LudumData

Arithmancy by Dining Philosopher

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

Practice your powers of memory and addition by SUMmoning extraplanar guardians to battle the beasts of the forest!

Made for 1920x1080 - full screen your browser if possible.

How to play

  • Each turn you may open two cellars. If their numbers add up to a number on one of the three cards, the entity on that card gets summoned at the second cellar you opened.
  • After that, all your summons perform their actions.
  • Finally, the beasts of the forest make their advance, and you continue to the next round.

End of the game

  • Losing: Rhinos, snakes and spiders try to make it onto your cellar tiles. When five of them are there simultaneously at the end of the round, you lose!
  • Winning: When you have not yet lost at the end of the last round.

Extraplanar guardians

  • Dragon: sturdy and deals 3 points of damage to enemies in front of it.
  • Catapult: lobs a bomb forward that hits multiple tiles - may hit itself!
  • Reverse archer: shoots any enemies to the left of it for 2 points of damage.
  • Fountain: all 8 surrounding allies have a boost of one hitpoint, represented in blue. If the fountain is destroyed, the extra hitpoint disappears at the end of the round resulting in injury and possible death.

Beasts of the forest

  • Rhino: charges if an enemy is ahead of it.
  • Snake: spits venom at enemies in front of it.
  • Spider: moves to a random cellar tile, unless it can attack something to its left or right.
HTML5 (Firefox/Chrome) https://jellenauta.com/games/LudumDare/LD55
Link https://gitlab.com/DiningPhilosopher/ld55-arithmancy
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/arithmancy

Ratings

Overall 905th 3.275⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 984th 3.025⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 255th 3.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 421th 3.875⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 941th 3.075⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 745th 2.5⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 934th 3.175⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 9🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

Asrata
16. Apr 2024 · 16:34 UTC
Very original design. I was confused at first but it made sense later. I enjoyed it good job!
LDJam user 282870
16. Apr 2024 · 16:43 UTC
It took almost five minutes to download this game to play in a browser. That's not good. I understand because it is Unity and it takes up so much space.

I played for 2 mins, after that I just left the game.
Cody Holt
16. Apr 2024 · 16:43 UTC
Interesting concept. I didn't know what to do the first time I played. Wasn't able to summon anything by clicking and opening the cellars. I thought you had to match the numbers or something, but on my second attempt I realized you are looking to add the numbers to create one of the bottom ones to summon it. I don't think opening the cellars to reveal the numbers is adding much besides wasted turns. It was easy to feel overwhelmed because you have to keep track of the numbers for cellars already clicked and waste turns learning the others. I think it would feel better to me if the numbers were revealed and there was a steady tick rate of the enemies moving, so the player could think on the fly about which numbers to combine to summon. Great work.
Bollatix23500
16. Apr 2024 · 16:46 UTC
Great job! Its strange at first, a tutorial could be great to catch up, even with the controls and all in the description, but after that its ok, depends a lot on luck but its cool
Atan
16. Apr 2024 · 16:53 UTC
This game is realy good but my brain is so tired after the jam that i psend 15 minutes even beating eazy dificulty.
Prepe
16. Apr 2024 · 17:00 UTC
Good game, great work on the graphis. A bit hard to start as you do not know any of the tiles and lose the knowledge of the tiles you used so you can't really plan for future moves.
argensis
16. Apr 2024 · 17:01 UTC
The memory mechanics are obviously going to make the difficulty very different depending on your memory (I had to keep notes!), but after that there are definitely interesting decisions between spending turns revealing more tiles to give future options or summoning something now. I think it would be nice if the catapult was more predictable where it would target, and it doesn't feel great to have the number you need randomly squatted by a spider.
Sodoj
16. Apr 2024 · 17:25 UTC
It's a very interesting concept, I haven't played anything like it so far. It could've been amazing, but the RNG factor heavily detracts from the whole experience. The units are interesting on paper and require thinking outside of box, but in practice I barely got use out of any of them. Still, this is a decent attempt and I hope you flesh this concept out more, I can see the potential and I fully believe it will make for a fine game!
Mr.Esport
16. Apr 2024 · 18:10 UTC
Pretty original take on the summoning logic. It does make it harder that there's a lot of luck involved in where you can summon each guardian. Nicely done, I think the game has potential ! ^^
AlvaroRomeral
17. Apr 2024 · 07:33 UTC
Cool idea, I have a great defense in the second line and those damn spiders brake it haha, really fun and entertainen with good focus on maths and strategy. good job!
minjutin
17. Apr 2024 · 08:48 UTC
Truly unique and interesting mix of tower-defence, arithmetics and memory games. I'm actually really impressed. It's kinda hard at first to pick up the game but I feel like after some time it'll become easier to utilize different tactics. This game could also work without the memory part in case someone just wanted to try and come up with winning strategies.
Papaver
19. Apr 2024 · 18:54 UTC
Very original combination of different game mechanics!
I played a couple of times and managed to finish all the difficulty levels. :confetti_ball:
I was really tempted to take notes, but didn't in the end.

I wonder if the game would be even more fun without the memory aspect, so that there is more room for planning ahead. I can imagine that the numbers would then change after an entity landed on it (or when used) to mix the numbers up a little bit during the game. And perhaps substraction and multiplication could be used at some point as well!

Overall: nice entry, well done! :clap:
Kitira
23. Apr 2024 · 14:56 UTC
Very unique idea. Really like the mix of memory, math and defense game. Cool game!
LDJam user 243193
24. Apr 2024 · 11:58 UTC
I can see the idea of this mashup but aside of memorization, it's highly dependant on RNG on you are more likely to miss turns not being able to summon anything. Even if you do summon something, you may not summon the proper one nor at proper spot.