Genus Arcanus by petit
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.

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.
| Link | https://gitlab.com/andrew.dudash/genus-arcanus |
| Link | https://petit-dejeuner.itch.io/genus-arcanus |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/genus-arcanus |
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🗨️ |
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?
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.
The game eventually froze though when I moved to a next generation.