Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → FlamingRat
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Vamper | jam | 757 | 3.42 | 3.18 | 3.30 | 4.03 | 3.49 | 3.35 | 2.62 | 3.39 |
I love this! The idea is really neat, and the text and art were awesome. I would maybe put a little more emphasis on the summoning screen, but overall really nice work! Loved the take on the theme too.
Awesome level design for the early tutorial/ramp up, and I also love the concept and the twist on the theme! I don't know if these mages are exactly summoners but it's good enough for me. Great work on the gameplay, but you really need sound controls (the game is very loud). Nice work!
Vampire Survivors but you're the villain! Great one. I found it hard to feel something was at stake though, like can you even lose?
Graphics looked too goofy at the start but they really grew on me and they really fit the game after all. SFX are hilarious. Great job!
First 5 across the board for me. Great job for a weekend! Love the art and the text was funny as hell. And I don't even like anime stuff most of the time!
If there's any constructive criticism to be made it would be the controls -- the movement physics are rather clunky, I would remove a bit of the acceleration or cancel it entirely when I start moving a different direction. Other than that awesome job! Would love to see that as a full game with more scenarios or just more space to wander around!
Pretty interesting take on block breakers, I do not see this fitting all that well with Summon (feels like you had an idea and just tried to fit it afterward), but it's a cool enough game to explore. Hope it gets finished! Gj!
Love the concept and the take on the theme, the art and sound are pretty cool too! I always wanted to make a PICO-8 game. Nice job!
I am getting the same runtime error in most attempts though, and found the whistling mechanic kind of hard to understand. Maybe a few more tutorials or an indicator of what exactly was happening after certain whistling combos would have made it easier, but perhaps it's just something you didn't want so hey.
Overall awesome game!
Great rhythm game, loved it! I would have paid a little more attention to audio balancing since rhythm games are all about that; the music could loop seamlessly and the SFX could use some volume balancing. The art was very neat and the game didn't seem to have a lot of bugs so nicely done there! I'd also cut back on the text a little bit, but that's mostly personal preference.
Good job with the concept! It's really hard too, but I feel like it could be super fun as a fully fledged game. Naturally the art and lack of audio leave a little to be desired, but as a tech demo it's a really cool one that shows potential!
Loved the concept, really interesting one! I feel like it could be a full game with dozens of puzzles -- maybe just straight up copying and tweaking some famous chess puzzles (if that's not how you're doing it already!). The drag and drop was a little confusing, I think making the pieces/souls follow the mouse could've gone a long way, but overall I loved it and wish it were a full game. Nice work!
Really enjoyed it, got some PS1/N64 vibes without loading screens. Could use some SFX to make the spell hits more impactful. I had a lot of fun. Will come back to try and beat all minigames soon!
Interesting idea, like a flappy bird with more mechanics, I really like it. While the prototype could use some polish and maybe start a little slower so the player can pick up the mechanics, I think it has potential as a fun little game. I would also try to add a little bit of sound just to help with feedback for my actions, even if it's not finalised.
Well done!
I feel like you guys focused most on the graphics so I will also focus mostly on that, even though I need to say I expected a little bit of engaging gameplay to be honest.
So, the graphics look great, excellent job on that! I would have paid more attention to the camera movement and character animations since you spend a lot of time looking at these, but overall very good for a prototype done so quickly. The audio was a little annoying, mostly because the crow wouldn't stop cawing repeatedly in the same pitch -- there's a neat trick where you can randomise the pitch of an audio without having to create/use multiple audio tracks. If you did that and decreased the frequency a little bit it would be a lot more tolerable.
Overall I think you achieved what you were looking for, so nice job!
I really enjoyed the core concept here, although the prototype could've used a little more polish, for example on the platforming physics or being able to attack in a direction while walking in another. The art is very detailed for the screen size/camera angle so either making it simpler or getting the camera closer could help with clarity. Overall interesting concept, nice work!
I love it, kept playing forever! The song is reminiscent of the Chocobo theme which is a straight A in my book. Art and SFX are super cool and the idea behind the game too! Hope it gets expanded!
This is hilarious and addictive at the same time! Very well done, I had to remind myself I'm checking a ton of games today, otherwise I'd be playing til now :P
If there's criticism to be made it's probably that it starts very hard already since it's a nonintuitive mechanic. Also, some feedback/transition when you die and respawn would have gone a long way.
Excellent job!
Awesome game, love the mix of genres! Also the sound effects are hilarious. It's really imbalanced in that I can just spam click without regard for which weapon is coming up since there's no cooldown to them. The idea itself is really great and I hope it gets expanded on. Great job!
Awesome art, audio and gameplay idea! The controls are a bit clunky but maybe that's on purpose to make it harder. There are other ways to make it difficult though. Overall I love it, played it way more than I should've. Well done!
Cool game idea, it really wishes it had SFX though! Also, shooting was a little bit awkward, maybe it could be an autoshooter? A QOL unit to help carry stuff like a cart would be nice too. I also found it hard to feel the stakes of the game since I could summon the stuff when I was ready for it like a sandbox game but without any of the survival elements that would make it more hectic. Maybe the fridge could get angry at you if you took too long or something?
Nice art and controls felt smooth (except for spacebar-shooting), so good job there! This game has potential, just needs more polish.
Cool game! Spent a lot of time playing with it. I think this concept can be really great with larger puzzles/more powers/a little more 'juice' to the visuals! Awesome work!
Thanks @lima-victor this was a very early build I wanted to put it out there to start getting some friends to test it. Going to push another version RN and then one just before the deadline, let's hope it's more of a finished prototype by then!
@ghosttori thanks for trying out the game! Adding new units is definitely the thing we want to do the most, but we need to add some polish first. We ended up not having enough time for this jam, but I'm really happy with how it turned out either way.
It sucks that you got stuck though. If you manage to reproduce it somehow let us know.
@tata Thanks for the thorough review, we really appreciate it! All GFX work credit goes to @nytezerak and audio to @ghyliorn.
We are testing out ways to improve the resource management like mana bottles and blood bags, unfortunately we didn't have enough time during the jam but we'll definitely improve it over time.
You can follow me on itch.io (same account that has the game) I will post updates outside the jam there once the rating phase is over.
@trux @jhax thanks very much! Yeah the gameplay loop is a bit flawed especially later on where you end up running more than summoning. The collectibles and new summons will hopefully fix those issues, although they aren't in the scope of the jam. You can follow us on Itch to get more updates there!
@jean-francois @untick thanks for the feedback!
- we are aware that the AI is a little shitty at the moment. We are going to fix it in a later version, there are some improvements on the way already, although we'll have to wait for the jam to be over to release. - someone suggested earlier that the player see the spawn locations before they actually spawn, so they can plan accordingly. We are experimenting with this route and are going to fix the issue of random spawns being too frustrating as well.
@labcatgames thanks for trying out the game! A lot of these issues are things we are looking to fix in future versions, unfortunately we didn't have the manpower to work on them within the timeframe, so it'll only happen after the review phase is over and we can push a proper update.
The choice to go 3D with 2D sprites was more stylistic than anything else, and though we do want to play more with the 3D environment, you're right that, for now, it's just a 2D game with a coat of 3D paint.
The turn length especially is something we want to find ways to mitigate. Speeding up the turns with a key press and having them animate faster are two quick wins we'll look into implementing. Also, with more time to add other summons and make the game more varied, the feeling of repetition should go away as well.
Thanks for the thorough review, and hope you come back in the future after the jam to check out what changes we can manage to make!
@kirass @andrewbyte @onqdll @zerolarih thank you all!
We're gonna try to make the later game more engaging and feeling less 'unfair' - you can check other comments for what we're on track to do!
Really enjoyed the concept here, after clicking around a bit to figure out what was going on, but I couldn't understand the goal or how to prevent the enemies. I had a little bit of fun with the physics simulation but it feels like the game loop wasn't quite polished enough for me to figure out what I had to do -- complicated games like these could really use a good old wall of text at the start explaining what you're supposed to do for each enemy :)
I hope this idea gets explored further, using different physics objects to defend your static "player" is a cool enough concept, sorta like a physics tower defence game. But this one needs a little more clarity.
Great sound and pixel art!