If I'm understanding the game correctly, I really like the twist on the survivors-like formula, but I kept taking damage and couldn't figure out why. The times I stayed alive longer were fun.

@plusonerabbit Thank you for pointing this out. We fixed the problem with the Hero (Enemy) not being displayed correctly, if you are still interested in trying our game.

Took me a bit to figure out how to sacrifice the rats, also sometimes I had the credits required to summon but it wouldn't summon
Art style is really good, game follows the theme perfectly, and the upgrade system is a really good idea to add to this simple concept

The attacks are cool, the graphics are exquisite, great work!

Really great and coherent game. Could be evolved something bigger!

@moonblast @anicrofmana @tykki19 thank you so much for taking your time with our game. we wish your dungeon to always be full of rats to summon only the best skeleton buddies

Solid concept that fits the theme beautifully, but I was a little lost at the start.

Seriously though, do you have any extra GIFs for chatting? I'd even be willing to shell out a few bucks...

the art is awesome.
It's interesting to play, I don't think it was planned, but the fact that rats spawn and get stuck in corners and gather in packs gives an interesting effect it's a pleasure to gather them in packs and vacuum the corners :)

I love the mono color scheme you are going with here, it really adds to the atmosphere.

Art looks great!

Had fun with a game. Art is solid, gameplay is fun. Had some bugs with rats not giving blood when dies - but its mostly minor
Thanks for a game

@albatross @tugaryn @givit-game-studios @escyll while rats tell us y'all are crazy for vacuuming lil cutie patooties, the gods thank u for your time, nice words and bloody service

(we take notes of all suggestions for potential future improvements as well tnx <3)!

Exceptional art! Really polished game, too! Though the gameplay got pretty stale pretty fast. Hope you had a good time making it!

Great art, good sounds, interesting mechanics.
Looks like a great starting point to expand from.

Excellent artwork and polish!A great entry, very well done!

This game was so accomplished! I loved the mini map you added top right corner. The pixel art was great and you had a really strong foundation for a game. Mood was superb. I found the heavy red visually a little hard to see in but it added a lot to the mood

Wow, a lot of work done for a short jam, congratulations! I found the assets super nice and had fun playing your game. Here's some feedback!

- I managed to level up a plenty and not have to worry about my health much, but I still don't understand the UI - I summoned some minions that had a cost (I think?) of 20, but the UI above it still showed amounts like 2 / 10? I thought it's the blood currency I buy them with. I just spammed my summon clicking in the circle while chasing rats and it worked :D
- Tutorial screens are black, but I think it's WIP!
- Tutorial says Arrow Keys, so I used them to move, which made it close to impossible to use the mouse :D got much better once I learnt I can switch to WASD
- Ludum's window doesn't fit your game, had to scroll down to find the fullscreen button!

This is really cool! It can be challenging to finish the ritual and get the blood when the enemies are chasing you down! I especially like the art and pallet, beautiful!

@outstar thank you so much for the valuable feedback. We are going to implement these suggestions in the next iteration of the game. The 2/10 should be the number of current summon vs the number of max, but this isn't really clear xD

Great artstyle and SFX. idea of vampire-survivors -like game is good, but it is sometimes hard to dodge enemy while pressing 'e' at the same time. Good Job!

Really solid package. Beatiful art and the core gameplay loop is there and it is satisfying to play.

Some minor comments:
- Holding E while using WASD is always quite difficult. Keys like Space and Shift are preferable because the player can press those while having all necessary fingers available for movement.
- It was quite hard to see how much blood I had. The number above the selected minion was apparently a minion cap. I would have preferred to see blood there, although I understand the thematic appeal to show it as the vial.
- I died two times to something I was not aware of. Not sure if there is friendly fire?

But overall, this is a solid entry that could have potential with a post-jam update!

This is fantastic looking and I have no idea how 4 colours carry so hard.

For sure one of the best looking pixel art games I have seen from this game jam so far!

I also really like how you approached the sacrifice mechanic by scaling the movement speed and the radius. I could imagine that with some additional polish this game would do pretty well on Steam with a demo!

The tutorial was missing animations for me, at least.
Not sure why the magic minions didn't seem to do any damage, and I didn't even realize at first.
Best strategy seemed to be to farm rats while ignoring enemies entirely.
I liked the art style.
I think the rat killing could be more snappy. The controls were a little awkward having to hold down E while moving around (both WASD and arrow keys were a little awkward).

Would be nice to see enemy health bars or the total blood collected.

I love the graphics a ton!! The enemies are super tanky which makes it even more important to maximize the collection of blood. My left indexfinger had some struggles holding E while walking, but that's just a me problem. Great and fun summonning game :))

I'm stunned by the optic and mood! In my opinion the art is simply insane!
It took me a while to understand the controls since i didn't realised you actually have a tutorial in your game menu! For the gameplay, i think there were bugs since I died at some point without getting attacked. Also the mice get stuck at some places which kinda make it easier for me :D

I Love the concept of this game. Pretty amazing graphics++.

Really like the graphics and the mood. Crazy that you achieved this in this time span.

Love these graphics and the moody colors. Perhaps it's better controlled with a gamepad. I had a bit of trouble with WASD +E. Finding a corner of the map with twenty rats piled up on each other was the best way to get blood for sure.

that one knight in the first room was decimating my summond skeletons. i think maybe have weaker mobs at the begining to let ppl properly learn the mechanic then you can ramp up the difficulty.

such a nice game, I love the graphics. I only encountered 4 enemies though I think :(

Great game, I really enjoyed the style and graphics. It would be cool to have the ability to draw blood from heroes or at least regenerate some from slain skeletons (or cancel their summoning if needed for some blood). The only thing I still didn't understand is how I died; at one point, the hero killed me with one hit, even though I had half health.

So good! How did you manage all that in so little time?

Absolutely mesmerizing art and an innovative gameplay twist! It's clear a lot of thought and effort went into this game, and the atmosphere is just spot on. Fantastic work on making such a compelling experience!

Very good game! Really nice compulsion loop, audio and arts. My only comment is to make rats different color. But everything else is great!

I like this game! You guys are great!

Pretty fun game! I think it would be helpful to declutter the UI, I was mistaking the rat counter (score?) for my blood counter for a while and was confused when I couldn't summon. I think the rat AI could be improved too, they liked to clutter along the walls so I could just run alongside and collect hundred of blood drops at once, which didn't seem intended. But that's all for critiques. This was a fun experience and impressive given the time constraint. The pixel art great. Good job!

Very atmospheric! I ended up just ignoring enemies and running around killing rats, since most of my summons barely did any damage. (20 cost units for some reason just stayed in one place doing nothing) Overall it was an interesting experience! Art is gorgeous and music is quite menacing!

Cool art style! wish the enemy can be smarter (also the warriors)

Crazy pixel art！Just in 3 days？VERY well made game, great job!

Cool game concept! It'd be better if the sacrifice circle instantly killed the rats (or give them a different visual indicator that they've been sacrificed.)

Art and mood are top notch! The enemy and summons AI is a bit weird, can't figure out how they work. Other than that, great game! Oh and its a bit hard to move with WASD while holding E xD

Very atmospheric!

Fun little submission, wish there was more to it, like some bigger boss enemies, but still very solid.

Interesting choice to go monochromatic, I think it works here.

Pixel art is a huge standout for me here -- fun concept too! I went the rat farming approach, which seems to yield success. I did struggle in understanding the UI, I'll admit. The audio was on point. Overall though a nice entry!

Amazing art. I was a little bit lost at the beginning but after reading again the tutorial it was okay. Sometimes it was a bit hard to sacrifice rats while moving because I had to press E and D button at the same time. Maybe if the sacrifice was on right click it would have been better. And there's no blood meter apart from the gauge that fills up right? But overall very good game.

I really liked how the tutorial was implemented. The visuals are amazing and the gameplay is solid and smooth. Overall a really well made game. Good job!

Awesome game! Took me a while to figure it out, it wasn't perfectly clear that I needed to keep the sacrifice button held down for longer than when the rats were inside it. Other than that, graphics were great, and the implementation of the theme was rather creative. Great work!

Loved it! Nice art really good and wonderful.

Really fun twist on several things! It took me a moment to figure out how blood was tracked - I think having the box with the rat icon tracking points kind of confused me. Overall really fun!

Awesome I love Pest Control simulator! For reals this was a real fun game, awesome graphics and vibe.

This was really fun! I appreciated the tutorial explanations before diving into the gameplay. I kept trying to use my mouse to do things when I needed to remember to use the keyboard. The game looks great and the sounds were good. This certainly nails the theme. Nice job!

The art style is very sweet and pleasant, the ost is great too. Was a little lost at the start due to lack of a challenge. Extremely satisfying to corner the swarms of rats

Insanely polished, lovely art and atmosphere. Feels great to play!

sorry for delay in replying to you all! :kissing:
since there were lots of you necromancers in the dungeon, we had to focus on catching all the rats in our basement, getting enough skeletons from graveyards and so on to make sure you can have fun!

@promzona @baggersmurf @hazard-game-dev @wujood @enver-arco @aaron-hart @hangovergames @ruruie @noize @eveee-cx @p3ngui @lindote @jbartelsson @lindote @thesmellofoxygen @villhest @emty @josion @usenrame @kirass @merb1000 @onqdll @klose @aegisfate @squidly @hieu @tokarts @lushboy-studios @irex @suksu @punniz @nardandas @saryah @pres2300 @muraena @linus-lindberg


millions of heartfelt thanks again from our team! :revolving_hearts:

due to your kind words our overlords have allowed us to touch grass for a whole hour yesterday. I think I have a new core memory now :seedling:


@outstar @nash @trogdor-20x6


additional thanks to the power trio, for taking your time writting us small novels here, this is exactly how we love our feedback.

@ everyone

we will definitely purge the E key from controls and will consider if we allow mice to hide together in corners en masse or force them to establish limits on their polyamory tendencies. more diverse actors for the hero role will be hired, bugs, ui remarks and everything else is also being compiled together so we can brainstorm best strategies and solutions to address them [proof attached].

we had fun making the game so would like to actually work on it a little further. if you think you are interested in seeing your feedback being implemented or just want to spend time with skelly friends in a more comfortable (or challenging, who knows) environment, you could **save the ichio page. updates will be posted there!**


and here is small proof that we take everything you write here seriously <3


Enjoyed it quite a bit!

Great job!

Played a few runs and that was really enjoyable? Artstyle is great. But a couple of times I've noticed that the rats have congregated in one place reaching for the wall and I don't know if that's the way it should be?

Really good entry!

Love the art and mood!
The game is well balanced, but I also encountered a big group of rats on the west wall.

Good job!

Awesome game!

The game is nice, expecially on the art side, where you really managed to recreate a gloomy atmosphere that perfectly fits the theme. Regarding gameplay, I found that rats were really slow to die, which made it kind of awkward to collect blood, and I also missed having a number telling me how much blood I had (as the bar didn't help me for instance in knowing exactly how far I was from a summon). Also, I think there may be some little issue in pathfinding for rats as they all seem to love living attached to the walls, which makes it very easy to kill them in big clusters.

Great submission!

Very fun gameplay loop that was easy to understand.
The art style was very charming, especially loved the little rats.
The sound design was also super satisfying.

Overall well done!

From the depths of our hearts, a huge thank you to @firellon , @funnypumpkin , and @meepster for taking the time to playtest our game concept! 💗


Your insights have been invaluable. We've noticed that our rats have developed a weird RATitude to form gangs—possibly plotting their great escape! Rest assured, we're on it and will be dismantling these rascally rat rendezvous to ensure our neighborhood stays safe and pleasant. The UI is definitely a part that will be majorly reworked to ensure that our necromancers have a good overview of their summoning kit. Thanks again to @dywanix , @deformhead , and @tommy for pointing this out!


If you're eager to find out what possible changes we're implementing we would recommend to check out the itch.io page for BloodRite!

Keep the feedback coming your necromentastic people!

Nice game! Really enjoyed the overall atmosphere, and I think this game really takes great advantage of the "Summoning" theme. The art is great and consistent, and the animations keep the environment lively. The music and SFX also tie into the mood of the game quite well.

After reading the other comments, I will say that I personally did not find using E to sacrifice rats to be too big of a deal, but I do agree that an alternative like Shift (or better yet, allowing the player choose their keybind) would be preferred.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward (especially with the tutorial) and pretty fun to play after trying it out for a bit, though I'm still not entirely sure what the "hero" refers to, on the upgrade cards. One thing I will say is that I felt like there wasn't much reason to use any skeletons other than the cheapest ones, as they were the fastest, most suitable against the melee enemies, and, well... cheapest. Of course, it's great to see variety in the types of skeletons, and I think providing these options alone makes the game more fun. So, it could be worth considering how players can be given more incentives to use the other skeletons, whether by introducing scenarios in which they are more useful, or by reworking their abilities.

Overall, a pleasant experience. Great work!

I like art and music, I have had a good time playing it. Good job!

cool game and nice graphics!

was this maybe a bug? i thought i was doing good and had a lot of health left, suddenly it said i was slayed, but i still have health left.


I enjoyed it - really fun spin on summoning. I wish my skeleton dudes would get their act together, and I'm not totally sure what the Level 20 skeleton does. But really enjoy the vibe, the color palette, all!

Thank you, thank you, new disciples of the Forbidden Arts for taking time to perform pest control duties @baluj @anvilesque @leiv-erik @jamie-whitmarsh :sparkles:


@anvilesque since summoning dead is sort of not cool in most of the universes, Heroes are coming to the dungeons to slay you for breaking the balance of the life cycles, making Heroes - your enemies. And every time your knowledge of Necromancy becomes stronger, Heroes coming after you are getting more and more prepared with extra band-aids and extra heavy swords. this should hopefully explain the cards! but obviously something we want to add for the tutorial grimoire, to make sure our new occultists don't get confused about their jobs.

addressing something that both @anvilesque and @jamie-whitmarsh mentioned, as heroes will become more diverse in the future with your nefariousness growing, we hope that using different skeletons for fighting different heroes would make a lot more sense! and skeletons might get a little polished too, as we won't have to rush our gravedigging routine. but let us see what the stars have to say about that.

@leiv-erik you are absolutely right, this plaque should instead be saying that you have outlasted the heroes for now, since the timer run out. unfortunately, pesky rats ate the other plaque when we were not looking, so we had to reuse the one meant for death :(

Beautiful pixel art with a red tone.

The game mechanics surprised me at first, as I wasn't too comfortable with rats. But I got used to it.

The atmosphere is very gloomy, and I've grown attached to the necromancer. Fresh idea to get under the skin (if he has any left) of the so-called villain.

A little rat soup!?...

Thank you for this undeniably excellent game!

This was really fun and I love the art! Great work! I really enjoyed the combination of the action mechanics with summoning the skeletons to fight the hero. Well done, this is a really solid entry!

That's the most annoying enemies and the most useless minions I've seen so far. Though visuals, sound & music, and a pentagram used for killing rodents were great.

Looks really good and gameplay is fun. Heroes seem to have a bit too much health and takes a lot to slay them. Throw in way to heal and a couple heroe variants and this could be a great arcade game

Cool little game! I was a little confused as to what the most expensive summons did and I randomly got killed after a certain point in the game even though there were no enemies nearby. The art is really well done and the mood feels very cohesive. Good work!

Looks cool, sounds great! Having multiple types of summons was great. Sometimes, I'd be a bit short on rats though, and the Hero could hurt me from quite a distance away at times. Otherwise, great entry!

I have to agree with the others that this is a great entry! One thing I would note is that the hero sometimes ends up fighting your summons in a completely different corner of the map, making it difficult for you to follow the action. It would have also been great to have a healtbar or some other indicator of the heroes and your summons hp. This is me getting really nitpicky however, achieving a game this polished and fun really is a great achievement in a game jam

great art and great gameplay. I like the concept, although an objective other than survive would have been really cool (it's a jam tho, i know). A couple weird hitboxes from the enemies, ended up dying because i think enemies spawned near where i was?. Rats tend to get stuck but i think thats cool because i think rats would be all clamped together near walls? idk i'm no rat ^^
Nice job

💏

@k-toll @paloobi thank you thank you for very kind words :kissing:

@ironcutter @pebkac @philocode @chispalbc and thank you for your praise and suggestions! we will definitely deliver them to our overlords to see if they are willing to grant those wishes :relieved:

@denismarasan thanks for praising the aesthetical parts of the the dungeon! but do you mind elaborating what exactly you dislike about the minions and the hero so we could give them a reason for their pay cuts?

@skransow thank you! :sparkles: you probably did not realise that there was a timer in the game that always runs out eventually. us sadly displaying a bit of a misleading plaque probably did not help, sorry about that :( pls blame the rats for eating the correct plaque

once again, we really appreciate all the feedback, our necro neophytes :sparkles:


@catnap minions don't do any noticable damage, the enemy continues chasing the player. The hero feels powerless. And doesn't feel right, unless you're making a horror game. Power fantasy now!

Really liked the pixel art and the concept. It was quite challenging at the beginning, but you quickly get the hang of it. Great job!

Nice game, Showing the amount of damage dealt could be nice.

Might repeat what has been said before but ; solid concept, and overall a good execution, but the game lacks a bit of feedback given to the player. I was actually unsure that the 20 mana summons were doing any damage at first. Also the blood meter is not very clear because the blood cost for skeletons is in units, but the meter is a gauge without numbers.
The rats taking a bit of time to actually die seemed off to me at first but it's not a problem once you understand how the game mechanics work. I was not sure I sacrificed them the right way in the beginning.
The game falls a bit in a gameplay loop going like "flee > kill rats > summon > circle around the hero to ensure the skeletons are attacking > repeat" that goes old a bit quick, but it's still a nice concept that could be dug for a bigger game. The music being a bit repetitive probably adds a bit to this feeling of repetitiveness too.

I like a lot the graphics. It's actually fairly impressive to see how much graphical content is out there ! and the whole concept of being the bad guy is always nice to see explored.

Overall a very good entry (don't take my critics as a negative review, I still liked the game a lot and it's only meant to improve).

Great game and great visual. I wish I there wasn't by a time limit so I would have more time. I'm not sure I really felt the impact of the upgrade though

@denismarasan okay, thanks! we noted your feedback :)

@konstantinreed thank you for your very kind feedback! it is expected for new necromancers to struggle a bit regardless, this is the spirit of the craft! :sparkles:

@fabonacci thank you as well! we will consider some sort of indication for now much health our skellies and heroes have :ok_hand:

@littlegamer we are very grateful for such a detailed and reasonable feedback! <3 we do not see it as a bad thing at all, since it is clear that you write it in good faith! so thank you for helping us with providing you, necromancers, with the best dungeon dwelling experience we can come up with in the future :smiling_imp:

@xavier7 thank you! we will try to scratch our heads and see if that singular braincell can come up with ways to make powerups feel more impactful and to find alternatives to the unstoppable feeling of doomed existence triggered by the limited time we all have left ... in game :>

Wow that's an amazing game, the graphics and the audio are great, the game is fun and not too hard and not too easy! This is a really good submission!

Really dig the aesthetic. The graphics and audio definitely helped to reinforce the mood. That said, while the graphics were pretty, I did sometimes confuse the hero with my summons since the color scheme meant that there was no quick way to distinguish them at a glance other than the shape (and the shapes are fairly similar).

Additionally, I did feel like some events lacked feedback for the player, like pressing the button to sacrifice rats for doesn't play a sound until after a while when it fades in. Also an indication as to when a new hero has spawned/old one died would be very helpful. Also Idk if you were testing primarily on gamepad, but the keyboard control scheme with E having to be held down _while_ you use WASD to move was uh... tricky lol. Personally I'd stick it on right mouse or something, but could work on space bar too if you wanted to keep it on your left hand.

Totally a nitpick, but some main menu/tutorial menu music would be nice as well. :slight_smile:

That said, this was still a pretty solid entry nonetheless. Nice job!

@mibi88 thank you kindly, hope you dungeons with be plentiful with our cutie patootie rats <3

@guitarbro thank you for taking your time and writing us very valuable feedback - it is much appreciated! we definitely agree with your remarks about the lack of player feedback, this is something we want to address when we will be working on our post-jam patch. we will consider more musical variety as well :D

Very good game, I like it a lot :) small bug, you can summon outside the map :/ and sometimes you start a game with an enemy close to you, it's unfair ^^'. Otherwise very good game !

great graphics, fun gameplay and well-polished, awesome entry!

I enjoyed playing this game, the graphics are great and set the mood, and the gameplay is very interesting and fun! Nice job!!

The graphics are sooo pretty. I love them <3 I think sacrificing the rats could have a bit more feedback or less of a delay but other than that I think its a great concept and execution for a game jam.

@jean-francois thank you, we will look into those space-time continuum shenanigans :eyes:

@neecto @tobaccoleopard @waterspirit your kind words brought us lots of joy, thank you! <3 keep practicing them Dark Arts :smiling_imp:

Easily the best Ludum Dare game this time around.

The artsyle's neat, I particularly like the use of red tones for the palette, it definitely makes the game stand out visually!

The gameplay was somewhat interesting and I played a few rounds even tho I wasn't really able to determine the most efficient strategy to get a good score, my scores were a bit all over the place lol.

I am also not entirely sure what the 20 blood summon was supposed to do did. regardless the idea here is pretty solid and polished

good job!

Made with taste, the graphics are top notch.

@stormblessed @volkolak :yum::yum::yum: thank you so much, your nice comments mean a lot for us

@tetracold thank you for the kind words as well!
we totally understand you not enjoying the flying mage skull so much, we want to find higher quality cadavers for the post-jam update to make sure all the summons can earn a place in your heart :heartpulse:

Had a bit hard time with the controls, but fun regardless once I figured it out and got a bit comfy with them. The art is great and suprisingly polished, and it had a nice vibe going with the music along with that. Impressive how that was managed in such a short time. But agree with one of the comments that it would been nice with more of an objective, if it is continued outside of the jam. Good job! C:

As a huge sucker for dark bloody palettes and demon/monster content, I hopped on this game the moment it entered my field of vision. And all those tiny visual flourishes on the UI made my heart twinge in a mix of admiration and jealousy T^T
I'll let my smol skeleton army find your artist and make them share their mastery secrets.

@n0va maany thanks! yes, this is definitely something we are thinking about right now for the update :>

@shess :blush: :point_right: :point_left: thank you for your kind words, you made our artists blush