy hp is much too high / upgrades don't scale my damage enough to keep up
2) The circling daggers upgrade didn't seem to do anything for me. Not sure.
3) The mini pentagons take too long to fill up. It's almost impossible to do.
I beat the boss in ~12 minutes :D
Don't know how others in the leaderboard did it in such a short time :D
I will have to try again later!
Amazing sprites! This game is incredible. The fact that you autoattack makes it even more original and easier to play, since I only have to worry about evading enemies and collecting blood.
Really great work for a compo entry. Thank you for giving such useful feedback on our game.
Loved playing this game, I played for like 40 minutes! I like that your upgrades relating to power are balanced to keep the game still challenging even at later stages but you still feel much stronger than the start. My favorite part is the miniature summoning circles I kept wanted to take the risk of damage for the potential reward. I will definitely come back to play this one again!
One minor issue I had when playing Non-Fullscreen the powerups were covering the health bar at later stages of the game, though playing fullscreen completely resolves this issue.
Great Job!! especially for a compo, I'm amazed!
Very well done, the graphics are very good looking and there are a lot of powerups to discover ! Also a lot of attention with some fancy cutscenes :)
Good game. Atmospheric introduction. I liked the graphics and weapons. I also liked the bullet hell elements of the gameplay and the idea of summoning circles, but I expected there to be a little more than just an increased number of points. The music is not bad, but it still needs some work. During dialogues and choosing a buff, it would be convenient to confirm the choice for Space, because I would like to play it with one hand. It was also not very clear that the enemies had become stronger, because the model does not change and I understand their strength when I expect to kill them and run into them but cannot kill them
Lots of feedback to provide:
First off, the critical stuff. - I don't know if it was the web build's doing, but the music's audio quality was rough. Once the music was fairly loud, It sounded like it was playing at a low sample rate. The actual notes and whatnot sound good, like- the melody is providing the perfect eerie atmosphere, though something sounded off about the audio playback. - I never found the "wait in this circle for 10 seconds" stuff to be all that useful. Unless you have the shockwave spell, it's a waste of health to just stand there, and the rewards for it didn't seem nearly as grandiose as I had hoped. - The name of the game just being the theme verbatim feels pretty lazy. Hence why there are 7 other games this Ludum Dare with the same name as your entry. - The enemies all stack on top of each other. To some extent, I would have them push each other away in order to form a more menacing crowd. Having them stack on each other makes them too easy to avoid, or combo off.
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- One final note on the critical feedback, I was swiftly finding myself wanting more variety. I recognize the scope of a 48 hour game jam while working alone, though having different "weak enemies" to spice things up would go a long way. This ties in with my "all the enemies stack on each other" comment, since having enemy variety would avoid creating one singular mass of enemies. (I appreciate the occasional blue enemy, though one trick to add some free visual differences is to multiple the enemy color's brightness by a random values between, let's say 0.75 and 1. It gives some random tint to each enemy, and looks nicer than all of them being the exact same color) - More spell variety would be nice too, or at least more frequent upgrades providing the interesting choices. Far too often it was just Hp/Speed/Damage, when the ones unlocking new attacks are the ones you really want the players to experience and play around with.
Moving to the positive comments so I can just gush.
- Wow, that opening cutscene was cool! - The fog rolling in as the game gets closer to the end is a really well made effect. - It's fun! - The floaty candles are super cool, and I love the aesthetic you have going on. - I like the sound effects. It's very satisfying to *hear* the combos happening. - The online leaderboard is sick, and now I need to figure out how to add a speedrun leaderboard to my own games.
Solid entry! Great work.
Great game. I enjoyed the visual style and how polished it feels. So far, it's the game I've spent the most time on in this jam. The leaderboard played a significant role in that. The only thing that slightly bothered me was that the final boss gets pushed back too much by the sword, and towards the end of the battle he is pinched at the edge of the arena. And why is my nickname displayed as ??? in the leaderboard? Desktop Screenshot 2024.04.18 - 15.12.40.04.png
Impressive game in such a short time. Well done!
Excellent game oozing with summoning theme! Love the visuals. I think the initial enemies have a little too much health. It perfectly fine later enemies to require more hits but initial enemies should be easier to kill and acquire blood. Love the sword mechanics passing through many enemies forcing the player to go after large crowds. Same thing about the blue summoning ritual. Plenty of strategy there luring enemies away to give you time you need. Great job!
This is so well put together! The gameplay is really satisfying especially when you group up a load of enemies and then get to collect the blood. The visuals are great and I love how the level changes as the game goes on that's a really nice touch. The "stand here" circles were a nice touch but I didn't really find them that useful or usable tbh, seems like a lot had to line up to get them to work. Overall, great work!
Fantastic Vampire Survivors inspiration, you did a great job with it. Lovely art and animation, nice and moody music, the game is definitely fun. The enemies just scale up fast in health after the first pick up. More weapons please and try to find sounds, while picking up blood and boxes, that trigger the endorphines. And you'll be set for a hit :D The leaderboard is also a very nice touch. Congrats!
I love the into. The game has Vampire Survivors vibe, but with much darker mood. I loved to play it. Great Job.
Nice top-down action game, however, the music during combat is too soothing and out of place, not a show stopper, as I had great time while playing it. Good job.
Good! I had a fun time! However, the music didn't quite match. I particularly appreciated the intro though!
well executed! I love the vibe!
Nice and juicy !
Nice game. Good graphics and music, interesting gameplay. Movement of the player felt a bit sluggish, I assume there's a power-up to fix that? Great work!
I really love how the thing is done from completeness point of view. All those explanations of mechanics really built well into the gameplay, the intro, the overall style. Love it