cool

This was hard! or im stupid! Nice looking game and solid idea though!

super?
-YES

I really enjoyed the core concept of balancing light and shadow
Visually, the spiritual theme is beautifully conveyed, and the atmosphere of the game helps immerse you in the task of preserving this delicate balance.

Overall, it's a meditative yet challenging game that kept me engaged throughout, constantly thinking about how to keep the influence bar high. Great job on creating a unique and thoughtful experience! :thumbsup:

Great job! This is the game that I spent the longest playing. The concept is so unique and the gameplay is fun, although a bit grinding! I'd love for there to be some music when I am playing the game because it does take a lot of holding left click and waiting.

After getting the last upgrade, I wonder if the shadow realm also once had a god, who once upgraded for them, but then abandoned them.

Cool concept! Took me a while to figure out how to play but the progression systems were very intuitive once I figured it out. Took 25 minutes to beat it since my start was so awful and had to come back from around 5%. Might want to add a mechanic that removes souls - started having performance issues after a while.

Was there any audio? I see that you didn't opt out of the category but I couldn't hear anything - maybe I did something wrong.

The graphics were nice. Very easy to read once I understood how the game worked. The soul collection animation was confusing at first though - I thought my guys were trying to shoot at the enemies and I thought it was a bug that they kept "shooting" to the top right of the screen. Might be because I was missing audio cues. I liked the invulnerable dudes at the end, they looked cool.

Good work!

Lovely game, once I figured out the mechanics, great game progression you've really put a lot of time into it, impressive for 2 days. Manage to beat to too after getting most of the upgrades.

cool

Great entry - lost track of time while playing and finished it only after almost half an hour :D

This was a neat little game. I was a little frustrated at first because it doesn't feel like you're able to turn anyone so I only had a couple of guys, but once you buy a lot of upgrades the tides turn really quick. I ended up playing through the whole thing, which took around 20 minutes and required all the upgrades. I do think a little more interaction or maybe the turning of enemies could be faster but it is so incredibly satisfying seeing all the souls count up. Big number make me feel good *thumbs up

The graphics are really beautiful, the game is fun, it is just a bit hard, but I took some time to understand how it works.

I really liked the concept, especially after coming back from the dead (Thanks to the OP last power), it took me a while but light prevailed ! I know you wanted to balance your game but I would happily keep purchasing powers past level 10 :p

It would be nice if you had an explanation for available powerups outside of game, it can be stressful to spend some time reading their description and leaving the creatures alone during that time. Some shortcuts to buy them would be nice too.

I really liked how after I thought everything was lost I came back and triumphed :)

PS: Is music/sound working ? You didn't opt out of the category but I didn't hear anything, either on MacOS or Windows.

Fun idea

Nice I won!

It was messy in the end

I love the progression of being almost overwhelmed and then reverse the steam !

Yeah it got quite messy towards the end, creatures where everywhere.

Took me a little while to understand how to play, but once you do, the game has a fun game loop, and is very engaging. Audio would've been amazing!

interesting concept!

Fun game, hard to play. The idea is pretty cool, nice work.

I really liked this game! It's awesome!

Super interesting game, I was hanging around 12% for the longest time then I got my upgrades and wiped them out. My only criticism was it took sooo long to win. But I had a good time playing it. Good jam, well done!

huh! that's was super challenging :D collecting soul energy looks very satisfying!

It was very difficult to get progress in the beginning, feeling that you can't win. The last upgrade is the one that turns the tides though, so be patient! (I almost quit when I thought I couldn't win but decided to push through). It's so satisfying to "scoop" the corrupted souls bit by bit and slowly overtake the whole screen!
Ingenious mechanic and implementation!

Do I see something? No. Was it fun. Yes!

@ejunegao I love this: `After getting the last upgrade, I wonder if the shadow realm once had a god who upgraded for them, but then abandoned them.` I might use this idea if I expand the game into a full version. Thanks for the inspiration!

@bad-fetus I’ve just uploaded a performance update, so the lag should be fixed now. I think you were the first in end the game. Thanks!

@rpgwanderer No sound, sorry! That’s on me, I opted out after release. Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

@dhim @crishnate Awesome screenshots, thanks for sharing!

A big thank you to everyone! I know it can be frustrating at first and tough to know what to do, but it’s amazing that many of you played through to the end. I really appreciate your patience and all the feedback. I’m planning to expand the game beyond the Ludum Dare version, and I'll be incorporating your feedback into that.

I really liked this, I kept playing way longer than I needed to just to rate it. I do think the mechanics were a little confusing though, like I'm still not sure what the point of the neutral souls is (you can't seem to convert them?) or if the devils eventually convert your angels to other devils or no. Are you intended to have multiple squads of angels, or just one big one?

Very unique game. It's very satisfying to manage large swarms of creatures, although I would like it if there was some sort of feedback when you gain or lose units. A sound or some sort of visual effect could have made the game more clear what was happening at any given point.

Cool mechanic, with some refinement this could be a really awesome game!

This was fun. It was quite the challenge too. It's surprisingly smooth, considering all the movement by the end.

The blessings all felt meaningful, and I was constantly looking forward to the next one. Though, I feel like the Graceful Pause and Spiritual Gate should have come earlier. I didn't feel their benefit, since soon after they were available I had eternal grace, which let me lay back and enjoy. Really satisfying to see it on autopilot for the last bit.


@adamg You’re right! The game really lacks visual feedback, and not having sounds is a bummer. I'm thinking about uploading a post-Ludum version on itch.io, and maybe even turning this into a full game with all the feedback we’ve gotten. Thanks for playing!

@lightningst Appreciate it!

@pincushion That’s awesome! Thanks for the feedback! I definitely need to rethink the blessings to make them better and more balanced!

Waw, nice entry, I love how this can scale and ears tones of souls, good job!

Thanks @maximeg!

A fun game! It took me a little while to figure out how to play but I got the hang of it eventually. Clearly lots of work into it so great job!

interesting concept

A nice game. It reminded me of a farming game of sorts. The game is pretty rough in the early game as the minions you have do so little. I wasn't even able to start making much progress until getting the Eternal Grace upgrade. The game also took a very long time to win just due to how much was on the screen. But these small gripes aside, I had a good time, and I'm personally very impressed on the performance of the game. Hats off to the coding! Good work overall!

Just a heads up, I think you may have forgotten to update the itch.io version with
the performance fix you mention in the comments. That's the version I played, so the
real challenge for me was to beat the game before running out of RAM :P. I tried playing
again on the jam page version and found the game much more satisfying, so
I think the performance really makes a difference.

It took me a couple tries to realize that you have to ignore almost all
the upgrades until you can get "eternal grace", since the game is basically
unwinnable until you've gotten that one.

@neoawesomeon The code is available if you want to take a look. Thanks you so much for your kind words!

@henk Nice catch! Sorry for the inconveniences, I just updated, thanks for the heads up!

Insanity! Very unique and fun concept. It gets a little stale when you've unlocked everything and are just watching the percentage marker go up while holding left click though.

I am _astonished_ at how much complexity and depth you were able to create in a 48-hour jam. Incredibly well executed, and a ton of potential. Truly amazing work!

Thanks for the kind words @thesmellofoxygen @samuel-fine!

Excellent game, unfortunately, I didn’t figure out the controls right away, but after that I enjoyed it immensely

It's purely amazing, how much you managed to implement on your own in compo time! The interpretation of the theme is definitely unique and interesting. The gameplay is too much like an idle game for my taste. Unlocking new upgrades to my powers was interesting, though, and the whole game works well.

Great work!

Very interesting idea! Didn't expect a game like this with the theme, but it matches quite well.
I love the graphics, sounds would have been nice though :-)

Nice submission. I liked the pixel art and the game concept. I found the mechanic of converting enemies to allies a bit confusing because I could not understand when it's supposed to work, eg sometimes trying to convert a neutral soul when no enemies are around would not convert and I couldn't understand why. This is a great submission given the time limitation :)

Reminds me of the gnorp apologue, which was also made in rust ! Like gnorp, i love the way there's just so much stuff happening on screen at some point, its fun chaos !

You have something like a one-tough RTS here? I love the idea, gets you dragging your mouse around trying to scoop red soulds away from their group to convert them, a bunch a time. It's somewhat mesmerizing!

@fabula-rasa I understand that idle/incremental games aren't everyone's cup of tea, but it's a genre I personally enjoy, and it fits well with my engine. Thanks so much for the feedback!

@aligator Thanks!!

@whitefox Yeah, one of the issues is that it's hard to understand what's going on or what you're supposed to do. Mainly, the Circle of Grace doesn't do anything by itself, it just makes the blue souls follow it, and they're the ones that convert nearby souls while inside the circle. That's why you can't convert neutral souls that are alone. I'm definitely taking all this feedback into account to improve the game after the jam. Thanks for your kind words!

I was a bit confused in the beginning as to what to do, and I lost the start, but it was quite enjoyable to play after I understood what was going on. I could not recover tho :( really great stuff tho!

@stracker You have no idea how happy I am with this comparison. Myco is a fantastic game designer, and Gnorp is exactly the type of game I aspire to create. I’d love to take this idea further and make a Steam game like Gnorp. Thank you so much for your feedback!

I think I liked it.


Nice game, I like the game loop a lot! Was a bit confused in the beginning but once I figured it out it was satisfying to play. Really like the art and overall polish is very good :) Nice job!

@bzoo345 @nickhellquist Thank you so much for the kind words!

@paulhocker oh wow! Almost 4k souls, amazing! Thanks for sharing your snapshot, I see that the UI is too small in your screen, I'll take that into account for next games making it adaptable in the same way as the game world. Thanks!


This was a super fun and addicting game! My main strategy was to perform encirclements around the enemies, and swarm them -- which felt super satisfying!

@notnasiul I’m glad you enjoyed the game and found the soul mechanic interesting. Thanks for playing!

@unitedfailures Awesome! That’s my strategy too, dividing them into small groups and trapping them in corners or encircling them. Thanks for playing!

One of the more addicting jam entries I've played so far, can't help but stick around to watch the number increase and the particles to go crazy :D

(seems like I pressed the "Publish" button too eagerly and my comment got posted twice :-) )

@orbitaldot Thanks! I am very happy that you liked it!

Really original game, although I'm pretty bad at it! But the idea rocks, and graphics are so cute!

Cool submission for the jam, and a really unique use of the theme. The game has a lot of tension in the middle where it seems like all is lost, and then you can get a key upgrade and swing things back in your favor. Very interesting tug of war.

Very original and addictive game! One of my favourites so far. I couldn't help playing it until the end. At first I didn't know I was supposed to pan using the WSAD keys. Also it wasn't clear how to buy upgrades. Holding the mouse button to activate the circle seems a little pointless as you want it activated almost all of the time. A toggle would be better. Near the end of the game the energy collect animation was so busy it was hard to see what was going on.

Thanks @ronn-fever!

@loveapplegames Totally agree with your feedback, there is so much room from improvements. Thanks for your feedback!

It took me way too long to understand you could upgrade perks, I tought the 1 in the first perk was because it was the first one. Really cool once I got that


Nice little game! It took me a while to understand how no to get overwhelmed but once you get to the last upgrade it gets much easier.

I noticed the blessings can still be purchased after the 10th, tho the number doesn't increase so I'm not sure I realy purchased them.

I also wish the game maybe paused when I was hovering the blessings so that I could read the tooltips calmly.

Cheers!

Wow, that was fun! Unfortunately I was stuck at one point where my guys weren't able to acquire new souls quick enough, but either way, that's a pretty addictive and cool little game, nice one!

Interesting game! I find it a bit slow, maybe the souls could get converted faster, also I feel like once you understand how the game works you can's loose since the souls under your circle never get corrupted. Once you unlock the last upgrade it's pretty satisfying to convert every souls.

The pixel art is good, the game runs surprisingly smoothly for how many characters are on screen near the end. Good job!

Nice entry! I had a hard time with my first game but then I understood that the top left panel was for upgrades and not for switching between different powers. It was satisfying converting all the evil souls and the game supports thousands of units! Good job!

This is a cool concept! I found the difficulty to be quite high, but the depth you have for just 48 hours is impressive! Keep on making games :smiley:

A very challenging game. It took me some time to figure out the strategy.

@andruid Awesome! I am very glad that you liked it, what a play you made there! Thanks for playing!

@purplexy Thanks for playing and sharing the screenshot! It’s definitely challenging, and I’ll work on balancing that better for the steam version.

@just-a-dev Your feedback is really interesting! I think you're the first to notice (or at least say out loud) that you can't lose the game when you're using the circle. And yes, you also can’t lose once you have the Eternals! Thanks for playing and sharing your thoughts!

@owlycode @frozenfire92 Thanks so much! I’m really glad you both liked it!

Wow! Really cool game, very satisfying. It would be great if you could unlock blessings using the keyboard.

Totally agree! The first version did use keyboard shortcuts. I’m not sure why I removed them and switched to mouse. Having both would definitely be better. Thanks for the feedback!

@zbrogdom Sorry, the comment above was meant to you!

Cool idea with the struggle between good and evil. I would also like to add some sounds.

Thanks for the game! Interesting idea, it’s pretty addictive! Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite figure out how converting to the light works—it felt like it took too long, haha. While I was trying to convert 5 creatures, the dark forces took over 20%—oof! Maybe making the magic (blessings) a bit more varied and noticeable would help. But regardless, I really enjoyed it. I got sucked in for a while, and I loved how the little guys followed my cursor, plus the graphics are really nice. Great job!

Thanks @co5monaut!

Great job! Nice visuals and nice idea! Keep making games!

@sasa-2010 thanks!

Hey fella! Your game gets really crazy after a while. I liked the concept. I wish you had the time to add some music and audio effects, that would have been a nice touch!

Like other commenters already said, this is very meditative and enjoyable to watch. It took me awhile to understand the controls and how to unlock new abilities. A tutorial would have been a big help. But I really liked the game and especially the vibe of the game, that you created with the different nuances.

Hello @tanis, thanks for the feedback! Yeah, it’s a shame the game doesn’t have sound, I ran out of time. I considered making a post-jam version with sound, but I decided not to change too much while voting is still ongoing. I really appreciate your feedback!

@j0ye Thank you! You're right, a tutorial was definitely needed. I didn’t think of it because I was rushing to have something finished before the deadline. Next time, I’ll plan for it from the start. Thanks for your feedback!

Unique idea, I had a lot of fun.

@quackqack thanks!

It wasn't very clear how to play

Unique concept, and the upgrades definitely add to it. 👍

Hey, this is really unique and interesting. It took me a few tries to figure out how to actually succeed, but once you kinda get into a groove it's pretty fun. I like how the game progresses through different "stages" due to the way it works. I really appreciated the last upgrade, once you unlock that it's fun to just sit back and watch the fireworks! And once the particle effect really gets going it looks really cool.

Super super minor things: when you click on the upgrades to select them, it also triggers the sacred circle to start rearranging the guys as well, which probably it shouldn't. Also, the prayer particles show up on top of the percentage bar at the top, which makes it a bit hard to read sometimes.

Overall, great work! I don't know if I've ever seen a game quite like this before.