Genus Arcanus by petit

[raw]
made by petit for Ludum Dare 56 (COMPO)

The modern magus doesn’t have the time or gold to prepare proper sacrifices. Instead, use your RAST (Rapid Ascension Sacrifice Tool) to breed creatures full of latent magical energy.

Careful though! Sacrifice too early, too late, or too often, and your mana will disappear.

Screenshot at 2024-10-05 16-13-57.png

INSTRUCTIONS:

Click creatures or press [TAB] key to view their properties.
Click the kill button or press [K] key to kill creatures and harvest their mana. Creatures with better genetics yield more mana.
Press the next button or press [N] key to breed a new generation of creatures.
Press the hot, cold, dry, or wet buttons ([H], [C], [D], or [W] key) to change survival rate of creatures. Creatures are more likely to live in their preferred climate.

Ratings

Overall 319th 2.447⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 317th 2.263⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 193th 3.211⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 258th 3.105⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 303th 2.421⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 253th 2.222⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 261th 2.25⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 285th 2.667⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 10🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

Ember44
06. Oct 2024 · 23:58 UTC
I love the feeling of taking care of my little guys, and then brutally murderering them (the surprise of the blood splatter when I first sacrificed one was great). Unfortunately the game kept crashing/erroring out on the second generation; otherwise I would've been very curious to figure out how the whole system works.

During what little I was able to play, though, I was definitely confused about my goal. Am I trying to breed the best possible creature? Get maxiumum mana? Something...else?
LightningST
07. Oct 2024 · 00:21 UTC
Am I supposed to ascend?
candlesan
07. Oct 2024 · 05:05 UTC
I liked managing the people, clicking on them, and trying to figure out how to breed them. I wasn't sure if there was an end goal that I was working towards, but it was interesting to breed them nonetheless
Sviborg
07. Oct 2024 · 08:20 UTC
I like this type of games)))
dhim
07. Oct 2024 · 13:16 UTC
I played multiple run, it was enjoyable to spam the kill key, and have the blood spatter live to tell the story.

After some reruns I managed to ascend in 4 kills. Is that good or bad ?

I just let them live multiple iterations until I had a bunch of chosen elect! Maybe some additional stats, or metrics to follow between run would help ? Even some random "event" (probably don't even need to be related to what the player is doing, like: People Fear You, People have forgotten about you, A rumor that ...) would be nice to increase the interactivity, making people question what they are doing! Changing the background color with the weather condition would be cool to have more visual.



Some bugs/comments:
- The vocabulary is not obvious at first of the gradation of gene level ( mundane < prococious [sic] < sensitive < awakened ? )
- The blue on black for the cold preference is too illegible.
- I tried several rounds, sometime the game freeze at some point and I can't get nowhere.
- The difficulty is lacking, I managed in one run to finish by killing enough on the first screen, or everyone later on. I haven't find a way to lose.
dooskington
07. Oct 2024 · 19:35 UTC
Interesting concept, but tough to grasp.
The game eventually froze though when I moved to a next generation.
PlasmaPuffs
08. Oct 2024 · 02:27 UTC
The concept was really creative, however I found a the controls (like what they did) mildly confusing. Is your goal as the player to get as much mana as possible, or to ascend with the least amount of sacrifices as possible? Also is it me or sometimes the game freezes when I try to click on 'Next'?
SdCorpse
09. Oct 2024 · 19:16 UTC
What shoud i actually do?
Pimping
12. Oct 2024 · 08:50 UTC
Interesting concept, also the description looks quite good, keep going!
bentglasstube
13. Oct 2024 · 05:16 UTC
A very ambitious and complicated game for a jam. I really liked all the little details that went into this but in the end it seemed like the best option was to just breed them for a few rounds to get really strong guys to sacrifice. Certainly an interesting concept that could be expanded upon with more gameplay.
Sam Bigos
15. Oct 2024 · 10:33 UTC
I love the idea of breeding the optimal cultists to sacrifice, but the gameplay was very impenetrable. I wasn't sure what I was meant to be doing and since breeding a new generation seems to have no penalty, the best strategy seems to be breeding to get 4 Chosen and then sacrifice them? Can it be completed with fewer than 4 sacrifices?
nrankin13
25. Oct 2024 · 21:53 UTC
Game kept locking for me on the second generation. It's a neat concept, though!