Summoner's Law by RubixNoob13

[raw]
made by RubixNoob13 for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

Bugfix #1: 04/15/24 9:06pm CDT - Hide exit button from web export to avoid game freeze - Reset global variables after final scene so restarting should work correctly

Bugfix #2: 04/15/24 9:29pm CDT - Adjusted summoner spellcasting during battle scene to consume mana at the start of spell rather than the end (functionally identical, only a visual fix)

Bugfix #3: 04/23/24 9:00pm CDT - Re-added a missing texture (that as far as I can tell was unused anyway). The HTML5 export still seemed to work just fine without it, however upon playing the Windows downloadable version, the game would crash upon entering the house for investigation. This should be fixed now!

Summoner's Law is an RPG-esque game where you play as a Summoning Enforcer for the magical court.

You are tasked with investigating alleged improper summonings, collecting evidence, battling with offenders as needed, and ultimately making sure that offenders not only show up for court, but are also held accountable for their crimes!

WASD movement, mouse to click on-screen buttons for interactions.

Opting out of graphics and audio because we only had about a day and a half of not working on IRL projects.

Graphics are from Kenney, and the music was generated with AI assistance.

However, we still think it's a vibe and you should check it out!

Small note: A few of the timings on when music completes / when animations finish seem to be a bit off in the HTML5 version versus the Windows export, but nothing major.

Windows instructions: Extract the zip file, there should be a .exe file (the Godot game engine executable) and a .pck file (the actual game data). Run the .exe from the same folder as the .pck file to play the game.

Thanks for playing!

Ratings

Overall 1152th 2.841⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1163th 2.568⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1132th 2.614⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 825th 3.357⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 561th 3.048⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1031th 3⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 20🗳️ 24🗨️

Feedback

WMute
16. Apr 2024 · 03:21 UTC
You have created even a cut scenes! Great job!
drahmen
16. Apr 2024 · 04:21 UTC
Really ambitious project for a jam. Quite a lot here, but lacks quite a bit of polish for a lot of the basics. Solid entry.
Kilthorne
16. Apr 2024 · 04:39 UTC
I got magical judge dredge vibes. Could use more player choices during combat, change in speed of mana regen, protection and debuff spells.
laszlotimar
18. Apr 2024 · 08:42 UTC
I had a special problem, cause I played it in one of my classes in the university and when I had to listen I missed the game story and the intruction so I had to reload the webpage. The core idea is simple, but very good, I waited something after the judgement, but it ended suddenly :(, I would have played with it more. Great work!
🎤 RubixNoob13
22. Apr 2024 · 07:46 UTC
@wmute Thanks! I wanted to do more with Godot's animation player, so I decided to try to make some cut scenes. I think they turned out pretty nice.

@drahmen Thanks for the feedback! We had a lot more we wanted to do, but didn't get to work on it for the full time due to real world obligations.

@kilthorne I didn't think about it at the time, but magical Judge Dredd is kinda the vibe isn't it? We were planning on having multiple investigations and battles with varying difficulties, with some equipment and/or spell upgrades. I was definitely thinking about a heal spell as well, but if I gave that to an enemy, I think it would have just made the fights drag out too long for a jam.

@laszlotimar :rofl: You should pay attention in class, there will be time to play LDJam games afterwards! As I said above, we had plans for several fights of varying difficulties, and the initial idea would be that once you brought the summoner to justice, whatever demon/monster they summoned would be sitting in the "jail" near the judge, slowly corrupting him, and then the big boss fight would be you versus the corrupted judge. But with like, 12 minutes left until the submission deadline, there wasn't anywhere near enough time to add in a few more fights and have the judge suddenly be a boss where it made any kind of sense, so we slapped the "Thanks for Playing!" on it and called it a jam game :slight_smile:
GodDoesPlayDice
22. Apr 2024 · 08:53 UTC
Pretty big story for a ludum dare game!
RossK
23. Apr 2024 · 23:47 UTC
The scrolling text went too slowly and too long for my taste, but I loved just about everything else. AI-assisted or not, that music goes hard!
🎤 RubixNoob13
24. Apr 2024 · 00:34 UTC
@goddoesplaydice Yeah, we've done quite a few jams and we're still working on finding the sweet spot of scoping what we can do in the time we have and also trying to have some type of story, instead of just like, generic platformer and/or pew pew game :slight_smile:

@rossk We were trying to find a nice balance between scroll speeds. Initially it was about twice as fast, but I'm sure some people would have not been able to keep up. We could have also broken it into smaller bits, or (what I wanted to do but ultimately ran out of time) added a scroll speed option. But, since I hard coded the duration of the cut scenes, they wouldn't have fit properly with the variable text speed, unless I tinkered with adjusting the animation player speed as well. And again, I ran out of time to code all that :rofl: :timer:
Also yes, I think the music goes hard as well. I spent like 10 minutes just sitting in the menu after we got the game submitted just to listen to the track
Mibi88
24. Apr 2024 · 16:13 UTC
It's a nice game, the story is ok... But the graphics and the sound are really good!

The controls are really annoying on an AZERTY keyboard (maybe prefer using the arrow keys instead when there is no menu to change the controls), so I found it very hard to play. I found the movement of the player annoying, but I understand that it adds an old school vibe to this game.
TikTak Gacha
27. Apr 2024 · 14:28 UTC
that was good. But the text scrolling is too slow.
I liked the fight with the fireball abd lighting.
Jajo
30. Apr 2024 · 18:14 UTC
Fitting this style of rpg into the time given is very impressive. I think the slow text speed could have been improved by controlling the speed with the mouse.
quasilyte
30. Apr 2024 · 18:24 UTC
I thought that battles would be turn based. :D
It took me a while before I realized I should be doing something.

My only real nitpick is the font selection. Or maybe it's a problem of ALL CAPS. It was hard to read the text most of the time due to the lack of spacing between the words.

The game is pretty short, but at least it means one can beat it. :D