The Summoned by CataclysmicKnight

[raw]
made by CataclysmicKnight for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

You're summoned to make a wish from a genie who has seen little more than the worst of humanity. Complete the genie's trials, craft the perfect wish, and then make your wish. Can you make a truly great wish, and show the genie that not all people are so selfish?

The Summoned is a collection of 13 dice games, tied together with a narrative and optional journaling. This is an analog game. You'll need to print two pages (two score sheets; the other 14 pages can be read on your favorite screen from a PDF) and to collect 12 dice: 10 in one color and 2 in another. Each game's rules are short and easy to understand, and the entire experience can be played within 30-60 minutes depending on your reading speed and if you skip the story stuff or not (we haven't timed it or playtested the entire experience together yet; I'll update this once we do). This time doesn't include journaling, as you can take as little or as much time with that as you want. :D

Everything you need is in the "The Summoned" PDF file.

You can also check out: * The post-Ludum Dare edition on Itch (the LD-edition is there too) * LOTS about the development of the game and the theme rounds of Ludum Dare 55 on our blog

Ratings

Given 19🗳️ 16🗨️

Feedback

Brandsma
16. Apr 2024 · 11:03 UTC
Love that you went for designing a physical (board) game. Kudos
🎤 CataclysmicKnight
16. Apr 2024 · 15:27 UTC
Thanks @brandsma! :D
Klemen
28. Apr 2024 · 09:35 UTC
Thats definetly an inovative project for sure, its verry impressive but man the board game are just not for me, its funny tho instead of making 1 game you made 8, nice stuff.
Knatt
28. Apr 2024 · 17:13 UTC
Very imaginative! I didn't have a printer, so I had the PDF open, and wrote on a blank paper. One suggestion I have is combining the rules with the actual score sheet, rather than have the score sheet and a separate rule book. I found myself constantly flipping back and forth through the PDF, which became tedious over time.
dyingwolfwood
29. Apr 2024 · 02:22 UTC
Wow what a great game idea! The writing was great! The audio and graphics (all in my mind based off of the writing) were amazing! Five stars! :)
BimBim
29. Apr 2024 · 10:00 UTC
sooo good, even counting that I'm not a fan of board games
anaastaska
29. Apr 2024 · 22:48 UTC
Wooow, as a fan of board games I am very impressed! It’s a great work, you did a great amount of work as a game designer!
goddzeproject
30. Apr 2024 · 11:29 UTC
Wow haven't seen anything like this, interesting way to implement the game.
Its_Capp
30. Apr 2024 · 18:05 UTC
very innovative! it looks really interesting! it would be really fun too if it was implemented into tabletop simulator.
ajpl
01. May 2024 · 17:56 UTC
That was impressive! Tbh, I didn't manage to go through all games (I didn't have enough dice, and using some online were mostly frustrating - to the point I considered writing my own only for this games xD).

I really liked the story part, and although I didn't journal, I think the prompts where very thoughtful.

The only issue I had, was that for some games, rules where not clear, at lest not for me. I had to kinda try and figure out what interpretation made more sense. Maybe because eng is not my native, but I would suggest spending more time on writing proper steps for the games (and I tried post-jam version, but tbh it wasn't better in that regard).

Still, I enjoyed playing those games and I for sure play the post-jam version, heck, maybe even buy some nice set of dice for it :D
🎤 CataclysmicKnight
02. May 2024 · 15:27 UTC
@knatt that's a great idea for a digital version, or if someone laminated. As it is you'd have to reprint all of the pages to play a second time if the score sheets were with the rules

Aaaawwwwwwwwww thank you so much @dyingwolfwood, and @anaastaska that's huge praise, thank you! It's always fun finding a balance between my tabletop/TTRPG creation and Ludum Dare, and that's pretty much the biggest compliment I could get!

Thanks so much @goddzeproject! Bringing something new is also incredibly amazing praise :D Almost all of these were based off of other small dice games I found, I just added some twists like adding dice, rebalancing, making them solo, etc.

@its-capp YES!!!! I don't use TTS because of their homophobia but Screentop.gg is great. I didn't have time to implement it but honestly just putting some dice and the rules there would be super easy.

@ajpl Thank you so much for all of the details! I don't think it's just because of English not being your native language; rules writing is a very tricky thing in tabletop games and usually my rules suffer because of the deadline with Ludum Dare. You did very well I'm sure, and your comment here is very well written! I can only imagine how rough digital dice would be here as so many games require you to put dice different places, lock them, unlock them, etc. I really appreciate all of this! I do want to continue it, in fact we have plans to make a set of zines (basically little booklets) that would have one or two games in each, and each would tell a fragment of the story basically pulling pages from the genie's diary. I think focusing on one or two games at a time would allow the rules to make more sense, and not be as overwhelming as sitting down and playing a dozen games at once 🤣 Especially while people are trying to go through and rate a bunch of games omg lol
LDJam user 147386
02. May 2024 · 16:38 UTC
Wow! I wish I had the dice to set this up!
Read through the rules, this looks like a really nifty collection of games, wonderful writeup!
🎤 CataclysmicKnight
04. May 2024 · 23:20 UTC
Thank you so much @cananaman!!!! That's super awesome of you to say :D I'm hoping to set up a digital implementation sometime in the future, although it'll likely be a while