Made it through and summoned the final summon! What a fun take on the concept! Figuring out the different ways to get summons based on what is written in the book is an awesome take on the theme! Had several "Ah, of course!" moments in the game, which is what I love about puzzle/riddle games. You have to think outside the box for some of the summons and it feels really rewarding when you get it right. Super polished art and sound too, everything from looks to sound design was wonderful. Awesome game, great job!


Awesome job! My son (7 years old) and I really enjoyed the game! We were truly motivated to play through to the end. This game has a lot of potential. I could envision it as a defense game, where you need to cast spells under time pressure to protect your castle. One small change that could enhance the usability of the game: saving the book page so that when you reopen the book, it returns to the same page.

Greetings from schw3de

@schwede
>One small change that could enhance the usability of the game: saving the book page so that when you reopen the book, it returns to the same page.

Yes, I thought of this too after the jam. It would be easy to add!

This be fun -- figuring out the way to the final summon was a great experience and felt good! There was a couple issues here and there, such as with holding the vials and then moving over an item felt janky or the book not remembering your spot. However, this was a really fun entry!!

- It seems similar to my game but premium, I liked the polish and all the effects, the animations and screen shake felt good
- It was annoying that the book reset page to beginning when reopened. It would also be easier if the book was a little higher and I could see the symbols in the ui, even if not allowed to press them, but I could map the input numerically because I found it really hard to memorize the shapes (left shape, triple shape, up shape, circle shape, right shape).
- I think there was maybe a bit too much resummoning of the same stuff. Maybe you could make it easier to resummon, at least don't require the chant, or highlight the chant for the ingredients already used in summoning, if not just have a button to summon a copy of the entities already summon, or have a copy summon.

I really love the concept! I think having to close the book and start back at page 1 was kind of a hinderance to me, though. I actually ended up opening a 2nd instance of the game just so I could keep looking at the recipe book! I would have loved to just have the book open at all times for this game where it encourages experimentation.

Super polished visually and the music is SO GOOD. I was really jamming out to it. Love how the screen shakes and the grab sound effect is really satisfying. The dark portal effect too. I had a good time but the memorization of the incantations was the hurdle for me each time I wanted to try something. This is as far as I got:


Really nice polish all around! I had fun even though I got stuck :) Inspiring work!

@ellaris @jawdan @goodwincek
Thanks for the feedback! Given more time I would probably rethink a lot of things. I'm tempted to keep working on it!

I've uploaded a post-jam version that keeps the page number!

Extremely fun! Love the combo searching. I would definitely play again if this was ever expanded.

Great game! I loved the music and sound effects, and the art is charming. Even though I got stuck (I didn't know how to make the lil white guy), I really enjoyed that I had to experiment to get different results.

Amazing entry! Really enjoyed my time with it! The sound effects, clean art style and challenging puzzles were a blast to play through!

@leunarie
>(I didn’t know how to make the lil white guy)

You must be too kind of a soul :angel:.... :smiling_imp: :knife:

wonderful execution, crunchy sound effects (especially the portal), and fantastic audio/visual direction. i do have some issues with the game though, but it could be just me misunderstanding things

1) the element combination idea is cool, but i feel like the symbols at the bottom are a bit unnecessary - it just feels like an extra hurdle to get to a specific element combination, if that makes sense.

2) it wasn't immediately obvious to me that i needed to follow the book to get to a final summon. i just thought it was a sandbox with the book being some suggestions. Then thought to myself, surely there has to be an end goal, and that's when i looked at the comments and figured out there's a final summon

Nice crafting game! Fits perfectly in the theme and really like the way in which the book gives you the clues to solve the different puzzles. Nice job!

Very cool game, a little too smart for me, but very polished and interesting summoning concept.

@benisu
>1) the element combination idea is cool, but i feel like the symbols at the bottom are a bit unnecessary - it just feels like an extra hurdle to get to a specific element combination, if that makes sense.

Hmm, the symbols (spell incantation) don't really have anything to do with elements (which is determined by components). Instead they determine "creature type" (goat, spirit etc). That's the idea anyway but I'd like to flesh it out more.

very enjoyable little journey to summoning, I managed to get to the end and figure it all out. having to figure out some things that were not very explicitly stated was fun

Overall great game to play, love the screen shake and impact when placing something in the circle. Felt really nice to do. Would like a better way to close the book and as others have said being able to save the pages.

Fun puzzles, took a while to get the dark goat (I tried some more complicated guesses for its recipe first). I particularly liked the sounds.

Is there a mistake in the text on page 2 of the book?

This game has the juice. The audio and visual feedback are fantastic. The art is also adorable and the concept is super cool. I might just be over-tired but I ended up getting stuck and couldn't figure out how to progress, but based on the comments I think that might be a "me" problem :sweat_smile: Phenomenal job especially for the compo!

Amazing work! Can't believe you made this by yourself in only 48 hours. I made it all the way through the game, but I think I got the "bad" ending. 😅

A really, really great entry!
Only issue: I was not able to summon a rainbow goat :(

The music reminds me of Shadowgate, somehow!

Overall, theme well used and the game is a fun puzzle and has some genuine a-ha moments, and the main mechanic is pretty clever, but at some point it become bit of a chore to make all the "ingredients".

The best game I've played this LD, there's just nothing else to say, it's just awesome!

One of the best game I play in this LudumDare, I can see the experience of the creator into game creation. Love the monsters!

Very well executed summoning game! Felt really cool when I started to learn certain recipes without looking at the book. Reminds me a lot of Infinite Craft

Also SPOILERS: Got this ending

Amazing. I love the game, the puzzle, the mood it gave me, and the surprise

Very satisfying to play, I loved the all the little guys!

Very nice! Visual and audio feedback is great and rewarding. But, I'm struggled to make any progress and many of the recipes I thought would work, just don't. I had a lot of fun trying, but got frustrated and give up for now, seeing how others managed to complete the game I'm wondering if I just missed something obvious that would allow me to break through. I cant figure out how to make the white spirit, even with your tip in the comments...I feel like I've stabbed everything lol :shrug:

It was a lot of fun to try with all the juice, and is the best alchemy game I've played so far this jam!
This is where I'm at:

@ismael-rodriguez
>I feel like I’ve stabbed everything lol

Any of the other spirits(elemental) should spawn a "ghost" spirit :ghost:. Let me know if you tried it and it doesn't work for some reason :thinking:

@silkworm-sweatshop I guess I didn't stab everything lol That was the trick X_X. Once I had that little guy I was able to do everything else and get the ending. Very fun!

Very charming game! A great little puzzle with an excellent presentation. Nice job!

yes for once the theme is super well respected and interpreted but what I note is great feedback for each action of the player, everything is super satisfying and it's a pleasure. Not to spoil anything, the summoning mechanic is interesting to explore and we get caught up in the game. well done

Cute and fun game! At first I thought I would just be following instruction in the book which would be a little boring, but then I realized not all formulas are documented in the book and I need to do deduction/experiments to figure out how to create undocumented creatures, which makes it much more interesting. I hope I can quickly summon creatures I have summoned before though instead of having to repeat the process. Noice job!

That was awesome! It took me a while to figure out few stuff but it was worth it. I see you already fixed my only complain about book not staying on the page it was closed on (I guess real books don't really do that XD). I also see a case to change a but mechanic, so that, if player finds how to make something it has unlimited access to it, instead of being forced to do the same summoning multiple times, but probably that would required making more options, to make the game longer, but that might be not feasible for a game jam, especially since that game already has a lot (just an idea, no complain). I wonder... are they multiple ending, depending which item player chooses at the end? Anyway, great entry! I had a lot of fun trying to figure it out!

I mastered the arts and was punished! I still can't believe it's a compo game, and made by you only. It's too good. Super polished, sounds and looks and feels great, and the hint progression is really good, self-explanatory to begin with but quickly forcing you to have to think for yourself quite a bit. I felt so clever when I figured out how to get the dark goat :')

I guess there's only a "bad ending" where I was mean to all the creatures, since I don't even know why I was stabbing them, but mechanically this was super satisfying.

My only complaints are that 1) the book doesn't stay on the page you left it, and 2) you made me spend 15 minutes trying to figure out meaningless (I think but please tell me otherwise!) tengwar :'(

But seriously, wow. I'm so impressed, and I had so much fun.

@ava-skoog

>2) you made me spend 15 minutes trying to figure out meaningless (I think but please tell me otherwise!) tengwar :’(

I'm sorry, it's just decoration. I didn't expect anyone to try to decipher it :sweat_smile:.

Congratulations!

Well deserved!