The Ritual by stmatn
== Description ==
The ritual is a deck building / push your luck game in which you try to summon an elder god.
Select a summoning ritual and chain random spells from your spell book into magical phrases. At the beginning of the game your pell book contains mostly corruption spells and a few useful ones. Between phrases you can purchase additional spells. Between rituals you can get even better spells. Also each succesful ritual gives you a mysterious creature that will help in the next rituals.
Have fun and watch your sanity!
== Important notes ==
- You need a workung Java 9 JRE or JDK to un the game
- You need to unpack the zip-file before starting the game
== Gameplay ==

| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/the-ritual |
Ratings
| Overall | 234th | 3.271⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 192th | 3.333⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 187th | 3.283⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 183th | 3.563⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 306th | 2.688⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 231th | 2.813⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 188th | 2.761⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 188th | 3.25⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 28🗨️ |
I had a couple moments where I was on my very last spell in the phrase or I was sitting at 6 corruption where I was like "I just need 1 more mana!" or something, then ended up getting it haha, that felt really good
Overall, really well done
I'm sure it's all a very well-thought-out game, but I feel like it's just a mess because I haven't been told or shown what anything does. I think that's my only complaint, I'm sure I would've enjoyed it if I just knew what I was doing.
I like that you can discern the different spells by sound after a short time (or at least know if something is corruption or not ^^)
I also got the feeling that this game was planned if "Push your luck" had been chosen as the theme instead ^^
If there was more time, I believe the biggest gain would have been by adding just a few extra screens explaining when something happens, like when you hit the 7th corruption, instead of just entering the shopping section
And then maybe leaning a bit more into the "push your luck" aspect, like giving extra benefits for good spells while you are at 6 corruption, if you choose to draw more spells instead of ending the phrase
I mean, which performer of dark arts could resist to "maybe" gain even more power when their sanity is at risk already? :D