Uncanny Inscriptions by Juss

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

test<em>title</em>2.png Summoning creatures out of this world, how hard can it be? Screen_4.gif Well, you can find out! In this game you get an ancient book and a summoning board into your hands. The book quite vaguely hints on how to summon different creatures, so it takes wit and skill to summon them all.

Junior summoner's guide Screen_2.gif Creature's type defines which shape you need to draw. If you need items for the summoning, a figure that connects then needs to be drawn first. The book will tell you the configuration of the items if they are required. Pay attention to the light, it reacts to your actions.

Try to collect all of them Screen_3.gif That's it, have fun!!

Ratings

Given 34🗳️ 43🗨️

Feedback

MonroeLabs
16. Apr 2024 · 19:39 UTC
Hey there! Tried to DL your game but it goes Not Found... :( Let me know if you update it!
🎤 Juss
16. Apr 2024 · 22:55 UTC
@monroelabs Hi! Thanks for the heads-up!
I've re-uploaded the build again, the game should be playable now.
But i would wait a little until we update description with some information about how to play, unfortunately, there was no time for the proper tutorial.
adrmille
17. Apr 2024 · 21:32 UTC
Wow great work! This is something I had considered but shied away from, mostly due to my own past struggles with drawing on screen. Temendous game gang, very much enjoyed playing.
Lélek Hunor Kadosa
17. Apr 2024 · 21:33 UTC
The graphics and music is great...but I have no idea what should I do with the items. If you explaine it to me I will give it another try
Pandalk
17. Apr 2024 · 21:44 UTC
the game is pretty, but it's hard !
I managed to get Stony and bimp, but I don't understand what the 3 dots mean so I'm stuck !
Cshep99
17. Apr 2024 · 21:49 UTC
it looks really good, but i cant figure out how to lay out the materials to summon more creatures. ![screensot.png](///raw/386/e5/z/64378.png)
🎤 Juss
17. Apr 2024 · 21:56 UTC
@lelek-hunor-kadosa @pandalk @cshep99 Thanks for the feedback!
We'll update the description to make it a bit more clear. But in short you can do things like this:
![photo_2024-04-18_00-56-06.jpg](///raw/754/b4/z/6437e.jpg)
Lélek Hunor Kadosa
17. Apr 2024 · 22:14 UTC
Thanks for the clarification. I managed to summon Flycorn and Karimp with your instruction... but got stuck again at Smimp
RollCreators
21. Apr 2024 · 14:08 UTC
ohh. So difficult for me to guess combintation.
But intersting idea)
Anton Florey
21. Apr 2024 · 14:39 UTC
Very pretty game with a great athmosphere. Your game is also the first that made me a bit angry while playing:D

I never know if my drawing is to inaccurate or if I am just drawing the wrong shape. And even if I am drawing the same shape, sometimes I can summon and sometimes I cant. How do you check which shape is drawn? It would be nice to see some feedback while drawing such that I know that the game knows what I am doing. Expecially for the summons that require multiple shapes to be drawn it would be veeery helpful to see what shape is drawn wrong. The more I write the angrier I get again.. Tried to summon Karimp for 10 minutes now and nothing happens :D
mircudx
21. Apr 2024 · 14:53 UTC
@anton-florey Thanks for feedback!
A helpful hint for determining if everything is drawn correctly can be the flame of the candles - green for the first sigil and blue when the second sigil is executed correctly, leaving only the placement of the necessary items on the summoning circle.
Anton Florey
21. Apr 2024 · 15:32 UTC
@mircudx It often happens that I get the green candles but not the blue ones after drawing the second sigil. Is then always the case when the second sigil is drawn incorrectly? Or can I somehow destroy my first drawing? How exactly do you test the sigil shape? Its not yust about hitting the circles on the board isnt it?

Also pls tell me what I am doing wrong in this picture :(
![help_me.png](///raw/877/93/z/649f5.png)
mircudx
21. Apr 2024 · 23:46 UTC
@anton-florey Hi there! I have the same problem here, when testing game=)
Clue in the book look like diamond, but in second sigil case it's cross.
Huitre
22. Apr 2024 · 02:47 UTC
These are some very adorable creatures! Kinda wish there was more to do with them :D
It took a while to understand how it worked (thanks to the hints in comments), but I got there eventually.
Though I sometimes seemed to struggle to make my pattern work, even when I knew how it was supposed to look.
iOlis_Lui
22. Apr 2024 · 10:00 UTC
That's cool) But, it's hard to understand what I need to do, and I think, you should check if an item in the circle (not on it's spetial place) - now it's harde to place it rightly)
Hadik
22. Apr 2024 · 11:19 UTC
Charming and intricate, but the game suffers from a steep learning curve due to unclear instructions and inconsistent summoning mechanics. Beautiful visuals and concept, but needs clearer feedback for player actions.
Blues
22. Apr 2024 · 15:07 UTC
had fun trying to figure it out but keep getting stuck when i think i understand the puzzle. maybe the candle could change to a different color after the secondary line is drawn properly? good entry B)
Chonibi
22. Apr 2024 · 15:26 UTC
I love love love the design of everything artistically. The ambience and music is great and the creature designs are really cool! The mechanics, while a bit unpolished are really fun too. It was a fun puzzle trying to figure out how to connect the lines so that each summon would work. I do wish there was some form of tutorial or guide on how to draw the secondary shape for items because I got stuck on those a few times.
Klemmbaustein
22. Apr 2024 · 15:42 UTC
I really liked how the game looked and the monster designs. But I felt like the drawing mechanic was very inconsistent and it felt really random if it would actually register what i drew. When I had to draw the shape with the 5 points, I eventually gave up.
ryusui
22. Apr 2024 · 21:29 UTC
I love the general idea but this is another one of many entries I've played this LD that's got a clever concept married to relentlessly obtuse execution. I don't enjoy being asked - repeatedly, thus far - to read the developer's mind under the auspices of "it's *demon summoning,* it's *supposed* to be esoteric and mysterious and hard to figure out!"

You've got some good graphics here, but for heaven's sake, give the player something, anything, in the way of actual *instructions* instead of just vague hints to the tune of "draw a sigil, then rub these objects around inside it; you'll get it eventually!"
LDJam user 308298
23. Apr 2024 · 12:57 UTC
@ryusui Thx you for the feedback. Yes perhaps not all of our decisions are the best, but we have what we have after three days of Jam. And we cant add anything to the game afterwards, thats the main rule. However, I've prepared a mini-guide for you on how to work with the book. And pay attention to the light, it reacts to your actions. And yes, the game is not linear, you need to search in the book where something has opened up.![Screenshot 2024-04-23 144731.png](///raw/a44/b4/z/64b9d.png)
LDJam user 308298
23. Apr 2024 · 13:12 UTC
@klemmbaustein Thank you for the feedback, it's really nice to hear. 5 dots mean a star. The sketch registration mechanic works quite correctly, it was tested on different computers. Yeah, we did indeed have some registration problems, but we managed to fix them.
hadesfury
23. Apr 2024 · 18:52 UTC
Great idea :D I struggle a bit with the pattern
The color change was a great hint too

Congrat
Lone_Wolf
25. Apr 2024 · 03:35 UTC
Either my inability to draw straight enough lines or something to do with my widescreen monitor caused the game to not accept my drawings half the time, and once I got to the 4 dots variation the assumption in my mind had been established that all lines must end where they start, so I got stumped in the same place `Anton Florey` did, and 10 minutes of trying with the input issue I mentioned earlier just caused me to stray further from the answer. I think I needed more feedback, like the game rewriting my input with one perfectly drawn showing what the computer thought I was trying to do.

With that aside though this is a neat game, and I probably could have saved myself time if I had come back and read the comments. Nice work! :P
LDJam user 278146
25. Apr 2024 · 15:35 UTC
Loved the creature designs. On my first playthrough I think I encountered a bug with the drawing where none of the items would "snap" onto the drawn circle, which combined with not really knowing what I was supposed to do was pretty frustrating. After a restart it started working again.
Smidgens
26. Apr 2024 · 11:20 UTC
I absolutely loved the graphics and atmosphere (especially after seeing that post from the artist showing how the sprites were done). I really like the concept too in theory, but I definitely needed some hints on how to play the game. I had to glance the explanation in the comments to get me going. A one page tutorial infographic with an explanation along the same lines would've worked just fine.

Blind experimentation could definitely have worked, but the problem is that there's no way to undo or erase steps in the drawing process. I would draw one part of a sigil, the light would change, and then I'd draw the next part and it would be wrong and I'd have to start over. So some sort of undo/erase feature would be nice. The freeform drawing was impressive to me technically too, but I wonder if it wouldn't be nicer to play if the cursor automatically snapped to the points on the board (almost like the Android lock screen puzzle).

All in all though, cool entry!
biemorth
27. Apr 2024 · 17:46 UTC
They are very cute mini demons, I would like to have them on the screen after creating them instead of turning them into resources, but I understand that it was a mechanic to increase the game's elements, besides the game is beautiful and with the music it created a great mood , it's really difficult to understand the character combinations, at first I even thought I had a broken build, it took me a while to understand that the first characters don't need this mini sigils on the book, but it's a very well polished game for the jam, thank you for putting it up the audio slider, is a great touch that often goes unnoticed.
LDJam user 267116
27. Apr 2024 · 20:54 UTC
Cute little guys, cool atmosphere, and a neat mechanic. Nice job!
Tetracold
03. May 2024 · 16:45 UTC
First let me start with the positives

The presentation here is really great! the 3d models are pretty impressive considering the time limit and I especially like the character designs some of them are really cool! The general atmosphere and vibes you guys managed to create are great

However, I found the actual gameplay experience to be less than exciting.

I got a little confused with drawing patterns, so kept trying to make the combinations based on some of the comments but for some reason I just was not able to make the candles turn blue no matter how carefully I drew the symbols and I almost gave up out of frustration but then I reopened the game and somehow this time it worked. I am really not sure what I did different

It would have made the experience a lot more enjoyable if the clues were at least a little more specific, because I probably would have given up if it weren't for the comments.

But I don't wanna be too negative, I understand that it is difficult to make something intuitive in 3 days especially if it's the first time. I hope this experience helped you learn some things and hopefully you will be able to make something truly great next time!