Dark Altar by Adrien Tremblay

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

Dark Altar 👹

A demon summoning game

note: Hi everyone! Will respond to comments is a bit! If the chalices aren't appearing it's because my level generation code is kinda flawed. It's RNG. Just replay the game ('s' will skip a level if you want)

Screenshot from 2024-04-14 21-24-41.png

Basic Premise

The year is 1329. You play as Cedric Leopold, an ex-monk, expert demonologist and founder of the Society of the Dark Altar: an organization dedicated to uncovering unknown supernatural cosmic and forbidden knowledge by means of summoning and communing with demons.

The long awaited total solar eclipse is in the sky. Now is the time to summon demons. Cedric and his followers have assembled in his summoning chamber deep underground where they have gathered their grimoires and drawn a summoning circle in human blood.

They have brought candles, skulls, and human blood. Cedric now has only to arrange them in the proper layout atop the summoning circle to summon each demon. Will he summon Lord Lucifer himself? Will he uncover the secrets of the world beyond this one? Or will this be his downfall?...

Instructions

The goal of Dark Altar is to summon five demons. To summon each demon, the player must place offerings on the altar in the correct layout. The Altar is a 5x5 grid of squares. A layout being the solution to the puzzle is determined by the sum of the value of the rows and the sum of the value of the columns being at the desired numbers.

Screenshot from 2024-04-14 21-03-37.png

The row and column totals are displayed at the right and bottom of the altar respectively. These numbers are red if not matching the desired number, and are green if they are. The target numbers are displayed in white.

There are three types of Offering: - Candle (1 point) - Skull (2 points) - Blood Chalice (+1 point to adjacent non-diagonal offerings)

The candle is worth one point, the skull is worth two points and the blood chalice adds 1 to the value of any adjacted non-diagonal offerings on the altar.

Screenshot from 2024-04-14 21-07-36.png

The entire game is played with the mouse. Offerings are initially picked up from offering spawners on the right. The player hovers over them, clicks, and drags and drops the offering to the desired location. Each level has a set amount of offerings available of each type. The amount of offering available for each type is the exact amount for the puzzle's solution.

After being placed, the position of Offerings can be moved by dragging and dropping them to a different location. They can also be removed from the board by dropping them in the trash.

Screenshot from 2024-04-14 21-12-46.png

When a puzzle is completed, the corresponding demon is summoned. The demon will speak briefly with the player the the player can move on to the next demon. Each demon's summoning puzzle will get progressively harder. The first two puzzles involve only candles, then skulls are introduced, then blood chalices. The levels are randomly generated (the code isn't the best so difficulty isn't very consistent). The fact that the levels are randomly generated gives the game a lot of replay value though!

I hope whoever plays the game has fun! And heres a little cheat code if you get stuck: the 's' key will skip the level and instantly summon the demon.

Playthrough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yIFlQYJm_w

About the game

  • Game was made using the GODOT engine
  • All art draw by me using Aseprite
  • All music made by me using an online sequencer
  • All sound effects generated using jsfxr
  • Source code available on GitHub

Ratings

Overall 50th 3.94⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 66th 3.82⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 108th 3.62⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 28th 4.28⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 154th 3.58⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Audio 83th 3.6⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 48th 3.92⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

MartensCedric
15. Apr 2024 · 01:56 UTC
This game is definitely HIGH mood! epic puzzle
alanbrook
15. Apr 2024 · 03:38 UTC
This seemed fun! Unfortunately it crashed on my browser after a few levels due to high memory usage.
altaf-creator
15. Apr 2024 · 03:53 UTC
Very good! It has a very nice story (even though I think you could display it a bit better). I really love the puzzles and I think it's very fun!

Again, I think you could display the initial story and the instructions / tutorial a bit better than the current one, it kinda is a wall of text but the text is short, so it's pretty fine.

The mood I think is also pretty on-point. Overall, I think this is a very fun game!
sirJupitron
15. Apr 2024 · 10:36 UTC
Solid, really fun game, simple enough to keep going. Nice touch meeting each demon and new rules keep making the game fresh. Thanks
Tata
16. Apr 2024 · 00:41 UTC
I love this kind of puzzle!
And wow, the sfx + the demon appearing caused me jump scares. hahaha
Owtuvammo
16. Apr 2024 · 01:31 UTC
I enjoyed this!

On the puzzle front, I was a bit confused at the solutions. I don't think I ever used a blood chalice? Are there multiple solutions to these?
Rob6566
16. Apr 2024 · 01:44 UTC
I got a jump scare from the first demon too! Great look and feel and music/sfx. I loved the puzzles - interesting and just enough difficulty. You did introduce the chalice in round 4, and it wasn't used until 5. Nice work - I enjoyed this!
Ben Albert
16. Apr 2024 · 01:45 UTC
Really solid puzzle game!! I loved the idea of the chalice but never seemed to have to use it definitely could see some pretty crazy levels with it
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 01:52 UTC
Hi everyone! Will respond to comments is a bit! If the chalices aren't appearing it's because my level generation code is kinda flawed. Just replay the game ('s' will skip a level if you want)
CaptainSpaceCat
16. Apr 2024 · 02:19 UTC
I had a bug where a chalice got stuck floating above the puzzle. I loved the talking demons and the mood!
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:34 UTC
@alanbrook Sorry that happened. I haven't seen this, but on my (super crappy cheap android phone) it doesn't run super well in the browser either. The Music glitches.
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:35 UTC
@altaf-creator Thanks for the comment. I think if I had more time I would have developed more of a back and forth dialogue scene where Cedric Leopold talks with his cult members to convey the story. Will try to do this next jam!

Yep didn't really have time to develop a tutorial :/ Which is why I recorded a playthough as a bandaid solution!
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:36 UTC
@sirjupitron Thanks for the comment and kind words :)
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:38 UTC
@tata glad I succeded in designing a puzzle! :) Thanks
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:41 UTC
@owtuvammo yep sorry about that! My level generation code is kinda bad. So for each level there is a different % chance that each cell will be for a particular type. But it may be that none spawn for the blood chalice for example.

Also I think there are multiple solutions yes!
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:42 UTC
@rob6566 sorry about the jump scare lol!
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:43 UTC
@ben-albert the level generation code is kind of bad! Maybe try playing the game again? YOu can skip levels with the 's' key ;)
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
16. Apr 2024 · 12:44 UTC
@captainspacecat Wow. I've never encountered that bug. Do you remember what you did to produce it? Thanks for the kind words
Luka420
16. Apr 2024 · 13:00 UTC
Fun and clever puzzles! I really enjoyed the game
the4thcircle
17. Apr 2024 · 09:32 UTC
Very fun, enjoyed the mechanic, couldn't figure out lucifer but I'll probably go back to try aain later.
VortexB
18. Apr 2024 · 04:37 UTC
Fun puzzle game. A summoning theme twist to the classic picross style. Very nice
LDJam user 5243
18. Apr 2024 · 07:35 UTC
Nice idea for a puzzle game. At level 5 things got a lot harder quickly. A bit of game juice would've kicked the overall feeling up a notch but nonetheless, a nice entry!
p-r
18. Apr 2024 · 14:21 UTC
Love it, quite fun
digital bacon
20. Apr 2024 · 03:31 UTC
I don't think demonic sudoku was on my bingo card, but here we are :rofl: Cool little puzzle game, nice graphics, music really sets the mood. Great work!
magicdweedoo
20. Apr 2024 · 07:16 UTC
fun game! i like the demon graphics
jdah
20. Apr 2024 · 18:52 UTC
also got jump scared by the first demon I summoned :D I really like the demon art. nice job!
Linky439
21. Apr 2024 · 21:53 UTC
Fun idea, I initially thought it would play more like a Picross but there is more freedom here. I like your take on the theme, but I feel the randomized requirements to finish levels are a bit too random for their own good ^^ On my first playthrough, I never had to use the chalices (only ever had one on the final level anyway) and when replaying it and skipping all the way to the final level, Lucifer only asked for a grand total of 1 candle :D

This could overall be expanded in a nice standalone game, with handmade puzzles (and why not randomized ones as a bonus) and more demons and new objects. Fun game, congrats!
LDJam user 4886
22. Apr 2024 · 08:38 UTC
Funny how this Ludum Dare has spawned so many puzzle-based ideas! Nice twist on the picross genre!
betovf
23. Apr 2024 · 17:09 UTC
Great game! I am really impressed by the music, which online sequencer did you use? Good job!
Papaver
23. Apr 2024 · 20:14 UTC
Nice puzzle game!
I was a bit surprised that the puzzles didn't have a unique solution. It was a fun twist with the skull of 2 points and the blood chalice. My main strategy was greedy: start with the skulls at high numbers and in the end move some things around to fix the last numbers.

I like that you took the effort drawing different demon faces, even though they only have a short appearance.

Overall, well done!
Loka
28. Apr 2024 · 13:05 UTC
Very innovative and interesting mechanics! Well done!
Wuppos
29. Apr 2024 · 08:15 UTC
Someone commented on my game that we had very similar games, so I came to check out your game. :D I really liked it! The puzzle mechanics work very well and really give you that puzzley-sudoku feel. I also really appreciated the story, which added a nice immersive touch which my game is sorely lacking >.< This was a lot of fun! Thanks for making this game :)
🎤 Adrien Tremblay
04. May 2024 · 20:48 UTC
@wuppos Damn yeah your game loops pretty similar haha!! Will defo check it out. Great minds think alike