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A jam submission

VocabiusView game page

Defend your wizard's tower with WORDS. Do you even SPELL?
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Vocabius's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#64.5224.522
Gameplay#164.0874.087
Art#624.0434.043
Is the graphics 1 bit?#1644.6524.652
Overall#1653.4933.493
Theme#3892.4352.435
Music#4771.2171.217

Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Write down what effects you used.
Some lights with volumetrics

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Really unique and fun game, I could see myself playing this for hours on end the replayability potential is off the charts!

Submitted(+1)

This is a super cool concept! This is a very powerful mechanic that offers a lot of replayability and interesting scenarios for the player to naturally encounter. My main issue with the game as it is though is the balance. The variance in what enemies you're given and how many of theme there are means you can pretty easily be put into a no-win scenario. One that I ran into quite a lot was getting a large number, like 7-9. Since every letter you type causes enemies to advance one space, and there's only 10 tiles on the board, typing a 9-letter word without clearing the entire board guarantees you're taking damage. Then even if you've gotten the 9-letter word done safely, you've now given the enemies 9 chances to spawn, which can easily leave you with at least 10 more. It feels nearly impossible to keep up with the enemies given how quickly they spawn and how random the letters they give you are (vowels don't feel like they show up especially often even though every word needs at least one). This was probably the intention, to avoid the game going on forever, but it felt especially punishing. Maybe enemies could advance once per word, plus one for every 2 letters to make long words less punishing and give more of a chance to clear the field? As long as 1 letter = 1 enemy move, I don't know how you could realistically prevent enemies from overwhelming you without killing at least 1 enemy with every letter. That being said, I think your issues are very fixable, and if/when they do get fixed, I think this game will be amazing!

Developer(+1)

What a detailed and thoughtful comment! You are very much correct that the balance needs work; the enemy spawning was done in the last 2 hours so I cut some corners and did not have time to balance haha. My original vision if I had time was to have the larger numbers be something like 5+ so there's room for different choices. First thing I would do for a patch is definitely to cut the amount of 7-8-9 and X-Y-Z. Thanks again for enjoying the game!

Submitted(+1)

Really clever game, with an interesting base mechanic! I wonder how you see if a word is a real word or not, I wanted to do a word game too. Really strategic and hard, I seem to be really bad at it. Overall really cool submission! (id there any audio I don't ear any?)

Developer(+1)

No time for audio unfortunately! I used a dictionary that came with the WordGameDict package for Unity, but curated it a little bit. You can find similar dictionaries quite easily, they tend to just be text files with one word per line. Thanks for the compliments and good luck if you do end up making a word game!

Submitted(+1)

The mechanic is cool !

Submitted(+2)

I enjoy word games, so this was really fun! I like that the enemies only move once you input a word. It makes the game much more strategic rather than some word games where it's how fast you can input them. It gives it a different niche in the category of word games. The different enemy types work well together forcing you to think of different words that might meet the most criteria.

It was a bit frustrating though on the "spawning algorithm" at times. If two bubbles who need different last letters end up at the last line I'm going to take damage. In this case it's usually my fault since I didn't deal with them earlier. However at times I'll get a "9" bubble and an "8" bubble right next to each other that both spawned from the abyss to an early enough line. In these cases, no matter what move I make, I'm guaranteed to take damage. I wonder if there's a way to make the bubbles spawn in such a way that (the word number bubbles especially) there's always a way out with skillful enough play.

Great job overall! I might've spent a bit too much time playing this one haha
(Best was 42) 

Developer(+1)

Completely agreed. I wrote the spawning algorithms within the last 2 hours of the jam so I definitely cut some corners. I think it works for the jam, but my perfect version would definitely be more massaged!

Submitted(+1)

Really creative mechanic! I liked it a lot. Missed some sounds and music on it. Overall, well done!

Submitted(+1)

Nice mechanic!

Submitted(+1)

I had a lot of fun! Great mechanic!

Submitted(+1)

This was so much fun. Really clever mechanic!

Submitted(+1)

22 enemies was my best run. Great graphics. Loved the backdrop setting. Quite addictive game. Some nice music and sfx would really amp this game up. I hope you keep working on this game. 

Submitted(+1)

Managed to kill 19 enemies, but using a 9 letter word was while the screen was filled with enemies was not a smart idea, ha

Really clever concept and I love the sprite for Vocabius :)

Submitted(+1)

This game is really fun to play!

Submitted(+1)

Quaternions, killed 10.  Cool game, cool concept, nice art ^^ Well done

Submitted(+1)

Richest, killed 17, good job on the game.

Submitted(+1)

Knowings was my best word