i decided to replay the game, and i really enjoyed the artstyle change from topdown to 2.5d, really reminds me of don't starve. The magic upgrade system was very confusing at first but i very quickly got the hang of it!
my only major gripe so far is there's no way to regenerate health, maybe it should slowly tick up if you don't take damage for a while?
Cool game! It was satisfying to see the enemies flock together, to eventually kill them with piercing. Also nice touch on the collection effect and keeping the camera inside the map border. Very fun art style aswell. I am looking forward to playing more from you guys!
Loved the spell system! Art is pretty with a distinct style. Of course there is nothing like using some bounce/stretch to save time otherwise spent animation sprites :D
I managed to get level 4 meteor and level 7 orbiting fireballs. Pretty difficult to get any further because all damage is permanent.
I love the art style. It’s super cute and the palette is harmonious, vibrant and yet not so hard on the eyes. Animations are simple yet fitting and cute.
The game is well polished and executed.
The upgrade mechanic is a nice idea, but it could use more polish. E.g. it was getting slightly annoying to craft more and more of the complex ingredients. E.g. clicking 35 times to make 35 magma for a meteor upgrade was a bit tiring. The icons were readable, but tooltips with ingredients names would be helpful. Also some animations on what is happening would help with player onboarding how crafting works. E.g. have a little fire and earth meet at the magma icon and combine there.
Overall I really liked this one, hope to see more after the jam.
cool as hell little game! reminds me a lot of turnip boy and vampire survivors :)
i really dig the games artwork and artstyle, especially the animations, as even though all the enemies are single images, the movement effects makes the enemies just as alive if they were animated regularly. I really like all the cool particle and magic effects, they really help your actions have impact on the world.
i feel as if this game could seriously use a tutorial for how combining and upgrading spells works, i had no idea how upgrading spells worked, as well as some iframes
Id say this game has a tonne of potential, and i have high hopes for this game :)
Saw a screenshot of a death screen full of mobs and at that point I knew I had to check this out!
This game has really pretty visuals, great job on the art. Sound design feels very satisfying! <3
I am a little confused on how the crafting works and feel like I'm trashing my materials by clicking them, yet I do figure out how to get the flaming orbs of death & destruction and become a demi-god most of the time. ;)
The game plays like a spiritual brother to my entry., which means Its also a type of game I really really like to play :D
This game's real fun, even in the prototype stage. Speaking of: AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING, THE ICE ELEMENT IS NOT YET IMPLEMENTED. I asked Lunar to confirm this; they say a patch is incoming after the jam. This +/- list looks worse than it is, but there's a lot worth talking about:
+ Really fun game loop; I would play more of this. The elements feel fun and distinctive + The art is gorgeous + There's quite a few interesting upgrade paths to follow - Enemies are fast enough that when they spawn in front of you, they're nearly unavoidable. Having no way to heal makes this especially painful. - Ability balance needs refinement. To whit: - Effects that slow/knockback are useless, because enemies push each other along even if you slow the frontrunners. This means that water and earth are trap picks for the first element, while wind doesn't do enough damage to keep up with just picking fire and oneshotting everything early on. - The slow/knockback behaviour means that 2/6 of the available upgrades are not valuable. The optimal build is to take 4 levels of pickup range and get ring of fire to level 8 ASAP - The levelup system triggers on EXP gained, but you can't upgrade anything unless you have the resources for it. You'll skip a number of levelups simply on the basis that you can't buy anything yet and have to wait. - At higher levels, the upgrade system requires a ton of clicking. Others have mentioned the issues with costs/combining, but making 62 mud for that next upgrade gets rough on the hands.
Love the feedback, especially regarding the balance issues! There's definitely a lot of room for improvement there so the insights are super valuable. Thank you for playing!
Being able to have different starting points was nice. The collection and colour of the elemental pickups is also satisfying. The empty spaces where circles could be in the element tree looked like there might be more upgrades to unlock, but combining the tier 2 elements didn’t give me anything new. Played a couple times.
There’s no real indication for when you take damage other than your health bar going down, so it can be hard to gauge how close to enemies you can get away with. It’s hard to say how valuable any of the upgrades apart from pickup radius I and the center one is.
A very beautiful vampire-survivor like with a lot of charm and interesting level up system.
The leveling up really confused me at first but after reading the tooltips and the game page a bit and experimenting I managed to figure it out fairly easy. I gotta say I really like the system, gathering elements and combining them to form other ones to unlock and level up powers is really cool. However I DO NOT like the fact that I am punished and lose resources for incorrect combinations. It feels too heavy and goes against the spirit of experimentation in my opinion.
Also I'm not sure if it's a bug but after you run out of a combined element you can't right click to create it you have to manually combine the 2 base elements again so I found myself keeping at least 1 of them in stock to avoid this.
I wish there was an indicator to show you if you had unlocked everything or not. I feel like I'm missing something in the bottom right but then the whole upgrade screen can be panned around so for all I know I'm missing tons! I couldn't figure out anything to combine with the ice at the very bottom and I swear I tried every combination.
Also some indication of your level/time survived/enemies killed etc would have been cool then you can compare your scores with others.
The art is just absolutely fantastic. I love the main character design and the enemies all look great. The background/level design is full of charm and is nicely detailed. The UI and level-up screen looks great and the effects are fantastic.
The music was kinda quiet and not much to comment on to be honest. The SFX were nice especially the collection sound, it was very satisfying, maybe a level-up sound of some sort would have been nice.
Later on my game became completely unplayable with the hundreds of characters and effects on screen it just lagged SO SO much and ultimately got me killed when I lag spiked into a massive group of enemies and died. A way of healing would be nice :)
Overall a very fun game, I absolutely love vampire survivors and this brings a really nice and unique twist to the forumla. I'd love to see this developed and the spell system turned up to 11, like Infinite craft where you can make anything haha (maybe not that far)
Would love to revisit if there are more updates :)
I haven't played too many games like this before so I was quickly overwhelmed. Then I got the hang of it, figured out the upgrades and had a great time with it. Then I was overwhelmed again, but much later. I might not have tried all combinations but it felt like I was experimenting enough and some elements, like steam or ice (idk if that's supposed to be their name) seemed useless.
Edit: I found that purchasing a spell that requires a secondary element, it consumes all of it, not only the necessary amount (eg. buying the first meteor wile having 11 magma will consume 10 earths and all 11 magma) Is this intentional?
Thank you for the feedback! The amount of upgrades and elements is pretty limited right now but we're working on adding more once the jam is over so we hope you'll try it out again when that time comes :)
The core concept here is neat. I figured a handful of collection range upgrades + basic attack upgrades + ring of fire + some magma fireballs for extra clearing. Ring of fire in particular is probably responsible for some 99% of enemy deaths.
One annoyance is how you can't figure out the additional elements other than with trial and lots of error, and you lose your elements in the process; the reason why Doodle God works is that you aren't really punished if you don't find out a correct element (and it also had hints). I would prefer if you didn't lose the elements or if any combination you already tried would become disabled. On that note, a UX nitpick - complex elements that ran out no longer have "Create" RMB button working for them. Either way, I found Steam/Cloud/Snow/Mud/Magma and I haven't noticed any other elements combinations, despite seemingly trying all combinations (Snow in particular seemed like a dead end).
Also, while there were quite a few upgrades, many of them boiled down to "stack an attack performed every X seconds". Aside from the general damage + fire rate upgrade and collecting radius upgrade, I'd like to see more upgrades directly affecting the player character and main attack, e.g. health restoration or chaining.
One more thing: it would be nice if triggering the upgrade screen also caused some knockback near the player, so that the player doesn't end up returning to the main game too abruptly.
The artstyle is neat and mostly clear regarding what happens in the game (though at some point the enemies swarm so much the player doesn't have particular strategic decisions left). The music is fitting. At some point the game lagged, though I think that's a given once you advance far enough in this genre (especially with web builds).
Pretty nice overall, but I feel the element upgrades system could use some extra UX love.
I thought "I got this" then the giant red eye thing showed up lol, then hoards of little black things. Good job on the enemy variety! I kind of just clicked randomly on the spell upgrade page but I do that in vampire stories too so... haha. Good work Lunar and Solar.
Thanks for the feedback! I wanted to get around to adding a bit more feedback to the level up screen, but as it goes with game jams there wasn't enough time! For the time being I've added an explanation in the game's description if you'd like to check it out again.
Game's quite fun, although the upgrade system was a bit to understand at first, but I loved the fun little animations and the cat :D Keep up the good work!
This is good!! I didn't quite understand the upgrade system and i think it would be better if the attacks were automatic. The game looks good and plays smoothly though! really good job! keep making games!
Thank you for the feedback! I went ahead and included a short explanation of the upgrade system in the game's description if you're interested in giving it another try!
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i decided to replay the game, and i really enjoyed the artstyle change from topdown to 2.5d, really reminds me of don't starve. The magic upgrade system was very confusing at first but i very quickly got the hang of it!
my only major gripe so far is there's no way to regenerate health, maybe it should slowly tick up if you don't take damage for a while?
Cool game! It was satisfying to see the enemies flock together, to eventually kill them with piercing. Also nice touch on the collection effect and keeping the camera inside the map border. Very fun art style aswell. I am looking forward to playing more from you guys!
Loved the spell system! Art is pretty with a distinct style. Of course there is nothing like using some bounce/stretch to save time otherwise spent animation sprites :D
I managed to get level 4 meteor and level 7 orbiting fireballs. Pretty difficult to get any further because all damage is permanent.
I love the art style. It’s super cute and the palette is harmonious, vibrant and yet not so hard on the eyes. Animations are simple yet fitting and cute. The game is well polished and executed.
The upgrade mechanic is a nice idea, but it could use more polish. E.g. it was getting slightly annoying to craft more and more of the complex ingredients. E.g. clicking 35 times to make 35 magma for a meteor upgrade was a bit tiring. The icons were readable, but tooltips with ingredients names would be helpful. Also some animations on what is happening would help with player onboarding how crafting works. E.g. have a little fire and earth meet at the magma icon and combine there.
Overall I really liked this one, hope to see more after the jam.
cool
cool as hell little game! reminds me a lot of turnip boy and vampire survivors :)
i really dig the games artwork and artstyle, especially the animations, as even though all the enemies are single images, the movement effects makes the enemies just as alive if they were animated regularly. I really like all the cool particle and magic effects, they really help your actions have impact on the world.
i feel as if this game could seriously use a tutorial for how combining and upgrading spells works, i had no idea how upgrading spells worked, as well as some iframes
Id say this game has a tonne of potential, and i have high hopes for this game :)
Saw a screenshot of a death screen full of mobs and at that point I knew I had to check this out!
This game has really pretty visuals, great job on the art. Sound design feels very satisfying! <3
I am a little confused on how the crafting works and feel like I'm trashing my materials by clicking them, yet I do figure out how to get the flaming orbs of death & destruction and become a demi-god most of the time. ;)
The game plays like a spiritual brother to my entry., which means Its also a type of game I really really like to play :D
Well done!
Thank you for the feedback! I still have to get around to checking out yours, hoping I'll be able to get to that tomorrow :)
This game's real fun, even in the prototype stage. Speaking of:
AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING, THE ICE ELEMENT IS NOT YET IMPLEMENTED.
I asked Lunar to confirm this; they say a patch is incoming after the jam.
This +/- list looks worse than it is, but there's a lot worth talking about:
+ Really fun game loop; I would play more of this. The elements feel fun and distinctive
+ The art is gorgeous
+ There's quite a few interesting upgrade paths to follow
- Enemies are fast enough that when they spawn in front of you, they're nearly unavoidable. Having no way to heal makes this especially painful.
- Ability balance needs refinement. To whit:
- Effects that slow/knockback are useless, because enemies push each other along even if you slow the frontrunners. This means that water and earth are trap picks for the first element, while wind doesn't do enough damage to keep up with just picking fire and oneshotting everything early on.
- The slow/knockback behaviour means that 2/6 of the available upgrades are not valuable. The optimal build is to take 4 levels of pickup range and get ring of fire to level 8 ASAP
- The levelup system triggers on EXP gained, but you can't upgrade anything unless you have the resources for it. You'll skip a number of levelups simply on the basis that you can't buy anything yet and have to wait.
- At higher levels, the upgrade system requires a ton of clicking. Others have mentioned the issues with costs/combining, but making 62 mud for that next upgrade gets rough on the hands.
Love the feedback, especially regarding the balance issues! There's definitely a lot of room for improvement there so the insights are super valuable. Thank you for playing!
Being able to have different starting points was nice. The collection and colour of the elemental pickups is also satisfying. The empty spaces where circles could be in the element tree looked like there might be more upgrades to unlock, but combining the tier 2 elements didn’t give me anything new. Played a couple times.
There’s no real indication for when you take damage other than your health bar going down, so it can be hard to gauge how close to enemies you can get away with. It’s hard to say how valuable any of the upgrades apart from pickup radius I and the center one is.
Thank you for the feedback! The element tree is pretty limited at the moment but we're hard at work on adding more :)
A very beautiful vampire-survivor like with a lot of charm and interesting level up system.
The leveling up really confused me at first but after reading the tooltips and the game page a bit and experimenting I managed to figure it out fairly easy. I gotta say I really like the system, gathering elements and combining them to form other ones to unlock and level up powers is really cool. However I DO NOT like the fact that I am punished and lose resources for incorrect combinations. It feels too heavy and goes against the spirit of experimentation in my opinion.
Also I'm not sure if it's a bug but after you run out of a combined element you can't right click to create it you have to manually combine the 2 base elements again so I found myself keeping at least 1 of them in stock to avoid this.
I wish there was an indicator to show you if you had unlocked everything or not. I feel like I'm missing something in the bottom right but then the whole upgrade screen can be panned around so for all I know I'm missing tons! I couldn't figure out anything to combine with the ice at the very bottom and I swear I tried every combination.
Also some indication of your level/time survived/enemies killed etc would have been cool then you can compare your scores with others.
The art is just absolutely fantastic. I love the main character design and the enemies all look great. The background/level design is full of charm and is nicely detailed. The UI and level-up screen looks great and the effects are fantastic.
The music was kinda quiet and not much to comment on to be honest. The SFX were nice especially the collection sound, it was very satisfying, maybe a level-up sound of some sort would have been nice.
Later on my game became completely unplayable with the hundreds of characters and effects on screen it just lagged SO SO much and ultimately got me killed when I lag spiked into a massive group of enemies and died. A way of healing would be nice :)
Overall a very fun game, I absolutely love vampire survivors and this brings a really nice and unique twist to the forumla. I'd love to see this developed and the spell system turned up to 11, like Infinite craft where you can make anything haha (maybe not that far)
Would love to revisit if there are more updates :)
Was looking forward to this review. Loving the in-depth feedback you give! Thanks for playing!
Nice little game
Thank you for playing :)
nice
Thanks for playing!
I haven't played too many games like this before so I was quickly overwhelmed. Then I got the hang of it, figured out the upgrades and had a great time with it. Then I was overwhelmed again, but much later. I might not have tried all combinations but it felt like I was experimenting enough and some elements, like steam or ice (idk if that's supposed to be their name) seemed useless.
Edit: I found that purchasing a spell that requires a secondary element, it consumes all of it, not only the necessary amount (eg. buying the first meteor wile having 11 magma will consume 10 earths and all 11 magma) Is this intentional?
Thank you for the feedback! The amount of upgrades and elements is pretty limited right now but we're working on adding more once the jam is over so we hope you'll try it out again when that time comes :)
The core concept here is neat. I figured a handful of collection range upgrades + basic attack upgrades + ring of fire + some magma fireballs for extra clearing. Ring of fire in particular is probably responsible for some 99% of enemy deaths.
One annoyance is how you can't figure out the additional elements other than with trial and lots of error, and you lose your elements in the process; the reason why Doodle God works is that you aren't really punished if you don't find out a correct element (and it also had hints). I would prefer if you didn't lose the elements or if any combination you already tried would become disabled. On that note, a UX nitpick - complex elements that ran out no longer have "Create" RMB button working for them. Either way, I found Steam/Cloud/Snow/Mud/Magma and I haven't noticed any other elements combinations, despite seemingly trying all combinations (Snow in particular seemed like a dead end).
Also, while there were quite a few upgrades, many of them boiled down to "stack an attack performed every X seconds". Aside from the general damage + fire rate upgrade and collecting radius upgrade, I'd like to see more upgrades directly affecting the player character and main attack, e.g. health restoration or chaining.
One more thing: it would be nice if triggering the upgrade screen also caused some knockback near the player, so that the player doesn't end up returning to the main game too abruptly.
The artstyle is neat and mostly clear regarding what happens in the game (though at some point the enemies swarm so much the player doesn't have particular strategic decisions left). The music is fitting. At some point the game lagged, though I think that's a given once you advance far enough in this genre (especially with web builds).
Pretty nice overall, but I feel the element upgrades system could use some extra UX love.
Wow! Thank you for the in depth feedback! I'll definitely take these points into account for the upcoming update :)
I love this! Huge fan of the graphics
Thank you very much!
Cool game!
Thank you for playing!
I thought "I got this" then the giant red eye thing showed up lol, then hoards of little black things. Good job on the enemy variety! I kind of just clicked randomly on the spell upgrade page but I do that in vampire stories too so... haha. Good work Lunar and Solar.
Really lovely visuals, but the crafting system is really unapproachable, you might benefit from an ugly wall of handhold-y text in the combining menu.
Thanks for the feedback! I wanted to get around to adding a bit more feedback to the level up screen, but as it goes with game jams there wasn't enough time! For the time being I've added an explanation in the game's description if you'd like to check it out again.
the little kitty is SO cute
Thank you for playing!
same as others didnt quite understand the spell upgrading, i felt the attacking was a little slow as well? but i had fun :D
Thanks for playing! I've added some instructions on the upgrade system to the description for clarification.
Game's quite fun, although the upgrade system was a bit to understand at first, but I loved the fun little animations and the cat :D Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed the visuals :)
This is good!! I didn't quite understand the upgrade system and i think it would be better if the attacks were automatic. The game looks good and plays smoothly though! really good job! keep making games!
Thank you for the feedback! I went ahead and included a short explanation of the upgrade system in the game's description if you're interested in giving it another try!