Rogue Scribe by Enryu Mirik
Parkour action first-person game about your spell collection. Collect and steal spells to complete your spell collection. Manage your inventory with new spells to acquire even more and become the greatest mage! In the inventory, you can choose your current spells and assign them to keys.
Made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare Compo 58
| Link | https://github.com/mirikKun/Mirik_LD58 |
| itch.io | https://enryu-mirik.itch.io/rogue-scribe |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/rogue-scribe |
Ratings
| Overall | 77th | 3.542⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 94th | 3.396⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 25th | 3.938⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 74th | 3.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 180th | 2.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 150th | 2.286⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 152th | 2.978⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 58🗳️ | 1🗨️ |
The level design encourages exploration. I especially liked the room under the ceiling and the dungeon with the gravity skill.
I understand time is limited (dude, it's also a compo!), but I think it would be better to ditch some mechanics to polish the existing ones. You probably already know this. Of the 9 existing mechanics (if I counted correctly), I'd keep 3-4 and focus on polishing them. I'd also add at least some sounds and maybe some simple graphics, since all game elements are important.
The goal could also be more clearly defined. For example, highlight the place you need to reach or, through a simple narrative, hint at the need to collect all the spells.
Another minor detail: I missed a gravity effect timer and a hook target indicator (at least a simple icon change). And why didn't you use left and right mouse buttons? It would have been much more convenient.
I'm not sure it's possible to develop this game into a full-fledged, large-scale game within a reasonable timeframe and resources as an indie project. Perhaps if you focus on one killer feature, you could make a cool small indie project. But it's still a ton of work.
I'm not very knowledgeable about action games (maybe you were thinking of something like Ghostrunner), but to my taste (because I love puzzles and exploration), this game would make a great puzzle platformer or Metroidbrainia. I recently discovered a great game in this genre with a relatively small scope – [Chroma Zero](https://store.steampowered.com/app/3121470/Chroma_Zero/).
[In my last jam](https://maximkolesnikov.itch.io/sizematters), I also experimented with some spatial mechanics.
Overall, I really liked it! Special like for the dash effect withh FOV.
This kind of movement has potential, I like going fast !
Most of my issues are with the lack of polish: the text needs an editing/proofreading pass ("Tutoril"?), the game really could have used some sound (even placeholders), and the "absorb spells" mechanic is in desperate need of some feedback (I had no idea it *worked* the first time until I checked my inventory!) There ought to be a more visible "absorption field" around the player, maybe a sound effect for a successful capture, and *definitely* pop-up text indicating the spell has been absorbed.
Another small quibble I have: since the left mouse button isn't used for anything (that I can tell), it really ought to be mappable. While I know combat isn't the focus of the game, Q and E make poor fire buttons for first-person action; I'm used to "click to shoot" (and I'm certain others are as well).
One last thing: I didn't play through the whole thing, but the lack of healing and checkpoints was one of the reasons I declined to explore it in full. I'd prefer not to be sent all the way back to bottom in the event I get ganged up on enemies. ^_^;
I liked the short tutorial and later on openness, of what spells to grab to get to other areas
kind of reminds me of a flash game Robot Wants Ice Cream, though there were general upgrades instead of spells
I see @ryusui already described issues I was also experiencing so I'm going to refer to that comment - though I'm going to highlight lack of sound effects (even simple ones), poor keybindings (left and right mouse button should be bindable, also keys right of WASD make good binds rather than shift or ctrl) and if I had a nickel for every typo I noticed I'd have two nickels-- which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. Right?
I didn't get all of the spells because of Ctrl-W keybinding and I didn't feel like going through jumping through platforms or into the pit -- movement requires polishing to make it fun and not a chore