Take This by dadads

[raw]
made by dadads for LD20 (COMPO)
You are a wizard, which is awesome. Unfortunately you owe the Mafia 500,000 gold which needs to be repaid. Thus, you help adventurers with their journey for a share of their loot. You win when you get 500,000 gold.

Conjure items to help the adventurers by drawing them in a 4x4 grid, their elements determined by which direction the drawing faces.
Pay attention to what the adventurers will be fighting against and try to find the best item-element combination against specific monsters (e.g. defeat Liquid Golems using Thunder Hammers).

Featuring:
- 12 different monsters
- 24 different objects to draw. Can you find them all?

This is my very first LD game, and I made sure that it isn't going to be yet another platformer or shooter.

Inspirations: Minecraft, Bonifaco's Bazaar (another LD20 entry)

Ratings

Coolness 0% 243
Overall 3.72 15
Audio 3.29 50
Community 3.61 29
Fun 3.09 95
Graphics 3.55 57
Humor 3.75 11
Innovation 3.94 11
Theme 4.47 1

Feedback

Danik
02. May 2011 · 14:06 UTC
It's dangerous to go alone! Take this oregano! :D
TellusE
02. May 2011 · 14:41 UTC
Phenomenal idea! The one thing that bugs me really just hands on my own inadequacies - trying to remember combinations :P
A clear top 20 (if not better) in my book. Great job.
Dan C
02. May 2011 · 15:26 UTC
I absolutely love this. Great idea, well presented. The audio is simple but effective.

I wasn’t very good at figuring out which items worked well against which foes, but I’ll have another go later on with a notebook to hand :).
🎤 dadads
02. May 2011 · 20:03 UTC
I originally thought of having a recipe feature where you can pay to take a look at an item's shape and to automatically keep track of discovered shapes. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to put that in.
Milo
03. May 2011 · 00:42 UTC
Bah, why should I have to pay and lose my multiplier if I give them a 75% effective weapon? It's their fault for being bad at slaying the Thunder Golem!
Slapunas
03. May 2011 · 15:52 UTC
great game :)
AndrewBC
03. May 2011 · 18:39 UTC
Pretty fun! I suck at shapes though, apparently. D'oh. ... My favorite is the SPOILER ALERT piranha
Hectigo
03. May 2011 · 19:30 UTC
Great work! Very much fun, well presented and solid, innovative gameplay. Only thing that I missed was some sort of a log where you could see the past patterns you have used and what they conjured up. With the current version pen and paper were quite necessary.
hamster_mk_4
04. May 2011 · 06:30 UTC
I remember reading your blog entry half way through the contest and thinking "that sounds fantastic, I hope he pulls it off" thank you for not disappointing me.
Cosr
04. May 2011 · 10:30 UTC
Starts to maybe get a bit repetitive if you play long enough, but probably a good sign that I did play that long.
Good humour. The junk items were good.
localcoder
04. May 2011 · 11:51 UTC
My initial strategy was to give everyone a Water Bow.

"But... I'm going to fight a Thunder Dragon!"
"Water bow. Next!"

I got better.

I enjoyed this, although at about 250k I got bored and started reading the source to see how to win faster.

It's very clever and I shall definitely be borrowing a few ideas from you :p
🎤 dadads
04. May 2011 · 22:23 UTC
^ Oh u hacker.

The idea at this state is pretty unrefined. It definitely could be made a lot more fun and engaging with additional gameplay elements (I was thinking of time limits and recipe-purchasing), better varieties of items/characters, and polish.

Also, thank you guys for liking the gameplay concept. I can actually now feel good about myself.
randomnine
05. May 2011 · 11:26 UTC
Smart system. Loved it.

One quick refinement I'd like to see is if you could click and drag across multiple boxes to fill them in.
KoryWazHere
05. May 2011 · 16:45 UTC
Great idea =)
eli
05. May 2011 · 19:45 UTC
YES!
We need to explore NPC lives more deeply, good work!

I really, really love the concept. The unhappy wizard graphics really worked well here.

Maybe I'm not good at this kind of game, but there didn't seem to be much connection between what worked where and against whom (especially when it fails despite "75%", as mentioned above).

Sounds were nice, music got rather grating after a few minutes.
Cirrial
05. May 2011 · 19:52 UTC
The junk items were hilarious. The amount of times I reacted to mistakes with "no don't give them THAT", well, I lost count. The game itself is a bit like the worst elements of Minecraft when starting out, but once you understand what the different orientations mean it becomes a bit more fun (although I couldn't really see how swords and hammers and pickaxes changed things once you had the element right). I like the graphical style but the music is a bit repetitive. Overall really good, though.
hexygen
05. May 2011 · 21:03 UTC
Nice game. Great idea and well executed. I wish there was a bit more variety to the items and some more items which are not junk :)
Dark Acre Jack
06. May 2011 · 03:20 UTC
I love crafting! This was pretty neat, if there was a way to make the system just a tiny bit more intuitive and less guess-y it would be real gold.

Good work on this submission!
alexlarioza
07. May 2011 · 21:38 UTC
I absolutely loved this!
zlash
11. May 2011 · 01:43 UTC
Nice one :)
Desmont
17. May 2011 · 17:41 UTC
It would be ideal if there was some sort of notebook where the successful combinations were stored
Jesse Chand
18. May 2011 · 01:45 UTC
I like the original idea you had here. Good work!
mwest
21. May 2011 · 18:14 UTC
Nice entry well done!

I sucked at it though, maybe from not having played Minecraft, but it just seemed very random to me what worked and did't - couldn't really figure out more than 5 items either...
zachstronaut
25. May 2011 · 03:56 UTC
Congrats! I thought your game was highly entertaining.
DrPetter
27. May 2011 · 17:24 UTC
"turn back time" :)
septmbr
29. Jun 2011 · 19:36 UTC
I got 8/24 objects. They were the SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT 4 tetris blocks, hammer, sword, pickaxe, and bow SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT