Ancistroides Folus by soundgnome
What a nice day to be outside and catch up on yard work! Too bad these annoying people keep summoning you. The exercise does allow you to mow faster, but if you spend too much time away the sun will go down before you finish!



| Link | https://soundgnome.itch.io/ancistroides-folus |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ancistroides-folus |
Ratings
| Overall | 987th | 3.194⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1076th | 2.861⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 940th | 2.972⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 412th | 3.889⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 651th | 3.639⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 537th | 3.278⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 220th | 3.694⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 772th | 3.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
I really liked all the character designs and the funny premise of a demon who just wants to mow his lawn but keeps being summoned to fix others' problems. The gameplay itself is pretty simple but that's fine since it's secondary to the narrative.
I did have a couple small areas of improvement, mostly relating to polish:
- The character sprite on the lawn mowing section is scaled down, resulting in some artifacts. All the other sprites look very crisp so this one sticks out a bit.
- The transitions between scenes are a bit abrupt. It might help if there was a short crossfade for the audio and/or some kind of simple visual transition like a wipe or fade.
- The summoning situations were all very interesting, with fun characters and situations, but I didn't really get to look through them because I had to click through them so fast! It might be nice if it took a little while for the dialogue to read out, without being able to click through, so you could get the full experience without having to play suboptimally.
I liked the music, especially the contrast between the two phases, good job to the composer.
I drew a doodle of the grass demon:

Nice work for 72 hours!
Sure, it's not difficult, but it is great fun!
I loved the summons sound, and the characters
in the summoned and demon scenes, Funny!
I played a few times just to see more!
Overall, fun stuff! Great concept, lovely art
that suited the concept perfectly and nice sound.
Great Work!

As for audio, I liked the individual tracks, but given that the game jumps from scene to scene so often it was hard for me to truly get into their vibe.
One thing I think would be a great addition to the game would be some more advanced battle mechanic.
Also, I've beaten the game twice: one time always declining the jobs, and the other always accepting them and I've won both times, so maybe some balancing would also benefit the game.
Regardless, it's a good entry so good job!