Elemental Summoners by Memnarch

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

Concept
Play as a wizard in this autobattler card game. Summon golems of different elemental types, build up your deck or fuse cards to create stronger variations. Fight.png

Each elemental type has different pros/cons in terms of attack damage, health and attack speed. Cards with higher values within the same element are better and fusing cards (costs 2 runes) of different elements allows you to get the best of both.

Elemental stats

|Element|Health|Damage|Attackspeed| |-------|------|------|-----------| |Fire | - | + | = | |Water | = | = | = | |Air | - | = | + | |Earth | + | = | - |

Fusing cards
Fusing allows you, for a price of 2 runes, to combine two cards and get one with both aspects. Fancy a fire golem with faster attacks? Just combine a fire and air one and watch your opponnent vanish! FuseSteps.png

Deck building
After each round you can decide to buy new cards or sell older ones to optimize your deck. At the top select what you want to buy, at the bottom select what you want to sell. The difference is added/removed from your existing Runes. ShopScreen.png

Runes
Killed enemies drop runes. You can either collect them by walking over to have them at hand for the current round (Rerolling hand or fusing) or let the game autocollect them at the end before the shop opens. Rune.png

Controls
- WASD to move your wizard - Mouse to control cards (drag & drop)

Ratings

Overall 681th 3.48⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Fun 549th 3.48⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 465th 3.48⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Theme 676th 3.56⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 802th 3.38⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Audio 683th 2.938⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 951th 2.364⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Mood 873th 3.261⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Given 37🗳️ 47🗨️

Feedback

gamesplusjames
16. Apr 2024 · 09:36 UTC
This is a fun idea! Great job :)
Suksu
16. Apr 2024 · 09:37 UTC
Fun game, kind of confusing when buying cards, felt like I didn't get the correct cards into my deck. Other than that a nice and chill game, well done.
LDJam user 282870
16. Apr 2024 · 17:42 UTC
The game looks like it could be fun if we had more time.

The graphics set off my UPS because my computer was drawing so much juice. Valheim does the same thing so you are in good company

I stopped playing after that.
Landerack
16. Apr 2024 · 17:46 UTC
Love the game feel, a little easy once you get that a tank in front is the solution to every problem, but I'd love to play this with like different spawnpoints and different difficulty elements :)
unchain
16. Apr 2024 · 17:49 UTC
Good, I like the graphics, the small effects is cute.
🎤 Memnarch
16. Apr 2024 · 17:55 UTC
@beebster-games thanks for trying out our game. We hope to develop it further and release it outside the jam at some point. Then, hopefully, with a regular settings menu to disable features like lumen. It helped us on the light side a bit compared to static backing at the cost of some performance.

@landerack thansk for the feedback. Yes, the balancing is a bit...in favour of the player at the moment. We hope to continue developing this jam entry outside of ludum dare and make it a full game with a better balancing :)
Cievers
16. Apr 2024 · 17:56 UTC
As you mentioned, the first few waves are quite difficult, and it feels very dependent on the luck of the draw with the initial golems you get, and at that point fusing feels quite expensive which is too bad as this interesting mechanic might be forgotten. However, when I got some strong earth golems going the battle was on, and quite satisfying to see the payoff of my little golems at work!
Landerack
16. Apr 2024 · 17:56 UTC
@memnarch awesome, well do let me know if you have like a need for a tester, I like the concept :)
Timur_Bahadir
16. Apr 2024 · 18:17 UTC
I really like the style of the graphics :smile:
Tek Atavuli
16. Apr 2024 · 19:07 UTC
Thanks to everyone playing and rating our game! We appreciate it a lot. There's a lot of ideas we have swimming around for enemy wizards, balance, art, music, and (best of all) more monsters. We're looking at adding some accessibility options along with what @memnarch has already said. Appreciate you all!
LDJam user 386314
17. Apr 2024 · 13:46 UTC
good game
Flying Butter Studio
17. Apr 2024 · 16:34 UTC
Great work! A little bit difficult at the beginning but nice to play! Thank you for this entry! :smile:
Abynaut
17. Apr 2024 · 20:26 UTC
This was really cool! I love the concept of fusing cards to make augmented versions of other cards. Pretty novel! This would be cool to explore in a larger game concept for sure!
TheSmellofOxygen
18. Apr 2024 · 03:27 UTC
What a cool concept! I loved fusing elementals. Beat it and played again immediately. Would love more information on the elementals' stats, or what my enemy's strategy might be.

The biggest pain point was the music. It was pretty discordant.
LDJam user 280707
18. Apr 2024 · 05:17 UTC
I kinda just spammed units and killed everything for something like 8 rounds until I got steamrolled.. Didn't really understand exactly what was going on, but the graphics are nice, and the idea is pretty cool.
felixx
18. Apr 2024 · 05:48 UTC
The look is great, but the gameplay is kind of unbalanced (which I can totally understand in game jam 😂)
bravelytyped
18. Apr 2024 · 05:56 UTC
the UI and some of the materials in this game are pretty nice looking! i think the rules and more complex mechanics went a bit over my head unfortunately.
Persepolis
18. Apr 2024 · 17:59 UTC
Love the game so much! But there might be a problem is the game balance? I can always easily collect the best armies and it is easy to win.
🎤 Memnarch
18. Apr 2024 · 18:03 UTC
@persepolis yup the game balance is a bit off. During development I ran into the case of either risking it being to easy at times or way to hard so i choose the first outcome for this jam. We want to make this a finished game and are working/refining the game systems and in the process redoing the balancing.
ScurvyStevon
19. Apr 2024 · 01:48 UTC
Bruh we got the same game! love autobattlers. 10/10!
LDJam user 355344
19. Apr 2024 · 17:52 UTC
Not bad
Smidgens
27. Apr 2024 · 22:20 UTC
I don't know why exactly but I love the occasional sped up music. It's like the game is trying to snap itself awake at important moments. Neat little entry. For someone like me who doesn't get up to many card games I appreciate the straightforwardness of the loop (sell, buy, reroll, fuse). I also kinda love that your wizard is absolutely helpless without his cards. And you don't just show the game over screen right away when your last card goes down. You
actually get to see the enemy units finish your guy off as a final insult. Fun stuff.