Gacha Summoning by DaylonWilkins

[raw]
made by DaylonWilkins for Ludum Dare 55 (COMPO)

output.gif Many people love to summon from gachas, but don't want to spend the money to do so. Well now you can get your gacha fix for free!

Gacha Summoning starts you off with 20 free summons, as everyone loves those free promotional summons. However, they don't last forever! Thankfully, you can earn gems by winning battles. Discover powerful synergies to make the most overpowered party imaginable! Summon creatures, change up your party, and climb as high as you can!

HOW TO PLAY

Upon starting the game, you're brought to the main menu. It is highly recommended that you take advantage of your free summons before challenging the first floor. Remember to modify your party so that you actually use your newly summoned creatures. You can head to your party menu at the bottom right. From here, you can adjust your party by selecting a creature and then clicking the desired party slot (A, B, C, or D). Be mindful of your party's order, as some abilities are order-dependent! You can also fuse duplicates, which will increase a creature's base damage (star * rank), along with strengthening their ability (1*s excluded). You do not have to fuse, as it is valid to have multiple of the same creature in the party.

Each battle takes place in one round. Your creatures use their abilities and attack from right to left. Your total damage must exceed the enemy's HP to win the round, and winning all three rounds will advance you to the next floor. Each battle is fought directly after the other, so pay attention to your party's composition to make the most out of successive battles! On the main menu, you can switch the difficulty of either of the first two battles, which will greatly increase their gem rewards. Be careful not to make a fight too difficult that you lose the run!

Elements: * Fire (combos with Wind) * Wind (combos with Fire) * Water (combos with Shock) * Shock (combos with Water) * Void

Enemies take half damage from their matching element, and are weak to their combo element, taking double damage. The Void element has no weaknesses or combos. Combos are executed when a creature attacks after another creature. For example, if the first creature attacks with the water element, and the next creature attacks with the shock element, then that shock damage is doubled due to the combo.

The gacha rates are as follows: * 5: 1% * 4: 10% * 3: 19% * 2: 30% * 1*: 40%

CHANGELOG

Version 1.0: Original Upload

Version 1.1: Added battle animations for clarity

The Web version is using v1.1. Both versions are functionally the exact same, although it's a bit harder to understand the battle phase in 1.0, thus the added animations. Version 1.0 remains available for download for the purposes of scoring, and the original commit may be used to build v1.0 for other platforms.

Ratings

Given 4🗳️ 0🗨️

Feedback

Linus Lindberg
15. Apr 2024 · 14:37 UTC
This is really impressive for a compo game. I loved buying the card packs and fusing cards. I just wish they had some character art, even if it was just stick figures.
LDJam user 266940
15. Apr 2024 · 21:31 UTC
Thank you! I also wish they had some art lol, but just ran out of time.
NBumgardner
28. Apr 2024 · 20:37 UTC
Clicking around the menus was interesting, and the wave-blue-ish background is fancy. The text was also easy to read thanks to the panels, even without outlining the font.

I attempted level 1 a few times unsuccessfully, which makes me wonder what level 2 would be like. Given more time, adding audio would be nice to help communicate the phases of gameplay and know the severity of losing a run. At first I thought I would get to retry and rebuild my party after a loss, and was confused when my 4-star cards were missing. Fusing everything does take some time for each new run, but maybe I am missing out on the strategy on choosing what to fuse.

A web build would also be helpful to get more eyes on the game. I liked the variety of card abilities, how did you come up with them?
LDJam user 266940
29. Apr 2024 · 09:34 UTC
@nbumgardner Thank you! There is a web build available at the very top of the page. It's right above the title for me on both Firefox and Chrome. I would have loved to add audio, but of course time constraints get the best of us all. Same with balance.

For general strategy, you generally want to use higher-star creatures. The free 20 summons will guarantee at least 2 creatures of at least 3*, which should help get past the first floor. From there, summoning and fusing become the bottlenecks, as the builds scale exponentially while the enemies scale linearly (didn't have time to balance!).

For the card abilities, I truly added the first things that came to mind. I only had 2 hours left and didn't have any card abilities implemented, so I had to just add whatever first came to mind. I think they turned out pretty well with that in mind!
NBumgardner
30. Apr 2024 · 23:45 UTC
Thanks for pointing out the web build and intended strategy! I usually ignore the builds embedded into Ludum Dare because they tend to have issues with audio not playing or low performance in general, and go with an itch.io web build if it has one linked. Giving this one a try it never loaded in Chrome, and gave me some console warnings which may or may not be normal. I'm glad the download worked great for us both though.

![screenshot_2024-04-30_gacha-summoning-console-warnings.png](///raw/6a0/63/z/64e6f.png)