Merb1000

Subpoena Magus by agentparsec 2024-04-16T02:43:51Z

I had a fun time playing this! I like this double entendre of "summons" being used in multiple senses of the word. My only critique is that there is a lot of down time as you wait between different summons. This could be made more enjoyable by having quicker or more obscured cues for summoning that require the player to pay attention the whole time. Alternatively, the text bubbles could be replaced by illustrations re-enacting the crime of whatever this trial is for. This would add some story, more engagement, and possibly some humor to the mix. Again, overall a great game with a very very clear level of quality, which is no surprise coming from a clearly experienced game dev such as yourself. Great job!

Faust's Big Deal by Shugor 2024-04-17T04:04:24Z

The random dungeons are cool. As a quality of life thing, I think holding click down and moving the mouse should collect resources of one type. My hands were tired of all the clicking after a while. I was a little confused on how to actually do summoning right, all I got were slimes. Still a fun time!

Waves of Chess by frozenfire92 2024-04-17T02:30:22Z

A really need spin on an ancient classic! I may be bad at chess but this is a fun way to experience it. I ended up with a *ton* of knights. I honestly don't know if there were any pieces besides knights and pawns. If you are supposed to get other pieces, maybe do a pseudorandom process that prioritizes pieces you don't have yet. Anyway, great game here!

The Klent by sirJupitron 2024-04-17T02:59:19Z

Very unique graphics and vibes. Reminded me a lot of the original Adventure! I'd love to see more in this style with more puzzle elements. I also think that the right of the pit area would be a good place to hide an easter egg if you backtrack with the flying guy ;)

The Evil Eye by Timur_Bahadir 2024-04-16T19:43:41Z

A fun game with good animations. It felt like the laser was the best option all the time, I never used the regular shooting. Maybe a way to circumvent this would be to only allow a certain amount of energy for the laser that must be replenished over time. Overall good game!

SUMMOGON by Nash 2024-04-16T14:58:41Z

It's a fun game you have here! I liked how the puzzles built on each other, I at least found them to be a good level of difficulty. I think the game could benefit from more graphical stuff. While the VA was good, it wasn't to interesting to listen to it over a black screen. The cards and table itself looked nice and played well. Good job here!

FAINA by Alexascher 2024-04-16T15:44:39Z

Oohhhh man this was excellent, maybe even a top contender for the jam! Art is great, sound FX on music on point, addicting gameplay loop. A great time overall! I find it hard to give any critique, maybe just that some creatures feel much more useful than others. I never played the eating guy because he didn't give enough of a reward for the damage he might cause. Very very good job with this!

Ghostly Notes by Kjip 2024-04-16T19:35:46Z

I really like the music and the post processing filter that you used! The dialogue was fun and made the game more enjoyable too. While memory games like this aren't the most original, you managed to put your own unique twist on the formula. Good job!

Cultists on ICE by Pusheeneiro 2024-04-17T03:47:37Z

Fun idea! Some levels felt more like puzzles and others more like precision. I enjoyed it! The same principle could be used to solve most levels, but others required more work. Great job!

Golem Guardians by Substain 2024-04-16T16:07:11Z

This was really fun! I liked that each of the golems functioned differently which added to the strategy of the game. One possible improvement is to change the camera view to always focus on the center of the island. This way you can always see if the Master is in danger no matter where you are standing. Good job!

Jim Brimstone: Devil Advocate by AploveStudio 2024-04-16T23:30:37Z

Fun game! Good art and and felt cohesive and bug free. Story was good too. I would have liked more game in the gameplay, but visual novel type things usually aren't my cup of tea anyway so I'm glad to say I enjoyed this

Mob Farm by Codeman1010 2024-04-17T00:37:24Z

This was a pretty cool idea! Reminds me of a simple mob farm in something like minecraft taken to another level. Music was great too. I think being able to spend gold on things like speed upgrades, item magnets, etc. would make the game more fun for a longer period of time. Great work with this!

Billy's Band by picross 2024-04-17T03:31:28Z

5/5. I loved every second of it. An actual joy to play. My only complaint is how long it took to find Freddy (I got stuck and turned around with just MJ's circle for a while.) Please make more. I need more

That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Crab Girl And Summoned Slimes To Fight For Me by bittripbrit 2024-04-17T03:11:21Z

This was really fun! One of the better summoner-class based games I've played from the jam so far. I think the randomized spinner could have benefited from spinning faster. I liked the graphics and getting to meet all the different slimes as I played. Great product!

Middleman Summons by Jvdwijk 2024-04-16T15:56:04Z

I second the other commenter, it would be *really* helpful to know which items come from which entry portal, as well as which direction the portal is facing. You have the makings of a good game here, it just needs some more polish.

Devil's QWERTY by SakuH 2024-04-16T20:13:46Z

I really liked this game! Graphics were excellent and the music was great. Typing games were never my thing, but this puts a unique twist on the genre. Great job!

The Mage And The Assassins by 0X_VOID_X0 2024-04-17T02:23:11Z

Pretty fun game. I think it would be helpful to increase the health on the melee creatures. Once there are too many ranged assassins they decimate anything that gets near them and they basically become unstoppable. Choosing runes for the portal was a creative idea. It forces the player to maneuver around the map and pause when being chased to deal with the pursuers. Good job here!

That Time I Reincarnated Into /.../Trials By Summoning Demons With Unique Powers by Filip Vannfält 2024-04-16T20:56:13Z

This is a cool idea that presents a lot of unique situations for puzzles. It was interesting how the second level was essentially done twice, with the third level showing it without one of the summoning circles. My issue with this game is how tedious failure is. On the second level I missed the jump at the end, which meant I had to redo the whole level essentially. On the third level I tried to mitigate this by putting more "right" power into the demon, but then I couldn't jump the ledge at the end. I think there should be a bit more leniency to prevent frustrations like this from occurring, especially since failure means restarting the whole level. The idea is solid and I like the graphics, I think all this game needs to be great is a bit of polish on the level design, and maybe faster movement for less tedium. Good job!

Against the Titan by CodeRaurus 2024-04-16T23:04:52Z

Fun game you have here! Graphics were nice to look at and it felt rewarding to earn more followers over time. I was a bit confused what the outer green circle was for. If it had a purpose that purpose was not clear and if there was no purpose then I think it was just distracting. I also felt like the only good upgrade was speed, though it maybe should have accelerated faster. Overall a great project, especially considering it was made for a jam!

The Art of Pixel Summoning (TAPS) by DigiDuncan 2024-04-16T03:45:55Z

This was fun, I enjoyed seeing what different combos created and what they were good against. It was also very frustrating; I sometimes lost the game and had to restart even when I had an 89% chance of winning. After so many battles in a row, it is probable to lose one, and having to go all the way back to the start is very disheartening. Id' recommend including a life system where you have to lose ~3 battles before restarting. I hope you make more games in the future and that this is just to start. I'd recommend that you focus on playtesting later projects with other people. When testing our own projects, its easy to forget what the experience of a new player is like. I made a similar game for this jam involving combining things to summon new things and I found it to be very easy. My playtesters, on the other hand, found it difficult since they knew nothing of how the internal code worked. So, I changed a bit of how my game worked and I think that made it more enjoyable. I think that proper playtesting would have revealed the possible frustration in this game for players who do not know all the best combos by heart.

Good job with making this! I hope that you continue creating in the future.

Dry Season by HolyPerceval 2024-04-17T00:45:30Z

Funniest game I've played today, 5/5 humor for me being so bad lol.Genuinely a ton of fun. I really don't have that much to critique here. The text boxes were a bit off for the web player, but other commenters have already noted that. I think my only complaint is that it didn't have more levels! Really good job here!

Danger Zone! by Romulo_Developer 2024-04-17T02:36:45Z

Cool game! I think it could benefit from being more fast paced with more frequent trees, upgrades, and monsters. I ended up dying when a circle spawned almost all the way into a wall and got hit by a monster as soon as it spawned, which was pretty frustrating. I'd recommend to reduce the spawn area for circles to account for this. I liked the music a lot! With a few minor adjustments this could be really great, and it is already impressive given your time constraints!

NECRO'EVOKE by Tugaryn 2024-04-16T20:07:14Z

Fun concept you had here! It is very thoroughly polished with good graphics, music, and clear controls. I liked the dialogue and the gameplay was solid. One critique is that the game was difficult for the first 1-3 rounds, but after filling each space with a skeleton you're basically set for the rest of the game. Sending in more than one monster at a time or having monsters with special abilities might make the "late game" more interesting. Overall great job here!

The Royal Writ by Save Sloth Studios 2024-04-17T01:11:45Z

The art and music are absolutely incredible by game jam standards. You clearly have a lot of experience in both game art and music to be able to pump this out so quickly. I found the gameplay itself to be fun, but lacking in any difficulty. The duke is an insanely overpowered card and turned basically every battle into a cakewalk. I ended the game with 3 or 4 of him in my deck. I'm guessing this oversight is due to a simple lack of playtesting, which is understandable given how much effort went into the audio and graphics design. I would love to see this turned into a larger project!

Ghostly Lens by MorePixels 2024-04-16T03:33:06Z

I had a fun time with this game! It was fun running around the room and playing various minigames while pushing my luck to spawn as many ghosts as possible. Great job! One thing I'd change is to not make the typing case sensitive. I was really confused at first why it wasn't working, but I guess that is my own fault.

Summoner's Tower by NikaZ 2024-04-16T12:25:34Z

Fun idea! I applaud you for making this as a fellow summon-creature game maker. Its a neat concept to do a tower defense game that essentially has 3 kinds of currency. I found the game to be pretty frustrating; I'd put down the spiky and the shooter in the beginning, then never get enough materials from enemies to place any more down. I played 4-5 times but only ever got enough materials to put another monster down once. I don't think this is a problem with your game design, its a fun idea, but rather just some values that need to be changed (either increase item drop rate, monster health, or decrease the rate at which new enemies spawn). Finding the good zone for these values is hard, my best advice for doing so is playtest, playtest, playtest! It's very easy to become blind to problems in our own games because we become very good at them while developing them. Getting a fresh set of eyes on a game can reveal issues we'd otherwise miss. And trust me there is ALWAYS room for improvement. Even now I'm getting comments on my own game revealing simple and easy to fix gameplay issues that I wish I'd noticed before the end of the jam. Seriously good job with this. The art is cohesive and the idea is solid.

The Unlikely Messenger by T90. 2024-04-16T18:59:28Z

The game was fun and I was genuinely invested in the story. Writing is often left by the wayside in Jam projects but you clearly put effort into it. Good job! The character portraits and music were great, I'm surprised to learn they are made by AI. Would you mind sharing what program you used for creating the art?

The Purple Portal by Bo Dangles 2024-04-17T02:51:22Z

Cute game with cute animals fighting monsters! My only complaint is that I spent most of time time looking at the summoning menu rather than at the actual game, which was very entertaining to watch whenever I caught a glimpse of it. Maybe having the arrow combos appear over the avatar's head would make it easier to watch the action and keep track of combos. Good job here!

Trial by Combat by Gravityflip 2024-04-17T02:10:47Z

Really fun, even for a someone who isn't usually a fan of fighting games. Also the funniest game I've played today. The difficulty scales well, although I wasn't able to beat Devon. Pixelart and animations are great! I had trouble hitting the combo for 'gavel throw' but that's probably a skill issue. Great job here!

Imagining Dragons by Falk Hoeppner 2024-04-16T03:11:09Z

I really liked this game! It was a bit frustrating for me, but that's likely due to my inexperience with this kind of genre. There were a few points where I got stuck on the moving blocks too. It was cool that you made multiple versions of the bosses to fight, I only wish there were more of them! I played through 4-5 times, genuinely a really fun game! (even though I was pretty bad at it)

Ghostslayer by ThatFirey 2024-04-17T00:59:55Z

Great graphics and good music, overall a good and polished game jam submission! I think the best thing to do to improve this game would be to speed things up. My bullets should go faster, they are bullets after all. Same with enemy bullets and the enemies themselves. They are so sluggish you can just run circles around them and shoot until they die. I don't expect this to be included due to time constraints, but if you continue this project later, adding a dodge roll or dash would be cool! Great job with this!

Geometry Summoner by benisu 2024-04-16T20:21:29Z

Solid work, the game plays nicely, is bug free, looks good, and it is pretty easy to get the hang of. My critique is that there isn't really a sense of scaling, so eventually the gameplay is just repetitive. Other games in this genre mitigate this hurdle by including things such as powerups (bombs, special ammo, upgrades) or unique enemies that spawn in later waves. If you want to keep working on this game past the jam, I'd recommend adding things like that to engage players for longer. Again, great job with this, and I hope you continue to make games in the future.

Kobold Pet Shop by Gawain Doell 2024-04-17T02:40:26Z

Neat game! I like the animal sounds. I think a good quality of life update would be to allow selling multiple pets at once by filling multiple orders then clicking the check mark. This might help players plan out their moves better. Great job with this game! I hope you continue to develop more in the future.

Hat vs Evil by minjutin 2024-04-17T02:00:38Z

Neat idea you have here! I think it needs a couple of adjustments in the spawn rate and dps departments. It was hard to catch up to their spawn rates even after playing for a while. I think this would also work better as a point and click game. Flying around can be tedious and slow down gameplay, which is hard when you feel limited on time at the beginning. You definitely have potential here, I hope you continue to work on this or other products!

Nexus Conquest by Blazejmg917 2024-04-27T14:41:46Z

Very well polished game, a great showing from the NCSU alums (and current students? There's a few names I don't recognize from my class). My main critique is that it would be nice for combat to be a bit more streamlined, I spent a lot of time moving my troops turn after turn and waiting for enemies to end up in the right position. I'd experiment with a few factors: number of enemies, enemy aggression, new enemy types, etc. until you find a nice balance that keep the player consistently engaged.

The upgrades/mothership system was unexpected and very well made. Definitely not a detail I expect from a jam project. Teamwork is a learned skill and its very clear that this group worked together very well to create a lot for this project. Great job!

HELLSPAWNER by Thomas Gelman 2024-04-17T03:55:07Z

Really solid boss rush style game! I loved playing it. The *{spoiler}* at the end was terrifying. To critique anything, I'd say there should be more attacks, maybe a charge blast that does extra damage or something. Great job!

HELLSPAWNER by Thomas Gelman 2024-04-17T04:05:09Z

@thomas-gelman Dang, I totally missed that. Guess I'll have to replay now :)

Lift Summoner Deluxe 1997: Kitten Edition by ehmtang 2024-04-17T02:45:12Z

Pico8! This is the first game I've seen made this jam in my favorite game engine. Good job with this! It looks great which is a lot to say for a p8 game made in such a short time. My one critique is that it gets pretty stressful pretty quickly. It could be interesting to add a third elevator as things get more difficult. It would be more to control, but also give more passenger capacity. Great job with this!

Indistinguishable From Magic by bearcage 2024-04-16T23:14:39Z

Fun game! I enjoyed getting better and better at the minigames as time went on; that was a rewarding game loop. It also took time to figure out the best strategy for completing the most tasks. I think this could be improved by spreading out the jobs a bit more. I was able to stay on the Cube Farm level for most of the game, and only ever saw one task in the executive suite. Overall fun time!

God's Apprentice by Kimday 2024-04-17T00:53:50Z

Really fun and cute game, as has been firmly established by the other commenters already. I think one improvement I would make is to the final level. It was a bit unclear what the goal was and in restrospect I think there could have been multiple paths to get there rather than the exact sequence that was required. It could also be helpful to show the name of the mission you are aiming for (such as in storyteller, which it seems like you have played ;D). Great job here!

Candles of Doom by Tykki19 2024-04-17T03:38:07Z

Cool game! It was simple enough to learn but felt like a challenge throughout! I wasn't able to fill a second drop on any of the fountains. It wouldn't let me after immediately after filling one, then a couple times my fill progress was reset by a villager taking the first drop. Other than that sorta glitch was a great experience!

Summoning Salesman by Merb1000 2024-04-17T12:13:00Z

@jason-shapiro one of my play-testers recommended the same thing for making all contracts available. I didn't include the feature for sake of time but in retrospect I think it would have been good to do that or separate card draw from contracts in some way

@ultrarat I'm glad it hit that zen mode for you! I agree about the 3 card reward, its something that I'll have to play with in later versions

@omitsu Glad you enjoyed it!

@jesslur Thanks for the comment, its good to hear the gameplay loop was in working order for you!

@raimondosenpai Good idea about consolidating the UI. I was originally intending to include items that could be used for summoning in addition to cards, hence a lot of empty space on the summoning screen. I think in the future I'll try to combine the UIs or make it easier to swap between them with keybinds

@bittripbrit Yeah, I would have liked to include more requests and cards, unfortunately was too brain dead by the end of this to do so. If I continue this project there will definitely be more to come!

@alldee I'm glad this caught you eye and you found it original!

@sariiger I feel like that's what I enjoy most too. It's maybe a bit too random feeling at times, but I enjoy risk/reward tradeoffs.

@yabin I'm glad you enjoyed it!

@beanboi I'm not surprised you can see the Inscryption resemblance lol. It took everything I had to withhold the temptation to put a grainy filter over everything.

@thomas-gelman I'm glad you found it to be unique!

@apoly That's a good feature idea! I'll consider adding it if I continue this project

@just-a-cat Not sure that was a glitch lol, flying rat is a pretty common card and likes to promote into itself. All the combos are algorithmic so it was hard to balance things well. Thanks for playing!

@googlefrog Ahh man, sorry that happened. Definitely something I'll fix in the future

@givit-game-studios Thanks for the compliment, I'm definitely considering trying to go down the commercial route (with another round of design focus). More feedback seems to be highly requested, so I'll definitely consider adding that

@nicolekg Yep, matching keywords is key! Some keywords are better than others (ie fiery->engulfing) which denote the different reward tiers.

@julian-france Yeah, I wish I had the artistic ability to draw and write music for myself. In case you didn't catch the credits the music is AlchemyLab by Ivan Duch (https://ivanduch.com). Art is just sourced from the first royalty free images I could find. If turning this into something bigger I'd definitely want to redo these with custom assets

@yeouseong I'm glad you liked it! I'm still not sure whether I'll be pursuing this project further or not, or how I'll get the word out about it if I do, but I'll probably update this page at least. I noticed the card text issue too, but it was too late in the jam for me to care and I thought it was kinda funny.

@bruce-dellinger Yeah it does feel random at times and a lot of combos don't make clear sense. I think I'd like to add a mechanic where the outcome of a summon is shown if you've done that combo before, maybe that would help?

@breadstick I'm glad you liked the effects, stuff like that is why I use UE5 :)

@pabloabraham Glad you enjoyed it!

@shugor I think in the future I'd like to add some kind of log to keep track of cards you've found so that trying to find all the combos is more rewarding. Thanks for playing!

@minjutin Thank you for the compliment, glad you enjoyed it!

@substain I think some of the wording in the contracts was a bit confusing and I should've added a feedback system. Thanks for playing!

@sirjupitron Yeah, trying to get a card with a lot of adjectives is fun!

Summoning Salesman by Merb1000 2024-04-17T17:58:36Z

@yanato I would have LOVED to add that for those who failed to reach 1000 gold. Unfortunately I don’t have access to good 3D models and have not learned to make my own yet. I’ll have something like that for sure if I continue development

Summoning Salesman by Merb1000 2024-04-21T12:23:02Z

@human Apologies for the UI confusion. There is an arrow on the left of the screen you should be able to click to change position. ESC quits intentionally. Cards left in deck is just an indicator of how many cards of left in the deck. I believe the arrow can be hard to see due to screen brightness settings, which I didn't consider before. Hope this helps!

DURO by Fenix131113 2024-04-17T01:52:44Z

Fun game with unique mechanics! I think the difficulty curve could be cleaned up a bit. The first 5ish levels were very easy, then the next ones immediately got a lot more difficult. I was a bit confused on the ice wizards' abilities; maybe the tutorial levels could be improved by only allowing their one type of wizard. That's all for nitpicks, good job overall!

Super Pal Summoner! by Meepster 2024-04-17T03:18:11Z

Fun and cute puzzle game! My one complaint is the drag and drop mechanic. I don't like having to drag my mouse back and forth, occasionally having to wait for the item to catch up to my cursor. I think just seeing the item show up and stick to the cursor would make for more fluid gameplay. Maybe you could replace the old box where you'd grab the item with an "up next" indicator. Aside from nitpicks, this was a great game! Good job!

Fedora Fury by Vantalogic 2024-04-16T03:22:40Z

I ran into a couple glitches while playing, specifically around summoning the sister early in the start room. It was a fun game, I really liked the slow-mo jump. It was unexpected and a good detail. The game did feel too easy. Minions could just bowl down any enemy, or could be spam-dropped on top of rolling guy. It could have been interesting to use summons for puzzle solving, requiring the user to summon the correct people at the correct time.

Aurora's Ascendance: Orbs of Destiny by Unbreakable 2024-04-16T15:27:56Z

Fun game, good graphics, and great concept! I think the experience could benefit from a bit of mercy when hitting enemies, sometimes it would look like they were in the circle but wouldn't get hit. Increasing the hitbox to slightly larger than the visible circle could help here. Good job!

Blood Rite by LetsSnack 2024-04-17T01:37:33Z

Pretty fun game! I think it would be helpful to declutter the UI, I was mistaking the rat counter (score?) for my blood counter for a while and was confused when I couldn't summon. I think the rat AI could be improved too, they liked to clutter along the walls so I could just run alongside and collect hundred of blood drops at once, which didn't seem intended. But that's all for critiques. This was a fun experience and impressive given the time constraint. The pixel art great. Good job!

Apothecaffine by Puppetsquid 2024-04-16T14:42:27Z

It took me a couple minutes to figure out what to do, but I had fun once I did. I think this would be a good game to keep working on post-jam and add the order-filling like you intended. It would be fun to try and fill orders while slowly getting better at using the coffee summoner!