Summoner's skirmish by LDJam user 389592

[raw]
made by LDJam user 389592 for Ludum Dare 55 (COMPO)

You are a summoner, and you are attacked by hordes of slimes. To survive you can summon divinities, who have helpful blessings. But just like everything, they come with a price and be careful of their curses... Try to survive as long as you can!Screenshot 2024-04-14 at 12.39.54 PM.png

Ratings

Given 11🗳️ 10🗨️

Feedback

Yochti
14. Apr 2024 · 20:45 UTC
Hey nice game! I've loved the player movement and how fluid the player is. Just one thing, I would have add the survive timer while we play and not just at the end.

Best Score: 2min36sec
LDJam user 372150
14. Apr 2024 · 23:52 UTC
Took a little moment to figure out what was going on. Realized that you could summon all of the divinities whenever, you just get one of each. The movement and bullet hell was fun. I made it to the boss fight, but died immediately. Overall pretty good!
LDJam user 372425
15. Apr 2024 · 01:04 UTC
I really liked the variety among the enemies in the game and the boss phase was good. I also appreciated how the density of projectiles was balanced, it felt like a bullet hell without being cluttered to the point that it feels unfair. Good job!
LDJam user 388431
15. Apr 2024 · 01:05 UTC
Pretty fun, I made it about 2 minutes longest! Maybe add some more clarification for how the divinities work, it was just a bit complex. Also, some basic sound effects would go a long way, even just something small like what BFXR can make.
PilotTK
15. Apr 2024 · 01:25 UTC
This is really fun bullet hell! I think I almost beat the boss before I died! The controls felt so good and I really liked the ability to stop and shoot.
LDJam user 11093
15. Apr 2024 · 01:37 UTC
Fun game, I killed the boss before I understood how to summon divinities, but it's OK. Like already said, a few sound effects could have been cool, even basics one.
Keep up the good work.
Owtuvammo
15. Apr 2024 · 02:01 UTC
The divinity UI definitely needs some work, but it's a fun little bullet hell!

I didn't even realize there were multiple until I checked the comments here.
LDJam user 386211
15. Apr 2024 · 02:06 UTC
Super fun, it was really hard to shoot at the boss though - something didn't feel quite responsive enough with the mouse!
Joua
15. Apr 2024 · 02:15 UTC
That was a funny one! Great time playing it. Nice job!
mrVentures
15. Apr 2024 · 02:40 UTC
I didn’t really understand how to play! That said, I liked all the movement and the variety of character types.
ollie_d
15. Apr 2024 · 06:21 UTC
Got a 7 minute run! I'm a big fan of dodging games like this. I think I could've essentially gone forever since I got the hang of manipulating the enemy's bullets. I honestly wasn't even shooting them or using the divninities because I was happy just dodging haha
🎤 LDJam user 389592
15. Apr 2024 · 06:38 UTC
@ollie-d ohhh 7 mins you beat my pb lol
🎤 LDJam user 389592
15. Apr 2024 · 08:29 UTC
@myse maybe its the cooldown (to prevent spam shooting), if you want to halve it use the red divinity
LDJam user 388782
15. Apr 2024 · 11:27 UTC
Pretty cool game. The divinity placements feel as bit more clunky than it needed to be, but it get the job done. I think it could use some progress bar, to show that something is happening, and when it is. I almost stopped playing before reaching the boss.
🎤 LDJam user 389592
15. Apr 2024 · 12:44 UTC
@ooboob lol the boss spawns randomly after 40 or so kills, and chance increases as you kill, so there is not actually a timer or something lol, and the boss is not the end as the game is more like a 'how long can you survive'
LDJam user 388782
15. Apr 2024 · 12:48 UTC
@cleverdumb , even so, I think having a progress meter would be an improvement
🎤 LDJam user 389592
15. Apr 2024 · 13:00 UTC
@ooboob yeah good idea maybe like a timer and stuff
Literally Void
15. Apr 2024 · 23:01 UTC
I have a 144hz monitor and that made the game a *lot* more hectic before I turned my monitor's refresh rate down, haha. I love the positive feedback loop of more bullets -> more dodging -> more bullets, too---it really feels like you're on the knife's edge of surviving the whole time.

There's a bug where if you press `ESC` it just shows the menu and doesn't pause the game---you have to press it twice to actually pause.

On the topic of divinities: I found myself placing them only at the start of the game (to be fair, this was *because* I was trying to see if using divinities were helping or not), and one problem that crops up is, it's hard to judge if they're helping between one run and the next---there aren't any obvious points (in my experience!) where I can go, "oh hey, if I placed/didn't place [X] divinity maybe I could have survived!", and the moment-to-moment gameplay is the same whether or not my bullets are larger.

And that's reinforced from it being tedious to place/destroy divinities during gameplay, which incentivizes a per-run choice instead of being a moment-to-moment thing.

That being said, I still found the game enjoyable! And I was surprised with how fun the core shoot-where-you're-moving-to mechanic is; it seems like other games generally use a joystick-style control loop, and I feel like the single-room global-mouse thing works really well. (Although now that I think about it, that's probably *because* it's a one-room game!)

I survived to 4m26s legitimately! ~~and 7m with one exploit and 16m with another sorry for brutally critiquing and then breaking your game so much :')~~
🎤 LDJam user 389592
16. Apr 2024 · 16:19 UTC
@literally-void thx for the comments i will probably add more divinities later lol, and i completely didnt catch the ESC thing so thx for telling me
OldDog
17. Apr 2024 · 10:17 UTC
so simple but interesting,love this game so much,wish to see more weapons or other contents to play
burnedkirby
22. Apr 2024 · 07:42 UTC
The game gets pretty hectic as more enemies spawn. It seems having a bigger screen gives more of an advantage I think. Being able to stop moving with spacebar is a nice quality-of-life touch. There doesn't seem to have much incentive to summon the helpers since they also come with "curses", and I ended up with the poison-removing one only. Maybe if there was some kind of "overuse" system instead of direct pros-and-cons I think would improve the game. Good work!
kroltan
23. Apr 2024 · 21:43 UTC
It's a bit unclear if the placement of the divinities makes any difference at all (besides the poison puddle one), I suspect it doesn't? In that case I'd just have buttons to enable or disable each.

Also, there are way too many enemies on the screen, in 10 seconds my screen is pretty much full of green blobs with no escape path. Could be framerate-related, I'm on a 165Hz screen.

Besides that, fun game, straightforward in a good way and the graphics are very readable.
Rekiem
24. Apr 2024 · 14:28 UTC
It's a pretty fun game. It could be a little better explained how the divinities work, and I missed sound effects, I think it would make the experience more satisfying.
Asieke
25. Apr 2024 · 04:00 UTC
Super fun! The chaos of trying to dodge around was pretty thrilling.