FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → Words of Power

Words of Power

By nsadie

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1384.0550
Fun1643.9450
Innovation4343.5050
Theme1794.1850
Graphics2024.2750
Humor4443.2745
Mood2263.9649

Comments

sicosiber 2024-04-15 22:52

it says on itch that the developer hasn't uploaded a game yet, but I'll give it a go once you have it up, just @ me whenever you got it!

nsadie 2024-04-15 22:56

@sicosiber I think you caught me just as I was uploading the build! Please try again!

sicosiber 2024-04-15 23:24

@nsadie very cool game! love the art and especially the fact that you were able to make a word game so quickly!

promzona 2024-04-16 10:20

Game is well made. Would not think that looking for words can be fun. Nice submission, thanks!

doot 2024-04-16 15:58

Nice word game! I love that you always have a lot of possibilities but there is a push toward using some letters. I found the font quite hard to read.

Thanks for the game I had fun!

nsadie 2024-04-16 17:45

@sicosiber Thanks for playing! I LOVE word games and strangely have never made one before!

@doot Glad you liked it. I was going back and forth on the font, as it really fits the look I wanted, but is not the easiest to read.

gdmage 2024-04-16 18:40

It would be more interesting if there were only 6 letters. But they could be used several times. And it would be necessary to form all possible words from the available letters. Like a quest.

dywanix 2024-04-16 18:40

Such a nice game. Looking for a words in enjoyable and artstyle is awsome

fenix131113 2024-04-16 18:48

Very interesting game. I really love it. But because of my knowledge of English, I couldn't even summon the first creature.

xry 2024-04-16 19:02

This is awesome, I'm so glad to see someone else make a game about summoning with words too!! I love the atmosphere and mood, and the specific requirements to make a summoning occur, and the fact that it can go wrong, is perfect!

nsadie 2024-04-16 19:03

@fenix131113 Word games can be sometimes be tricky for people who does not speak the language natively. I think it is usually more about the math than the actual words, although a good vocabulary does help. The way I coded the word checking library it could work for any language, but I would need a full list of legal words for each.

matthiasbroske 2024-04-16 19:03

Love this! Totally absorbed me and I lost track of time trying to beat Jolene. Seems like sometimes it might not be possible to get enough spell components, but I also might just be bad at creating optimal words haha and part of the fun is trying again when you fail

firellon 2024-04-16 19:17

Never were as proud of conjuring up 6 rare words in a row as today :)

nsadie 2024-04-16 19:35

@matthiasbroske Jolene is quite difficult! To get the required power is not so hard, but getting all the other resources can be tricky and you do need some luck for sure. I made the rounds short so failure is relatively low cost. @firellon Nothing beats the feeling when RNG Jesus smiles at you :smile:

pusheeneiro 2024-04-16 19:37

Great scrabble type game

fishmasterino 2024-04-16 21:33

Screenshot_20240416_233113_Firefox.jpg

I made it ! Fun game, but sometimes it feels like it doesn't give you all the tools you need to win

labcatgames 2024-04-16 22:47

Extremely impressed by the depth of content considering you have such thorough word recognition, including definitions! Were you able to import some dictionary data? Great clean art, and nice color choices, satisfying game play, a great build!

cmakota 2024-04-16 23:00

Guess I need to work harder on my vocabulary haha, it was really hard for me to make the ritual work, but an amazing submission any way. Congratulations!

stesim 2024-04-17 00:17

I spent quite a bit of time trying to beat the various stages, but eventually gave up. While I enjoyed the game as a whole, the complete randomness kind of took a toll on the fun. Most of the time it felt like I didn't even have a chance no matter how well I did with the words, since certain colors just wouldn't spawn enough. Other than the RNG aspect, I think it's a great little game.

dreamscale 2024-04-17 05:49

I love word games, so this was right up my alley! Would be cool to see a few more mechanics, like maybe the different colors have different effects when you use them, but overall I enjoyed it!

rubikon 2024-04-17 14:06

Name "George" for an abomination caught me off guard lmao.

nsadie 2024-04-17 18:25

@fishmasterino @stesim thank you for playing! I made a very small tweak to the RNG, to increase the probability of the resources you still need in the final rounds. There are some interesting discussions to be had around probability in game design!

@dreamscale I love word games too! I was thinking of things like multipliers, but ended up just using the word length for that because I ran out of time.

@rubikon It was really late and my brain was fried :smile: You should have seen my kids faces the next day when I showed them the game with their art in and then they read the names!

dams333 2024-04-17 18:42

Really cool word game ! I like the global ambiance and I like George :wink:

myre 2024-04-17 19:24

my biggest congrats to the art team on this one ;) great stuff, love a good cursed wordle

hexy 2024-04-17 19:37

This kept me playing way into a time when I was meant to be meeting with friends. Thanks to this game, I now know how few words I know haha. This is a great game, and I would never have guessed that the artists are so young. They have a bright future ahead of them. There is of course, as always with this type of game, an issue with rng and the tiles you get, but I don't think that detracts from the experience here. Well done to all four of you, I will be coming back for more!

cat-lab 2024-04-18 19:12

This game was so much fun! A simple concept but so well-executed and honestly a little addictive. I'm saving this one to play again in the future. Fantastic job!

kizilejderha 2024-04-18 19:25

Nice take on word puzzles. Having to focus both on specific materials and overall power creates a good dynamic. Gotta work hard to summon Jeff.

samboyer276 2024-04-18 23:02

Loved the graphics and sound design! feel like lots of care was put into this as much as the game design/letter selection. I failed on George a few times at first but worked out how to combine elements better towards the end. Good job!

risminator 2024-04-18 23:37

Great idea! Agree with people above, this blend of mechanics is very fun to play with. Nice job!

dartdimon 2024-04-19 00:07

even that I'm not english native speaker, but I think the game is great an I could beat 4 bosses, great game in all means Untitled-1.jpg

nsadie 2024-04-19 06:07

@dartdimon that is a good round! Thanks for playing!

@hexy Glad you enjoyed it! I am so thrilled to have my boys join me, it was a nice creative family weekend! On randomness, I feel that as long as you keep the cost of failure low (short rounds), and cheat a bit, like boosting probabilities when needed so you feel luckier, it adds to the experience.

@cat-lab to be honest, I found myself playing this quite a lot, especially when I found out by accident it runs fine on mobile!

pelmanable 2024-04-19 11:32

As a non-native english, I only succeed in first 3 rituals and couldn't make long enough words for last one.

The game is great, but first 5 minutes I just didn't know what to do with letters (picked randomly and they just worked sometimes when formed a words I didn't heard before, so I was confused). Maybe a little mention that you need to form just words would be nice in instruction or, at least, in game page (I just tried to find out what is "Words of power" from instruction means). Or maybe show red only "Words" in "Words of power" to keep the overall mood of the text.

Anyway I had a fun playing this game.

nsadie 2024-04-19 12:07

@pelmanable Thank you for playing! Three rituals completed is actually really good, no need to bash your English! I have lots of English friends who can't finish off Jolene :smile:

digitaliliad 2024-04-19 16:55

Longest word I could think of was 7, but thanks for backseating and letting me know how much better I could do next game. Congrats to you and your family on a great jam game!

nsadie 2024-04-19 18:41

@digitaliliad Thank you for hosting!

anifan-gelati 2024-04-19 20:25

I think you use soundtrack from 20 Minutes Till Dawn. I don't know if it's possible, but it sounds doubtful

pacelin 2024-04-19 20:28

I enjoy it! Really good word-game about summoning

frederikja163 2024-04-19 20:28

Pretty cool game, i really liked the art, was it really done by your kids?? I didnt really understand what words were and werent allowed though. I wrote some words that were definitely english words but they didnt give me anything. Maybe i missed something, but even after looking multiple times i could not find any rules about which words are allowed.

tryam 2024-04-19 20:29

Good word game. I liked the graphics

aleksa-al 2024-04-19 20:34

I called everyone, not knowing the language well and putting randomly matching letters together xD is a very pleasant chamber thing

nsadie 2024-04-19 20:57

@anifan-gelati I have never played 20 minutes, but the music I used is from John Leonard French. His pack of great tracks on the Unity asset store was in a Humble Bundle a while back and is quite widely used!

tosmaster 2024-04-19 21:01

This game was so much fun! Cute graphics, snappy controls and a great idea! I'll defenetly come back to play this one again! You could put this idea on steam!

Also, cool kids play only the coolest of words.

PXL_20240419_203256907.jpg

anifan-gelati 2024-04-19 21:14

@nsadie Oh, sorry then, I thought 20 Minutes had the original soundtrack. Anyway, the game is very coolly done!

liniux 2024-04-19 21:54

good artstyle and also for me as no native speaker it's good for training english

lyamgtt 2024-04-20 07:48

Really fun game! I love word games and this one is really nice! The only thing is the conditions of failing were a bit unclear, other than that I love it! (love the art too!)

chiara-sanviti 2024-04-20 09:51

The mechanics are simple, but elegant. Same thing for the art style, good job!

nsadie 2024-04-20 10:55

@frederikja163 It is really weird that you found some words that did not work, as I think I have a very comprehensive dictionary implementation! Almost any English word that is not a proper noun and that is more than 3 letters should work. If you can remember the words I would love to improve my dictionary.

Yes, my wife and kids did all the drawings! I did not have time to put them all in, but you can see the kids' raw images at the top and then I process them into the shadow things! monsters.png

The only other art is this sheet, that my wife did! combined.png

frederikja163 2024-04-20 11:26

The only one i really remember is bulb, i also didnt find that many, i just remember a few times where i though "this is word... right??" Maybe i was wrong in some cases, or maybe i mispelled them

euler-moises 2024-04-20 14:34

A great look at these cell phone games about putting together words. If they were like that they would be much more fun. One idea is to make some more to collect. Like pokemon. The people would be doing rituals all day long. And on top of that, they would learn new words and their meanings.

Congratulations!

coleslaughter 2024-04-22 23:45

[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2124979046?t=02h46m09s)

And thanks for making us feel illiterate while we played. :sweat_smile: Maybe I should do more crosswords...

nsadie 2024-04-24 11:03

Thanks for playing! I always enjoy watching you guys stream these!