That Time I Reincarnated Into /.../Trials By Summoning Demons With Unique Powers by Filip Vannfält

"That time I reincarnated into another world as a dark mage and overslept so now I'm late to the dark lord's summoning ritual and have to go through trials by summoning demons with unique powers"
This is our game never got truly finished, as we were all busy in some part during the weekend. Many of the gameplay elements are there, but there is a lack of content and a lot of planned content (the HEAVY trait currently does nothing apart from altering the demon's visuals) didn't make it in in time.
Unfortunately the webm export for Godot left us without the demon animations/altered appearance based on its traits, but it is still playable. We recommend downloading the zip for an exe file if you're on Windows. Hope you enjoy what we did manage to make!

| HTML (broken animations) | https://boodle.itch.io/ttiriawaadmaosnilttdlsrahtgttbsdwup |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ttiriawaadmaosnilttdlsrahtgttbsdwup |
Ratings
| Overall | 312th | 3.818⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 510th | 3.523⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 59th | 4.114⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 96th | 4.318⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 407th | 3.955⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 167th | 3.909⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 462th | 3.238⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 238th | 3.955⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
Cool concept with the different traits that you have to build. I especially liked that you had to trade of directional movement as a trait.
Good job, even if it is not completely finished, i felt like i got a good experience out of it!
The idea is solid and I like the graphics, I think all this game needs to be great is a bit of polish on the level design, and maybe faster movement for less tedium. Good job!
For the things to improve:
- on my screen the game was very small (only took 2/3 of the width), and so the text was hard to read.
- You can lock yourself in a wall when grabbed by an invocation (worse when the invocation can go only one direction lol)
Good job!
- I got stuck in the second room because I made a dual-right-dual-jump-grab-summon, picked the summoner up and accidentially moved him into the wall with no way of picking him up and moving him back again. You should always check for "legal placement" of the summoner
- The picking up-part was slightly confusing at first because while it makes perfect sense picking something up thats to your right side (thereby understanding you suck them up), the summons are lacking a mouth to the left, which hat me try to pick something up using the leg at first and wondering why i cant pick stuff up. I'd either fix this by adding a second sucker or letting the monster be able to pick something up from the sucker-side (and flipping the sprite when moving left, for example). Also, I'd add some visual or auditive feedback to picking something up, that'd instantly make the game feel way more controllable
- Also second room: you have a lot of free space to the left; I'd put the text there instead of its current placement where it blocks the summoning ring-menu (also id put the text on a lower layer than the menu to make it feel like it belongs to the world a little more, having it be on top of the menu is slightly jarring
- This might just be me, but I'd absolutely switch what S and spacebar do. Space is usually your action button and having it swich characters felt super-wrong to me personally, especially since S is such an unusual action button. Id rather have (S)witch character - especially since the summoner cant jump, so you wouldnt think of it as crouch or something anyways and spacebar to interact with stuff.
- It needs a reset-button in case you get stuck in a wall. :D
Those minor things aside, I think its a great concept which altogether feels very polished, really loved it.
Will keep an eye on it in case you guys decide to extend on it. :)
Idea is nice. I like the way I get to choose parameters of a new summoned creature and how it helps to solve puzzles! Music and pixel art work together well to give a mysterious atmosphere.
Well done!
From what i saw: the summoning menu (left/right/jump circle) should appear on the top of the instructions.
And probably there should be a "destroy demon" button. Overall I really like it, looks and sounds great, but after few tries i just lost patience. This omission makes it really tedious to experiment right now. Maybe you can update?

Well one of the locks was just hitting esc and leaving full screen but everything was so tiny without that it was near unplayable. The other time I got somehow stuck in a wall and the demon that carried me there couldn't move left to get me out.

So the idea is great but executing the "plan" so to say just takes so much time and is fiddly as hell to swap between multiple demons and try to remember which does what. Doesn't really help that the only levels are basically the same thing with a very slight alteration. I think at least an easy way to help with demon power memorization would be to give them different color eyes maybe based on what ability they have the most of. And a way to unsummon them too would be nice (and obviously level restart as it's possible to mess up and lock yourself).
Nice pixel art and animations! The music and sounds fit the mood well too. All in all would be great fun if you somehow made the actual gameplay less tedious and obviously added a buttload of more brain melting content.
Good job! 👍
**edit:** Oh yeah and the controls could be streamlined quite a bit. Of course the game was short now but I kept constantly messing up with s/w/space. First of all, swapping off from a demon could automatically drop what they were holding to not get stuck on an immobile state then needing to rotate through everything again just to drop. Of course if you'd create puzzles with double carrying mechanics needed that would be another case. Both down and up could activate the summon area (and picks in the ring) to make it less fiddly. I would also swap the keys for grab and switch. I think it would also make a lot of sense if switching picked the demon closest to you first etc instead of using the summoning order.
I think it'd be helpful if there was some variance in how the demons looked, even just a slightly shifted hue could make it easier to keep track of who is who
I guess the controls and the platforming feeling could be fine tuned a little bit to improve the experience. As it is I found it quite tedious to redo almost 75% of the puzzle so you can try the end of the puzzle (yes I failed a lot of time to jump at the end of level 2). Maybe some kind of rewind would allow players to experience a little bit easily the capacity of the summoned demon without having to invoke a ton of them. (Is it just me or can you not destroy them.
I played the web version and found the graphics and the character animations quite pretty. The audio was nice and moody too.
All in all it's a great entry ! The problems I'm pointing to above seems to be something that could be easily fixed given more time and the rest of the design seems well thought out. Congratulations !
I can see this idea going to steam, Xbox, and Playstation, and making serious cash.
I did see that the moving platforms didn't move the player correctly, but it was purely a visual glitch, and it was on the last play-test level, so it didn't matter anyway.
For the most of time the game worked well. Only bug I encountered was that I could accidentally transport myself into a wall with a demon and only way out was alt+F4. I would have also liked a way to delete a demon as I summoned quite a many in the last puzzle before clearing it.
I could see lots of potential for expanding this game as others have said in so many words in their reviews already. Nice work!