SUMMONING by xk_the_name

SEVEN BLADES bound your soul, one for heart four for lungs, two for kidneys one for liver... Locked in hell for 100 years. But now, you hear a voice...
It's time for revenge.


Chill web roguelike
Optimize your build
Compete for high score
Complete THE GRAND SUMMONING




| Link | https://xk.itch.io/summoning |
| Link | https://xk.itch.io/summoning |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/summoning-3 |
Ratings
| Overall | 27th | 4.158⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 31th | 4.088⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 257th | 3⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 65th | 4.054⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 53th | 4.132⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 52th | 3.8⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 26th | 4.08⭐ | 58🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
I did three runs and for me the progression was very steep. Enemies becoming thick too fast and you have only one option to get +++damage each time. Otherwise you can't do anything to them at all.
Maybe I was very unlucky with power-ups though.
Still, great entry and jaw-dropping result for a solo COMPO dev. You are setting the bar for enthusiast game developers very high :)
Audio is very impressive for a compo submission, very well done overall!
Interesting sword upgrades. Was very fun to play! Well done)
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I think the progression needed more balance, enemies get tanky too fast.
Overall good work!
Here my feedback, I hope it's helpful.
1) Enemy hp is much too high / upgrades don't scale my damage enough to keep up
2) The circling daggers upgrade didn't seem to do anything for me. Not sure.
3) The mini pentagons take too long to fill up. It's almost impossible to do.
I beat the boss in ~12 minutes :D
Don't know how others in the leaderboard did it in such a short time :D
I will have to try again later!
One minor issue I had when playing Non-Fullscreen the powerups were covering the health bar at later stages of the game, though playing fullscreen completely resolves this issue.
Great Job!! especially for a compo, I'm amazed!
Also a lot of attention with some fancy cutscenes :)
First off, the critical stuff.
- I don't know if it was the web build's doing, but the music's audio quality was rough. Once the music was fairly loud, It sounded like it was playing at a low sample rate. The actual notes and whatnot sound good, like- the melody is providing the perfect eerie atmosphere, though something sounded off about the audio playback.
- I never found the "wait in this circle for 10 seconds" stuff to be all that useful. Unless you have the shockwave spell, it's a waste of health to just stand there, and the rewards for it didn't seem nearly as grandiose as I had hoped.
- The name of the game just being the theme verbatim feels pretty lazy. Hence why there are 7 other games this Ludum Dare with the same name as your entry.
- The enemies all stack on top of each other. To some extent, I would have them push each other away in order to form a more menacing crowd. Having them stack on each other makes them too easy to avoid, or combo off.

- One final note on the critical feedback, I was swiftly finding myself wanting more variety. I recognize the scope of a 48 hour game jam while working alone, though having different "weak enemies" to spice things up would go a long way. This ties in with my "all the enemies stack on each other" comment, since having enemy variety would avoid creating one singular mass of enemies. (I appreciate the occasional blue enemy, though one trick to add some free visual differences is to multiple the enemy color's brightness by a random values between, let's say 0.75 and 1. It gives some random tint to each enemy, and looks nicer than all of them being the exact same color)
- More spell variety would be nice too, or at least more frequent upgrades providing the interesting choices. Far too often it was just Hp/Speed/Damage, when the ones unlocking new attacks are the ones you really want the players to experience and play around with.
Moving to the positive comments so I can just gush.
- Wow, that opening cutscene was cool!
- The fog rolling in as the game gets closer to the end is a really well made effect.
- It's fun!
- The floaty candles are super cool, and I love the aesthetic you have going on.
- I like the sound effects. It's very satisfying to *hear* the combos happening.
- The online leaderboard is sick, and now I need to figure out how to add a speedrun leaderboard to my own games.
Solid entry! Great work.

Love the visuals.
I think the initial enemies have a little too much health. It perfectly fine later enemies to require more hits but initial enemies should be easier to kill and acquire blood.
Love the sword mechanics passing through many enemies forcing the player to go after large crowds. Same thing about the blue summoning ritual. Plenty of strategy there luring enemies away to give you time you need.
Great job!