Phew.

Mac Build works fine! It looks like the elements I summoned sometimes turn on me. Maybe I overlooked it, but is this intended? Makes it hard and takes a couple of tries but overall an metal entry!

Cant get the win version to download, would love to play

Win version reuploaded, should be downloadable now.

As for summons turning on you, it is "summoning tie being severed", basically if you lack a per-turn mana to support a summon, weird stuff will happen to it. Some turn, others explode, that sort of thing.

It is explained in the summon's on-hover description.

Have fun!

Fun game, although I must admit was a bit too difficult for me to muster a win :joy: enjoyed losing though and I liked the mechanic of them turning against you, although the 1st time I was confused, until I reread the description and figured out the normal generation rate vs. the maintenance cost.

Yea I should've put in some more in-yo-face tutorial, perhaps with pop-ups. Figured on-hover descriptions would suffice :<
I couldn't do anything sane on the balancing side given the time either.
But, thanks for playing & fb regardless :3 Glad you enjoyed it!

Interesting game! I like it!

a little confused to play at firt, get interesting later,,love this game,wish for more content to play

This game was sick! The soundtrack shreds, and the dialogue was pretty funny. It took me a few tries but once I figured out the combat the game became really fun, love the system.

Also, nice banepost bro

@tired-mutt I KNOW RIGHT, I assembled a meme story quickly but it became the end-product...

@olddog so do I, but the rules are the rules ^.^

Awesome Games. Had much fun playing. Concept is cool and the art is really really nice. If the font and Textbox was more fitting it would be the cherry on the cake. Dam nice job for the 48h. With some better balancing and more content this could be a really cool full scale game.

@dekara I do not agree on the arts being nice tho : P

I'm already considering at least experimenting at making this fuller-scale, based on fb from various sources including you guys. <3

@themaskedman Nono its cool. The style of the sorceress is really cool I would keep the style that way. Shure the enemies are a little bland in Contrast, but you only got 48h ours. 🙃

Art is unique and good looking with hand strokes. Gameplay wise I first thought it will be like old final fantasy games but its not like that. Its like the clash royal. But i was getting same type minion to send from my end for longer than I expected and i got bored of that. May be give some other variety of minion expensive ones. And some feedback on damage will help a lot.

Please allow me to start with something that might come off as a bit offensive:

Firstly, the art style of your game did deter me somewhat; it appeared rather crude, as if it was "unprepared." Some of the creatures' designs did not match the others at all, as if they had wandered in from a neighboring set.

Secondly, your game was quite stingy with the tutorial system. It's not that I'm against throwing players directly into the challenge—I also enjoy games without tutorials sometimes—but it has been proven that they are very necessary. A good friend of mine educated me, saying, "When you're making a game, you need to think more, and then even more than that. Even if you treat players as if they were foolish, it might not be enough. Because, in fact, sometimes you might not even be as smart as a fool." It was a harsh statement, but it has enlightened me a great deal.

After voicing these harsh truths, let's move on to something more valuable. Once I got used to the art style and familiar with the game system you created, the game quickly became enjoyable. It's like, once you can accept sipping aged whiskey neat, you'll surely get addicted. Now, I'm a bit hooked, although I still have to go play other people's games.

I can sense that the underlying design of your game is quite solid and robust; your experience must be quite extensive. It's just that perhaps you decided to join the compo on a whim, which led to some haste.

But, brother, you've chosen this challenging path, so you must walk it well. You need to prepare more than enough before you start; you have to know what you're going to do even before the ones who set the challenge.

Regardless, the game you've made is still very excellent and has provided me with a great gaming experience. Keep up the good work, buddy; you've done a really great job.

@drgcandle >It’s just that perhaps you decided to join the compo on a whim, which led to some haste.

You saw right through me :3
I joined *this jam* on a whim 2 days before it started, without any prev. jamming exp or any exp building a whole game fast.

That out of the way, this has 2be the most constructive review I saw let alone recieved so far. Even though you did point out the stings I myself see clearly (but cant do anything about now), it only hammers the couple points home:

- SOME tutorial is a must when jamming, for people usually allocate only so much time to learn the game & wanna get in there faster

- For more jamming (which is unlikely), or for a general skillset boost, I have to figure out n learn SOME way to produce fast but better-looking artwork, which I simply can't do. I can only create stuff that either takes aeons and looks good, or, one that is plain jank-crude sketches. :<

Don't get addicted, addictions rob us of our freedom. :P

Thanks for the 40% stronk feedback. <3

@themaskedman
Our artist told me that rapid creation is always backed by long-term preparation and clear ideas. A hasty doodle is not necessarily a bad piece of work; it could also be an extremely strong personal style, as long as you are truly skilled at it. Earlier, I wrote some thoughts on our team's artistic production for another friend, which you might find useful as a reference. You might have to scroll through a few posts to find it, though.https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/moving-in-and-moving-on

It's an interesting concept, good job!

Wow, that's a pretty cool use of RenPy! I wouldn't even guess you used it :) However, at one point I accidentally scrolled the mouse wheel up and it took me back some battle steps, and that's when I remembered it's RenPy. So keep that in mind if you make some adjustments, RenPy still considers it a visual novel that can be scrolled back.

Overall, it reminded me of Heroes of Might and Magic, though some aspects of combat felt a bit different. So that was a nice dose of nostalgia. Also, the rock music is fantastic :)

I wasn't entirely sure if I understood the story - did the mask make her evil? (To be fair, I just woke up recently after a deadline, so might just be my comprehension skills right now and not your writing)

You call it programmer art, but I can clearly see by the sorceress you know anatomy very well :D I am still learning to draw better so noticed that immediately.

Imo, that's some really productive work for a compo! ^^

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY EPIC AND BADASS! Your character designs are super cool, and the gameplay is addictively fun, with a straightforward learning curve. I read the comment you wrote about the "summoning tie", and that solved all my confusion. I disagree with the others who complain about the enemy variety - I think what you've done is perfect for a compo. More variety sounds like the type of thing for the jam instead.

The things I like most are the game's rock-on metal personality, and the fact that it is so accessible. EVERYTHING has a quirky description, like the templars being "THE melee unit" or the archers actually being able to hit their shots (lil Stormtrooper roast lmao).

Excellent game! **I now have a new fear of unhinged women wearing masks! 10/10**

@kanity Rollback's intended, there are even a couple notes, both in game and in the game's description above that you can use rollback to your advantage to dodge poor balancing or alter your levelling decisions : P

I use rollback to dev/debug all the time, on many projects, VNs or crazy ones like this one. You just gotta be aware of it and write your game logic in such a way as to make the most use of it.

HoMM vibes are **THE** warmest compliment possible, thank you. I do certainly see this myself: clash-like games (can I call this "genre" so?) usually have longer lanes, more troops-on-screen, but this game has that weird feel of Disciples/HoMM in that its quite compact. With some brainwork put into it, I think **it can get even closer to these kinds of games**, which is a based prospect.

The story is Uwe Boll's rampage laced with a lulz-first assortment of baneposting, anti-maskers, other memes & jokes so... You haven't really missed much. If I'd taken this more seriously, it'd be ridiculously more grimdark though, so perhaps the fact that I didn't is for the best.

As for arts, well here's my [artstartion](https://www.artstation.com/themaskedman) and [deviantart](https://www.deviantart.com/kostucha616/gallery) pages. It looks a few orders of mag fancier than this game, but I simply can't draw the dark-shiny-metal style stuff fast enough. That's actually **my main takeaway** from this whole jam thing: gotta learn to do that, which will involve figuring out core stylistic aspects that make it what it is, ways to streamline production stages, blah blah blah...

Thanks for playing the game! Glad you enjoyed it and left a bunch of stars. I think your rating just tipped me over twenty. :3

@footlettuce **I KNOW RIGHT** the only thing that saddens me a lil bit is the lacking visual fb I've managed to stuff in :< Imagine blood splatters, spell effects, even screen shake, ooof

I tried to make each unit super unique, quirky and, well, *meaningful* as opposed to "add a bunch of dudes that vary by hp & dmg", but only managed to achieve it so much. I think the rogues did hit that mark the best of all units, summons included. Somewhere along is the puppeteer.

The stormtrooper roast was not intended btw, likely my subconsciousness doing it 4some weird reason. Many if not all aspects of this game were just pulled together on-the-fly from the warp.

Thanks for the feedback, now I know for sure the metal maniacs are out there, lurking, **waiting**. <3

I enjoyed that. I like the design of all the creatures and their various effects.
No idea what the summoning tie meant, but managed to win regardless.
Surprised renpy is capable of this. Great job.

Love the soundtrack 🤘

I didn't totally understand how to battle successfully. I know I needed to get my dudes to the far side of the field to attack the enemy leader, but whenever they had no enemy to fight they just turned around to attack me instead, so putting one in an empty lane was just like self-destruct, and if I only reacted to where the pikemen were coming out, I could never get to the leader. The best strategy I found was to pump them out in one lane and let another lane get attacked for a bit, and lightly defend wherever else they went, but then sometimes my dudes would just turn on me anyway and set me back to square one.

I think I just didn't get what was severing their summoning tie, or if there was anything I could do to stop it from happening?

@vivid-hallucination If you hover on a summon, whether its spawn icon or on-lane sprite, you can see in its description that it both has a summon mana cost, and a support mana cost. If you lack mana to support a summon, "the summoning tie will be severed", leading to various different outcomes depending on specific summon. The outcome tiself can also be found described there. :)

I thought this was really well put together actually. I know the art is unfinished (but it actually gives out a pretty cool vibe the way it is) but the different environments and characters and how the small things like music changes and animations in cutscenes really made it feel like a complete experience. I liked the combat system once I realised why my own summons were killing (Which is a very cool mechanic), my favourite combo was using the fire summon to boost attack, that was good fun. I enjoyed the writing as well, could see something cool come from expanding on it. Well done, great entry.

- Interesting, I would like the story to be developed more in place of the battles
- The first battle took quite some time to go through
- I noticed several different types of enemies but haven't seen them do much, since I was keeping tabs on whether I have a unit in each lane fighting
- I tried to check out new units, didn't see them perform at all, and couldn't beat the game until I reloaded and upgraded the starter unit and won the game with basically just that. Felt like there were some cool options there but I felt punished for using them instead of the starter unit since they performed much worse.
- Why did the lady not like to wear masks, did she ever took it off, where do hats come from?

Fun concept. Not a huge fan of the thing where my monsters will randomly turn on me. I'm assuming that the "summoning tie" gets severed if they take damage, or randomly in combat?

*-reads other people's comments-* Ah. Seeing how it's mentioned nowhere in the in-game help that it happens if I *run out of MP,* let me kindly tell your "summoning tie" mechanic to take a hike.

That said, I'll give you mad props for making a game like this in *Ren'Py,* of all things, and I'll gladly take your sketchy art over AI-generated garbage like I saw in someone else's entry.

@dan-allison The... fire horse thing is indeed cool, the only prob is, I havent' had the time to stuff in on-hover adjusted damage display :P So logic-wise, the damage gets boosted, but the only way 2find out is via combat log entries. The summoning tie would be more fun to experiment on if there was stuff like enemy summoners or various mana-draining extra spells/effects, that would be **quite something** :3 Although as is, it works quite fun because the game kinda nudges you to spam monsters & be all metal, while the summoning tie will kick ya in a sensitive spot, creating a peculiar vibe of "keeping your throttle in check" if that makes sense. Meddling with forces of evil, **as in real life**, will bury you if you just don't hold back. :P

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it.

@ellaris On story and balance well, you know, Compo. I tried my best to do *some* balancing, but yeah couldnt really achieve much on that front, so yeah you can just max out centipedes and slash away. Other units *do* perform, but they aren't really necessary. Your approach was strategically optimal. Options are there for more of a showcase/experiment, unfortunately. Although I think maxing out flesh master might be a stronger approach to go rather than centipedes. Dunno

"Why did the lady not like to wear masks, did she ever took it off, where do hats come from?"
-- All these questions will be answered in the 1.0, if it is ever to come. :3

@ryusui Thanks for playing! Pleased to hear there is *some* sense in having arts like these. :3

On the summoning tie mechanic, I've talked to it and it refuses take a hike, unfortunately. Perhaps it simply isn't a game for you. Thanks for the feedback regardless! <3

@themaskedman Just make it clearer that you should never, ever allow yourself to run out of MP if you don't want to get your face chewed off by your own summoned minions. I understood there was a mechanic that was making my minions turn on me, but it wasn't explained at all what exactly "breaks a summoning tie" (and again, since it was happening during combat, I assumed it was a random chance in battle).

@ryusui It's not in my style to explain stuff to player. Games I enjoyed the most rarely did. There's just enough evidence to figure it out in-game: if you hover about, read, imagine what the whole "tie" thing might mean given the exposed values, stuff like that.

**BESIDES** that, the mechanic is not a generic "don't do": it can be exploited even in this proto. Grab a bunch of flesh masters, let your mana run dry, watch entire lanes die. The icey thing goes idle, blocking lanes. If only she had some sort of a damage resistance bonus on "disconnect"...

As I've mentioned, it's simply not a game for ya, so apologies for nerve burnt!

Except for the "summoning tie being severed" not being quite understandable, the game plays well. I was not able to pass the first level. Once I read through comments, I was able to manage my mana and cheesed through the game and enjoy it. I played two times through and I can imagine there is still a better combination of creatures to build the deck from.

Interesting game. Got to level 2 but then it crashed with an exception. Still seemed like you put a lot of time/effort into those mechanics. Well done.

@joe40001 Huh? Can you drop an error screencap or something? It never seemed to crash on my machine or anyone else's. :thinking: A good bug is a dead bug!

@petr-vejchoda I did meditate on tutorials and yeah, should've put *just a little more* effort into making the mechanics more obvious. Well, it is what it is. :shrug_tone1: Glad you enjoyed it anyway!

Sorry, I didn't take a screenshot. It was just a bunch of text on the screen saying there was an exception. I was putting the psychic? units down in level 2 IIRC if that helps.

@joe40001 oh. Well, hopefully its something rare n obscure enough as to not happen often. Thanks for playing anyway, and apologies for the buggo. <3

Nice one! I figured out what "severed" means only by the end, wasn't paying attention to support cost (at first I thought that that means that I can spend that much mana to support my summons). Music and writing fits very well, loved those transitions and the whole idea of a story!

Being able to hover over units when you're upgrading them for the first time would've been helpful too, and seeing their stats beforehand too. I didn't understood summons abilities though, haven't saw their effects, maybe it's just the lack of visualization.