Soul Weaver by ollie_d

[raw]
made by ollie_d for Ludum Dare 53 (COMPO)

Game length ~5-10 minutes -- There is an ending AND special boss music.

https://ollie-d.itch.io/soul-weaver (Play in Browser)

Soul Weaver is a turn-based puzzle game. You are tasked with delivering souls to the depths of hell. Enjoy the eerie atmosphere and the unique gameplay.

promo_gif.gif

--Tools Used-- - Godot 3.5.1 - Ableton Live 11 Intro - Audacity 3.2.0 - Gimp 2.10.32 - GitHub

--Audio Sampled-- - Cat toys, Dice, Coins

--Instruments Used-- - Djembe, Doumbek, Various bongos, Tambourine, Maracas, Flute, Kalimba

--Fonts Used-- - Augusta by Dieter Steffmann - Deutsch by J. Fordyce - RobotoSlab by Christian Robertson

--Notes-- - There are tons of mechanics I wanted to add, but of course that's true for all of us :). If this gets good reception/my friends are into it, I'll consider reworking this and adding those mechanics in. - There is a bug with my path connection logic. I tried being fancy and it ended up hurting me a lot. There are edge cases it fails on, resulting in vastly incorrect paths being found with AStar. This is not a bug with Godot's AStar2D which seems to work perfectly.

Ratings

Given 7🗳️ 1🗨️

Feedback

dearkh
30. Apr 2023 · 23:01 UTC
very nice sound, gameplay and design!
ty, that was pleasure :)
RandomPickle13
01. May 2023 · 08:30 UTC
Fun game with awesome visuals and sound.
EvoGenGames
01. May 2023 · 17:39 UTC
A game with cat toys as sounds!
Amazing audio and mood setting work! Best entry so far :smile:
rjerez192
01. May 2023 · 17:40 UTC
Nice puzzle, the intro is very useful as well. The music and the vibe is what shines the most tho.
snakemuho
01. May 2023 · 17:44 UTC
Nooooooooooo give me a refund I want my soul back :cry:
Pincushion
01. May 2023 · 18:05 UTC
Great game. The puzzle was neat. Nice looking, good music, and a voiced intro/outro to boot!
LDJam user 357656
02. May 2023 · 02:22 UTC
Everything worked together very well in this game.
LDJam user 364744
02. May 2023 · 05:17 UTC
it's so impressive that you made the soundtrack using physical instruments! i loved the final boss theme and the overall mood & humor of the game was great. the core concept is very novel, if a bit shallow, but i think it could work really well in a 1v1 tabletop game. well done!
MoebiusMeow
02. May 2023 · 12:33 UTC
Really innovative mechanics and impressive soundtrack! I was shocked since I didn't expect a compo game to be with this kind of intro. Combining plumber game with adversarial game is also a genius idea. Nice work!
SquidGod
02. May 2023 · 15:27 UTC
The voice acting was amazing - laughed at the part about Harold. The audio and music was really polished, and I had fun trying to piece together the path for the souls. Good job!
CodeRaurus
02. May 2023 · 18:03 UTC
Nice take on the theme! The first soundtrack set the perfect atmosphere for the game for me, while the second felt.. too cheerful? The gameplay was fun, although it would have been great to have some rules laid out for you. For example what tiles the enemy can have control over and does your tiles lock for the round or not. I think you nailed the narrator voice for the setting.

Good job!
RNGames
03. May 2023 · 04:11 UTC
✔️ Nice sound design! I liked both the voice acting in the intro and the bopping music.

✔️ Interesting and fresh mechanics that I havn't seen been used this way before.

➖ The AI felt kind of weak.

⭐ Overall: Fresh!
Harmadillo
03. May 2023 · 16:50 UTC
Nice game. Graphics are good and I thought the music was great. The game play is pretty intuitive.
Cheaptoads
04. May 2023 · 05:01 UTC
i love the music! real nice tone. the game picks up after harold!
DroidDare
04. May 2023 · 15:15 UTC
Nice idea all brought together very nicely by the audio, well done
Linus Lindberg
04. May 2023 · 15:38 UTC
Very moody!
I loved the music, voice acting and art. Very impressive for a COMPO entry!
The only thing keeping it down is that it feels a little too easy, so there's not really much strategy needed to beat the AI.
🎤 ollie_d
04. May 2023 · 17:18 UTC
Thanks for all of the comments everyone -- really appreciate them. I've been reading all of them, just haven't had time to respond.

@dearkh @randompickle13 @evogengames @rjerez192 @pincushion @moebiusmeow @squidgod @harmadillo @cheaptoads @droiddare
- Thank you for the compliments on the vibe/music. I had a general idea of the type of game I wanted and then started with the music/voice lines since they're the easiest for me to crank out and can have a huge impact. Glad it resonated with people :)


@rngames @linus-lindberg @coderaurus
- AI had to be intentionally nerfed unfortunately. 3 of the 5 bosses are fully random while Orlox and Q'oz alternate from choosing a random tile on the optimal AStar path and random tiles depending on the length of your path. The reason they needed to be nerfed is without additional mechanics, optimal play for the AI ends up being stalling indefinitely until the round limit is reached. There were mechanics I intended to add to solve this problem such as claiming tiles as enemy/player and receiving special abilities after defeating enemies that could be used to beat the optimal play. A quick fix would've been to disallow the soul from being "trapped" on a tile at the end of a round, but I baked this in for a different unimplemented mechanic (lesson learned).

@snakemuho
- No :smiling_imp:
rasblo
04. May 2023 · 18:14 UTC
Fascinating hexagon puzzle you came up with. And I agree with others about the music, every part of the audio is really strong!

Also impressed that you went for an idea with AStar path finding, I didn't need to learn that part (although maybe I should have for the AI..) Cheers!
soundgnome
04. May 2023 · 18:18 UTC
Very fun and polished game, love the music and voiceovers!
Aymeric Le Moal
05. May 2023 · 14:31 UTC
Very fun games, liked the overall design/ambiance/graphism, totally fit your vision. However as other people have pointed already (and as you already answered), the AI is kind of disappointing. This result in skipping your turn most of the time because the AI doesn't do anything significative, but I guess why it is that way, still had fun anyway :D. (PS : loved the cat toy sample)
OldDog
06. May 2023 · 04:24 UTC
great design,I can believe this was made in two days,
ps: the AI logic seem not rery well,looks like random move
great game,nice job
AlexSolonnikovP4
06. May 2023 · 09:43 UTC
It's impressive how the topic is covered. At first I did not understand how to play, but along the way I figured it out. They did a very good job on the atmosphere and idea. Impressive work from one person in three days)
Jin9310
09. May 2023 · 10:45 UTC
Very cool! Good job. I am always impressed with all puzzle entries... still can't figure out how you guys can make such great games, during such short time.
neonlare
10. May 2023 · 21:46 UTC
Interesting and unique take on the theme, was a little confusing at first (the layers of hell being marked as red circles with numbers, but the goal is to hit the aqua tile confused me at first). AI seems a little random and sporadic at points, but damn impressive for the compo, good work!
TheSmellofOxygen
12. May 2023 · 21:01 UTC
Good sfx and tracks. Funny voicelines. The puzzle itself felt a little too random and without challenge. Tough to balance so quickly for a Compo game though. I was never in danger of falling into the red tile except once during the final level, where Orlag (?) rotated my final tile before I moved, and would have dumped me on a path to the red, but then it rotated again twice to let me win!
gamescodedogs
18. May 2023 · 12:14 UTC
Impressive! Great amount of work was made in just a 48 hours. I hope, you can make it a good big game. Good luck and thank you for your entry. 5/5