It's our second time ever attending a GameJam and the first time we were ever able to publish something finished.

So, Summoning. How about we are a necromancer that uses only familiars born from enemies's corpses to attack? And what about feeding the greatest demon Akino that can erase every enemy from our sight? (Well... when it grows up; until then - enjoy its gifts of power!)

Please check our game out! Dodge, maneuver, learn, collect skulls, gain new strengths by growing Akino and defeat all enemies!

The game is difficult, but you can beat it and get to the ending screen!

Did you know that we did all of our visual art? It was very fun to come up with different ideas and how to incorporate them both visually and via gameplay. And Godot Engine is a great tool to experiment with it!

Check our out game at this link!

Akino's Dungeon: Pick Skulls, use Melee familiars to kill. Feed demon Akino to get its strength and wipe out your foes!

The Problem

Players have been playing our game, and a lot of them noticed that mouse controls feel off. Some offered to use WASD or arrow keys instead. However, there were also a lot of players (us included), who liked the mouse controls, but thought that its implementation could use some improvement.

The Solution

We listened to the feedback from our players and decided that a bug fix is needed. According to the rules of Ludum Dare, "Certain Bug Fixes are allowed. You can’t add new features, but if something broke or didn’t work correctly as you were finishing up, you can fix this after the deadline." So that's what we did!

The problem, of course, lied in inexperience with Godot. Here is how character's movement direction was determined:

To be honest, looking back, I was impressed that this code even existed and somehow worked, as those mistakes are quite basic: + using local position for the player, when cursor's position is global + abs, when using vectors, doesn't get it's length - it just makes its components positive + somehow we compare abs vector to just vector; such behavior could be very unpredictable

The fix was simple:

I also used the global position of collision shape to make it more precise, as character sprite is not centered.

Conclusions made

• it's certainly useful to look back at your old code and revise it, you may not even remember what you wrote previously
• playtesting is essential for making your game enjoyable: remove the problems before anyone can see them!
• player feedback is very helpful to make the experience for new playes more enjoyable, so it's really important to learn how to listen to it and interpret what the game needs

Those may be basic, but everyone comes to them at some point and it's not so easy to actually acknowledge them. So, now you can enjoy our game better then ever before!

About the game

Akino’s Dungeon is a challenging, addictingly fun top-down arcade where you'll have to dodge and maneuver to kill enemies with the help of your orbital familiars. Pick skulls, summon familiars and feed Akino! Check our game out on our page, link here!

The game is available here! Playable HTML5 version is also available via itch link, check it out!

AnimationPlayer

While it does what you may expect from its name - making animations for assets - in Godot it has much more potential to even replace some code! Here's how we used it to create an attack for one of our mobs in-game:

:walking: First, the crusader is walking with no attack with normal speed

:dagger: Then, lock_on() function is called, which determines the attack's direction (at the player)

:stopwatch: While locking on, the crusader: + is standing still, the speed is 0 + takes an winding-up aiming pose + gets charged up with color to telegraph a coming attack

:cyclone: After the charge-up, the crusader makes a dash: + the speed becomes much higher than its normal one + an attack swipe becomes visible and its collision becomes active + crusader takes a swiping pose + color returns to normal

:levitate: After an attack, it takes some tome for the crusader to recover. Which gives the player a chance to strike back!

This way, you can modify almost all of objects' properties (even ones you've declared!), call their methods, and time all that perfectly.

Here's how it turned out in-game!

Akino’s Dungeon is a challenging, addictingly fun top-down arcade where you’ll have to dodge and maneuver to kill enemies with the help of your orbital familiars. Pick skulls, summon familiars and feed Akino! Check our game out on our page, link here!

Here is our submission for LD 56!

In Druid's Friends, you befriend the local animals by feeding them their favorite treats. Be gentle and attentive to the cute creatures' wants and needs!

Try it out!

Druid's Friends is a game where you befriend cute creatures by feeding them their favourite treats.

In this game, we made it so that a creature may run away if: + it accidentaly bit your hand, didn't like the food, + it was frightened by sudden movements, + it was poked with food when it wasn't ready to eat, + it didn't like the chosen food.

Like real animals, you should treat them with attentiveness! And we wanted to show the player that.

For starters, we made an instruction at the start of the game:

However, you should also telegraph the creature's state to the player. For that, we made a "frightened" sprite to make the player go back and move more carefully. There is also a little screenshake to draw attention to the change in the state.

Ok, but other than that, we need to tell the player why exactly the creature ran away. We tried to do this: + If the player is bit by the creature, a "hurt" sprite is shown for the hand and it shakes intensely. + If the player makes sudden movements or pokes the creature, it goes into "frightened" state and, if the player continues, then just runs away. + If the player gives the creature the food it doesn't like, it will turn green and run away with "angry particles".

While it is intuitive when the player is bit, the latter two situations are more vague as the difference is subtle and can be easily missed, so some player may have missed that.

Some players also missed the notes on the bottom right of the screen that can be used to get hints on what each creature likes. And some were confused by two hints that are similar (both show eyes as a feature):

What have I learned from this? While most players got the message, it was not everyone. So:

• When explaining something to the player, it should be as unambigious as possible. No alternative meanings.
• When showing the player something, highlight and make it evident that it needs the player's attention.

Although it may sound obvious, the balance between not telling the player anything and holding their hand too much is difficult to maintain. It is definitely something that needs more consideration and playtesting.

Interested in our game? Try it out now!

We are also working on the post-jam version on itch that addresses the quality of life issues!

I've played some games that are, in my opinion, so polished and fun that they deserve much more players to see them!

Maratus in Love - a cute and very responsive platformer where you play as a jumping spider and use mouse to jump with chosen thajectory! Its movement feels so good!

Age of Honey - a small, but very charming RTS game about bees that is so addicting that I wanted more of it when in ended.

^ These two don't have 20 ratings yet, so help them out!

Ants Save the Queen - a dungeon crawler where you control a swarm of ants! The amount of ants is both your hp and ammo, so be careful not to get hit! Every detail in this game serves its purpose and that's why I'm so in love with it.

Vermin Tiny Creatures - it's so fun to play as a swarm of rats and shoot with... rats! Grow your army and punish the polluters of your home! This game is just pure fun in numbers. The "megarat" evolution is hillarious and epic at the same time.

If you too have any games that you played, have a low amount of ratings but you think deserve more attention, you can leave them in the comments below!