Welcome to the Summoner's Shop by citsua

Welcome to your new shop, Summoner. Every day, customers will come to you with requests, from the silly ones to the radically life-altering ones. Use your knowledge to find the right demon to summon to help them. Craft soul essences and perform demonic rituals!
How to summon a demon:
1) Read its book entry for instructions

2) Mix its soul essence

3) Perform its ritual

And voilà!
Post-jam update: bugfixes, QoL changes, ability to sell ingredients to avoid softlocks
Both the post-jam and the original jam version are available on itch.
A game made in 72h by Citsua.
| Link | https://citsua.itch.io/welcome-to-the-summoners-shop |
| Link | https://citsua.itch.io/welcome-to-the-summoners-shop |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/welcome-to-the-summoners-shop |
Ratings
| Overall | 73th | 4.16⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 169th | 3.94⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 152th | 3.9⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 26th | 4.5⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 207th | 4.26⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 431th | 3.304⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 113th | 4.125⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
@istade Thank you for your feedback! Not sure if you noticed, but you can open the book at any moment, even during a ritual. You don't necessarily have to memorize the steps beforehand.
Everything seems to work well and is super polished. From a comfort of use perspective, it would be nice if you could click on the "See Page X" reference in the book to go to that page right away.
Because there are no time constraints and no penalties for failure, the whole thing is just a very chill experience.
I love the summoning instructions, and how it feels they are going to be UI-less, and just be natural game actions.
The "End the day" action can be triggered tooo far away from the bed. I pressed E wanting to bring up the book, and accidentally ended the day. Maybe you could make it also a button that you have to hold for 2 seconds for it to actually trigger, to avoid accidental triggers.
I also love that there is no time limit, so you can take in the wholesomeness and lore of the game without stress.
I love that the book stays on the page you last used.
Nice touch with the ingredients to pick up in the wild, as a way to add a reason to explore the world every now and then. Nice touch with the door bells that lets you know if anybody came into the shop. It's also an activity to do while the customers arrive, and makes the game feel more alive.
Would be nice if the scroll merchant left your place after you bought everything they had to sell. I guess you lacked time.
I didn't find it super intuitive that you could go to the prev/next page by clicking on the pages, initially. Maybe some sort of cue or affordance would help the player discover that.
Would have also been very cool to see the demon leave the room and leave with the customer. I guess time also played on this.
The UI was very functional and intuitive (except for the page turning thing). I feel having to open the Ingredients drawer is a step that is unnecessary. It could just be open, and when the player starts mixing, it hides away.
Nice humor touches to the dialogue. Dialogues are concise and rewarding enough.
Sometimes I find myself trying to shake the phial... and confused about why I cannot grab it and start shaking it... then I realise that I didn't click the "Start mixing" button first. Seems like there's no reason why I couldn't just grab it and start mixing without having to click the button.
Unfortunately the game runs a bit slow on my browser (wish I could turn shadows off). Making the game slow enough that I don't feel like continuing to play after Day 4. Even if I am curious to know what would happen if I summon Admodeus.
I really like the way we have to summon the demons. I loved having to wait for 15 seconds for Belial, doing nothing.
Standing ovation for Citsua!!! My favorite game this jam. Thank you for sharing 💙
Mixing was a fun mechanic, although I think it would be better to click the ingredient tab to open it, rather than it automatically opening when you hover over it. There were a few times I accidentally clicked the top ingredient because of this.
Having a few more items to pick up would help make exploration feel more worthwhile. Currently it feels like it's only really there to avoid softlock. Otherwise, sleeping and checking the shop the next day always felt like the better option.
The camera felt a bit jittery, although that could just be the web version.
I really liked the characters, all the customers and demons had unique personalities. The character interactions had a lot of charm to them.
I enjoyed the summoning rituals too. Getting feedback for each step helped both the atmosphere of the game and the player quality of life.
Overall I'm very impressed, all my critiques are minor quality of life suggestions. I enjoyed playing it enough to finish the game. I think there's a lot of potential here, great job! :)
That happened to me too
But after I figured that out, it was great! Such a chill vibe in the forest, was nice to walk around every day while looking for ingredients. I loved all the little storylines with all the customers and the shopkeeper. Summoning itself was also fun! I really liked that style of "do these normal actions but in a specific way".
I think my only other complaint is that, I sometimes had trouble knowing if I had the correct demon for someone or if I had to wait for a new demon. I mean it's part of the game, but it was also rough making an incorrect guess in the early game when money is low, then losing a lot of it on a failed summon... Thinking about it now, it was mostly the kids 2nd request that tripped me up, the others were pretty clear.
Minor issues aside, this is a great entry and a very fun game. Nice job!