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A jam submission

Bookbound: A Warlock's Tale Act 1View game page

The city of Una has fallen. All hope seems lost until a young woman awakens an ancient spirit entity.
Submitted by Mondlicht Games — 1 day, 29 minutes before the deadline
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Bookbound: A Warlock's Tale Act 1's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Candy!!#393.5563.556
Monsterous!#573.8893.889
Overall#643.7333.733
Fun#724.0004.000
Scariness...#753.3333.333
Halloweeny?#753.8893.889

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Log Line
A young woman sees her homeland invaded. She decides to make a pact with a spirit entity.

Content Warnings
Contains strong language, death, blood and topics related to war. And spiders.

Team Members
Mondlichtgames (Sole-Developer)

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Comments

Submitted

And just when I was tottaly hooked, the to be continued rolled in haha

I really liked the story and lore you put up as well as the art and music. Yet, I feel like the fighting mechanics with the dice rolling were the main plate of the experience, it made it really dynamic, considering it's a visual novel. Great game, hope you continue it!

Submitted (1 edit)

I've always been a fan of tales where you have contracts with spirits and magical beings going on :D It's just one of those kinds of subjects that draws me in because I like seeing how the relationship between two characters that are bound together by something progresses. It was certainly a fun dynamic to watch unfold here :3

The dice rolling reminded me of how I used to cheat on the old choose-your-own-adventure books I read as a kid before VNs were a thing x3 Whenever a battle popped up, I would pretend I had just rolled all 6's xD Yay, I win! But, of course, I couldn't do that here, haha. The result... I got mulched by a spider x3 hehe. It's fine though because I saved before and was luckier the second time around :D It did take me about 1 full minute to open a door though I was that unlucky, haha. It's a neat mechanic anyways!

I'm intrigued to see what the future holds. Good luck with the rest of development :3

Oh, and thanks for introducing me to Stable Diffusion! I'd heard about stuff like this but never seen it in action. It's so cool :o Sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole there, but I love it, haha.

Submitted

Writing: The story is interesting. I like the dialogue, and I like how you used dice. And that butterfly explaining that gods like to play dice was fun too.

Theme: Being in some sort of contract with some sort of “evil” spirit and not even knowing what that contract is about does seem spooky. And there’s a witch too (maybe I should have tried attacking her… but I don’t really think that’s the first thing a farmer would do when meeting a stranger that doesn’t look like a soldier or a spider.

Audio: I liked the music (although some of it is hard to hear when mixed with the ambience), and the sound effects seemed to work well too. And I actually had to play through a second time to

Art: There seems to be a lot of it, and it does look good. I can tell that there’s more than one art style, but they don’t really clash, so it’s okay. But when I’m specifically paying attention to it just to have something to say… I might have two nitpicks: first, that black-and-white background where you show text in the middle rather than in a textbox, it’s not exactly the easiest thing to see the quick menu on, and second, I think it took me a couple of speakers to get used to reading the font that speaker names are written in. (Then again, I feel like it does look good, and it’s not like there’s a lot of different names to remember. And names like “Brother Lu” do appear in the dialogue before appearing in the namebox, so I get a chance to see them before I have to be able to read them in that font. But yeah, I do think the font fits the game, and if I had to pick something else with a similar vibe, I’d probably pick something else weird, such as a font where thick and thin lines have different colours, which I’m not even sure Ren’Py would easily handle.

The buttons “back”, “history”, “auto”, “save” and “skip” in grey on a messy grey background, with the word “skip” in a darker tone that’s especially hard to distinguish against the background

Fun: The story is interesting, and the dice add to it. And yeah, playing through it multiple times I did realize that the numbers are maybe not completely random (and I understand that… there’s also a place where if I fail an action, something else happens instead). And I sorta wonder if there’s any places where the dice check has more than two outcomes (I mean, imagine you get a four at the door and it slowly opens, but if you get a six it blows wide open… stuff like that).

And don’t worry, I don’t think I’ll roll dice to decide which scores to give this entry.

The dice rolling system is a good mechanic; it adds some randomness to the outcomes and makes me weigh my decisions much more carefully. I also liked the character art. The story, though, felt fairly well-trodden--it doesn't go anywhere that I haven't seen in a lot of other fantasy books. But maybe it will go in a direction I don't expect later on.

Submitted (1 edit)

This was a very interesting prologue!! It reminded me of the vibe of RPG Adventure stories, exciting and thrilling 😎 

I loved the dynamics between Jenna & the spirit, there's potential for them becoming great friends (or maybe more, it was so cute how he went inside the book when he got embarrassed)!! The dice mechanic was a lot of fun and something I don't think I've seen before, it makes the story all the more uncertain, in a good way, keeps you guessing what could happen if you don't match or surpass the DC. 

I also liked the way you show how history is always written by the winners, which makes you question if those 'winners' were actually heroes or just happened to have better resources to come out victorious!

My only critique is in regards to the sprites. I think both the realistic ones (Mother and Old Lady) and the anime ones (Aurelia and Brother Lu) look really good but it looks a bit jarring when both styles are combined, so choosing one of the styles and sticking to it would make it stand out more imo.

Other than that I really enjoyed this little prologue, wish you all the best with the rest of the story!! ❤️ 

Submitted (1 edit)

The dice mechanic was a really interesting thing to include - I don't think I've seen that so much before! Best wishes as you continue to develop the story!!

Submitted(+1)

Really enjoyed the dice mechanic! Made the game super fun and unique. I definitely prefer the art style of mother to that of the other characters but that is just a personal preference! Overall I really liked it :)

Submitted(+1)

It's very good and I love the dice rolling system! (time to test my luck!)

Even though it's only a prologue, I already can feel the characters' personality and the world building. Good job writing it!

SPOILER: The thing I want to comment just a little bit is maybe the cohesiveness of the characters spirits. I understand side characters  like mother and old lady aren't that important, so their spirits didn't matter. But I feel like it was too drastic change from looking at their spirits to the more important character like Aurelia and Brother Lu. I was like "Wait a moment. Where is that anime style in the game thumbnail?! Why they have realistic style?!" Of course you don't have to change the style but maybe blend them more to the background so the player won't be surprised will make it better, just like the spider (though I think it's more like an insect rather than spider ...).

And another thing is about the dice rolling tutorial. It was just to sudden for me. Maybe you can try to elaborate it a little more to make a smoother transition to the tutorial.

Last, the button of save and load. It's a pain to access them through history menu while playing it, so if your game have the save/load system, it's best to let the player easily access it in-game. Unless your game doesn't have that, like mine that doesn't let the player saving/loading  wwww

Good luck for the Act 2! I'm excited to play it again!