Cthuloop by beardywombat
"Something's not right. Wait ... haven't I been here before?"
Either you have a very bad case of deja vu, or reality is being warped by the incomprehensible horrors of the beyond. Rearrange mystic runes in this tribute to Puzzle Quest to investigate the mystery and survive the night ... again.

A few hints for combat:
- Matching board pieces provides resources (top left panel)
- Use resources to activate actions (bottom left panel)
- Use actions to deal damage, dodge attacks and delay enemy attacks
A few hints for the map:
- Click a location twice to move around the map
- Enemies spawn on most map locations but not every time you visit
- Flee will avoid a combat and move you to a random location
- Hide will consume a lot of time and avoid the combat if possible
- There is a story line that starts with a item you receive after defeating a specific set of enemies
| Youtube | https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6njf5qpcw2cej63/AABS6yxsTozgl3WjT0bKZ3wwa?dl=0 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/cthuloop |
Ratings
| Overall | 511th | 3.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 543th | 3.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 253th | 3.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1235th | 3.152⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 713th | 3.652⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 1088th | 1.875⭐ | 18🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1082th | 2.265⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 628th | 3.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 18🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
Art direction is also very nice. Minimalistic, but pretty.
I'm sure I'm just missing something, but regardless, the combat system was awesome. Nice game!
EDIT: Also, there was no audio for me, so presuming that wasn't a bug, you guys should remove the audio category here so you don't get rated on it.
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
1. You can use actions while animations are still happening and that allows you to kill/dodge enemy when it is supposed to attack but before attack actually happens, potentially avoiding damage you would recieve. Was that intentional?
2. Madness and corruptions tiles seemed to appear way too often. It is really nice thematically, making them unavoidable but that makes gameplay feel too random at times. I think making some abilities that control the board state would be nice. Something like: "Remove all corruption tiles in 3x3 area but gain madness for each of them" or something like that. Basically, keeps both of them a problem and makes them unavoidable but makes combat a bit more managable.
3. That happened only once but there was a 3 tile row on the board but it didn't count for some reason.
4. You haven't opted out of the audio category but the game didn't seem to have any sound? Was that a problem on my end?
5. Obviously some more guidance would be helpful but that's a problem for almost every LD game. But if you're going to make post LD version you should probably make some things more clear. Examples: make it clear which color is which resource, explain what + and - values near resources mean, explaining how corruption and madness work, make it more clear what affects + and - values (I assumed it was corruption and madness effects that changed them?)
Game really could use some sounds and a bit more readable graphics: it is a bit hard to differ elements when they have the same shape and similar colors.
Nevertheless, good job! I'd download something like this from store and watch loads of ads, if not donate.