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Summoner's Soul's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Presentation | #19 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
Engagement | #25 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Gameplay | #29 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
Overall | #31 | 3.875 | 3.875 |
Theme | #77 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 4 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Indrah is back, stronger than ever!
The gameplay starts very addicting, the pokémon formula is a winning formula all the time. In the first sections of the game, I really wanted to enter every encounter to see which spirits were available for capture - I was very engaged with the entire game loop, it worked wonderfully.
Unfortunately after the initial wonder the gameplay started losing momentum, and random battles don't matter as much: capturing new monsters is not really that incentivized if not for the random moves that they can get. Switching to a new spirit is hardly an option, since (leaving aside the exp bug in the merging) I didn't see any benefit in doing so: they all have the seemingly similar stats and same moves (there are some differences in moveset, but at that point I already settled with the first spirit with good moves I found), so it all comes down to who I like more.
The battle system in itself also is pretty unique and gets some strength in the customisation that you can do, even if I didn't feel like there was a lot of strategy involved, and you can just use your strongest moves. Also the ability to move around the battlefield didn't feel useful - I never used it.
The exploration is simple but pretty satisfying to do, since there's a lot of items laying around, and later with the unlock of new abilities I felt incentivized at backtracking to find even more stuff. I didn't really had a use for money though, since I didn't use any item.
I especially appreciated the artstyle, a pretty good choice for the theme of the game. the maps look all different and well decorated. I liked the exploration part a lot.
The story was simple but nice, mostly because of the different personality of every character and the worldbuilding. I personally really appreciated the master, since it really gave some sort of final challenge vibes. Though I gotta say the dialogues, even if sweeten up by the characters personality, I felt were too long than necessary.
After all, despite all the problems (both gameplay-wise and bugs) I enjoyed the experience. For me it started to get a little repetitive after a while - there was nothing that "freshened up" the experience - , but the pokémon formula and the exploration helped to keep that curiosity and interest just a little longer.
Also, what the hell? How long did you manage to make a game in a single month? Wow. Truly beyond expectations.
Here's the VOD:
Great game! I love the music, I love the art (on the map more than during battle)
I just noticed that whatever I try to catch, even at full health, I will always catch it, even during challenges when I am not supposed to catch the honey bear. Which I did, at full health and at the first try. Maybe you've set that to 100% for test purposes, and forgot to set it back?
Other than that, I didn't find any bugs or glitches so far.
I think the story/writing was nice and the presentation okay with good music. Some stuff could use work like I think the side panels look too basic and there could be some animation or something when merging creatures, but yeah I know it's a jam game made with time limit. However there were some bugs, like the battle animations seemed misplaced(?), in battle it seemed to sometimes say move left when meaning right(?), when using item in menu it targeted the wrong creature, I could catch a monster in the duel even though told that I couldn't etc. And I'm probably not an expert on the merging stuff but the enemies already in level 2 hit really hard even though I had fought almost everything in the first level. Anyway, a good concept.