Grid Land by TheMixedMaster

[raw]
made by TheMixedMaster for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

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.

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🗨️

Feedback

LightningST
15. Apr 2024 · 23:27 UTC
Maybe this is just me, but I'm getting stuck on the Unity loading screen with the loading bar staying empty. (Firefox on Windows 11)

Let me know if you get it fixed, I'd love to play it!
🎤 TheMixedMaster
16. Apr 2024 · 00:59 UTC
@lightningst I just tried it in Firefox, I'm getting that problem too. Not sure what the cause would be. It works fine on Chrome though if you don't mind switching browsers.
LightningST
16. Apr 2024 · 01:06 UTC
@themixedmaster I'll give it a try
Merijn Schaap
17. Apr 2024 · 19:50 UTC
I like the idea, but whenever I manage to summon a bigger creature than the starting three, they just stop producing :/
Stefan Funke
17. Apr 2024 · 20:11 UTC
Interesting idea! I tried it for a bit, here are my first impressions

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.
Dagunov
17. Apr 2024 · 21:11 UTC
Nice usage of the theme!
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
karln
17. Apr 2024 · 23:55 UTC
This was nice to play with. I think it needs to run a little faster, or to have a button to collect essence right away. I ended up spending a lot of time with my guys set up how I wanted them and just waiting for the next essence tick. I was enjoying looking for new creature types but the waiting around got to be too much :(
Life_Lich
18. Apr 2024 · 02:19 UTC
cute art and good use of the theme, it would be nice with a clock to show when you would get essence
🎤 TheMixedMaster
18. Apr 2024 · 02:34 UTC
@merijn-schaap The speed of essence production is supposed to take longer over time. I made a mistake though so it was going fast for the first minute and then slow afterwards. That's fixed now.
BenjaminW
18. Apr 2024 · 05:14 UTC
Very cute game, I like the concept. Could definitely see it being a playable mobile idle game. Like somebody else said I do think the production needs to speed up. I got two trees and a mushroom and it's taking on average ~20-30 seconds. It would be less of a problem if I had more decisions to make during that time.

But I like the idea and the execution, it's definitely a pull to see what creatures I can combine next :)
NataBlanco
18. Apr 2024 · 21:47 UTC
I like
the creatures,they are cute)
TentacleDream
18. Apr 2024 · 21:50 UTC
looks interesting, and I also can’t help but praise the cute art
ZedGame
18. Apr 2024 · 21:55 UTC
Took a while to understand but it's a clever little game! Very cute art, too!
comigor
18. Apr 2024 · 21:57 UTC
Cute idea, but I'd polish it more perhaps adding some clicker and more idle game mechanics (to avoid taking much time just waiting), as long as drag & drop for the creatures and animations! And a visual representation of a failed summon.
🎤 TheMixedMaster
18. Apr 2024 · 22:20 UTC
@comigor thanks! Visual representation for successful and failed summons are something I wanted to add, but ran out of time.
Mr.Esport
18. Apr 2024 · 22:25 UTC
Very VERY cute game, big fan of the arts, the smiles (: Spent some time trying to optimize every synergy.
The essence production did feel a little slow
Special mention for my Stickbug Army
Adam Gallina
19. Apr 2024 · 03:34 UTC
Really interesting idea, I really like the art style, and that alone would be enough to make me want to find all the creatures, but like a lot of people were saying, it's really slow to get the essence and that makes it hard to experiment. I feel like you tried to combine a crafting game with a time-based optimization game, but it just ended up slowing down the gameplay on both ends. Really unique idea though, would love to play a future version if you ever continue working on it :)
🎤 TheMixedMaster
19. Apr 2024 · 07:55 UTC
@adam-gallina I've had a lot of ideas for expanding and improving it so I probably will keep developing this, so stay tuned!!
epb9000
21. Apr 2024 · 19:02 UTC
@themixedmaster Perhaps instead of a fixed-timer for the essence production time - could base the essence timer on number of creatures on the field. Though, if you did this you'd also need to include some indicator that the timer is lengthening or shortening as it is more complicated than a fixed extension. Also, a timer showing the essence timer would be good to include in later versions.

The art was super cute. Really the highlight.
BlorengeRhymes
22. Apr 2024 · 03:54 UTC
cute art and theming! im not really the type for super granular optimizations but i stuck around for the marine biology theming, this is how my grid looked before stopping (after sacrificing the king crab)![image.png](///raw/22e/34/z/64a92.png)

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 :-)
JamesW
22. Apr 2024 · 06:58 UTC
A super fantastic game concept to me! Love the idea of optimizing the balance of resource spending and the utilization of each creatures feature. The art is also cute. For the UX aspect, moving creatures is a bit inconvenient to me but still bearable. Love this game.
🎤 TheMixedMaster
22. Apr 2024 · 21:48 UTC
@blorengerhymes thanks for the feedback! There were actually going to be two more types (reptile and mammal) but I realized that would be 162 combinations as opposed to the 56 that I ended up with, so they got cut as I started coming up with all the creatures. (That's why there's blank space for 2 more essences in the menu lol). Also a completion menu is planned for later versions.

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!
🎤 TheMixedMaster
22. Apr 2024 · 21:49 UTC
@jamesw Yeah I agree about moving them being a bit hard to move. I think later I'll make it so hold-clicking on a creature puts it into moving mode. That should hopefully make it easier. Thanks for playing!
Hawkin
25. Apr 2024 · 02:56 UTC
I love all the different creatures that you drew! They are so cute and add a lot of personality to the game. On the surface, the mechanic was pretty simple. But below this, it is almost like a recipe game. Next time, I would experiment with more UI like drag and drop to move and sacrifice. Those controls would probably be a bit more intuitive.

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!
BimBim
28. Apr 2024 · 23:32 UTC
cute art, nice game, i like it
OhFiddleDiddle
30. Apr 2024 · 09:25 UTC
This is the kind of game I could get really addicted to!

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!