Shadow Summoner by Tommy 2024-04-22T14:08:00Z
I loved this submission. Nice simple art and style, fun mechanics, and rather balanced game play. It may be my favourite game that I've seen in the jam so far!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → AJ Atkinson
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Lost Signal | jam | 722 | 3.08 | 3.20 | 2.70 | 3.72 | 2.85 | 3.47 | 2.68 | 3.32 |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Garbage Hero | jam | 2.66 | 3.16 | 3.33 | 3.83 | 2.66 | 3.50 | 3.16 | ||
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Dead to Rites | jam | 842 | 3.34 | 3.32 | 3.26 | 3.86 | 3.17 | 3.16 | 2.52 | 3.10 |
I loved this submission. Nice simple art and style, fun mechanics, and rather balanced game play. It may be my favourite game that I've seen in the jam so far!
I'd recommend some instructions.
The game itself is a charming little puzzle game. I enjoyed the concept, though it was incredible easy to blow through all 7 levels in a minute or two. I suppose the timeline makes it difficult to set up some actual challenging levels. But put some time into coming up with some head scratchers, and I could totally see this on steam or mobile store!
We did it!
Thanks for playing and commenting! We definitely didn't get everything we had hoped in, and really regret not leaving enough time to balance gameplay :p
Thanks so much to everyone who played, rated, and commented on our first ever Godot game.
We had an extremely hard time cutting out various things that we really wanted to include, but with the limited time and experience, those decisions had to be made to get something up within the window. I am unbelievably thrilled that so many people that left feedback were able to see past unpolished and missing features, and still express an appreciation for the idea and the gameplay mechanic at it's core.
We do very much plan to continue developing the game, and hope it can eventually evolve into what we envisioned throughout the jam.
I sincerely want to say thank you to everyone above this comment for the kind, supportive, and encouraging words. You have all made my first game jam such a positive and enjoyable experience. I can't wait for the next one I am able to participate in!
Best of luck to everyone in their future projects! <3
Nice little arcade shooter! It'd be awesome if you added a roll/dodge button, and I think a little more effort to include the summoning theme would have been nice to see.
But I enjoyed what you managed to put together in the time frame :)
An interesting idea indeed!
I don't know that I ever really 'figured it out'. I think I was sort of getting it, but with only the score in the bottom right, I didn't really feel like there was any feedback for how you were doing.
By the end I was just choosing 3 random cards as quickly as possible, and even then each turn takes about 10 seconds. I didn't necessarily dislike choosing card combos and hearing their tunes, but I didn't feel like I was given any reason to want to keep doing that for the 8+ minutes required to get to round 50. It didn't feel like I was ever rewarded or punished for my decision (though I'm guessing through the change in score I was).
Because this is a game jam, I did stick it out to see what happened. I was kind of disappointed to see it just abruptly end and display the score (that felt like I randomly) accumulated.
I don't meant to sound to critical. I think the game looks really nice, and the melodies were interesting. But I can't help but feel like the gameplay falls a bit flat. Some sort of obstacle to overcome, or reason to try to collect specific types of sheep, etc. might go a long way.
All that being said, I appreciated the game, and applaud your choice to do something different and unique!
Cute little collection of mini games!
I am baffled that people are having trouble figuring out how to play this. It seems pretty straight forward. Unless maybe some people are having trouble recognizing some rune-like letters?
You just spell a word, and then click the check. I love the simplicity of the game and the design.
This honestly is feels like one of the most polished games I've played in the jam so far. It's really well done, I haven't encountered any bugs, and I absolutely love the effect that you add to the audio as letters build up, as stressful as it is haha!
Great job! I genuinely loved playing this!
*Edit: it seems like most issues people are having is with the viewport. Not sure if it's been fixed, but it was fine for me. As someone else suggested, try playing with your browsers zoom if you have this problem.*
This was a fun play! I definitely see the love put into to the spells and combos! Great job :)
(Side note hitting esc makes the game unresponsive with seemingly no way to get it working again. I lost a run trying to cancel a spell :p)
I really enjoyed it! There's just something about a top down with a solid roll! I love the art, very cute little main character, and I really appreciate the care that went into the enemies. With their different sprites, movement, attacks, and the death animations were a nice touch.
A couple times I had enemies (mainly the sprinting yeti) get stuck in corners, but it was rare. I think it might nice to have a little more feedback when getting hit, even just more prominent health bar could help communicate the damage you are taking. And it kinda of felt like the summoning aspect was just a long range spell. But the theme component was there.
But you guys did a great job! It's a fun game start to end, perfect length for a jam imo!
Interesting game :slight_smile: I quite like the concept! You may want to spend some time balancing the playable characters a bit. Once I switched to the guy that shoots the blue projectiles I never switched back haha. We ran out of time and weren't able to balance our game at all, so I don't mean to criticize! :sweat_smile:
Cool idea! While a little cumbersome to enter spells repeatedly, I really like the mouse wheel spell interface! It has potential!
Interesting idea for sure!
I always appreciate people that choose to tackle a puzzle game in a short timeline. It's hard to come up with levels that elicit a satisfying eureka moment. Obviously this is quick short, but given the constraints of the jam I think you did a great job! I would be interested in seeing the idea expanded into a full game with a couple additional mechanics to play with.
(Maybe having the instructions just list the runes in the order you need to activate them would be clearer)
This was quite a fun 3d platformer! I loved how you separated two simple mechanics of air jumping and wall jumping, to create a third mechanic. And how all three had to be used together to solve the different areas. I found the different sections puzzles to be pretty engaging.
Great job!
(no issues with the web version for me)
It's an interesting concept. I think some further polishing of the ui might make it a bit easier to progress. But I found it genuinely hard to figure out how to play at first. Once that was figured out it was fun to try the different actions and combinations available.
I applaud the choice of using voice over narration. Haven't seen that in another game in the jam thus far!
I made so many friends! I like the art! I found a number of the enemy sprites to be particularly funny XD
Keep up the great work!
Interesting concept. I did enjoy the experience, and found it to be a refreshing change in the types of games I've been seeing across the jam. I always appreciate people trying unique or niche concepts!
I don't however appreciate the dev's attitude "anyone who rates my game poorly is just not hardcore enough"...People are allowed to just like different things. But it's a great attitude if you want to prioritize protecting your ego over hearing constructive criticism.
Once again, I enjoyed it!
It's a nice little deck builder! I found the card's a bit hard to understand at first. Once I got into things it did get a little more familiar, but they still feel not easily distinguishable or clear in some ways.
Tackling a deckbuilder in a short window like this is definitely ambitious. Particularly when it comes to balancing, since that is such a key aspect that deckbuilders really need to get right. While I probably didn't invest enough time to get a great idea of how things are balanced, it felt better than I expected it would, having been put together in 3 days!
Great job!
I genuinely had fun playing it. It is obviously missing some key features like being able to restart or pause. But for the limited time allowed, I think you should be very happy with it. You put together a fun and engaging game!
Cute little platformer. I enjoyed the art and music quite a bit.
Maybe I didn't get far enough, but I didn't see the summoning theme come into play. But again, I didn't get to the end.
All in all I'd say this is was a fun submission to play :)
A great start to a tactical rpg! Maybe a little loose with the term summoning, but the theme is only one category to rate. I really enjoyed the game, it's well polished and has a great level of detail, lore, and charm to it!
Love the pixel art. But not sure what any of the 'summoning' skills/spells actually do, but the counter goes up. Kinda feels like a playful clicker game.
I'm sorry to see that you removed your submission! Everyone has to start somewhere, try not to let perfectionistic tendencies stop you from putting yourself out there!
Best of luck in the future :)
Ahh I loosed... Interesting game. Pretty hard to get the hang of at the beginning. I feel like practice mode was a good idea, but maybe not the tutorial that it ought to be.
Overall it's a cool submission! Great job!
Cool idea! I didn't know until the last room that you could pick up more than guns XD
@JHax Thanks for the review! I'm glad you noticed the wind and terrain surfaces! Our biggest regret with the final product was not having enough time to put together a larger level that really showcased some of the features and mechanics we included.
Did you forget to include a link? Or weren't able to get it finished? I hope you had fun in the jam! :)
Great little game :) good job!
Interesting idea. I couldn't quite find my way through the game XD
Really cool idea! I love the effect of the radar sending waves out periodically to get a reading. It was a little tough at first to figure out how to do things, but I think's it's a great execution of a interesting idea. And definitely well suited for the theme. Kudos!
I love the art and the color palette! Great job!
I absolutely love the style and feel of the game! Great job!
Good try guys, best of luck on the next one!
Couldn't interact with anything as the drone? But well done on the art and style. It's an interesting idea for sure, and a great take on the theme!
You should consider exporting for play in browser :) Best of luck!
Broken link :( Best of luck!
Very interesting choice to do a co-op game for the jam! I admire your ambition!
Try renaming your .html file to index.html, re-zipping and re-uploading! Best of luck!
As others have stated, try renaming the html file to index.html and you should be able to get it up and running in browser. Best of luck!
Interesting submission! The lidar system is a great idea for the theme. Haven't seen that take on it yet!