Circle of Life by UniOwl
You can play in browser here: https://thespinningsofa.itch.io/circle-of-life
Or download Windows version in Download section below!
Idea
Uh-oh! Your safe and sweet magic lab is under attack of monster hordes! Ain't no way you're getting your hands dirty yourself! Let's summon some creatures — they will help you instead!
How to play
Drag jewels to the magic circle and drop them into empty slots.
Drag placed elements again to rotate them.
When two or more arrows with the same color face each other a link between them will appear.
The more connections you have — the more powerful your creature will be!
When you're done drawing your circle, press summon button on the right side of the screen.
Don't let enemies defeat all your creatures, otherwise say goodbye to your neat and sweet magic lab!
Developed by
- Game design and technical art by Vladislav Rusakov
- Lead development by Pacelin
- Art by EklBirifine, MotiSU, tryam
- Sound design and balance design by bulba
- Music was made with use of https://suno.com/
FAQ
Q: I keep getting a rat, what should I do?
A: There are 8 types of summoned creatures in the game. When you pass a certain threshold of stats, you get a new type of creature.
Q: Why gameplay is so slow?
A: The balance has been specially adjusted so that it is easy for a beginner to figure out what to do.
Q: What determines the strength of the opponents and the number of slots?
A: You get score points for defeating monsters. The more points you have, the stronger the enemies, the more cells and the better the runes.
Q: I barely can see the lines on gems!
A: For whatever reason, WebGL doesn't properly render them :( There's nothing we can do just for now. Windows version of the game doesn't have this issue however!
Bestiary
| Portrait | Name | Stats | Description |
| -------- | ---- | ----- | ----------- |
| 
| Ratoroo | Low HP Low ATK Low SPD | Based, has personality of chihuahua. Will bite you without hesitation. |
| 
| Pyrik | Low HP Low ATK High SPD | Very polite, curious and silly. |
| 
| Emo | Low HP High ATK Low SPD | Timid guy who doesn't like violence but does like to eat berries. |
| 
| Freaking Hunter | Low HP High ATK High SPD | Acts like older brother, serious and protective. |
| 
| Bloomba | High HP Low ATK Low SPD | Friend-shaped 💀 |
| 
| Mr. Uptight | High HP Low ATK High SPD | Tense fella, has anger issues. |
| 
| Kusok | High HP High ATK Low SPD | Nobody likes him. |
| 
| Just-a-dragon | High HP High ATK High SPD | Looks wise but has not a single thought behind his eyes. |
Trailer video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd-N8S7QY2I
Have fun!
| Link | https://thespinningsofa.itch.io/circle-of-life |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/circle-of-life |
Ratings
| Overall | 192th | 3.962⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 399th | 3.654⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 160th | 3.892⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 20th | 4.546⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 176th | 4.308⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 447th | 3.446⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 639th | 2.94⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 485th | 3.662⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 143🗳️ | 172🗨️ |
Continuing on that thread, it was tricky to gain an intuition for why my rats were so weak (when I played the game wrong). When I pick up a gem labeled "+10 health", I think that just means I'm about to make a strong rat for free. To signal more clearly whats going on, maybe each gem has two indicators: one for unpowered and one for powered. If your gemstones is unpowered via a line tether, it will get a small (but clear) benefit such as +1 attack. If the same stone is powered/tethered, it will get +8 attack (also clarly indicated on the card). This also could help build a more versatile set of summoned creatures that don't always show up as "1 damage & 1 attack speed" by default :)
Here's some other random ideas:
1. Show a lineup of the next 3 enemy types and a timer of when they'll be arriving.
2. Your gemstones could have modifiers such as "armor piercing" or "flame" or "ice". These modifiers will change how effective your summoned creature is against an upcoming enemy.
3. Certain summoning circles should have good/bad modifiers (e.g. x2 or x0.5). This will make you decide carefully about how you will spend and position your gems. Do you want a creature with double health but low attack? or high attack but low health?
4. Force the player to use all the summoning circle slots. Don't let them horde their favorite gemstones for the perfect moment.
5. Unlock new gemstone types over time (deck-builder style).
Thanks for sharing your project. Excellent work.
Thanks for the feedback!
We are very glad that you liked our game.
I contacted you in private messages on Reddit so that we could communicate more easily and discuss the whole issue.
Thanks for the feedback!
There are 8 types of summoned creatures in the game. When you cross a certain threshold of characteristics, you get a new type of creature.
>How to get more slots?
You get points for killing monsters (they are displayed at the top of the screen). The more points you have, the stronger the enemies, the more slots and the better the runes.
We made a litte Q&A in description. You can check if you want.
Yep, it's a bit tough to pass through rats at the start, but if a player will play a bit longer, he will manage to get more diverse creatures eventually.
Thank you for ideas listed at the end! If we continue working on this game in the future, we'll take a very close look to them.
> it’s unclear how colors is affecting the result?
Colors don't affect the resulting creature. They're used only to make connections. Different colors don't connect.
You get stats listed in hint for each connection. for example, two connections will give you x2 stats, but no connections won't give you anything
Everything else were covered by my colleague. Thanks for playing and giving feedback, it's very useful for us as it is something we can learn from!
Nice job!
From the spinning sofa to the spinning sofa :3
It would be cool to add the possibility to remove runes when you find after that they are not really well suited
Just a small bit of feedback that it was a bit hard to notice the very thin red lines on the gems, so it took me a while to figure out how to connect the lines, but I eventually got it!
Thats a valid point about arrows. For some reason, WebGL build just doesn't seem to render them properly. Win version though works fine. We haven't figured out the reason behind that.
I liked how the monster you summon is based on the stats, and how the maximum possible stats you can get into a summon increases as you kill monsters and get stronger gems. It gave them game a good feeling of progression.
The difficulty curve is a bit intense though. It starts off slow but then explodes rather quickly. I thought I'd summoned a really powerful monster and was ready to see him do some damage but he got obliterated by a giant skunk thing. Seeing that was pretty disappointing. I think you should make the enemies smaller and weaker like disposable mobs so that effect of different stats between your summons is easier to visualize. I think this would make the game feel more satisfying and engaging.
The graphics and audio were very nice and the game felt very polished overall
UPD: did you mean removing stones from slots? We've recieved some feedback about it and I think it's a valid point to let players at least destroy incorrectly placed elements (or remove them back to invertory? idk for now)
---
The difficulty curve is pretty raw, indeed, and it needs correction in the future.
Thanks for all the points you mentioned! We'll try to learn from them to make better games in the future!
It's a fun game with adorable art and nice replayability.
Would be nice if the gem lines were more visible.
Would also be nice if it was easier to tell if two gems can make a connection, I had a few times where it looks like they're generally pointing at each other, but the angle was wrong so i just put in 2 gems for no reason.
It's fun trying to strike a balance between putting out monsters fast or taking the time to figure out how to make more connections, and thus a stronger monster.
Glad to hear that you liked art and gameplay!
It quickly gets to be really difficult to get anything working though, once there's three different colors of gem lane and the bad guys are hitting really fast. If I could pick up and move gems after they're slotted, that might reduce frustration.
I also wish I could see how much health everything has the way I can see their speed and power stats.
Bonus points for the beautiful itch.io page with the little creatures on the bottom
concept is original and nice, having the fight happen in the background while you think of combination is cool
for some reason i couldn't see the leaderboard
Migth be nice to add a tutorial and also to make the lines on gems thicker.
My respect to your artists, great work with character design!
Otherwise, it's a great game.
People have given out a lot of useful critique and I don't really have anything extra o add that hasn't been said already. I can see this being great with some polish, but it's pretty good entry regardless, especially the art!
Спасибо за отзыв!
Будем и дальше радовать вас новыми играми (^///^)
While I didn't understand the mechanics for summoning very well, I have to say that arranging crystals to summon works well to make the auto battling aspect of the game not feel like you're just watching the creatures fight. The whole experience is quite satisfying!