Spellbook by Paul Nadan

made by Paul Nadan for Ludum Dare 54 (COMPO)

"I have discovered a truly marvelous spell, which this margin is too narrow to contain..." -- Wobby the Wizard

Play as a plucky mage, delving deep into a subterranean dungeon in search of fame and fortune. Cast a variety of powerful spells by inscribing them in your magical spellbook, but be warned, adventurer: space on the page is limited, and you must carefully arrange your spells to avoid being devoured by the dungeon's dangerous denizens.

Instructions

Left click to select a spell (hover to see the area of effect)
Right click anywhere to rotate the letters
Left click in your spellbook to cast the spell
Survive as long as you can!

Credits

Made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 54. Ported to web after the jam period ended without any gameplay changes.

Code: Programmed in Python using the pygame-ce library, with pyinstaller and pygbag used to export builds.

Graphics: Artwork was created in paint.net.

Audio: Music was created with MuseScore 3 and Audacity. Sound effects were generated with SFXR.

Fonts: Viner Hand ITC and SWMeteo.

HTML5	https://superduperpacman42.itch.io/spellbook
Download	https://superduperpacman42.itch.io/spellbook
Github	https://github.com/superduperpacman42/Spellbook
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/spellbook

Ratings

Overall	99^th	3.85⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Fun	92^th	3.81⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	18^th	4.381⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Theme	53^th	4.214⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	238^th	3.262⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Audio	234^th	2.929⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Humor	134^th	2.969⭐	18🧑‍⚖️
Mood	106^th	3.605⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Given		12🗳️	19🗨️

Feedback

Jeremy Ryan

03. Oct 2023 · 01:59 UTC

Had a lot of fun with this one! The main mechanic is really interesting, and it makes for some interesting choices of when to use your limited spells to get the most out of them and not mess up your spellbook too much.

Right now it does feel like it's rarely worth it to intersect words or play them diagonally; the safest strategy is just to stack them to conserve space. It would be neat if intersecting previous spells gave some kind of bonus to incentivize it and make a more interesting crossword (maybe you get a copy of that spell, or it makes that spell fade faster, or you just get bonus points).

Graphics and audio are fairly simple but are cohesive and readable. I like the bouncy characters and the variety of animations for the different damage types. It's a nice touch that the player and enemies actually respect the perspective.

Nice work for 48 hours!

Gamer Fates

03. Oct 2023 · 03:23 UTC

Impressed you were able to squeeze all of these mechanics in just 48 hours. A lot happening at first but after a few minutes the game I was able to get going.

mahalis

03. Oct 2023 · 04:15 UTC

This is terrific! Clever, original, well-executed mechanic—I love that the different words produce appropriate attack patterns for slash vs. jab vs. bisect etc. I couldn’t tell what the difference was between the enemies—was it their attack pattern? Point value? I agree with Jeremy’s point that the crosswording could have used a little more depth, but honestly: this is the compo, it’s super hard to get _anything_ good done in time, and you knocked it out of the park. Bravo.

Rose

03. Oct 2023 · 04:28 UTC

Fitting spells into a spell book is an awesome take on the theme! The characters were cute, especially the bounce. It was fun to see the variety of spells that popped up. One change you could consider is if rotating the words rotated the spell effect as well - that would be a good reason to rotate the words and not just stack them up.

Lachlan James

10. Oct 2023 · 11:00 UTC

Heaps of complexity here. Love the way the spells slowly faded in the book, and the connections between the words and the spell shapes.
Couldn't see a super viable reason to do anything other than just stack my 'crossword' words vertically, but maybe I wasn't playing close enough attention. Crazy depth for 48h. Well done.

KingGurke

10. Oct 2023 · 19:34 UTC

Would be cool if there was more incentive to actually stacking letters, but a really fun game concept either way!

Hare Software

17. Oct 2023 · 17:25 UTC

Truly and amazing entry! Had a lot of fun playing it and kept discovering new features of the game as it went along. Very well made and a very good implementation of the theme. Well done!

mcbombadev

18. Oct 2023 · 00:12 UTC

Got to 5900 points... and totally didn't realize I could stack words until coming back to leave a comment (woops!). It's a cool idea for a mechanic though and something that could easily be expanded on in a post-jam project, such as re-casting or combining the effects of the overlapped spells.

Overall, really nicely put together for a compo entry!

croze

19. Oct 2023 · 02:40 UTC

I really like this one! I got 8600 on my 3rd try, and about to have my partner try it :)
Really well balanced for such a short amount of time, and the variety in attacks was super neat.
Only immediate suggestions are to create an indicator for attacks that provide lifesteal (I could intuitively guess, but people who don't speak english as well might not realize which attacks give health back), and the spellbook/board thingy could use some fine tuning, I found it was either completely unrestricting or game-ending.

Edit: wow I need to pay more attention to descriptions lol, I just realized too that you can stack the words and rotate them. I was just placing them horizontally from top to bottom and it seemed to work out

aucguy

19. Oct 2023 · 03:22 UTC

Innovative take on the theme by incorporating crosswords. I think there is a way to do advanced strategies, but I'm not good with crosswords. I did like the variety of spells to keep the game varied. I also liked how the spells faded and made room for new spells.

Aggrathon

19. Oct 2023 · 07:16 UTC

This was a really fun game. I like the use of two boards to minmax. However, I feel like stacking the words horizontally (and sometimes vertically) is an optimal strategy (would be fun to see what kind of game design would break that). My final score was 15900.

minjutin

19. Oct 2023 · 07:40 UTC

The idea of this game is just so good and innovative, also technically interesting (as a programmer, while I was playing this I was all like "wooow how did they do the tile system very interesting yes yes"). I wish I had made this game, it's so great

LDJam user 268934

19. Oct 2023 · 08:08 UTC

Impressive mechanics. I love the fading effect to create space. The best part is the variety of spells and the hit area, which makes it increasingly puzzling. I see the potential for a mobile hit with this core mechanic

vfqd

19. Oct 2023 · 13:25 UTC

This is a neat idea! I think some way for removing letters would be cool to help survive longer

Sal.Zhang

19. Oct 2023 · 14:49 UTC

Although It's a easy game, but I still love it, I got 14000 points.

cassowary

19. Oct 2023 · 16:22 UTC

It is a really cool idea! I wish there was a way to remove spells without using them. I ultimately lost because I had too many healing spells, but when I used them, they healed like 2 hearts but then I took 3 damage... lol. It's very creative though, I scored 8100 on my second try.