PolyMancer by LDJam user 336560

Use mouse gestures to summon abilities & make shapes go boom.
I'm developing this game further! Join Discord for updates, playtests and suggestions :)
Gallery

Controls
| Action | Control | |--------|---------| | Move | WASD | | Draw | Mouse |
Hints
It's fun to come up with your own strategies, but here are some hints after you've have a couple of attempts and are going for a top score :)

| Link | https://markasais.itch.io/polymancer |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/polymancer-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 7th | 4.464⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2th | 4.601⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 4th | 4.529⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 940th | 3.181⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 263th | 4.174⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 102th | 4.144⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 8🗳️ | 4🗨️ |

Finding the practical patterns to draw is tricky, but once you get them the game is really fun and skillful

Also you can kill the lasers with a line!

also, a recording of an 11k run: https://youtu.be/vQZ8FSi-Nss
Thanks for the stream submission!
A true art game with great mechanics!
Aswell I like the artstyle - clear and simple.
Greate work!
The game itself is really unique and very enjoyable.

i don't even know how i was able to get that score

i think this is one of the best games i've come across on this LD edition, so congrats!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvw31U45lSg


This image shows the final chaos:

Is.
Insane.
We're a little bit ashamed about how we handled tutorials and mechanics in our version of (almost) this mechanic. Yours is so crystal clear and so simple and elegant and juicy. The way simple shapes gradually get more features, start shooting at you, flock together, combine in different structures, then just as soon as you're comfortable a wild star appears and it's going on and on and on, just a party for my eyes and ears and my hand (holding a tablet pen because i"m a filthy cheater).
"Draw square to start" is genius.
I'll study this game for a while and learn from it. Thank you :)
https://youtu.be/vWs354uzbSQ
Loved the whole shape drawing mechanic!
As an aside you should do a writeup or something on how you got the shape detection working, fun fact, my game was supposed to have this kind of shape drawing mechanic but couldn't figure out how to do it on the first day so axed it for a circular menu and then drawing lines between connections because it'd be easier XD
Anyway! Love the game!
Really fun game and I enjoyed playing it a whole lot. Every once in a while the shape recognition wouldn't pick up what I was trying to draw but I think that's more of a me problem than anything.
Great job!
New post-jam boss rush with **5 boss fights** in increasing difficulty!
And a new boss leaderboard!

Simple and fun.
Nothing more to say

https://youtu.be/Dl4jJB0zKsE
https://youtu.be/25pr3bVYXnk
If you want to rewatch my playthrough, you can find it here on YT:
https://youtu.be/VrinXzvnhho
my main tip is play in browser and not fullscreen mode. in browser you can continue to draw offscreen to complete your shapes. also i have ultrawide monitor which makes enemies spawn too far apart in fullscreen mode so you have to make larger shapes and you cant get from one side of the screen to the other before the orbs disappear
Thank you everyone so much for playing and giving amazing feedback.
I have decided to continue the development for a full release - more drawing tools, upgrades, bosses and... pain-t.
Now with a new name!

## If you're interested, join [Discord](https://discord.gg/DMWmewb4pC) for development updates, playtests and suggestions :)
Again thank you so much and keep **pain**-ting!!!
I used a custom solution for recognition, which is based of a video/code by Sebastian Lague - "How to Create a Neural Network".
I do the following:
1. The user draws a shape which is made out of points connected with lines.
2. Then after the drawing is done, I normalize the point positions: scale all the points to fit in a 1x1 square.
3. I rasterize the points and lines into a 28x28 black and white image.
*This is done by running a pixel to line distance algorithm for each pixel & line of the drawing and mapping that to a color.
This is best done using Compute Shaders but had to use CPU for WebGL version :/*
4. I then use the image as inputs to a Convolutional Neural Network (from the above example).
*There was a special case with lines as if you draw a line along the horizontal/vertical axis, when normalized the horizontal/vertical imperfections will be very exaggerated and can look like another shape. If small width/height of the drawing is detected it assumes it's a line an no further classification is done.*
I got a FAQ with more technical questions on the discord if you're interested :)