You descend into the depths of the dungeon to collect as many rare monsters as you can… and seal them in jars.

Really nice game. Maybe the balancing is a bit off or I had really bad luck with the enemies once. Very compelling overall!

Fun game idea. The game looks and sounds great. Gets difficult really fast. But overall a really good combo game. Well done.

Thank you very much

Nice little game, I enjoyed it - haven't got to the end yet. Only thing I'd add is floaty numbers; it's a little tricky to tell what's happening inside a round (but also, y'know, compo game)

Good graphics and nice sounds make for a pleasant play experience. It would be nice to see what creatures I already have, so I know what I should pick after winning a level. Also, having a monster that allows re-arranging monsters between turns would be interesting, though you may already have this as I did not finish all 6 level. Very polished experience.

Glad to hear that. I don’t have such a monster, but I actually like this idea — thanks!

Really cute game!! I really enjoy the graphics and all the monster designs are so nice ^^
The gameplay is fun and easy to understand as well, though I agree with others that it gets difficult rather quickly.

Cool deckbuilder/autobattler concept, this can be expanded really quickly by just adding creatures with new abilities.

Всё сделано очень хорошо. Приятная графика и эффекты.

Сложность растет заметно и быстро. Пачки монстров растут, а тебе дают всё теже три случайных банки из рюкзачка, и выносят твой сет.

В целом игра отличная

Interesting concept, though I’m not really a fan of the setting. Some of the enemies feel unbalanced, but overall, it’s pretty good for a jam game.

Very cute monsters and the graphics overall looks awesome! Was hard a bit to understand how perks work on your crew's order, so my monsters were weak and beaten all the time while my enemies flourished. Anyway I enjoyed seeing different monsters!

Cute concept and great execution. I wish I could reorder my monsters before I press end turn since I accidentally fat fingered a few times.

Very cute game, nice concept

Thanks everyone for leaving comments! After the jam I’ll definitely work on the balance and add the ability to rearrange placed monsters.

Turn by turn or deckbuilding games isn't generally my _jam_ (pun intended) but I was curious of the graphics and animations.

Oh boy did I have a great idea to come here: I really enjoyed this !

I'm flabbergasted that you did all of this alone. It's snappy and cute, has a certain amount of strategy, it's really nice.
I would have loved having a peak of what the next round would be, or event choose the order to furthermore go in the strategy

Honestly? I want more of it, great job.

It was fun watching all the effects resolve! The big guy at the end was really a cool idea!  I do wish the jar draw was slickly higher so I had to make more decisions about what not to put on the board. Great entry!

Didn't realize this was a compo... wow amazing.

There’s a small bug — if you hover near the top of a creature’s head, the tooltip keeps popping in and out.

That aside, I really appreciate the fast-forward button; it makes the pacing feel much better. This is a super polished game overall 👏 The art is beautiful, the sounds fit perfectly, and the whole thing feels cohesive.

I didn’t have the patience to finish it all though 😅 — maybe if it were a bit shorter for the jam (around 5 minutes of playtime is usually a sweet spot). Still, really solid work! 🎮✨

Wow, thank you so much for such nice comments!

The game feels good and is played.

Really cute auto-battler! The art-style and general vibe with the glasses of monsters battling in an eery dungeon is very well made!
One nit-pick: the first hit sound blasted my ears away :smile:

I love, love, love this game! It's exactly my jam! It reminds me of Wildfrost a lot, was that an inspiration perchance?

The monster designs are absolutely lovely, the soundscape fits the mood perfectly and the game is fun too! The only thing I missed was the ability to take a look into my backpack (which monsters do I have left?). And I wasn't really sure what the End Turn button does, apparently the same thing as pushing one of the play buttons?

The catlike monster with the scarf and the cute one with the bow and the dress were my favorites. And the final boss tossing its teeth onto you is such a great concept! Your design really hooked me, I'd love to see more of it!

Thank you so much for creating this game! Easy 5 Star entry :heart:

Maybe I'll try my hand at something similar in the future, you really inspired me here, hehe!

Thanks for the feedback! No, I haven’t played Wildfrost. I’ll definitely add the option to view the deck after the jam. The End Turn button ends the turn and starts the battle. The fact that the play buttons also do this is a bug.

I very much enjoyed this game! It fitts the theme and you don't get bored. Took me two or three fights until I fully understood how the fight mechanic works. The monsters are cute and add variety to the game. Well done!

Beautiful game, art, and sound design are really nice, controls are responsive. It feels good to play.
The character mechanics are varied and interesting, but I failed to really have the time and patience to develop a strategy. Your characters play often just once, and when there are more enemies than you have, it's even harder. But kudos on attempting and successfully producing a working game in that genre because it is really impressive.

I myself **[collect GitHub entries](https://github.com/stars/dhmmasson/lists/ludum-dare-58)**: So it's super nice to see you have used GitHub during the development process of the game (24 commits).

I have also collected a few tricks to make the repos shinier across my Ludum Dare participations

---

# Repo name and Description

You can update the repository name (I always name my repo ldXX and I rename when I have found a name for my game) without breaking links (GitHub redirects old names to new ones), and add a description for inclusion in the list
(<https://github.com/dhmmasson/ld58> still redirect to my repository)

# Readme and Badges
Include the link to your LDJam entry in the Readme. I also have created badges that you can use to decorate your README:

```
```


# Topics

Consider using these **topics** on your GitHub description to make your Ludum Dare entry more discoverable:
- `game`
- `game-development`
- `ludum-dare`
- `ludumdare`
- `ludumdare58`
- `ludum-dare-58`
- `ld58`

# Cover Art

You can also use your cover art for the ```Social preview``` image in the repository ```Settings```

# Stars

I have starred and added your repository to a list of ld58 compo: <https://github.com/stars/dhmmasson/lists/ludum-dare-58>

(Also, I am on a quest to **collect** 10 stars on a repo. If you play my game, consider [leaving a star on my repo](https://github.com/dhmmasson/tilesCollector) as well.)

I loved your game so much, I played it again on my phone. Works like a charm! Cranking the egg monster up to health levels above the final boss felt like a real flex.

I discovered a graphical bug: if you already have 5 monsters and hover over one, but don't replace any, the replace symbol stays.

@purrseus I’m glad to hear you liked it so much — it really motivates me to keep working on the game. Is this about the mobile version (graphical bug)?

Fun auto-battler, def reminds me of super auto pets. Like the cutesy theme with dark humour thing going on.

Thanks, Super Auto Pets was my reference during development.

Love this concept, love ur game.

These designs are so cute!! I especially like the little healer that increases everyone's health by 2. Very fun mechanic, simple to understand.

Really good game! Reminds me of super auto pets. I managed to get a strong build and beat it first try. The graphics are great

felt really intuitive to play, loved the monster designs

This was a lot of fun :smile: So satisfying to pour them all on one character and make them super strong. Last boss didn't stand a chance. I love your art style and really liked the combat mechanics!


nice game, the start is a little bit complicated, but the more monster you get the funnier it become, straightforward and easy to play !

Very interesting game, it took me a while to get the hang of the unique turn order but once I did I felt really smart, incredibly well done

Awesome autobattler! Love the mood, art syle, animations, music and sound effects. Feels very polished. The last battle was awesome and kept me on the edge. Very nice, love it 💖

I liked how you designed the little monsters ^^

It was actually a fun game to play. Slay the Spire style gameplay with your own touch, in a good way. You didn't have any background music? but the SFX did the job well enough. Graphically it was Amazing! Cheers 🥂

@jim-jagers I’m glad you managed to do that — the order is really unusual but opens up possibilities for different kinds of abilities.

The art is really nice liked it a lot and the sound are matching the vibe ^^.
The mechanics felt good and I like how you could just extend this into a larger game. Nice foundation and great entry good Job ^^.

This is astonishingly polished for a compo entry and super fun to play! Well done

The monsters are really cute and the gameplay loop itself is quite engaging, and it feels like there's a lot of depth to it!

This game has a lot of potential outside of Ludum Dare, it's a really fun game loop with a lot of potential!

I replayed this several times just to mess with the mechanics. It's astonishingly good. My only complaint is it didn't convey the turn order idea super well but damn this is good. Graphics are great too.

If you enjoyed the game, please consider leaving a [rating on itch.io](https://t4ran.itch.io/monsters-in-jars/rate) as well — I’d really appreciate it!

@bangkerpow Yeah, I’ll keep working on that.

Addictive little game. Loved the artstyle, took a moment to figure out the mechanics but they were eventually obvious enough. I think I would have loved a mechanic to prune my deck, to throw out the weaklings.

@ranarh of course, I’ll definitely add that in the post-jam version.

such satisfying UI, sfx, and art! was very fun to play and smooth animations!

OMG, I had 3 HP left against the boss :0
But I won! :}

The game is short, but fun! Why do you need a pause button if the fight starts anyway?XD
The graphics are great, the artists are great!
Thanks for playing! ^-^

Cool game! Reminds me of one I played on the last jam - I wonder if you guys are the same team. Very nice graphics, and solid gameplay. Took me a minute to fully understand, but it was fun.

I think upgrading your audio could do a lot for the feel; some variation in the sounds (maybe cheers for a certain type of hit, maybe a score that's more than a drone pad - I think that background sound weighs it down a bit). Of course I know time is always the limited factor.
Overall, great job!

@mrdumpling There's a bug where the top-left buttons start the battle, but they still work.

Nice game! Love the art! :) Great job!

Wow, what a great Compo entry! Fun and addictive gameplay loop, and overall very polished. Great work!


This was a lot of fun - I was disappointed when the game ended! Once I started getting more and more creatures to build my deck with, I was getting very into the strategy, and wouldn't have minded one or two more fights, since I felt like I had started to hit my stride :)

I did run into one weird behavior that I couldn't understand - Most of the time, each side had one monster take a turn, then the next side had a monster take a turn. Occasionally this pattern would stop, and the enemy team would all take a turn in a row, wiping out my board. A couple of times the same thing happened in reverse - My team all would take a turn attacking the enemy. I wasn't sure if this was a glitch, or a mechanic that I didn't quite understand, because it did seem to happen when one side had more numbers than the other.

Overall though, this was really fun! Well done!

Really fun jam game! I saw your game on xk’s stream.

Have some fun. Nice sounds. Good job!

Great entry! The gameplay already feels very good and will be even better with some classic deck-building mechanics like removing monsters. The graphics are great, and maybe the audio could use an upgrade. Overall, really impressive work for the timeframe.

@koolruz The thing is, each monster attacks only once per battle — this was done so that the side with more creatures would have an advantage. While I was describing this, I started thinking whether it would make sense to add a “speed” parameter that determines who acts first. What do you think?

In that case, it might actually be something that can be solved with UI, instead of a mechanical change - If you change monsters into a visually "exhausted" state after they attack, it could clearly communicate to the player why their creature won't act again, but the enemy monsters will continue acting. For me, the problem was just that I didn't understand the mechanic, rather than the mechanic itself being problematic, if that makes sense! :)

I think there's an elegant simplicity to the way that you've got things designed right now, now that I know how it works!

nice game :wink:

nice graphic

Incredible, even more incredible as a compo game! I think you should polish this into a proper release after the competition.

Cool monsters and mechanics. I'm wondering how drowned everything.

I won! It's actually more challenging than it looks. I'm always impressed by compo games; there's already a lot of work to do in a game like this without having to draw everything! Music would've been nice, but in a 48-hour jam, something has to give.

The rules aren't obvious at first but the game is full of visual feedback that help you understand them, and that's the right approach. I actually think it's a pretty novel take since powers don't immediately activate, the creature has to wait for its turn. The strictly turn-based approach makes it easier to plan your actions.

Two things were unclear to me: what do the buttons actually do? They seem to be pause, normal speed and fast forward, but they seem to skip your turn when you click them. Otherwise, I would have liked a visual indication of whether my "alive" creatures go back to my deck after a fight, or if they're spent definitely. Great job overall!

@kyrio Thank you for your feedback!
Answering your question — the buttons do exactly what you said; however, there’s a bug that makes them also act like the “end turn” button.
And yes, your creatures do return to your deck.
I’ll fix the button issue later and also add the ability to view your deck so you can make sure your creatures are being preserved.

Nice game! First of all, the art is amazing and you even managed to pull all those monsters' design in just 3 days? That's impressive. I won on my first play, so I don't know if I was lucky or if the game is a bit easy? When I reached battle 5 and 6, it's when I realized you can build combos that are really powerful: one of my creatures was dealing 8 damages and the last boss didnt' stand a chance, it felt pretty empowering. Few things that could be improve: revamped SFX and an engaging music could bring up the tension a bit more, I also mis-dropped my creature a few times (maybe cause I'm on a touchpad), and not being able to rearrange the creatures after you placed them felt a bit arbitrary (but maybe you tried it and there's some good design reason for it). Anyway, I had fun playing the game and really like the monsters design!

Awesome job! I really liked the character designs and how the abilities built on top of each other. One thing that could be improved is clarity on turn order / when abilities trigger. I wasn't always sure what was actually going on in a round.

Thank you for making it! Very nice & polished game! Visuals are super cool, audio too. Mechanics works well. Perfectly done jam game!

Very nice pocket monster game! It felt quite intuitive and the effects were described accurately. I liked that you also implemented and mechanic far swapping out monsters even though I just ran into that option once. Very strong entry! :)

Solid game and good theme interpretation. It would have been even better with music but this was a lot of work done in just 48 hours.