Ars Goetia by Nekuake
Summon demons with Sigils to get stronger by stealing their souls!
In this game, you'll have to face two phases per round, starting at the preparation phase. Each phase has a fixed duration so try to get the most out of them!You can check the clock in the upper-left corner.
On the preparation phase, you can place the sigils on your basement floor to summon demons by clicking and dragging them from the book. *Some sigils even have enhacing effects on your fighting skills! *

On the fighting phase, demons will emerge from these Sigils, challenging you with some souls as a reward. You will want to keep an eye on your health, it's in the upper-right corner.

Get increasingly stronger and richer to get even better Sigils.
Controls
W/A/S/D: Movement
Drag&Drop: Place Sigils
Versions
Up to v1.0.2 was made BEFORE deadline.
v1.0.3. dont!! : - Don't play this version, it's broken but we can't delete it for some reason.
v1.0.4, 17-04-2024: - Attack speed broke just before deadline. Normally we wouldn't fix this but it lead to a heavy imbalance, which made the game almost unplayable. You are free to play either version if you don't feel this fair.
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ars-goetia |
Ratings
| Overall | 525th | 3.614⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 929th | 3.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 736th | 3.205⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 410th | 3.891⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 48th | 4.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 237th | 3.773⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 936th | 2.405⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 184th | 4.022⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
Other than the difficulty issue, I think this is incredible! Super solid result for a jam and the most polished game I've played so far. Amazing work!
The gameplay is however really easy to exploit (just put all sigils at the same place), it would have been great if there was a zone around each sigil where you couldn't put another one (the stronger the sigil, the larger it is).
It would force the player to organise and make little pentagrams by himself.
Overall great game!
Thanks a lot for your feedback! We wanted to include waaaaay more content but a jam's a jam after all and we barely had any time to spare ahahaha but it's something we are looking forward to!
@saffwong
Thanks for playing!!
@monika
Thanks for giving our game a try!! Yes, there are some internal rules to ensure that things don't go too out of control. For example, atk speed has a minimum delay of 1 sec (the time it takes to at least finish the animation). But
@pedryx
Congratulations!! It may look easy but you have to be good at dodging and to have luck in the Sigils. Thanks a lot for playing all the way through
@jamieok
Thanks! Yeah, balancing the different things has been one of the main issues we had (and have), but since the time was running out, we embraced chaos and the feeling that you are getting stronger. Not perfect at all but time was running out!
@aby
Thanks a lot for playing! Our idea was to limit the zones where you place the sigils but it was pretty challenging to implement and balance so we had to discard it for the moment. We will probably revisit it. Love that you enjoyed it!
As for the gameplay.. it's simple but fun. After a while it gets a bit broken if you manage to stack a lot of sigils at which point you can basically one hit everything. It also gets a bit laggy at the later stages where a lot of enemies are spawning in. Maybe the amount of enemies could be limited, to prevent this.
All in all I love what you made here. Be very proud of yourself!
But again, love the visuals and with some balancing changing this could easily be a fantastic game!
Would be great to be able to skip the shop section once you've already made your choices, as well as a bit more variety in enemies in a post-jam ver. Great work!
The timer sound is my favorite part