Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → HollowBearGames
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | Summoner's Speakeasy | jam | 942 | 3.24 | 2.87 | 2.89 | 2.96 | 4.23 | 3.74 | 2.63 | 3.77 |
This game is incredible! The art, the music, and the voice acting are all fantasic. I was totally invested in the story and I thought the difficulty was about perfect - it was challenging but not too hard, and it was really rewarding to get to the end (nice twist too). Can't believe this was achieved in such a short period of time!
Absolutely love this idea, it's a really nice twist on the theme. The graphics are really charming and the fact you done it using the pico8 restrictions is just the icing on the cake. Really found the gameplay enjoyable and pretty addicting once I realised what I was trying to do. It's certainly a shame regarding the audio but totally understandable. Great work!
Art style is very on point, especially how gleeful the main character is about murdering his little summons for food. The sound track was nice and fit the slightly morbid concept well, but the icing on the cake was the rubber chicken noises the monsters make when hit with the frying pan. There seems to be a visual artifact left over from a button or something in the middle of the screen, unsure what that's for, but thought I should flag it up. I agree with the above commenter that you should add some of the art from your itch.io page to this ldjam page as the artwork on itch is great!
Love the art style and felt all the sound effects worked well alongside it. I had quite a bit of fun blasting the enemies but I do agree with some of the other commenters that the target kill count seems a bit high. However, great experience during my play time, was very satisfying. With some further variety/abilities it could be a great time killer :)
I really really enjoyed the art direction in the game, it's a very strong theme and works well with the summoning idea. The music was nice and quirky and fit well with the tongue in cheek game ideas. Unfortunately I ran into quite a few bugs with the invocations that made it hard to get through the level, I constantly ended up stuck because of this. Overall loved the concept and could see a great game here once some of the bugs are squashed :)
Simple concept executed really well. Loved all the animations and the art style is cute. The audio was simple but worked great with the art direction overall. I felt the difficulty was pretty well balanced and I was challenged at a few points for sure. Only minor negative is that I ran into a few bugs with card rendering that made it so I couldnt read the text due to card overapping, nothing major though, otherwise a great game :)
Great work on this, the composition of the assets really gave me morrowind vibes, nice. Haunting music fits the theme well. Simple but great game :)
Holy moley this is just a fantastic take on the theme, i'm head over heels with your implementation here. It's also incredibly polished and the puzzle aspect is satisfying, not to hard, not too easy. The different calendar blocks are funny through the decades and it hits a bit too close to home having the timeslot for dnd get narrower. Such great storytelling in a simple way. Icing on the cake for me was the interactable environment. Being able to hit the music player to mute was genius. Amazing work!
Awesome theme, the art style is perfectly executed imo. Really great work. The music fits super well with the theme and its fun watching the little battle play out as you get correct matches. Really interesting twist on the summoning theme.
I found this very enjoyable to play, there is definetely a special joy in correctly timing the head landing on the enemies. The music was reall nice and the artwork is simple but very nicely directed. I found the game balance to be pretty spot on, and I was constantly needing to be on the move which was great. I honestly could have played this for much longer. Only thing is that I wish I could choose the heads attack mode, rather than it being random, as I feel this would introduce more tactical choices in the heat of battle. Great job!
Awesome work on this one, the art style is incredibly charming, really digging it. The music is simple but really manages to convey a wizard-y vibe with its tone, which fits perfectly. The icing on the cake for me with the sound is the walking sound effect, it had me laughing non stop, so silly. Gameplay wise I really enjoyed the puzzle and felt it was well balanced overall. Although I can see the undo being useful I didnt really run into much issues with placement, but I can agree with the others that this would be useful for some players to have access to. Finally, just wana compliment you guys on your tutorial, its something we ran out of time for, and yours is a great example of how to do it well. I also really enjoyed the controls screen, having them light up is a great touch. Awesome work overall :)
Controls were nice and the difficulty seemed just right to me, right in the middle. The art styles very cute and the music really lent itself well to the frantic timepressure the game is going for, which is great. Awesome work :)
Very nice art style and I was surpised all the combos work, really impressive to get that much art done in the time frame. The music is really nice but I wish i looped slightly more smoothly. Solid work :)
Wow what a great take on the theme. The typing is super fluid and the game juice on the letters getting matched really stood out. Blew me away when I realised that the menu was also using the typing game approach, great idea and really added to the games vibe. The artwork is impressive, it's very stylised and was executed well, just my kind of game art. The difficulty felt pretty good and the different creature attack speeds meant you had to constantly juggle which word to type at a given time. Great work to your whole team :)
What a great twist on the classic typing game idea. The art direction really drives home this feeling of solitude and that's also reflected in the sound of the melancholy piano, simple yet excellent. I'll admit I actually disagree with some of the other comments regarding the number combinations, I think having them be consistent lent itself to sounding like I was playing an actual song, which I thought worked really well with the overall theme it was going for. Very polished as a whole, great work!
Love the art direction and music in this one. Special shout out to the title screen also. The cat designs are great and I lost it at the cat mushrooms, too good. I agree with the other commenter that the difficulty balance isn't quite right, it becomes very difficult very fast. Otherwise a great foundation for a tower defense, with some balance tweaks it should be purrfect
Excellent audio track, really fits the vibe of the art. Speaking of which, the artwork is really great, super charming. Gameplay wise once I realised I could pause them running it became much more fun. I would perhaps shift around when this advice is given so that its clearer earlier. Awesome work and super funny theme :)
I really like the twist on the theme, and the visuals and music really suit the concept well! Gameplay was fun and it feels pretty polished. One thing that would have helped would be having the monitor content visible in the background so you can use the book at the same time - I hardly used the monitor window at all. Overall a really nice entry and I like it a lot!
The art style is very cute and charming, with great designs for the characters. I really enjoyed the music track. I felt the game would benefit greatly from some feedback when your attack hits one of the enemies, both audio and visible, as it wasn't always clear to me if I was successfully hitting them or not. I agree with the above commenter that the balance is leaning a bit of the more difficult side, but it was an enjoyable game :)
@shanzhai @thatfirey thanks so much for your feedback and we're glad you enjoyed the games style. We agree that a tutorial would be ideal as the first customer enters the bar to show the various interactions the user can make. @shanzhai we like your suggestion about pre-placing a glass on the countertop also, that would be a great hint to the player.
We've added some additional instructions to the games page to clarify some of the more confusing parts you've highlighted above. Given more time we would certainly add these changes in :)
@aviv-levy thanks for your feedback, super glad you liked the games vibes. Noted regarding the leave game button, I was actually trying to figure out why it wasnt working for the other user. I hadn't thought that it might be because of the web version, that's frustrating. Will defo make sure not to make that mistake in my next jam :)
Regarding the cut-scene this is a very good point and such an obvious QOL feature we should have included. We appreciate you taking the time to sit through it again to play however and we will update the game post jam to include this.
I've fixed the bug with being unable to restart the game when using a web browser and also enabled skipping the cutscene.
@cresceda thanks so much for your feedback it means a lot to us. I think given more time we would have liked to implement a menu you can open to view recipe hints, which would help a lot with figuring out the combinations. Noted regarding the hovering time, perhaps the tooltip delay needs taken down a bit to make it faster?
@aviv-levy amazing, thanks for trying again. Going to give your entry a whirl now too :)
@locksmitharmy @human-writes-code @kirass @iellswo thank you all for your feedback, we really appreciate you taking the time to check out the game.
@iellswo particular thanks to you for such detailed feedback, we'll be taking this onboard for our next attempt for usre. Note: the game itself doesnt have a timer, but the customers emotions occur via a timer. If you get more than 3 emotions on a customer this triggers the end clause. I agree this needs better feedback.
@norah @orbitaldot thanks so much for your feedback. We really wished we'd allocated time earlier for a tutorial. Lesson learned for the next jam :)
Great artwork on this one, really enjoyed it. The music was a bit repetivie overall but it really set the hectic spooky vibe none the less. The echoing footsteps are a good touch. I agree with some of the other comments that it would be good to have an indication to how much health I had remaining as I died suddenly the first time playing. Great work though :)
Fun wee game, kept me playing for quite a while. The difficulty felt well balanced and the use of the custom cursor made is easy to keep track of the portal ability during the heat of the moment. The graphics are really cute but I felt the combination of the background moving and its colour made it harder to track the player. The audio fit the theme of the game really well and overall the game was a nice take on the wider theme :)
Really nice artstyle and I loved the music and sound effects, especially the summoning sound effect, so cute yet so haunting haha. Kept letting the enemies get out of hand a bit but thats on me not you. Great work :)