Grid Land by TheMixedMaster
Manage an ecosystem of cute and weird creatures! Gather essence from them and use that essence to summon in new and more powerful creatures!
How to play: Creatures generate Essences automatically. Click a creature to see its abilities. Click it while selected to move it. Use the UI on the right side of the screen to organize resources for summoning. Sacrifice creatures to improve chances of successful summoning. While you wait for more essence, reorganize your grid for an optimal strategic layout.
Goals: Goal 1: Try to collect every creature! (There are 56 total) Goal 2: Try to maximize your essence production! Go full optimization game!
Mechanics explanation: (this section is not required to read, but offers clarification if you get confused. Feel free to ask in the comments as well!)
Essence: Essence is the currency of this game. Each creature by default generates 1 essence from one of their types (chosen randomly) every 60 seconds. The first waiting period is 4 seconds, and all subsequent waits are 2 seconds longer, until it reaches 60. This is to make it so you don't get as stuck in the early game and hopefully doesn't make the late game too easy.
Abilities: Each creature also has a unique ability. These can trigger when producing essence, trigger before the creature is sacrificed, or be a static effect. Ability execution order during essence production is left to right, bottom to top.
Summoning: To summon a creature, load some essences into the UI. The success of your summoning attempt depends on how many essences you put in, as well as any sacrifice you add. When you summon a creature, each essence you choose has a chance of being included in the creature you summon. This chance depends on the total number of elements you use, the number of essence used, and the elements of the sacrifice used. When calculating the chance of success for an element, you start at the base chance, and for each additional essence: add the base chance divided by the remaining percent. So 50% with 1 would mean 75% with 2, 87.5% with 3, etc.
Base chances for : Single-type summon: 50% double-type summon: 25% triple-type summon: 10% quadruple-type summon: 5%
sacrificing: when you choose to sacrifice a creature, you double the effect of essences for any types included in the sacrificed creature's type-combo. For example, doing a summon attempt with 2 essence and a sacrifice that matches that type will effectively be the same as a summon attempt with 4 essence of that type and no sacrifice. Sacrificed creatures are removed from the grid after being sacrificed. Creatures with abilities that trigger on sacrifice trigger before the creature is removed from the grid.
NOTICE: Things added after the deadline: (feel free to take these into account when rating my game) - most creature names and bios - slight tweaks to production rate of essences - very slight tweaks to one or two abilities (nothing bug related, just gameplay balance) - fixed an issue where having so many essences on screen would sometimes cause them to form a circle around the collection hitbox and not go in - the grid size now grows as you unlock things, rather than being stuck at 5x5 - added +10 and -10 buttons to summoning sidebar - the "Summon!" button now displays the total success chance and darkens if no essences are selected.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/grid-land |
Ratings
| Overall | 1068th | 3.056⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1049th | 2.907⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 813th | 3.111⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 707th | 3.519⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 872th | 3.222⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 777th | 1.528⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 526th | 3.13⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1043th | 2.981⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
Let me know if you get it fixed, I'd love to play it!
1) It takes much too long to get resources. I wanted to experiment further, but most of the time I was just waiting, which wasn't too much fun.
2) The sacrifice button was a bit too well hidden. I didn't see it for a long time. Maybe I'm blind. Would make it much more visible :) Also maybe it's bug, but the sacrifice button stopped working and I can't click it anymore.
Hope that helps a bit :)
Good entry! I liked it.
Really had to read description to figure out most of the stuff, but that's okay. But sacrifice button must be of a different color or type or else, I didn't know it existed until reading the comments. Great art! And a lot of different creatures, interesting to learn them!
@stefan-funke btw sacrifice button only works when any creature is selected. Maybe it's why it didn't work for you later on
But I like the idea and the execution, it's definitely a pull to see what creatures I can combine next :)
the creatures,they are cute)
The essence production did feel a little slow
Special mention for my Stickbug Army
The art was super cute. Really the highlight.
all else i have to say is that a convenient way to keep track of what combinations have yet to be discovered would be cool, and the top left gets cropped in the embed (but i take it that part is out of your control).
great game! i spent alot more time with it than i usually would :-)
As for the embed, you should be able to use the scrollbars and go into full screen to fix the cropping.
Also congrats on making it so far, I'm glad you enjoyed!
Very cool idea overall! I think the "summon" theme was a stretch here, but I don't mind that at all. The only thing that would help pass the time waiting and optimizing is some music and sounds!
From a design perspective, you nailed it. This is the kind of game I would buy a prettier version of for $9.99 on Steam any day. (Although I do love how cute the art is, for a game jam!)
My feedback is mostly around the controls. I think hovering over the creature should show you what they do, and instead of:
- click to select, click to move
You could have just:
- Click and drag.
I think that would have made the controls significantly more intuitive.
Overall amazing work, keep it up!