The Book of Summons by TROGDOR 20X6
A puzzle game where you have to decipher a spell book and summon all kinds of monsters. This is my first game jam, the game is built using Phaser (a js library) and Tiled. All sounds are from Zapsplat and the music is "Giant Wyrm" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com).
The book:

The summoning circle:

SPOILERS!!! Solutions: https://geoffreylhart.gitlab.io/zenithref/demos/ld55/solutions.txt
Bug Change Log:
4/15/2024 10:52 PM EST: Fixed X Contrast Issue (changed from black to white)
4/16/2024 11:00 AM EST: Added solutions.txt link in description
| Link | https://geoffreylhart.gitlab.io/zenithref/demos/ld55.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-book-of-summoning |
Ratings
| Overall | 324th | 3.8⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 716th | 3.32⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 240th | 3.771⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 22th | 4.54⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 138th | 4.375⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 43th | 4.313⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 11🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
little clues in the scirbbled out part,
You Win
Go Back
seemed more like a warning than a choice tho.
I woudl have really liked to see a clear button in the book. I wanted to right click and wipe away the rune i had placed.
Really like the art-style :D
That's funny, we had the same approach for the game theme, but with two very different results. It seems sizing puzzle games correctly can be challenging, especially with just a weekend to do everything. Unfortunately, I only managed to uncover one summoning, and I have no clue about any other approach than randomly testing combinations to discover the other summons.
Yes I noticed as well. I anticipated there'd be some difficulty in the players trying to read my mind, effectively, but not by enough. I didn't want folks to miss the content I worked on, but I also didn't want it to be so easy it didn't feel like a game. But I at least tried to allow for brute forcing by some amount.
I promise there's a tenuous clue for every single rune/summon, and that's only thanks to putting in that bare minimum effort. It's hard to think of good clues since that sometimes means more assets you need to do (how do I make it clear what this rune means? by making 3 other summons with that same property? by just telling them outright like the others? etc), and it feels like you're wasting precious time just sitting down and thinking instead of working.
The atmosphere is excellent, and it really feels like you're experimenting with summoning.
I didn't find everything on the first try, so I used the solution for ******** and ******. This gave me 10/10 in incovation but 0/7 in solved pages...?
In any case, great work!