Necrunmancer by Adam Martin
Background
The heroes are coming again, as the resident necromancer, it is your job to stop them. Run through a gauntlet of battles and summon your monsters to defeat the heroes. The more you win, the harder it will become.
How to play
Battles take place in turns. * First, you will play any cards you can afford from your hand, and then click "End Turn" (you hand will be discarded, so use them or lose them). * Then, the enemies will strike back. They will, generally, attack summoned monsters first, and then the player, if no monsters are left. * Finally, you will regenerate some mana and get a new hand.

Card types
There are 2 types of cards, summons, and utility.
Summon cards
These are your minions that will do your fighting. The have an attack, defense and cost to play. The higher the cost the stronger they may be.

Utility cards
These cards do something to you such as increase your available mana or health. They do not have a cost to use.

Enemies
There are various enemies you will fight, each has different attack power, and some have unique attack styles such as the archer only attacking the player.
| Play on itch.io | https://adam4813.itch.io/necrunmancer |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/necrunmancer |
Ratings
| Overall | 454th | 3.688⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 344th | 3.708⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 930th | 2.979⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 311th | 4⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 877th | 3.208⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 348th | 3.604⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 568th | 3.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
I'd have loved to see some kind of an upgrade or progression mechanic — maybe choose between more hp or more mp every N fights or something?
My only feedback would be to make the art a little bit more consistent, for example, some entities have a white outline, whilst others have none. (also I believe the hellhound is floating)
Great work overall though!
The look of the game was innovative, 3d/2d parallax background on rails was new to me. One way to make the game more innovative would be to have a different resource for playing cards than just mana.
Summoning creatures to fight for you was very thematic. To make the game more thematic I would've liked to see more emphasis on the act of summoning instead of just focusing on what was summoned.
The background and foreground looked great, I really liked how the knights looked as well. Removing the semi-transparent panel behind the cards and splitting the clouds and sky into separate parallax layers would improve the look.
Really good sound track, catchy! Sound effects for all attacks, summons and interactions were good too. I would've liked an ""end turn"" and ""turn started"" sound effect as well.
Firstly, the music and audio are nice and cohesive. They add a nice ambiance to the gameplay experience and go very well with the graphics!
It was fun to try to manage your mana and make strategic decisions in the battles, you have a very solid foundation that I think could be expanded into a cool mobile game!
Overall, your game is fun, geat job! :smile:
Anyway, good job!
My biggest complaint is the card text size is way too small, often unfortunately unreadable. (I played the web build and there does not seem to be a way to make the game full screen?) I have played enough other games of this style to pick up what everything did, but I strongly recommend going bigger on the font sizes!
I have a minor gripe with how it is balanced. There is this sweet spot where the player is just barely getting by or has to not go full overpowered to conserve between combats. I thought that part of the power curve was very fun, as I had to really think about taking blows vs having mana next turn/combat, and what might come next in my deck build. In the jam version this lasts only about 2 or 3 combats max before the enemy creeps over the power level and stomps the player flat (or a bad shuffle kills the run). If this expands, I would love to see the game get rebalanced so those "tight but fair" situations happen more often.
Overall, great job to your team! I had fun with my couple of runs, the sound, music, and graphics all come together to make me feel like a summoner, so this is right on target. You got a great start to something here. :smile_cat:
Glad everyone is enjoying it so far, and we may attempt a balance pass after the jam, stay tuned!
At its core, this combat mechanic of this game is Magic the Gathering, but creatures only, and no control over who attacks what. That lack of control was my biggest frustration, because it didn't let me prevent losing scenarios (like targeting archers first so I can reduce player damage). Even something like having a creature that forces blocks (e.g. Hearthstone's Taunt keyword) would give me some amount of control over attack targets, and that would've been more enjoyable to me.
Again, though, for a jam effort, what you got in there was fun. With some refinement, I could see this being a game I'd pick up.