Sigillis by JUSTCAMH
Play it now, WEB, WIN, LINUX, MAC
Draw on the screen to cast spells.
Pay attention to the different symbols, which will be required to defeat enemies. Sacrifice your health to buy special spells that have custom effects, or to swap out unwanted or complex symbols with easier ones.
Post jam fixes released
A bunch of bugs, brought to my attention by you awesome people have been patched! The game is otherwise the same, you're just less likely to fall into a messy pit of bugs.
How it works
The game uses a pattern recognition algorithm that I developed entirely during the 48 hour jam period. The algorithm scales your drawing to a constant size, then compares it against all the patterns in the game. The main feature of the algorithm is flexibility; each step has a wide range of acceptable inputs to ensure that a match is found. Unity source code available below. More info will be available in an upcoming devlog, if you're interested, you can follow me on Itch.io to be notified of when that comes out.
Please enjoy, downloads (and WebGL version) below! :smile:
| HTML5 (web) | https://justcamh.itch.io/sigillis |
| Windows | https://justcamh.itch.io/sigillis |
| macOS | https://justcamh.itch.io/sigillis |
| Linux | https://justcamh.itch.io/sigillis |
| Source code | https://justcamh.itch.io/sigillis |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/sigillis |
Ratings
| Given | 18๐ณ๏ธ | 26๐จ๏ธ |
The point of swapping patterns was to swap one of your complex ones for something more manageable. Sometimes the items in store aren't worthwhile, but you can pick up some pretty horrible patterns, so they can be good. The special spells are definitely worthwhile though...
Thanks for your feedback, and I'm glad that the tech worked out. A few hours from submission and it was still a bit of a mess, so it was a relief to get it up to scratch.
The user interface is also really nicely designed, with the sloping lines in the middle. Though the viewport seem to have been cut off horizontally on my laptop screen.
Great job on coming up with something truly unique! Everything works exactly as it should, the game looks pretty and the sound design is on point!
Nice job, original and fluid, permissive enough not to be frustrating.
Great job anyway!
Thank you for the tips @mrspeaker! The shop system was totally appended on, because I hated the theme. I would really like to work on the game after the comp, and like above will work on it when I can!
@lola
Merci beaucoup!
I think its a really fun concept though!
I think there's a way you could make the shop work. Maybe if waves didn't really end, so you had to open
the shop while playing. Heck, get rid of the buttons and make sigils just for shopping!
The music's also pretty dope, has got that fantasy flair to its composition.
@fenderbate I'm sad to hear that the game wouldn't work for you. Were the symbols too hard to for you to reproduce, or was the game not accepting your input? This may be a bug if its not accepting anything, so I would very much appreciate further information.
@phyro Best part is, the variety of the patterns don't even matter. With the algorithm I made, all that is required is a few parameters to create a new pattern. I've got a video dev log in the works, and I'd love to share it with you when it's done and if you're interested!
@supernapie Thank you for the report. I tried it for a bit, and agree, it's not as responsive as I'd like. I fixed it in this morning's bug patch, so thank you heaps for the help.
@nayaki-anandan I really want to work more on this game too. I was super excited to release a bug patch today, and I had to restrain myself so damn hard to not add extra spells and animations. I really want to make the spells feel more juicy, give it some shake, spell-specific particles and the full bundle, but I don't want to cheat the Ludum Dare rules. You're not supposed to add new features whilst the rating is going on. I'm pretty sure this is one I'll be working on in the future, if you're interested in getting updates when they role around, you could [follow me on Itch.io](https://justcamh.itch.io/), but please don't feel pressured if you're not interested.
@hechi Thanks for the info. I investigated it this morning, and right you are! That's all patched now, so thanks for your report!
@daitse By 'tough to reproduce', do you mean that the game doesn't accept drawings that you believe are valid, or that the patterns I have made are too hard to do with a mouse? If there was any specific patterns that weren't working, I'd love to be able to fix it.
@tqv5964 There is a spot that the spells are displayed, but it has a scroll pane. Oddly enough, on some screen resolutions, the scroll bar started at a point where the list couldn't be seen, so I fixed that in this morning's bug patch. Thank you so much for the feedback, it helps so much!
Thankyou everyone for the useful feedback that you've left on my game! It's so great to know that the community is enjoying and criticising my work! Cheers :smile:
problem is that multi-colored sigils have only one color for the glow and cost of the power-ups are a bit too high to purchase
@matthewpoletin a mobile port would be cool, my only fear is that I won't be able to test it. If you've ever developed for iphone you'll understand the pain associated with ios export, and I don't have android :upside_down: Would still be cool tho.
@ianlux @josh-mcmillan @soujd @appix Nice to know that it works with a drawing tablet! Then again, I suppose tablets just emulate mouse... That's a great strategy, and I'm glad you all enjoyed! Thanks a heap for playing.
@krapht Thanks for the stream, awesome to see it played first hand! Today, I did my best to improve the flexibility of some of the patterns you were having trouble with. The algorithm's still the same, just the definition for those patterns have been slightly tweaked. You still can't rotate the symbols, but they should at least be easier to draw. So all of that has been *improved* (still not perfect sorry) in the latest patch, thank you for your valuable feedback.
**Thank you everyone for your feedback. I'm trying my hardest to keep up with all of your suggestions, whilst also not breaking the Ludum Dare rule of 'no modifying game during rating'. Cheers all, JUSTCAMH. :smiley: **
If there was 5start for programming I would give you 100.
One design note: Once you've taught me the main mechanic of matching symbols, I don't think these need to be on the side menu anymore - I am not referencing them for any reason as the symbols I need to match appear in the play area:
The music is lovely, the animations are satisfying. Fun game!
What I loved about this entry (aside from familiarity) was the mood. The music is lovely, and the simple pulsing artwork for the enemies matched it well. The experience established by the two kept me playing.
My one critique would be that the sigil-matching is sometimes finicky. It's hard as a player to know "why" a symbol isn't recognized. Sigilia had similar problems and I never really solved them, but in hindsight I think using a classifier-based approach and thinking in terms of "most similar" instead of "similar enough" might have helped. (Haven't checked your sources yet so not sure how applicable that would be here.)
Nice work!
@walkalope No, I've never heard of Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire. It's funny, because I thought this idea was completely new, and now I've learnt of at least five other games that use this mechanic XD. I'll be sure to check it out. That list there was for the special spells, as these can be cast at any time, and are only shown there. I also had additional plans for it, but these flopped on their face. With the patterns in the shop, you were meant to then click on something in the list, but apparently Unity doesn't recognise clicks to buttons that are on a scroll region... Now the pattern shop just shows the options above the button. Anyways, thanks for playing, and double thanks for the feedback, I'll be sure to check that game.
@killscreen Wow, another game that I've unknowingly ripped off... I honestly wouldn't recommend digging too far into the source code, viewing that is equivalent to being stabbed. The code is probably some of the messiest I've ever concocted, I should definitely clean up. A delta based metric would be smart, but I'm not that smart, AND it was made in 48 hours, sorry. Yours is all nice and shiny tho. My algorithm doesn't know how good of a match it is, and instead, knows right or wrong. This has too many pitfalls, but was the best that I was willing to pull in the limited time period. I'm glad you enjoyed the atmosphere, that was at least one focus, amongst so many others. From what I've seen from videos, the most common reason for failure tends to be that diagonal lines aren't drawn as such. That probably just means that new symbols should have less diagonal lines.
@mrbrooms I think you commented twice.
@mrbrooms I think you commented twice.
@biebras more not perfect? I'll assume you meant could be better, and it most certainly could be. The worst recognitions seem to be late game, when you've got a bunch of sigils. It likes to get confused, and whilst I've got a few ideas to fix it, I don't seem to be finding the time (and I'm probably also procrastinating at least a little bit). Thanks so much for the feedback though.
**Great stuff everyone! Thanks to all who have left a comment, it's been so helpful. Strangely enough, this has been one of my most 'experimental' games ever, and it was made in 48 hours, which was about as stressful as you can imagine, so thanks for all your tips to improve it. As a completely experimental game, I greatly appreciate all the feedback I can get, to improve this one and my future games. Thank you all, JUSTCAMH. :smiley: **
That said, I have some feedback:
* The game speed is a little slow. It takes forever at times until the enemies are visible. Especially in the beginning is was just waiting 80% of the time. It's not a good idea to waste the players time like that.
* The left HUD element covered up gameplay space. Enemies were spawning behind the HUD and I could barely see the sigils on them -> Which lead to just more waiting around.
So, the gameplay could be a little tighter with less waiting around. That's basically my only complaint. The rest is top notch! Keep it up
Are waves past the introduction of the 5th colour procedural? By that point I had already got all the spells and shapes and level intro popups stopped appearing.
Pattern recognition worked well (there was the occasional undetected sigil, but very seldom) and the risk/reward mechanic was a brilliant addition that fit the theme wonderfully. I didn't use them very much, but I also appreciated that there were spells.
The music track was nice, but I played for long enough that it ended up becoming repetitive (for a compo entry it's completely forgivable, especially given how solid everything else is)
In general, although while in-game I had all my senses focused on beating the level, I felt it was easy: I was basically trading most of my life for $$ till the point where I had run out of things to purchase and my only worry was to avoid getting hit.
The three-sigil enemies coming out from the left were annoying to wait for, as you could only see the first required sigil once they'd left the HUD covering them and there was little reaction time after that. Not sure if this was intentional, but as a way to balance difficulty it felt a bit asymmetric compared to triple-sigils coming from the right that could be dispatched instantly.
Despite these relatively minor things I really enjoyed your entry, and I'm specially curious about the pattern recognition tech you've used :)
Amazing job!! :smile:
PS: One last thing... the HTML5 version on itch is cut at the sides. Was it possible to switch it to full screen? I ended up playing the download version.
@ithildin Wow so much feedback! Thank you! All of the waves were procedural, and there are messages beyond that point, but you hit a fun bug. In fact, you had exhausted all of the patterns available, so it had nothing new to give you, so the notification couldn't open because an error was thrown in the background. Good job getting to purple though! I understand what you mean about the music, having played a few hours of the game myself :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: One thing I'd like to know is why the spells didn't feel useful? Were they underpowered or were they easy to forget? Should they be stronger, cheaper or somehow more usable? I agree with the three sigiled enemies to the left, but the ui needs to go somewhere. Not really sure how I would fix the left side being harder, that would happen no matter how the screen was split up, to some degree. I'll look into fixing the HTML version too, thanks for the heads up.
Thank you all for the great feedback! I'll keep working on updates, and hopefully a devlog will be available soon. Cheers, JUSTCAMH. :smile:
- There is a lot of time where I have nothing to do because the enemies are offscreen. It would be great if the symbol to draw was always onscreen (either because the enemy spawns onscreen or the symbol to draw could be on the edge of the screen when the enemy is offscreen). You could also have all enemies come from the top. This issue of offscreen symbols was even worse when triplets appeared because I have to do them in order and the first of three is still offscreen.
- I always set my life to a super-low nonzero value, and think it is always correct to do so.
- Some shop text went off the edge of the screen
- It would frequently adjust my drawing to some other shape (like a triangle) even though I correctly drew a shape. Why not adjust it to the shape that I drew?
- I can't see the cooldown of all of my spells that do thing because of the random attack spells in the scrollable list. I don't care at all about that list of attack spells.
- Some spells seemed to start on cooldown when I buy them. I died trying to cast these spells to try them.
Well done !