Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → TheMaskedMan
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | The Dank Sorceress | compo | 199 | 3.37 | 3.34 | 3.22 | 3.87 | 3.26 | 3.32 | 3.30 |
**That was weird**
One of the best takes on the "summoning" theme I saw around. Carrying anim was a tad slow. Apart from that, the gameplay was smooth, intuitive and cozy. Deffo a like, would play more.
Cozy models & anims, although I didn't get the premise :< Walk around, summon guys & kill em to open doors? Kinda weird.
I didnt like all the fighting, opted to do sth else instead:
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Hey the itch link asks for a password.
It's like playing that weird japanese tv show. 9.5/10
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I went over 400 skeletons/circle later, didn't bother to screencap.
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It was stupid fun watching em explode into existence, followed by a horribly lagging stream of souls chasing you
To anyone coming here after me, seek the exit first (it literally says "exit") then Create Your Own Carnage.
10/10, would buy 1.0 & play the hell out of it.
Hey that's a cozy game right here!
If fleshed-out, I can see myself playing it 100%. Difficulty is not chill enough for the premise - I could've only last as long as about 1:30, but it was enough to get the brain going as to what this game *could be*.
Great work overall! For some magicka vibes, wrong spells could backfire and all : P
Can't see any links at all. Drop a browser one or an executable? Looking forward to it <3
Reeeeee tried a few runs, couldn't get past the guitar. Haven't seen any way to tell how close you are to defeat, ie how much misses till gameover. This was a lil infurating too. Other than that, fun times. <3
I sometimes dream of a sane mix between dungeon keeper & "longer" playstyle of tycoon games. DF-kinda. Cozy stuff, now you're makin' me go start another fort...
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As much as I enjoy typing games, no amount of typing made the files run
Is This The Police? I had that vibe, was quite certain that This Is The Police. Just asking in case It Is The Police. : P Nice exp overall, another chill day at the office.
This is hilarious! The take on the "summoning" the witnesses, the whole seriousface mana-based card-casting in court, would deffo play more! Add some screens man, it should be more out there!
For some reason, got that weird Midsommer vibe.
Just imagine a farmer person growing some ###-looking fruit to offer to some clearly evil (the pentagram-like-shape) deity.
Eerie!
Deck RNG's being annoying and it lags a little here and there, but overall is based, we had quite a cozy run.
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Would deffo play more, given it would be as easy to set up a match with a frien in a full-ish one. Bonus points for making an mp compo, you rock <3
10/10 would buy on steam salmon sale
**thirty seconds until minions spawn**
jokes aside, cozy game. I don't really dig that kind of gameplay, but the rest of it is base: vibe, visuals, audio, controls/ux, *the atmosphere* of being a poor lonely summoner chef locked in his cagie to work... It's art.
Kinda chill moving stuff around but I couldn't figure out anything. Tried putting stuff into baskets, combinations of stuff into baskets, nothing happened :<
Hey itch link is 404! Would play if revived, based on covert art & desc it's sth close to My Vibes
As I've deciphered it, top left is your score followed by your high-score.
Use WASD to consume static blobs of stuff.
Avoid moving blobs of stuff.
That's it.
Gets quite fun if you survive long enough, managed to wake me up proper after a crunchy day. :thumbsup_tone1:
Couldn't load project data at path error :'C Looking forward to play, desc's cozy!
Strong guacamelee vibes ^.^
Would love to play, but can't figure out how to run it. :C
Chill market sim, super EZ and casual. Was surprised it's mice-controlled :3
Fun stuff, although **THE PIXELATED FONTS** make it infuriating!
It could use some sort of a tune blasting in background.
I think it's the first rhythm game I saw without music or sound. :3
Other than that, had a nice couple runs.:3
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Cozy mood & nice vibes, although I dropped it before I could summon a single monster. Just takes 2long to figure out the monsters' ingredients.
You should definitely add some screenshots! Given the artwork quality and the overall warm vibe the game has.
Could be a great chill game given some more love and most importantly, a smoother learning curve. Took a while to figure out *some of it*, but other than that, it's VERY cozy. Something I would certainly play the full/better/bigger version of.
SOUNDS on chords and all too! <3
Cozy, but I dub the above: would be better if we didnt have to move at all and this kind of stuff needs readable fonts! Other than that, great work <3
Controls list more than 2 summons, but I only got cacti and the walkie-bomb? Other than that, fun times <3
Based, one of the most innovative entries around. Could be better if the equations were placed closer to the battle taking place. Perhaps as a plain overlay even. That way, you'd see it happen as you mash the keys, as opposed to having to glance there and back.
I was mashing the key for a while, managed to summon a couple dogs, then as I finally "took the scene in", the old guy, all the honking, dogs running, I had quite a laugh. Cozy concept, although the timings are hard to figure out. Based visual repr. 4.5/5 overall, if it wasn't for unknown timings on the signaling. :thumbsup_tone1:
Looks sounds and plays good, but I couldn't figure it out. Spent some time randomly gathering stuff, use-ing it, gave some of it to the altar, but still zero understanding as to what do.
I might have failed the IQ test, but the vibe & direction's cool regardless.
Links please! :'C
Great 2.5D, cool visuals & sound, and most importantly, absolutely loved the fact that it kinda makes you both remember the riff of the spell visually & by ear! 9/10 would play moar
That was cozy. Took a couple minutes to figure out, had a nice gentle nightcall run. The guys never bugged out btw.
**Dwarf Fortress adventure mode update certainly looks interesting**
Great visuals! Totally loved the sprites, the god rays (or whatever these are called?), the use of 2.5d, cozy particles flyin' around, plain superb graphics.
Spinning fingers on the ijkl turned it into a battle trance simulator for me, providing a legit hypnotic experience.
The guys above did mention most of my pop-in thoughts on the mechanics already.
About wave 7 is where I started mentally filling-in the kung-fu movie-style punch sounds.
But I'm only writing all this to get to the main point: **HAVING PAUSE in a time-critical-ish-game got me!** For some reason people rarely put it in their games.
9/10, -1 bc no winscreen leaves you all alone bringing dark spec-ops-the-line kinda vibes :^)
Cozy, you get to do some two-flippers drifting.
I knew there had to be at least one other renpy game out there except mine lol.
This game has the thickest & most eerie atmosphere I saw out there so far.
It is **dripping STYLE**, if you can look past the jank caused by time limit, you can drown.
Did the human ending, but the ambience/music hummed is so weirdly, deeply unsettling, I will politely not replay it.
**But I would certainly play a 1.0 of it.** At least once, or, as far as my sanity allows.
Fried my poor ol' lappie so I could only appreciate the screenshots.
Hey you should put some screens up! The game's audio, visuals, gameplay & UX are all dandy, is a cozy chill "find-em", certainly deserves more attention!
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That's a nice chill doggo experience. <3
Although, it says LD53, while it should say 55?
I've only got one question now, is having angels and cannons some sort of a Paradise Lost reference? :thinking: Either way, it's the vibe I had, gonna be waiting on the "conquer hell" expansion. <3
Guide please!
Totally based summon arts! It felt kinda weird having the core gameplay on the right-part-of-screen-only tho :<
Hey it won't start. "Couldn't load project data at path" :<
The decision to put that tune + piano notes on interactions got me. Eerie stuff. Although on my first run I did walk into the pink room. :3
@krummsakura Yea I guess its what the other guys say - first door on the right room wasnt there, all pink and I stepped right into it.
I initially thought it to be a part of the game, but falling for about 2 minutes I figured it wasnt :3
How do I return from the pillagin' to the portal screen? :'C
Reupload please! LD won't allow a dl :'<
Would love to play, cozy screencaps & desc
Phew.
Win version reuploaded, should be downloadable now.
As for summons turning on you, it is "summoning tie being severed", basically if you lack a per-turn mana to support a summon, weird stuff will happen to it. Some turn, others explode, that sort of thing.
It is explained in the summon's on-hover description.
Have fun!
Yea I should've put in some more in-yo-face tutorial, perhaps with pop-ups. Figured on-hover descriptions would suffice :< I couldn't do anything sane on the balancing side given the time either. But, thanks for playing & fb regardless :3 Glad you enjoyed it!
@tired-mutt I KNOW RIGHT, I assembled a meme story quickly but it became the end-product...
@olddog so do I, but the rules are the rules ^.^
@dekara I do not agree on the arts being nice tho : P
I'm already considering at least experimenting at making this fuller-scale, based on fb from various sources including you guys. <3
@drgcandle >It’s just that perhaps you decided to join the compo on a whim, which led to some haste.
You saw right through me :3 I joined *this jam* on a whim 2 days before it started, without any prev. jamming exp or any exp building a whole game fast.
That out of the way, this has 2be the most constructive review I saw let alone recieved so far. Even though you did point out the stings I myself see clearly (but cant do anything about now), it only hammers the couple points home:
- SOME tutorial is a must when jamming, for people usually allocate only so much time to learn the game & wanna get in there faster
- For more jamming (which is unlikely), or for a general skillset boost, I have to figure out n learn SOME way to produce fast but better-looking artwork, which I simply can't do. I can only create stuff that either takes aeons and looks good, or, one that is plain jank-crude sketches. :<
Don't get addicted, addictions rob us of our freedom. :P
Thanks for the 40% stronk feedback. <3
@kanity Rollback's intended, there are even a couple notes, both in game and in the game's description above that you can use rollback to your advantage to dodge poor balancing or alter your levelling decisions : P
I use rollback to dev/debug all the time, on many projects, VNs or crazy ones like this one. You just gotta be aware of it and write your game logic in such a way as to make the most use of it.
HoMM vibes are **THE** warmest compliment possible, thank you. I do certainly see this myself: clash-like games (can I call this "genre" so?) usually have longer lanes, more troops-on-screen, but this game has that weird feel of Disciples/HoMM in that its quite compact. With some brainwork put into it, I think **it can get even closer to these kinds of games**, which is a based prospect.
The story is Uwe Boll's rampage laced with a lulz-first assortment of baneposting, anti-maskers, other memes & jokes so... You haven't really missed much. If I'd taken this more seriously, it'd be ridiculously more grimdark though, so perhaps the fact that I didn't is for the best.
As for arts, well here's my [artstartion](https://www.artstation.com/themaskedman) and [deviantart](https://www.deviantart.com/kostucha616/gallery) pages. It looks a few orders of mag fancier than this game, but I simply can't draw the dark-shiny-metal style stuff fast enough. That's actually **my main takeaway** from this whole jam thing: gotta learn to do that, which will involve figuring out core stylistic aspects that make it what it is, ways to streamline production stages, blah blah blah...
Thanks for playing the game! Glad you enjoyed it and left a bunch of stars. I think your rating just tipped me over twenty. :3
@footlettuce **I KNOW RIGHT** the only thing that saddens me a lil bit is the lacking visual fb I've managed to stuff in :< Imagine blood splatters, spell effects, even screen shake, ooof
I tried to make each unit super unique, quirky and, well, *meaningful* as opposed to "add a bunch of dudes that vary by hp & dmg", but only managed to achieve it so much. I think the rogues did hit that mark the best of all units, summons included. Somewhere along is the puppeteer.
The stormtrooper roast was not intended btw, likely my subconsciousness doing it 4some weird reason. Many if not all aspects of this game were just pulled together on-the-fly from the warp.
Thanks for the feedback, now I know for sure the metal maniacs are out there, lurking, **waiting**. <3
@vivid-hallucination If you hover on a summon, whether its spawn icon or on-lane sprite, you can see in its description that it both has a summon mana cost, and a support mana cost. If you lack mana to support a summon, "the summoning tie will be severed", leading to various different outcomes depending on specific summon. The outcome tiself can also be found described there. :)
@dan-allison The... fire horse thing is indeed cool, the only prob is, I havent' had the time to stuff in on-hover adjusted damage display :P So logic-wise, the damage gets boosted, but the only way 2find out is via combat log entries. The summoning tie would be more fun to experiment on if there was stuff like enemy summoners or various mana-draining extra spells/effects, that would be **quite something** :3 Although as is, it works quite fun because the game kinda nudges you to spam monsters & be all metal, while the summoning tie will kick ya in a sensitive spot, creating a peculiar vibe of "keeping your throttle in check" if that makes sense. Meddling with forces of evil, **as in real life**, will bury you if you just don't hold back. :P
Thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it.
@ellaris On story and balance well, you know, Compo. I tried my best to do *some* balancing, but yeah couldnt really achieve much on that front, so yeah you can just max out centipedes and slash away. Other units *do* perform, but they aren't really necessary. Your approach was strategically optimal. Options are there for more of a showcase/experiment, unfortunately. Although I think maxing out flesh master might be a stronger approach to go rather than centipedes. Dunno
"Why did the lady not like to wear masks, did she ever took it off, where do hats come from?" -- All these questions will be answered in the 1.0, if it is ever to come. :3
@ryusui Thanks for playing! Pleased to hear there is *some* sense in having arts like these. :3
On the summoning tie mechanic, I've talked to it and it refuses take a hike, unfortunately. Perhaps it simply isn't a game for you. Thanks for the feedback regardless! <3
@ryusui It's not in my style to explain stuff to player. Games I enjoyed the most rarely did. There's just enough evidence to figure it out in-game: if you hover about, read, imagine what the whole "tie" thing might mean given the exposed values, stuff like that.
**BESIDES** that, the mechanic is not a generic "don't do": it can be exploited even in this proto. Grab a bunch of flesh masters, let your mana run dry, watch entire lanes die. The icey thing goes idle, blocking lanes. If only she had some sort of a damage resistance bonus on "disconnect"...
As I've mentioned, it's simply not a game for ya, so apologies for nerve burnt!
@joe40001 Huh? Can you drop an error screencap or something? It never seemed to crash on my machine or anyone else's. :thinking: A good bug is a dead bug!
@petr-vejchoda I did meditate on tutorials and yeah, should've put *just a little more* effort into making the mechanics more obvious. Well, it is what it is. :shrug_tone1: Glad you enjoyed it anyway!
@joe40001 oh. Well, hopefully its something rare n obscure enough as to not happen often. Thanks for playing anyway, and apologies for the buggo. <3
Cozy stuff. Does feel weird summoning guns, but the tempo, audio and visuals are all nice. :3
Didn't get it. If you click or hit space, you die. If you want THEN click or hit space, you die. If you wait and don't click or hit space, you die. :/
Kinda sad you've had to opt out of graphics, because the visual feedback & general visual vibe (or, direction thereof) is :muscle_tone1:
Hey that's a cozy game! The UI elements were spaced too far to the left & right: would be chill-er if I didn't have to glance left & right to mash thru it. Other than that, very stmooth UX and nice visual repr. Well done!
Some sort of a "downtime" between the actual "runs" (such as narrative bits/upgrades or whatnot) would improve it considerably I think.
I also suggest you go and thank that SOMEONE who told ya to go compo :P I believe compo's the :muscle_tone1: and you've just proven me right once again hehe
Well done!
Nice gameplay. The mood is a little bit on a grim end of the spectrum though. Cozy aesthetics. 10/10 would ban kids again. (Dont upvote this, I'm being silly)
That's a level of normal map depth I can get behind. :muscle_tone1:
Cozy concept, although it felt kinda weird getting into the rules: the cards respawn, the cards can be used to cast certain spells, *and your goal is to collect all the diff cards*, that felt kinda mind-boggling to bother with so I just walked around appreciating goblin giants & casting random stuff. Oh cards spinnin' also made me waltz around in circles to read descriptions here and there. :3
Given more design werk (and ALOT less spacious dungeon? Barony-like? please? feels like I'm an ant!) I can see this being sth quite interesting to play. Perhaps even **toss in a deck mechanic** :boom:
Great work!
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