Conjurer's Cup by dreamscale

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

Sports are cool, but why play them yourself when you can summon minions to play for you?

screenshot.png

Instructions: instructions.png

Minions: - Runner: Runs straight ahead, attacking an enemy minion once. Doesn't hit the ball. - Keeper: Patrols vertically, hitting the ball towards the opposing goal. Doesn't hit minions, except for Fetchers. If two Keepers run into each other, they both die. - Fetcher: Chases after the ball, hitting it once. Doesn't hit minions. - Pike: Remains stationary, hitting incoming enemy minions twice. Doesn't hit the ball.

Ratings

Overall 169th 3.5⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 156th 3.476⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 57th 3.905⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 43th 4.167⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 226th 3.19⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Audio 241th 2.738⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 14🗳️ 20🗨️

Feedback

SparkyDoc07
17. Apr 2024 · 06:01 UTC
THIS IS SUCH A BAD GAME IS SO DIFFI-oh wait I'm winning JK IT'S SUCH A GOOD GAME!!!

Lol but in all fairness, I'm enjoying the idea. This feels like foosball with a twist, and I'm all for it. It's a good strategy game, just 2 ideas from my end:

1. Keepers need to be balanced: they are presently too strong and can only be killed by a minion which has no other purpose except to run forward. Consider reducing keeper speed and increasing size.

2. The game field could be larger: Currently, I find the field too be too claustrophobic as soon as I have more than like 4 minions deployed. Consider increasing size. This plays well with reducing keepers' speed.

3. Spawn times must be reduced: Spawning minions takes quite a long time. This is annoying when paired with the slow mana refill. Moreover, if the enemy deploys a fetcher or a runner then you need to wait for quite a while before a pike gets deployed.

With this fixed, this would be a really enjoyable game.

P.S. I see that your Smart balance metric on LDJam is quite low. Consider giving feedback on other people's games to increase your games chance to get feedback.
nathmate
17. Apr 2024 · 06:04 UTC
Interesting game, feels like a cross between foosball and pong. The mana income felt a little too low, most rounds you can only get a single unit out. I can see how the different units counter each other, but there's usually only one or two on the field at any point, it would have been nice to have more interacting at once.
jcoates
17. Apr 2024 · 23:00 UTC
It's fun. Like foosball with a unit summoning twist. I appreciate the instructions. Good work!
EddyR
18. Apr 2024 · 02:42 UTC
Love this version of foosball. Its crazy how good the CPU is!!
Bewelge
18. Apr 2024 · 17:03 UTC
Really innovative idea! Mana felt a bit too slow, making it a little random who scores but with a little more balancing this could be really fun!

For a game jam this is awesome though, well done!
RPGWanderer
18. Apr 2024 · 17:11 UTC
The computer is cheating. It must be, no ? Well... I guess he's better than me :D Your game is fun and it would be nice if we had some kind of visual cue over the units bar to show what kind of movement an unit does while we're in the learning phase :)
candlesan
19. Apr 2024 · 03:51 UTC
Wow! Super fun game! It took me three attempts to finally get a winning strategy. I started with 2 Keepers, and basically whenever I had mana I would make a Keeper, and if I had extra mana I would make a runner and I just had to learn and practice the timing to remove enemy keepers. I did not feel I had to use the Fetcher's or Pike's much but I can see that with some tuning they could become quite important to the game. I love how simple the mchanics are and how it's based on simple real life games like air hockey and foosball. Had a great feel to it.
DenisMarasan
19. Apr 2024 · 09:47 UTC
Wow, this one is fun to play! Great job!
Weine
19. Apr 2024 · 09:59 UTC
Interesting idea and good execution. I did find it a bit too random without direct control over things, though.
nsadie
19. Apr 2024 · 19:45 UTC
Pretty interesting idea! Feels like you very little control, but there seems to be some strategies that work well. I managed to win!
Jonathan Vinesar
21. Apr 2024 · 04:43 UTC
This game was a game that made me so frustrated that I had to keep replaying until I won, but I could not win. Interesting idea that would be fun with pvp.
Harmadillo
21. Apr 2024 · 09:54 UTC
Fun game. The balance between strategy and chance seems to be weighted towards chance. Or it could be the computer is just better than me.
Rakowu
21. Apr 2024 · 16:36 UTC
I think it's cool that each player has their own ability and you can take each other out. It's a great mechanic.
tetrapteryx
22. Apr 2024 · 19:57 UTC
Great concept! I'm just as bad at this as I am at real life sports, but it's much more enjoyable. I wish mana regenerated a bit faster, or that I had a more direct way to fill it, because it feels bad when I start a round already doomed and can't do anything about it until it's too late.
frozenfire92
24. Apr 2024 · 00:57 UTC
This was such a fun take on air hockey! I really liked the concept and think with some tweaking it could be a cool little game :smile: Keep on making games!