Spellunker by Naamed
Cast some spells & stomp some slimes in your escalating journey to finish up a simple summon spell.
Help Alia outwit her wrying wizardly peers by collecting ingredients to a simple summoning spell, obtaining new powers on the journey deeper into caves.
Gather spell ingredients by exploring the depths of cave or by slaying enemies.
Controls:
Arrow keys or WASD for movement.
Z or K for Jump.
X or L for special actions, by gaining new powers, directional inputs paired with X or L allows different actions.
Bug reports and feature suggestions are highly appreciated, as this was our first game as full team.
Update: Thanks to the feedback, we’ve made few adjustments.
Version 0.2.2 patch notes:
Difficulty fix: Fixed the ingredients not stashing when entering Home, added clearer notifications on the fact that you can stash them when going home.
Accessibility fix: Made the menu buttons work by pressing [Z/J/Y/Enter] on keyboard too, instead of requiring mouse use.
Accessibility fix: Enabled basic controller support.
Collision fix: Slight player hitbox fixes.
Fixed a typo in "Fine Bloddstone".
Fixed player sprites reverting to older sprite sheets.
Version 0.2.1 patch notes:
Fixed few edge case crashing issues, this version has been hidden in light of the later fixes
Version 0.2 patch notes:
Fixed the save rooms being spawned way too far apart.
Fixed the controls on German keyboard layout (QWERTZ) and now allowing for WASD+KL controls instead of Arrows+ZX.
Fixed the lack of resource loss on death.
Fixed the numbers on resources gained/lost not showing.
Fixed the map not getting capped off with a ceiling.
Fixed the Ingredients counter also showing required amount of ingredients to progress.
Fixed 8th quest’s description listing off incorrect ingredients, also a typo in quest 5.
Fixed the player character using sprites from older build's sheets.
Updated the visual effect of resource collection for more clarity.
| PC/Mac/Linux | https://naamed.itch.io/ld48-spellunker |
| HTML5 build has some audio issues | https://naamed.itch.io/ld48-spellunker |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/spellunker |
Ratings
| Overall | 667th | 3.655⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 653th | 3.5⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1120th | 3.06⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 604th | 3.869⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 435th | 4.083⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 573th | 3.577⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 438th | 3.319⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 846th | 3.548⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 35🗳️ | 53🗨️ |
Keep going!
Side note, please make the menu usable with the keyboard because if the game isn't played with the mouse it's a hassle to go grab it every time you die.
- Jumping needs a grace period when falling off an edge. Right now, the player fails to jump if you jump off the ledge a frame too late and that's frustrating (compare this jump tolerance to other game in the genre).
- The concept of the combat is great, but the execution feels poor. I never felt in control of my character during combat. The best bet for making progress was simply to avoid enemies.
- Speaking of enemies, the snake/worm that shoots stars is the bane of my existence. It fires on a seemingly regular cadence (but lacks a tell animation). If you're falling on one from above to try and kill it, it will simply shoot and kill you. The only means of approaching them is from the side, but even then you can be killed by their bullets... Either make their attacks more telegraphed and less frequent OR allow the spear to deflect their bullets.
- I didn't play long enough to get to the point of having magic of any sort. The name implied "Spell"unker making me excited to get some fireballs and ice bolts etc. Don't make me wait for the fun, just give it to me!
- The game's focus of collecting resources is neat, but let the player make some decisions with those resources. Let me choose fire ball/ice bolt/spear/whatever. Maybe you've implemented such a mechanic and I haven't gone far enough in yet. But the policy in games defaults to "get to the fun already"; magic is fun, snakes that kill shoot unblockable stars are less fun :p
Excited to see where you take this since it has a really solid start and big potential!
@paulloz , thanks for pointing out the keyboard control instead of mouse bit for the menu buttons, it slipped our minds, but we'll definitely throw it in the next version! Also, we wanted to improve the variety, but the time constraints of the jam were pretty tough for the project, so it ended up being what it is. The work's not yet over, though, as we want to continue working on it!
@jakubbala , the dungeon is, in fact, semi-auto generated from premade prefabs/chunks, including bits from which the "islands" are made, wall parts for the sides of the map, and things like the ceiling or the side-rooms with the Doors to go home; decorations for both the "islands" and the background are randomly spawned on top of that, and then the enemies.
As the player progresses, new sections are being generated on the fly, so technically it's an endless cave.
Thanks for appreciating the work!
@the-neon-shark, thanks a lot for the elaborate comment! We agree with your points, and most of it was (and still is) in the to-do list along the way, but the time constraints sadly limited the outcome. Still, we do intend to continue improving the project post-Ludum Dare, and we hope to include better combat, tighter controls, more magic (currently there's only two spells, one of which is passive), and especially, fixing the collision detection and issues related to it.
Thanks for taking the time with all this!
However, I didn't complete it. It drags on for way too long considering the levels are very similar to each other and you don't get any new skills later on.
As a suggestion, it would be nice if you could store the ingredients you get by going back to your base, so you don't lose them on your next run.
Good game!
Sadly we ran out of time to properly implement cave variety in generation, but we've cooked up plans on that for a "post-ludum" version.
Gotta say though. That worm. It's my nemesis. It and it's bloody stars. I hate stars now.
It's polish and I really take pleasure to play.
Congrats :)