(edited out my misplaced gripe with the voting system)

Really good game! I loved combining different runes together to create mega powers! It was difficult to figure out how to make certain combinations however. 4.5/5!

This game is certainly one of the better games I've played so far. I LOVE the art style. I love how smooth the mechanics are. I love the overall feel. I love the story. I love the way spirits can hide in objects. Extremely well done guys.

Very fun game! It got a bit sparse near the end I had to go back to get some more runes to make the spells required for the last few dudes. But otherwise pretty solid.

(PS: you don't actually get to know your ratings until the end. The number you see is actually the total number of votes)

I really enjoyed it. I think I won? It was very polished and had some solid gameplay. The art style was great too. You could definitely expand this easily into something bigger and it would still be very fun!

Excellent ! This game is really well done. Once you understand the way to combine runes, it becomes cool. You have a really nice concept here, cool graphics and music. I hope you'll continue the dev, i really liked it. Good job!

Very amazing experience though it took a while to study the rules. It's perfect nearly i nall aspect. For a jam game it's really fantastic with high quality and concept. However the link to the theme is a bit weak.

Really interesting, though I kinda botched it the first time. I like the rune magic system once I got the hang of it, but that was after I somehow managed to waste the only two yellow rune drops in the game and thus reach an unwinnable state. Made me wish that runes weren't expended when failing a spell. I liked how I needed to collect and expend green runes in order to get a red rune, so it struck me as odd that this pattern didn't really continue at all. The shield skill seems like more effort than it's worth when all that's really needed to fight yellow enemies is the triple shot. Still, the graphics and presentation are excellent and the music is suitably atmospheric. Well done!

Fascinating game! I really enjoyed the ambiance and clean transition between possessed objects and clean ones. Rooting out spirits out of everything is a clever mechanic.

Very impressive! Very few games have this level of intricately complex mechanics. It took me over half an hour just to finally get a grip on exactly what was happening. Actually I managed to completely succumb to darkness first, because I was so convinced I was going to get a level up or something, ha.

I kind of like the "here you are, figure it out" kind of feeling, although I wouldn't have complained if the mechanics could have been explained (or just demonstrated). But for a 48 hour compo, that's a minor issue, well done.

Honestly I don't know how you two managed to put so many unique ideas into a single entry (like the enemies entering objects), but on top of that, the progression of the game kept it interesting, and of course great job with the art and music. It really set the mood (kind of reminded me of Threeside?) Nice job!

EDIT: Oh and a side note: I managed to succumb to darkness and beat the game (?) at the same time, I think? Not sure if that was intended?

That was fun! I liked pretty much everything but there were a few issues I had. Perhaps it was just me, but I struggled to find the green spell for a while, which confused me a bit as I couldn't kill the enemies with the green shield but I could kill the stronger yellow enemies. The spell casting system is great but takes you out of the action a little bit by making you stand still, perhaps assigning different runes to different buttons on the keyboard/gamepad you could create a system where you can cast on the move.

Graphics are very polished consistent and I loved the animation at the end, really solid way to finish a LD game. The monster/ghosts hiding in the environment was really cool. I didn't quite get the theme, I assume when the bar on the left filled up I'd lose the game, but I feel this could've made the game harder by increasing the amount of enemies or something similar.

Great job! Thoroughly enjoyed playing it :grinning:

Very nicely made game! I got succumbed into darkness but that's fine I suppose. :P
I really like how polished the game feels.
- The graphics are really nice.
- The audio is fits the game very well.
- The mood is....dark? :D
- I see how theme you included the theme with the darkness mechanic but the effect was quite weak and unnotcable at first. You could maybe add some more negative effects.
- the gameplay is really fun and creative.

The top down shooting and spell crafting are standard mechanics, yet the light slowly fading out, losing runes whenever using them and having to combine ever rarer runes together to fight the bigger and badder monsters are all neat ideas and most importantly work together fine!

The audiovisuals are good too. Lighting effects and particles would push the graphics into the great category.

One UI issue I can raise is the spell casting menu itself. Why is it in the bottom left corner? Placing it above the mage would reduce the amount of mouse movements radically. Hotkeys (e.g 1-4) would be a nice addition too.

The theme doesn't seem to fit really, but who cares about that! Good work in all.

Overall: *Good (4.0)*
Fun: *Good (4.0)*
Innovation: *Good (4.0)*
Theme: *Bad (2.0)*
Graphics: *Good (4.0)*
Audio: *Good (4.0)*
Mood: *Good (4.0)*

Hey I played you game on stream it was great fun!

I played twice on two different streams but I managed to create the moon spell at the end :yum:

I loved the way you can kill enemies to build spells - and the ever growing insanity meter that goes up if you try and collect said spells.

The spell variations were great too!

Something I would make the game abit more sinister would be the visual maddening of the character when he becomes more and more corrupt - Shaking, laughing, being downright insane when he peeks at higher levels - In inclusion to the already excellent darkening of the screen.

If you continue this post-jam, it would be great seeing some areas like the graveyard in threed and maybe an underground cavern area that's accessed using a certain rune on a gravestone :yum:

Regardless, it was hard coming up with helpful feedback! You've done an excellent game!

Thanks everyone for your comments and feedback!

Some of the biggest areas that need tweaking that I've noticed (with mentions to people who mentioned something similar in the comments):

* Learning how to create and cast spells is confusing for most players. People tend to figure it out, but only after running around confusedly for a while. A longer introduction path before the level opens up and tweaks to the UI would probably help that.
* UI placement in the spell menu isn't as obvious as I had hoped. Tweaking that and adding hotkeys (some exist, but I didn't add in 1-4 like I planned), and making queued spells more obvious would likely help. I do like that casting spells takes time and requires focus, but it should probably feel more like an action combo than it does. Rehashing the UI wouldn't hurt! (@huvaakoodia, @conk)
* When the road ends at the circle near the end of the level, most don't realize there's more to the level at first. Dirt paths or some other visual cue would probably solve that
* The red/orange shield spell is expensive and ultimately not worth its cost. It also doesn't continue the intended concept of needing to work your way up the "chain" of baddies, since you don't need the spell to kill the yellow spirits. All spells and the spell system itself could use tweaking. I created the spell shield because I didn't just want another more powerful attack for the yellow baddies, but the concept needs tweaking.(@piscythe)
* Ghost re-spawns of some sort would probably be useful. Perhaps a portal that opens up occasionally a few spirits pour out of, adding pressure to cast the moon spell before the spirits are too overwhelming... (@logicon211)
* I ran out of time needed to make the corruption meter have more meaning. I was hoping to have time to have an "intermediate" (about 50%) state where the character seemed more insane, instead of only adding darkness near the end of the meter. With the corruption meter being as subtle as it is, it's easy to lose the "More is Worse" theme in this entry. (@huvaakoodia, @willisika)


### Thoughts On Continued Dev

* I'm fairly happy with the rune system. Expanding it to do more, and adding more complex spells would be fun. If this were a longer game, then I'd need to reconsider the cost and/or worth of spells. One rune per baddie is quite expensive for a spell that lasts about 4 seconds.
* I love the "haunting" concept. That wasn't part of the original design, and was an idea I kind of "fell into" when programming enemy AI. It'd be great to give spirits abilities based on whatever object they're haunting. Perhaps trash cans can hop around, and trees can spit out fruit, etc.
* Designing new areas that fit the general feel of this game would be quite a bit of fun. I'd enjoy the process of adding graveyards, haunted forests, towns with more thought (instead of 4 basic houses), and of course, many more spirits and spells, and even bosses.
* I think this world also begs for more storyline and lore to be discovered.
* I'm not sure I'll put effort into continued development on this game, but I think the systems are interesting enough to give a lot of promise beyond a 10 minute experience. Knowing that alone is pretty rewarding!

Thanks again for playing and commenting!