I liked the spell gameplay and the character sprites! Was a little confused by the abrupt ending.

I too thought the ending was a little sudden, at first I assumed I'd lost somehow. Other than that I liked it! Those deer are tricky ones >.>

Yeah the ending need a bit more work. Casting spells is fun though! Great game for solo!

I liked that the mouse button instructions were color-coded. :) Thanks to that, it was very easy to control from the start! And nothing distracted from gameplay. One thing that took me a while was noticing the lightning bar, I think I would have liked it more if all bars were aligned on top of each other or next to each other, but that's just a visual detail.
And my first summoning was a hellhound! How many creatures are there?

Thank you to @eva, @reid-willis, and @lossypi for pointing out the issue with the ending. For some reason I totally forgot about fixing that. I was originally going to have the background sky turn to day by the end, but I probably need something a little more obvious.

@ynneblack, thanks for the thorough feedback! Unfortunately the summons were something I added in the last hour of the jam. There's only 3 of them and the highest one is really hard to get. I counted the total points possible after posting, and I believe you need to get every creature. I wish I could have tweaked that, but it wouldn't be right to change that now.

If anyone does manage to get the highest level summon I would love to know!

Nice game! I appreciated the well explained and easy to use controls. Learning the timing of the different spells and picking which ones to use at what time was a fun challenge, and they felt pretty satisfying to use. Great work!

very enjoyable!

Took me a little while to get the hang of the controls but eventually I got to the point that I killed nearly every creature... I just couldn't get to the highest one, even after like 6 playthroughs.

If I had a suggestion I would nerf the meteor - it's hitbox is too good and it should either have a longer cooldown or something, since it was too powerful to use and easy to kill 5 or even 6 creatures with it. Another thing that could've made this better is if killing the people were actually detrimental - at first I wasn't sure whether or not I was allowed to sacrifice the people!

Thanks @aurel for the feedback and suggestions! I did unfortunately increase the ending requirements last minute. While it is possible to get the highest ending, the odds are awful and probably not worth the effort.

Great game! Here are some of my feedback. Consider having some music play in the instructions menu as it is too silent there. The interactive tutorial is nice to make sure players understand before continuing.

Does the score I get at the end affect the type of ending I get? The text implies so though I got the same result (hellhound) twice. If there are multiple endings and if it is based on score, it might be worth it to add how much score I lack to get the next result. For example, "you scored 80! You lack 20 score to summon the next underlord being!" As score is the main "benchmark" reward in your game, you could possibly take this further by adding a counter that shows the player's all-time high score.

As for the ending, if the ending occurs after a fixed amount of time and the gameplay is time-based, then there should be a countdown timer as it was abrupt and I was taken to the end screen unexpectedly without warning. If the game ends due to time of day (does it?), it wasn't very obvious.

I liked that the spells had a cast time so it's not just mindless clicking, and I appreciate that they have different ranges and color. I also liked that the spells had 'charging' animation sprites as well. The huge contrast they have with the dark backgrounds and characters make it very readable. Also, it is possible to place spells in the air - you probably may want to disable that as it breaks the immersion.

It would be better and cooler if the different spells were more unique apart from cast time and range. Maybe the purple spell has a chance to leave behind some purple fire that burns for some duration, or the lightning would have a longer cooldown but the cooldown for the next strike decreases if you hit a more condensed area with more targets? Just throwing out some gameplay ideas to make the spells more different from one another and improve the game's fun and variety.

Overall, the animations were also well done and the graphics are clean and simple, easy to read. Great job on your first solo Ludum Dare! :)

Pretty well done!

The spells were pretty fun to cast. The ending made it seem like I lost. Or maybe I did, I don't know, I'm not sure how good a hellhound is.

Thanks @yyz for the thorough feedback! The score does affect the ending, but I didn't get a chance to adjust and test it. I believe 50-99 is the range for hellhound. There is one ending below and above that range. But as I mentioned in other comments, it's just barely possible to get the highest ending.

I originally had intended for the game to end as the sun comes up. I'm learning from the comments that it may not have been an obvious enough indicator, even if I had timed it properly.

I had meant to disable casting in the sky, but didn't allow enough time for it.

Again, thank you for taking the time to play the game and write this all out. Hopefully feedback like yours will help me make a better game next time! : )

@toonteamj Thanks for playing my game! Hellhound is the middle ending, but the ending above it is almost impossible to get. I would say anything above 90 is pretty good.

@thecritterscove You're welcome! It is awesome to hear that you had already put some of these feedback into consideration! I am sure after this experience, you'll definitely have learnt a lot and be on your way to make an even better and more awesome game next time around! All the best for the jam! :)

A cool take on the theme, though perhaps one that might feel repetitive after too many plays.