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A jam submission

Spell TowerView game page

First Person Dungeon Crawler Meets Slay The Spire
Submitted by YouDoYouBuddy — 1 hour, 43 minutes before the deadline
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Spell Tower's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#24.3484.348

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

Theme incorporation
The main theme this entry incorporates is cosmic horror. The plot revolves around the player stopping an evil cult from waking an incomprehensible cosmic being. There is also a sanity mechanic where the player loses sanity(SP) from powerful cards with the occult property. The game also features a bunch of ancient ruins including the tower that the game is named after.

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Comments

Submitted (2 edits) (+1)

Late to the party on this one, but I'm working through some entries I didn't get to and this one is super cool!

The art is cute and polished, love the juice on the cards and the nice animations and tweens. That effect behind the texture with the bubbles is really cool too. Love the ambient sounds. Even the main menu is cool with the camera angle looking up at the tower.

Combat is tight and really satisfying, the bombs affecting the level geometry is a nice touch. Tactically it provides some interesting opportunities to try position enemies to best use some of the weapons and their abilities. The fact that you need to kind of pick up and throw the card onto the field is just a super satisfying physical control.

I can see why this entry was rated so high, it's nearly production ready and probably the most mechanically fun and satisfying game I've played so far.

Super awesome job.

The only thing I would have liked, and this is just personal preference and not like a bug or issue or anything, is that the turn system had a bit of leeway so I could move in front of an enemy without them hitting me instantly (Or be able to "wait" a turn). The way it is now means that if I want to use a melee card I had to tank the damage before I can use the card, it would have been nice to be able to time the turns so I could get in there and hit first and then they took their turn.

Submitted(+1)

This was pretty good! The ambience works well, the visuals are really nice, and the battle system is simple but interesting. I don't have too much to say here, it's just pretty good and fun overall, I like it. I could see a full-scale game like this working really well. :)

I will say though, the game crashed on me once (No clue why), leading to me restarting from the beginning, but it wasn't that big a deal since I wasn't very far in and the game is pretty short anyway. I'd leave the error message just in case, but Itch won't let me leave screenshots in the comments (I know I could have just copied the text directly, idk why I didn't).

(Also, the ending text is funny. Lol)

Submitted(+1)

I had an amazing time playing this game! Solid art and audio, with really engaging gameplay! As an enjoyer of card games, this game has fairly easily become one of my favourite games from this jam! Brilliant work!

Submitted(+1)

Got a crash on level 7 I think when opening a chest and an enemy occupied that square in same motion. Got an error message I tried to screenshot but did not get it.

Would be nice if settings stay when restarting the game.

Mouse sensitivity changed from windows settings so it was a bit strange to move around in the the menu and game.

The gameplay is very fun and I like how it incorporates the dungeon into the combat even though it is card based, well done. The combat feels engaging and it is fun to figure out tactics on how to fight the enemies in the best way.

I think the enemies could be a bit tougher, and the game could and should be expanded to be longer, but for the jam it might be ok as a short demo. I never understood that I fought the boss. Maybe I missed something, I did clear the game and win though.

Some cards did not act as I expected during the fights though, so maybe make that a bit clearer. Sometimes I killed enemies that had a lot of health left which left me baffled. I never understood if there were an end to the draw deck and if there was any drawback in just reshuffle to get the cards you need.

The graphics looks awesome and I really like the theme that it uses. Some text is a bit hard to read but it works.

Good Job!

Developer

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

I've been squashing a couple of crash bugs relating to objects trying to get grid cells that don't exist so it's probably something to do with that, hopefully that's fixed. The Settings menu was a last minute addition, I'll work on polishing it up and making fullscreen feel better. I've gotten a lot of feedback regarding things not being super clear so better descriptions and a proper tutorial is on the TODO list.

The deck only shuffles when you transition to the next level or when you play the Ancient Orb card :)

Submitted(+1)

Card games are always so tricky to implement in other genres I feel. While I'm a Gwent fangirl until the day I die, this was absolutely brilliant.

Already stoked for your post jam update with some more card variation. I would love to see an additional progress based mechanic introduced that would allow for the player to create a build or deck specialised around a certain type of abilities or playstyle. I understand that is an enormous undertaking and very aspirational, but this is really such a great foundation!

Art was beautiful, sound was excellent (bit loud, but you know that!). From what I can tell you're already addressing everything I have to say in the post-jam update and therefore there's really nothing more I can add.

Wonderful entry, thank you.

Developer(+1)

Thank you! I might look into the ability to start with different starting decks but that will probably come some time after the inital post jam update. Depends a bit on how ambitious I'm feeling once I've fleshed out what's already in the game.

Submitted(+1)

I loved this game! How do I get more of it?

You can watch my play through here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2116031581?t=01h18m52s

Developer

Thanks, means a lot! It's a shame I missed the stream but I really enjoyed watching the VOD. It was really satisfying seeing you put together that ritual knife deck, was always a little woried that people wouldn't use cards like that one to their full potential :)

Submitted(+1)

"So that sucks." Now that's a great conclusion message.

The game is super fun. It looks and sounds pretty good. It's very pleasant to control, the pool of cards is good too with some different effects and managing the distances and ranges is fun, I like that you went with this tactical positioning instead of a combat layer separated from exploration, especially with distances being very important to most cards and some cards directly playing with these distances. I like that you go through your deck only once for each level, that's a cool twist on the usual fare and I can imagine this last part being very interesting in a bigger game as you might want, for example, melee cards with high damage rather than ranged ones with less damage, with the caveats that there's melee cards of course, these could be fun decisions.

The game is very cool, thanks for sharing.

Submitted(+1)

This is great! The card mechanics are fun, cards interacting with the environment surprised me and was exciting to discover by chance. There is enough card variety for the time within the jam and had some synergy (blast wand + wisp arrow was fun). Grappling hook was really fun! The cloud UI button effects are really nice and I love the art style. This is my favorite so far, I would love to see this as a full game!

Developer

Thank you! I am currently working on adding extra content to the game in a post jam update.

Submitted(+1)

Quite a fun game - I didn't make a particularly specialized build (and kinda only barely squeaked past the finish line), but I could see the key cards that would let one do so. The aesthetics were both pretty and coherently cohesive, and none of the level themes overstayed their welcome. This is one I could actually see myself replaying.

About the only 'critique' I have is that I think at one point I killed a chest with a wisp arrow, and I'm not sure if that's intended?

I recorded my playthrough-you can watch it if you like:

Developer(+1)

Oh yeah, attacks breaking chests is intentional. I really liked the video, that kind of feedback is invaluable!

Submitted(+1)

Card battle? Nice! I hope default attack means I hit enemy with deck of cards instead!

Fun thing - last boss teleported from me with me poisoning him just before that, so when he appeared again - he was almost dead and died next turn. Slightly OP!

Loved how smooth combat feels. Wisp arrow (well poison one too) is slightly overtuned for many sittuations. You can aggro any mob and run behind few steps for clear shot from the passageway. But perfect tuning in a game jam? Impossible!

Art is gorgeous and sounds were spot on too (after I adjusted volume). Very polished game.

(Final screen made me giggle)

Thank you for that experience :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks, I'll make sure to adjust the volume in the post jam version! And the poison exploit will get fixed too hehe

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

This game is so Cool!
The art style is so pretty.
I mean it's a card game it's wonderful!
The combat system is cool and there are very cool card effects. I like the combo of the wand attack and the arrow that deals damage based on distance.
The sounds were so loud that I got scared when I opened the first chest XD.
Maybe you could add the possibility to reshuffle the discard pile into the deck once is over, and remove the draw so you have to manage the hand time by time.
Because finishing cards in a card game doesn't feel so right.
I really liked it, Good Job!

Developer

Thank you, it means a lot!

I did try to implement STS-like mechanics as you describe but it just doens't work since the player can just sit in a corner and redraw their hand over and over until they get a perfect combination of cards, which defeats most of the deck building aspects of the game, diminshes a lot of the emergent gameplay and removes the tension that's inherit in seeing your resources dvindle over the course of a floor. It would also allow you the cheese the game by playing cards like health potion over and over until you have full health :p

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

A game made in Löve and it runs better than most other games, really cool. The graphics have beautiful colors and everything fits well together. The card battle system works super well and it is so much fun selecting new cards and dragging them onto the battlefield. Oh, and the atmosphere is spot on, with the wolf howl etc. in the background.

Submitted(+1)

Great game, it's fun. The graphics are nice and the battle system is simple but fun to play ! Explosions clearing out enemies, chests and walls was a very nice touch!

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

Great game!  I love the visuals, really nice use of simple pixel art and a bit of depth, and nice colors.  I made it to the end, killed the head priestess with poison, which felt cheap - I love that she respawned after some damage, it would be good if the poison cleared at that time too, I think, as once I managed to land a poison on her, it was over ^_^.  The destructible terrain was cool, and a surprise, though I didn't notice anything special that could be done with it (was there a chest hidden behind a wall to blow up anywhere?).  The writing at the end made me laugh =).  Also, almost goes without saying, but combat was great, I love deck building, and I felt like I often had interesting choices (and was always the wrong number of steps away from an enemy to do what I wanted ^_^).

Developer

Thanks! The poison arrows were added about 40 mins before the deadline becasue I thougt the game needed another occult card so they were a little untested hehe. In a future update I'll probably change that so poison clears after awhile or so that big enemies like bosses have a way of clearing poison.

Submitted

I did like them, and actually didn't pick any occult card until then because I was too afraid of losing stuff when drawing, and the poison finally tempted me into it =).

Developer

I didn't mean to imply you didn't :)

Submitted(+1)

You didn't, I was just trying to affirm your last-minute decision to add them =).

Submitted(+2)

Well rounded and fun.

Submitted(+1)

You should make this into a full commercial game.

Developer(+1)

Making a full commercial game is pretty big undertaking but I'm already working an expanded post jam version of the game that'll release for free some time after the rating period has ended.

Submitted

Just saying, I'd buy it.

Submitted(+1)

Solid game idea, good execution and fun gameplay

What more do I need to say? 5/5

Submitted(+1)

Very fun

Submitted(+1)

Really solid! I like it a lot! It's more difficult than I was expecting at first. :)