Wow great game. Amazing execution all around

Really fun, would be great on mobile!

Awesome game indeed! Really fun with a tablet & pen haha. Loved the overall aesthetics, the graphics, music, sounds - everything fit together so well!

Oh my gosh, how did you guys whip up such an astounding piece in such little time? I'm head over heels for your art style – it must've been a herculean effort, right? And the game's difficulty is just perfect, exuding a vibe of total maturity. I'm so hyped, I can't wait to throw my cash at it! Shut up and take my money!!

Phenomenal game. Great concept & execution. Beautiful aesthetic. I hope you make a full game from this!

This was unreal. Would love to have been a fly on a wall for the development of this - I can't believe how complete this feels. Best I've played so far.

My only feedback would be for the game to start a tiny bit slower to give the new player time to get a grip on things before the pressure is on. But this is amazing.

Also, soundtrack reminded me a lot of the Noita soundtrack - not sure if there's a fan on the team ;)

Omg this game looks fantastic, it was pretty fun also! Props to the team who made this, really talented people for sure!

wow that game is amazing, everything from the art, the audio, the game mechanics.
I'm really curious how you implemented the mechanics to recognize the shapes

These effects are so cool. The drawing feels really fun and I love all look and feel. The music really fits. You nailed the tone.

Really liked the game! Glyphs recognition works great, 6 stars for audio and art.

I was not able to read all the text in game, but I will give another try tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just read it right from my video :smile:

https://youtu.be/-70K2Ash6uI

Oh man I love mouse gesture games. The use of elements for various spells was pretty good, although I certainly had some difficulties keeping topped of on resources. The art and audio creates a great aesthetic and one that compliments the drawing aspects of the summoning spells perfectly.

Really cool game! I know for a fact that gesture recognition is not trivial, and this works really well.

Very cool game! Your execution is insane, we build a game. In a very similar niche (so for all you mouse gesture bullet haven fans have a peek :))
your game is on another level though with how complete it is, great job!

I was very surprised that a lot of people this jam worked around shape recognition mechanic, just like our team did :D

Your execution is very neat and I like it! Condition to not only draw the right shape but also have enough of some element really helps reducing the amount of false positives during recognition, which I think is a really smart design choice!

Still, there were a lot of "What is this?" moments during stressful situations which made the whole system feel unfair, maybe that's because I'm left-handed and shapes end up looking not quite as intended :(

Love the lighting a lot!

How difficult it should be to detect shape! Did you already have some code or did you do it all during the jam?
It is impressive (even if I'm able to draw a water golem once for five, Should be easier on mobile or tablet).
It could be a full game.

Suuuuper polished game. All glyphs work super nice. Music is sick
Super cool submission

Super impressive for a Jam Game. The art style, particle effects are all excellent. Main drawing mechanic is cool.

Loved the sounds and music. Great idea and the glyph execution feels nice. Instructions were a bit quick so it took a while to figure out how to get resources to cast spells.

Its just the best

@mizuto @mollusk @svenerik @drgcandle @james-greenleaf @lachlan-james @omitsu @castitatis @partkyle @icxon @ronn-fever @nox282 @mantsje @spica @dekisenpaitm @misoukun @promzona @enver-arco @creatan @benjamin-jaeger

Thank you all so much for playing and for the kind words guys!

@svenerik Yeah, we've been imagining a tablet port, this would be pretty fun with a pen. Even just making it work with a pen tablet on desktop would be cool, but Unity didn't want to make it easy :D

@drgcandle Not a bad score for the first try! We were really worried about the difficulty, we started balancing way too late and it was madness. Glad to hear you liked the result!

@lachlan-james Yeah, the track seems to consistently remind people about Noita, hahah, props to @kiberptah!

@castitatis @nox282 @misoukun the gesture recognition is done using a third party asset, [Gesture Recognizer](https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management/gesture-recognizer-86410). It was a lot of fun to work with, but has its quirks!

@icxon Thanks for the amazing video, it's always such a thrill to see a person who didn't develop the game and hasn't touched it during development play it. Also very nervous, usually ton of stuff goes wrong or things you thought were obvious turn out completely enigmatic to players. Your video showed almost no visible frustration on your part, and you even used all the spells (minus one) at least once, I was grinning the whole time :D <3

@spica hey! Thanks! Writing gestures take some time to master unfortunately. We tried to make it better, but that's what we have. Gestures actually have hidden patterns which are flipped, so left-handed writing should not be a problem. But yeah, it takes time :(

Guess, 3 days was not enough for us...

@yogurtthehorse between you and me here, but in our game the hidden pattern for circle recognition is actually just a square xD

@spica in our its both square and circle ;)

Just to be sure

@13x666 thx a lot, we have a similar but way simpler mechanics in our game (just drawing circles) and at one point I wanted to do different shapes but to implement that in a week end it's not possible, I didn't even think about looking for that on the asset store... :id:

@castitatis We almost considered using an old in-house solution I had from an old game, that thing was like 250 lines of code and defined gestures like "CFIBEHADG" and used like 33 heuristics and does a great job in a released commercial project, but @yogurtthehorse went "No, I want something that looks serious and scary!". It was a good call because we ended up needing to iterate a lot with gesture shapes, and a full-blown gesture editor was a must for this.

Very good game, style, audio, concept in general, top notch

Really well done! Gorgeous art. I love the thumbnail. It took me a short time to realize I could collect the resources from enemies, and I occasionally felt that my shape was misunderstood, or I expected to deal damage to some enemies and didn't. But it was really exciting when I understood how to get resources and started memorizing shapes. The other thing it took me a bit to figure out was where I could see my resources. But this was a lot of fun! Really nice work. It has a smart design and I can definitely see playing for a long time to get good.

i saw your blog post a few hours into the jam and mentioned it to my team mates because it is a similiar idea to our game - but back then yours was just concept art, so we brushed it off, being like "yeah right, no way they will manage to actually make it look like that"

but wow, all i can say now is: incredible. how did you do this in just 3 days - it is so well polished, you could release this on Steam right now.

all the kudos

Production is absolutely unbelievable, the UI is immaculate and all the subtle animation touches really makes it pop. The gameplay could probably use some tweaking before it's ready for prime time but it's practically already there.

Very good entry. I am curious what sort of algorithm did you use, 1$? Would be nice to have an access to source code.

Anyway, it was fun. I think that some of the glyphs could have better feed back (like escape) and the camera would not have to shake that much, but boy.., did I have fun. :)

Thank you!

Amazing visuals.

@snory Thanks a lot! Yes, a lot of feedback is missing for sure, it seems that adding all necessary feedback to a jam game is just impossible, dozens and dozens of places need it and it's so damn tough to keep track of. But there's always that one game in every jam that does it *all* and more. :D

As for the gestures, we used [Gesture Recognizer](https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management/gesture-recognizer-86410) asset.

@snory we used an asset for that, but a basic explanation is done in comments here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/glyph-tower/wizzards-gonna-strike

There are also some other solutions for that problem :)

I would probably make a post about that as many people ask about that

Everything about this is super interesting! My biggest limitation was my brain power. The look is incredible, and it's really fun, how powerful all the spells feel. The scoreboard is a really cool addition. I enjoyed the music a lot too!

Oooo that was really addicting! It was really fun trying to manage resources while defending at the same time, loved the art and music as well!

Amazing visuals, cool concept, super frenetic and fun. The only critical feedback I have is, it speeds up pretty quick, like before I know what's going on, maybe that's fine because a replay isn't hard.

Maybe this is my fault, it took a few tries to understand how many elements I need to collect before I can use them to attack, and it was always a bummer when I tried something and didn't have the resource. I noticed the dots around the glyphs, and the dots on the cursor, I think the dots around the glyphs indicate how much of that resource you need, but it also seems there is a limit to the elements I can collect around the the cursor? So If my tank is full I cant load up on more elements? I guess I just wish the HUD was a bit more readable in that regard. I think I was trying to collect resources while the tank was full, then trying to use the spells but didn't actually collect what I wanted.

Anyway, great job yall, super fun!

@ismael-rodriguez

The UI got a little cramped as we added more spells and we were out of time to fit all the necessary information in a concise and readable way, and also the game is lacking any tutorial on that. But yep, dots around glyphs are their prices, you guessed that right!

We did a few iterations on the cursor dots thing: if you don't restrict the number, it's easy to collect too many and it just gets too busy. So we restricted it, but actually if you keep collecting when it's full, you'll replace the oldest ones. This is how it currently works, but a big flaw here is, you can lose an old dot you wanted to use later because you collected a new one, and you can't really always control how many dots you collect or see which are about to be replaced, it gets confusing sometimes... maybe just putting your dots along the edge of the screen grouped by color + making affordable spells light up was the first step of the answer here, hm.

I got carried away there :D Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

@13x666 Ah Okay! I'd say having some type of element indicators around the glyphs would be easier to read since I tend to look over there to remember what to draw.

Something like:


@ismael-rodriguez that's actually great idea, maybe we'll do it like this in post-jam update.

this is incredible, I had a little trouble collecting resources but the style is insane

Awesome idea, and I love the visual style. My main dislike is centered around resource collection and how the UI doesn't do a great job of showing me clearly how much elemental resource I have and what abilities I can afford. My next would be adding some cushion to account for sloppy spell execution. You could even write this in as a feature and reward perfect execution with a damage multiplier. Solve these problems and you have a winner on Steam.

Edit: I figured out the UI, and while I get it now, I wish the left side had bars that filled up and changed to let me know immediately what spells I can afford. It's still not immediately obvious and leads me to some amount of frustration when I'm spamming skills and being told theres not enough resources when I thought there were.

It's an absolutely thrilling game, and I'm convinced lightning is the ultimate skill—bar none!

Everything is great, the graphics, the sound, the gameplay. Well done ! I had some trouble identiying how many resources I had to cast a spell, but once I found it, it was the fun and fun ! Great job !

Truly outstanding entry! As others have said the UI is the only minor issue, but nothing that takes away from my enjoyment of the game! Great job to all of you.

Amazingly polished game, plays so well, the visuals and audio are stunning. Honestly my top 1 game so far. Very good job!

This is an amazing and creative concept. Really well done, I really like it, it's in the top games I've played so far.

It was fun trying to figure out what to do, I'm glad you made it so the game logs the spells you successfully cast. The high-contrast art style is really nice! I managed to get 221 seconds on my first run. Thank you for your game everyone :heart:

Stunning game! As another peaople say - perfect polished game, balanced and cool cast mechanics!
All rated by 5 stars, great job )

This is really awesome, both visually and has interesting gameplay. Is there a limit of how many elements you can have at one though? I feel like sometimes I run into an issue where I have a orbs each of all elements and can't cast most spells, but can't override what I already have either.

Took me a couple of goes to fully put together where I could get resources from but really fun game once things start to click!

@tevasliutauras yes. After 10 iirc your elements start to get replaced by new one

The best entry I've played in the jam so far imo, ultra polished, bravo

this feels awesome with lots of feedback and juicy visuals, it feels quite delicious to draw the spells, even when you get them wrong lol

this feels perfectly polished, this is something else

Very cool concept! Feels really satisfying to fire of a powerful spell. Only the ressource collection felt a bit finicky, but otherwise a lot of fun

Awesome game, the gameplay is fun and everything feels extremely polished. Great job!

Really good game, the amount of polishing is amazing! I can't believe you managed to create this in 3 days!

I love the art and the game is so much fun, feels very polished. Great job.

Extraordinary game! The visuals and the gameplay were very good. The differents spells were fun to use and destroying everything on your screen with a lightning spell was so satisfying. Only trouble I had was tring to identify my ressources but still managed to get by and got a pretty nice score.
Overall, very polished and strong entry, great job guys! 

@yuu what a madman. Did you have any fps left at your time?

@kiberptah Had enough to see my death coming but not enough to use any spells. Was very fun going for that score and loved that you guys put up a leaderboard.

Awesome game! The graphics and sounds are amazing, also the gameplay! It was a bit fast-paced for me and I would have loved more time to think, also I found myself constantly out of resources, so I waited for the water to refill while enemies were already attacking my tower.. BUT that's just some minor critique - all in all, amazing entry! :love_letter:

Very great submission!

This is definitely the best jam so far that I've seen using glyphs!
Really addictive gameplay.
Sound and art design were wonderful too.

Overall awesome work!

Took me a moment to get a feel for what I was doing wrong but then I really got into it. Absolutely love the core mechanic. Reminds me a lot of Magicka, except I didn't explode myself 90% of the time. The aesthetics are awesome too!

@smidgens

> Reminds me a lot of Magicka, except I didn’t explode myself 90% of the time

We are sorry for that. We would consider adding occasional self-explosions to post jam updates

WHY DOES THIS LOOK SO GOOD!, SO POLISHED!, bro this is AMAZING, LOVE the drawing mechanic, EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS GAME IS SO GOOD!

The glyph system is very innovative. Haven't seen one in years. Reminds me of the golden days of the Nintendo DS, with Phantom Hourglass. I think the game would do a lot better on phone. With a mouse it feels weird. I also noticed that the gesture model is not good at recognizing when the glyph has been drawn in reverse order or when the glyph is rotated. If these two caveats can be fixed it would make the experience so much better. The graphics are good, especially my friend liked the fire shader. The music is a bit underwhelming, though. Maybe a tune that is a little more aggressive would help. Maybe a tune written in the Double Harmonic major scale or Phrygian scale.

Good job!

@andriybyelikov thanks for the feedback. We had a lot to do so music was basically left as a draft so I could make sounds and help with other things.

I stopped thinking about music piece being in certain mode years ago and usually combine them without thinking about it and trusting my ears. The bass riff is actually in phrygian scale though :)

Yeah this is great, but I was pretty bad at it! Maybe ramped up too fast for me. I got a lot of 'What's this?' and I think I was drawing the glyphs too small.

Love the design and concept, great feedback when you get the lightning strikes etc Nice sounds! and obviously fits the theme really seamlessly.

For the glyphs I'd love to see them light up in some way if they're castable. Great entry nice!

@ansible Thanks! Making glyphs light up before you cast is a great idea, would look pretty cool, we'll definitely play around with it. One downside is, if you're drawing a glyph and it doesn't light up, there's not much you can really do about it, so it won't help with accuracy. This game just needs a better glyph recognition system, that's for sure :)

@13x666 sorry I was meaning to be referencing the left menu of spells with that part of my comment! Thought it could be a good visual aid if they lit up some way when you get enough orbs to do a spell :)

@ansible Ah, I see :) You're totally right, that feature is absolutely necessary, people keep suggesting it, and for a good reason. Trying to count tiny dots flying around the cursor is a pain

Awesome art style! Interesting concept and entertaining gameplay, amazing attention to detail. I can't believe such a good game was made in just 3 days. Great job!!!

Absolutely awesome and well-made game! How did you guys manage to achieve such a high level of polish in 3 days??? You're impressive!

The game is very addictive, the visuals are impressive, and the music is incredible! Big respect to your musician!

Personal Best : 237s... So far from the best scores XD

Otherwise, I had a great time playing your game !

Hey guys, just got my hands on this one and I love it, tho UX might be a bit more friendly. The pool in the corner caused my always to lose focus on the game window (not in full screen mode ofc) and the spells on the left might be more indicating what I can cast right now and what I can't. The messages with 'No resources' etc are not really helpful ether during the combat due to intencity (and it's fairly intentse even on the first waves.

Gesture recognition (tho it's not your part, since there is a lib behind) isn't ideal as well and with the messy error messages really frustrated me.

I do like the art tho (u know that I'm not objective there) and sound :smile: As well this idea that you have to gather resources to use - it's really nice one.

Keep rock guys, you know I like your crafts. Peace! :smile:

This has a lot of polish for a jam entry, from the visual feedback to the FX and sound effects. Frankly it's a tremendous amount of work to integrate all that in three days, I have to assume there were several programmers on your team, haha. The core idea is very strong, it actually reminds me of a Nitrome game from years ago. I really like these types of games and I had already noticed your GIFs during the jam! The spells are inventive, too.

I'd say the main issue is clarity: even after reading the rules, it can be a little tough to make sense of what's happening on screen. For example, it's not obvious how much health we have left, I think I understand now that it's the color of the sphere but perhaps it should've been emptying gradually, _a la_ Diablo? I also initially thought killing enemies would give me their elements, but you need to collect them the same way as the water. The placement of the puddles, right at the bottom of the screen, makes it a little awkward to trace a line on them; it would've been nice to have other puddles in the empty spaces near the top of the screen.

Finally, though I'm not sure of it, it felt like we couldn't store more than a fixed amount of elements, and yet it kept filling up without me consciously collecting them, so I often had too many different ones and not enough of each to make a useful spell :smile: In the end, I spent a lot of time trying to collect water for a simple splash spell, and I'd often hear the slurping sound effect without actually gaining a water element. I'm not sure what I did wrong!

In any case, it's an impressive entry and these are mostly suggestions to make it even nicer. Congrats!

The UI could be a bit more clear as to which resources you have etc, but GREAT art, effects, cool idea and gameplay and in generall very polished.

Good job!

This is super neat, both in concept and execution! Its super juicy and once you pull off sick combos it feels electrifying! Though it really is hard to pull off sick combos, mainly because I suck ass, but also because my cursor keeps slipping away from the screen, a full screen option would have been neat! My ass sucking aside, I also think the game generally could have shined a lot more if it was a bit more relaxed, as it is it feels way too frantic to draw a right symbol and plan your resources. It's just a food for thought since this is an amazing entry!

Edit: I am a dingus, apparently there is a full screen button!

@sodoj we have full screen option on itch, just press button in the bottom right :)

You saw me playing live :)

The pattern recognition was well handled! After reading the instructions, it was also fun to play.

The art was cool!

Maybe less spells would make it more fun for the short-jam-game format.

Thank you for stopping by!

Great concept, there's some good potential for expansion here! I also really liked the visuals and the graphic effects, which do add to the desired experience. I'd also love a downloadable version though, since it can be too slow on my browser sometimes

This has to be my 3rd favorite game in the jam, I'm so glad I found this before the deadline!
Absolutely wonderful work >:)

@cananaman what are 1st and 2nd? :)

@kiberptah The Summoning of IN-SI-LA and would you still love me if I were a worm

Truly excellent concept and visuals. I want more!