The Art of Pixel Summoning (TAPS) by DigiDuncan

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

Learn about the monsters in this world, and summon them to aide you in battle! A puzzle-y type-matching monster fighter by DPN Games!

  • Guess what two elements the enemy is composed of.
  • With the elements you have, try to make the best match up!
  • If you win, you'll get an element the enemy is made of!
  • If you lose, you're out of the tournament!
  • Fight a monster with all ten elements unlocked to win!

This was our first game in Godot! It's also our first serious game as a team.

SPOILERS: The type chart can be found here!: https://pasteboard.co/KlRcPPEkzuWx.png

Game made in Godot, sprites made in Aesprite, backgrounds made in Krita, music made in ProTracker!

Ratings

Overall 930th 3.25⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 775th 3.25⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 694th 3.25⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 135th 4.25⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1017th 2.769⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 725th 2.729⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 611th 2.979⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 937th 3.173⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 45🗳️ 36🗨️

Feedback

JohnKoop
12. Apr 2024 · 01:48 UTC
Hello!!!
Dorren
16. Apr 2024 · 03:37 UTC
Love the take on the theme, fun to try different combos and tons of charm, great job!
Merb1000
16. Apr 2024 · 03:45 UTC
This was fun, I enjoyed seeing what different combos created and what they were good against. It was also very frustrating; I sometimes lost the game and had to restart even when I had an 89% chance of winning. After so many battles in a row, it is probable to lose one, and having to go all the way back to the start is very disheartening. Id' recommend including a life system where you have to lose ~3 battles before restarting.
I hope you make more games in the future and that this is just to start. I'd recommend that you focus on playtesting later projects with other people. When testing our own projects, its easy to forget what the experience of a new player is like. I made a similar game for this jam involving combining things to summon new things and I found it to be very easy. My playtesters, on the other hand, found it difficult since they knew nothing of how the internal code worked. So, I changed a bit of how my game worked and I think that made it more enjoyable. I think that proper playtesting would have revealed the possible frustration in this game for players who do not know all the best combos by heart.

Good job with making this! I hope that you continue creating in the future.
Waterspirit
16. Apr 2024 · 03:52 UTC
I love the concept and the perspective with the book as the menu. I felt like I could usually understand what the elements of the enemy were but even knowing what they were, it was hard to know what the counter element was even after several playthroughs.
coolasjake
16. Apr 2024 · 04:44 UTC
Yo this is so fun - art is a bit jank but I *think* I lost to some poisonous lightning. What the hell beats poisonous lightning???

Exactly - nothing.
nathmate
16. Apr 2024 · 05:01 UTC
Guessing the right element counter and still having a chance to lose the fight felt bad. Cute concept overall.
Tesseus
16. Apr 2024 · 05:02 UTC
I appreciate the simplicity. Creating monsters based on 2 elements was interesting and collecting more elements was a great loop!
Kirass
16. Apr 2024 · 21:49 UTC
Interesting game! I like it!
roburab
16. Apr 2024 · 22:36 UTC
The furthest I got was with a string of 40% win chances :D

Getting to try out new combinations and trying to guess whether they would work was fun. Would have been even better if you get more than 1 chance and get to experiment some more. Nice game overall.
Bx007
17. Apr 2024 · 04:06 UTC
The idea is impressive! Nice game~
Polina Makarova
17. Apr 2024 · 11:11 UTC
Despite the simple visuals, the combination of objects is quite cool. fun to play! :3
kristinamay
17. Apr 2024 · 11:51 UTC
There is the kernel of a really good game in here! I love these sorts of combining games (I made one a few years ago for a past LD) but they're really hard without a lot of testing I think. I was mostly stuck looking at, like, an... eclipse? and then thinking, "what would beat an eclipse? maybe... lightning and... fire?" but with some more polish and balancing this would be really fun. Good work!
Yuu
17. Apr 2024 · 14:52 UTC
Very fun. I loved the fact that the sprite was based on the first element you use when summoning and the textures with the second element. Enjoyed trying to figure out the elements charts. I felt bad losing on a 89% while waiting for the rng to spawn the last element needed.
Overall , good job on that game!
OlavDeng2
17. Apr 2024 · 15:40 UTC
Interesting game, reminds me a lot of pokemon. I think its a great idea! would be better if you had more than one chance to experiment, its quite hard as it is.
Pakoo
17. Apr 2024 · 22:59 UTC
Yeah I do wanna say, that we should've added a life system or something to make it a bit easier. Since it was only one "tournament" or level, we wanted to make it somewhat difficult to beat at least. Also after fighting an enemy we should've put up a name like "icy bottle" for something like ice and lightning so you knew what was and could make assumptions for the rest of the game / next playthrough. We really appreciate the feedback and love for the game already, and now that we know how Godot works, we might even continue the progress of the game after the jam.
onqdll
18. Apr 2024 · 00:16 UTC
![Screenshot_66.png](///raw/f48/d5/z/643ea.png)

It is surprisingly fun! I managed to get quite a good chances.
treefds
18. Apr 2024 · 12:10 UTC
Simple yet interesting game. The sprites are nice too; different graphics for 100 combinations must have taken some time to make, I really appreciate that!
Chrispy977
20. Apr 2024 · 07:03 UTC
The level of complexity here is really interesting. Looking at the chart and seeing all the possible combinations is wild. Giving some better level of feedback to help the player gather more info about the fights would be good, or maybe some way to understand what kind of monster is before you.
Very impressive for you first LD jam.
Jamie Whitmarsh
20. Apr 2024 · 21:47 UTC
I love the fun of combining the different elements. Reminds me a lot of Kirby 64. Fun to play! Did not win, hah!
I like that your starting elements are randomized, as well!
Ava Skoog
01. May 2024 · 15:15 UTC
I won! Really like the concept. In practice it was a bit confusing to tell, using common sense, what some of them were supposed to be, but after a while I started picking up on the game's own logic I felt. Like how the half spheres seemed to just mean "pure essence of element" unless I misunderstood that after all 😅

I like that it was randomised since I had to replay a few times before I got anywhere. Would've been more boring to redo the same set of steps every time by memorisation without understanding, so that was good.

The graphics mostly do their job well (besides the confusion I mentioned) but are a bit inconsistent in terms of line widths and so on. The music is nicely tense and the sound effects are fun :)

It was nice, and with some polish and clearer representation of the elements I think it could be really nice.
Ava Skoog
01. May 2024 · 15:15 UTC
*(managed to double-post, sorry about that)*