LudumData

Soul Catcher by DragonsBeardGames

[raw]
made by DragonsBeardGames for Ludum Dare 48 (COMPO)

Side Scrolling Auto Battling Plinko Catching Game

Gameplay

Create a team of heroes to battle into the depths. They will automatically battle and use abilities you have given them. All your heroes respawn after each wave.

Spend souls to:

  • Level your heroes
  • Buy and Upgrade abilities
  • Recruit new heroes
  • Upgrade Soul Catchers

SS1.png SS2.png

How to play

  • A / D - Move Soul Catchers left and right, Use them to catch bodies to earn souls.
  • The middle soul catcher will give you double souls, Try to catch as many as you can in it!
  • After each wave a store will appear, level up your heroes, recruit new ones, and buy new abilities!
  • Upgrade your soul catcher to increase how many souls you catch per body

Difficulties

  • Easy = Easily slaughter all enemies, crush everything!
  • Medium = Still crushing everything, but slightly more difficult
  • Hard = Will require choosing synergistic abilities and hero placement
  • Insane = Will require catching all bodies, Perfect ability choices, good economy and a lot of luck. Choose this if you enjoy dying.
Source Code https://bitbucket.org/Railor/ludum-dare-48/src/master/
Web Player https://gamejolt.com/games/SoulCatcher/610475
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/soul-catcher

Ratings

Overall 355th 3.58⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 214th 3.712⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 83th 4.019⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 841th 2.56⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 630th 3.115⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 409th 3.212⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 139th 3.44⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 596th 3⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 28🗨️

Feedback

LeHaine
26. Apr 2021 · 12:11 UTC
Really great game. Absolutely hilarious how they fall down. I think the build I went with was a little overpowered!

I had two guys: first guys was just pure damage skills and the second guy was pure healing skills. They were completely unstoppable. Each level took only a few seconds. The first guy two hit the 2nd boss.

Overall fun game and I enjoyed it a lot! Good work :).
RefraX295
26. Apr 2021 · 12:35 UTC
Great idea and well executed! I liked the use of the soul catchers to give the player something to do while the battle happened as well as to generate their income. Well done!
alexjdg
26. Apr 2021 · 16:48 UTC
What a cool, original idea! Great job!
hypp
26. Apr 2021 · 16:50 UTC
Great take on the theme, and nice effect when the souls fall down.
Goutye
26. Apr 2021 · 16:53 UTC
Had a lot of fun! :smile: Love the pachinko mechanics. I was able to absolutely over leveled them and one shot them with poke o/ Thanks and big congratulations! :v:
neonjeff
26. Apr 2021 · 17:05 UTC
Wow this was much cooler than I expected! It is easy to overpower your fighters and I was one hitting bosses (played through lvl 30). I also didn't realize I could move the catchers until level 14 but that was probably my fault for not reading. Great mix of games!
mrtnldm
26. Apr 2021 · 17:32 UTC
Very nice! I like the little bling sounds they make when falling down. I mostly ignored battle going on above just to watch the dudes ragdoll down. Fun concept and well made. Some GUI text at the top could be a tiny bit bigger for better readability.
sevkron
26. Apr 2021 · 18:35 UTC
I never thought I would be into pachinko.
The game is quirky and fun, love the janky physics and ever increasing stats of your characters. Having just that interaction with catching the characters is a great idea for a casual game like this.
There are some problems, abilities start feeling very samey after awhile and by then nothing really poses a threat.
Could be interesting to have abilities that only take effect when a hero goes into pachinko.
Anyways, good stuff!
PookiPoot
26. Apr 2021 · 22:01 UTC
Dude, this is a hysterical idea lol. I used to play this minigame in Shenmue called lucky hit and this brought back good memories with a twist of that. Great job adding several layers of mechanics like leveling up and recruiting more characters. Definitely made the game have great replayability.

Also, is that your voice as the grunting AI? I kept cracking up to the sound of xylophones and enemy grunts.
🎤 DragonsBeardGames
26. Apr 2021 · 22:06 UTC
@pookipoot Yes all the sounds are me grunting, and the sounds of hitting the plinkos are from my Kalimba.
Glad you enjoyed it!

@sevkron Thanks for the feedback, I definitely wanted to get more depth into it but ran out of time, I had implemented that basics of status effects (bleed, stun etc) but ran out of time.
Nisovin
26. Apr 2021 · 22:25 UTC
Great game! It was a lot of fun to catch the souls. I love the huge variety of upgrades after each round. I wish there were walls on the sides, because sometimes they would go flying off the edges. Also I saw them go right through the walls of my buckets at times (which I used to my advantage a few times). Overall, awesome!
AhSpike
26. Apr 2021 · 23:47 UTC
Super fun and addicting. Totally unique idea combining a gotcha game with a catching game, very creative. Good job.
3amsoda
27. Apr 2021 · 01:52 UTC
such a great idea for a game! this is my favorite entry so far its so fun
Virtual Turtle Studio
27. Apr 2021 · 12:24 UTC
I really liked this concept! Very cool idea that works really well. At first I was a little daunted by the 'complicated' looking UI, but it turned out to be very simple! I did play on easy, (and it was very easy), but I kinda enjoyed building an unstoppable army of bois that absolutely shredded every enemy coming their way. The soul-catching part of the game is a nice twist, shifting the focus away from the fights and making the game more of a strategy/idler game. This felt nice to me, but it did cause me to kind of miss the fight happening on ground level, but that's not too bad. Good job on this one, I very much liked it :)
incobalt
28. Apr 2021 · 04:27 UTC
This was a really unusual combination of game elements that I felt worked well. It was fun at least. I do feel that the bodies are a bit too hard to predict, but maybe that's ok. I think you may have a bit of an attention problem with this game, since I mostly focused on the bottom and didn't really care what my recruits were doing. I don't know how you'd solve that, but it's something to think about! I did, often, notice that some bodies just flew off to the side and couldn't be caught at all. That felt frustrating, and if I were playing on a harder difficulty, I wouldn't have enjoyed seeing that. Still, overall interesting :)
🎤 DragonsBeardGames
28. Apr 2021 · 19:57 UTC
@incobalt Thanks for the feedback! Bodies falling off the side was definitely an oversight, Totally forgot to add borders lol. For catching all the bodies, I wanted the player to catch around 80% of them, as I enjoy the chaos of tons of things falling at once and not being able to catch em all.
Mighty Mufflon Games
30. Apr 2021 · 11:56 UTC
I really like the combination of the game mechanics. A big plus for the difficulty option. I choosed easy for my first run, so I could just go for a relaxed experience. Cool idea to use your Kalimba. :)
cavedens
04. May 2021 · 15:55 UTC
Pretty fun overall. Good job
DoctorTM
05. May 2021 · 12:29 UTC
Great compo! Interesting idea, love the ragdoll and the pings :)
marksht
08. May 2021 · 15:54 UTC
This is so funny)
BBApps
08. May 2021 · 15:59 UTC
The abilities were so fun to use and the sound effects brought it all together into an amazing game.