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Dungeon Crawler Jam 2024

Hosted by zooperdan · #dcjam2024
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A jam submission

SpellView game page

Spell your spells to cast them!
Submitted by NPJarcade — 5 hours, 8 minutes before the deadline
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Spell's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#143.7143.714

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
I incorporated the themes 'Ancient Ruins' and 'Solitude'.

The the player is locked away in an ancient ruin, overgrown with living trees.

The player is trapped in solitude, with evil monsters who lurk around every corner. The player must escape to seek their revenge on those who banished him.

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Comments

Local MinimumSubmitted44 days ago(+1)

You forced me to spell discombowluahte gaaah! Cool entry, interesting concept and all in all a nice game.

I loved the intro and the general tone of the game with rhymes and all. It was a fun concept of playing with spelling spells. But there were several things that were off with the fight.

The enemy-phase of the game was much much to slow. I found myself looking out of the window or just staring into the void while waiting for my turn again. I think a huge part of fun could have been making that cycle several times faster.

The options I got didn’t really give me much risk/reward either since most enemies would die from two fire balls or two blizzards I just used the one that felt easiest to type. That did change a little bit in the last level or so. But in general, I think there’s a need to force the player to adapt. Either by enemies being sensitive and resistant to certain spells or if there were combo effects.

Next thing with fighting that was really annoying with healing. Especially the “HEAL” spell. Having use my turn and get 4 point only to have 2 or 3 taken away made it a chore. There wasn’t much risk involved in the fighting either with the spell being that easy to type so I would have it heal something like 50% or more and recovery heal up to 100%.

Or… rework the whole fighting logic so that if I only use up say 40% of the time allotted to typing HEAL then I still have 60% action time left on my turn so I could hammer out a quick FIREBALL. In general such a mechanic, I think would elevate the game immensely. It feeds into the speed-typing core mechanic and gives a risk reward system for being fast.

Then as a somewhat minor thing that got a bit irritating was all the [ENTER] pressing. I think it was great that I didn’t have to select spell I wanted to cast but that it got selected based on the first letter typed. In similar fashion I think it ought to have cast right when I typed the last letter. I also think it should cast as soon as any combination of letters that filled up the slots were entered. I’d urge you to try removing enter from the game pretty much.

As for the movement, since my hand needed to be on the letters, I would have loved WASD bindings when moving around so that I didn’t have to press enter and then move my hand down to the keys. Please also consider adding strafing and backwards movement.

I think that was pretty much all for the complaints. :) The game was great though and I had fun playing it to the end. Movement was nice in my opinion, the levels were good, though I got lost a bit at some points. And I really liked the graphics too.

Btw there was a glitch on the final stairs it felt with something that looked like a missing background.

Great entry!

Playthrough: https://youtu.be/M1r0hukA3lQ

Submitted
The Mass
Reply
NikaKhSubmitted44 days ago(+1)

This is a very good idea and entry! I would love enemy actions to be faster though, it takes a while for them to prepare, hit and, as I understand, I cannot do anything to stop it.

I got lost on the third level (exit was blocked by webs and I couldn't understand what to do).

Teleport was a strange one to use, it seemed that it only prevents one attack, which is kind of pointless, since its basically you skip a turn and enemy skipts a turn. And blizzard seemed to be reduntant, since either enemy die from one fireball, or two. But they still would die to two blizzards either way. Arachnophobia helped to kill slimes in one turn though. Maybe other levels would give blizzard a chance - idk.


Everything was good otherwise! Liked how it sounds and how it looks!

Submitted
Tomb of Aeon
Reply
CupriteSubmitted45 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

This is pretty good! It was a bit more difficult for me since my computer's keyboard is broken (Specifically L, O, and P, which every spell uses (Not letting that impact my rating though, since that's unrelated to the game itself)), so the typing speed option is very appreciated since I had to use a mix of my actual keyboard and a virtual one.

I love how the game looks, really nice spritework and effects. The speech is also a nice touch, and the name is clever. Good music, too.

Honestly, my only real criticisms are that you can't heal outside of battle and that you can't escape combat. I'll mention that older spells quickly become outclassed, but that's fairly common in games anyway, so it's not a huge deal. Tho Teleport seems kinda pointless, unless I'm misunderstanding how it functions.

Overall a fun game with a fun concept. :)

Submitted
The Reaper of the Depths
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Realms&RuinsSubmitted54 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

What a fun entry! The double entendre for the title is fitting, the mumbling the character makes while typing (as if speaking some invocation) is hilarious, the old school sound, music and graphics are awesome and the movement is very solid.  The typing itself is an incredibly fun take on combat. I've played similar titles in the past, but something is just fun about this thematically. Nothing really to complain about.

Great job!

Submitted
Escaping the Cosmic Abyss
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Ilyos GamesSubmitted55 days ago(+1)

I'm going to be biased towards this game, simply because I made a spelling combat game for the jam 2 years ago, so naturally I loved this! But, truth be told, I think this game would have benefited from real time combat instead of turn-based, making your typing speed and accuracy help you defeat monsters. Plus, turn based makes some spells like teleport useless since you just use a turn so that your enemy misses a turn.

BUT! Impressive work. Loved the actual wording of the letters, the graphics, the sounds, the goofy pops of the UI. Very well done!

Submitted
Derek Deagle - The Case of the Unknowable
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boogergamingdev202058 days ago(+1)

I really enjoyed this alot :) 

The sprites have a very "old school" pretty charm to them

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NPJarcadeDeveloper57 days ago(+1)

Thanks very much!  I stuck with the NES colour palette for the sprites/textures which gave it a retro feel.  I even decided to limit to three colours per enemy, as if they were made on original hardware (albeit without any limitations on 3D!).

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impmjaSubmitted58 days ago(+1)

First of it has a nice simple but clean menu and very nice background music.

The small intro is a nice touch and gives the game a great starting atmosphere!

As I first heard the combat music I wanted to stand up and dance to it! It has a very nice rythm and feel to it - very engaging indeed! Best music so far!

That you matched most of the keys to a sound is awesome - even with variations! I tried to make some swearwords and tried some raps with it! Hilarious!

I selected the slowest combat mode at first but had to change it to a faster one as the battles would play out quite slowly - but somehow the battles didnt get any faster (maybe because I’m running it within a Virtualbox?). But nevertheless the combat (typing) is quite enjoyable and has a very cool asthetic to it. Great job on that.

The visuals are quite appealing and very fitting. I really like the Monster designs like the “dancing” Spellington - very hilarious name btw.

The movement and turning was a little slow I would say, like the last part of the lerping animation could have been a little faster. Is there a strafe mode? If not I think it could benefit from it. Oh and the first time I played it was not immediately clear to me, that you have to use the Arrow keys to move. I pressed WASD and got a nice rap out of it which was hilarious but also a little confusing at first ;)

I didn’t get to the end of it because the combat was somehow quite slow but I think it has something to do with me playing it on a Virtualbox as I only have Linux available to me - so sorry about not getting to the end :(

Overall a very enjoyable game with great atmosphere, even better music and hilarious (maybe not intended, but nevertheless fun) keyboard rapping ;) - Awesome job. You should think of building a full game out of it. Maybe even with couch-based coop play where you could party up with a good friend and have the occasional battle rap against Spellington and his other friends ;)

Submitted
Ocean of Damnation
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper57 days ago(+1)

Hey impmja, thanks so much for all your feedback and compliments - I really appreciate you giving my game a go! 

I really enjoyed working on the music, great to hear you liked it.  It was stuck in my head for days during development, so I had to put it on mute towards the end to avoid going insane..! 

The phonetic typing sounds were good fun to implement too, although on reflection probably not the best use of time for a game jam!  I had planned on adding secret words you can spell out too, or even bleeping out attempts at swearwords just for fun, but this didn't go anywhere in the end. 

The combat is a bit slow, the flow of the text is fixed to a set timer and not skippable unfortunately.  I appreciate you playing the game on VirtualBox, not sure if this also had any affect on the game speed however as I only tested it running on Windows.  I would love to test the game on Linux myself as I have no idea if the game has any issues running on a Linux system. 

The intention with the spellingtons was for them to throw out random words that the player would have to spell quickly in order to defend against them, but sadly I didn't have time to implement this mechanic in the end.  

No strafe mode available at the moment.  It was tricky limiting the available controls as the entire qwerty keyboard was taken up by the spelling mechanics in the end.  However I ended up removing the ability to cast spells or type messages outside of combat/spell walls/riddles after all, so perhaps could have just used WASD/QE in the end!

Thanks for all your awesome feedback and nice to hear you enjoyed making little raps out of the audio, (I was definitely doing the same during development)!  Love the idea of a couch co-op mode with wizard rap battles!  That is an insane, but potentially very fitting idea to such a wacky game. 

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impmjaSubmitted56 days ago

Hehe, yes the music could stuck in your head very fast, so congrats on that ;)

So I understand why the strafing wasn’t there in the first place, but as you said if the phonetic keys are only available within the battle now, that make it easy to add, I think it would be nice to have it.

I like the idea of Spellington shouting random words you have to counter. Is it like, he is shouting something like “Blizzard” and you then have a list of counter-words you could possible spell (but have to learn them while playing)? I think that could be nice having like a “Spellbook” you filling up with words you encounter or tried using. Maybe something of a hidden list you have to figure out yourself.. like some logic behind it based on elements that counter each other? I see alot of potential here! This could even be expanded to a PvP mode where you “battle” other player / friend maybe just locally but could be a fun addition!

Looking forward to what you making out of it!

Reply
DamienDeSubmitted60 days ago(+1)

To start, I do not like typing in games. But you implemented it well here and even give some options for the typing speed. The game needs a minimap and the monsters should be effected differently by the spells, so the battles also become a little bit of a puzzle. But anywys, what is here is awesome. Very good feeling movement, nice graphics and maybe the best sound implementation of the jam. Oh, I loved the uneven floor tiles. And the wizards portrait, like a little magic Doom guy ;)

Submitted
The Nexus Grave
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NPJarcadeDeveloper57 days ago

Thanks so much for playing and for your feedback.  

I completely agree about the map and combat encounters,  I would have loved to add some variety to the spells and damage types to add a bit more variety, but I'm really glad you enjoyed it, especially considering you're not a fan of typing games! 

Thank you for all the appreciation of the graphics and sound design, these were definitely my favourite things to work on.  Animating the wizard portrait to mimic Doom-guy was definitely intentional, so I'm glad you picked up on that :D 

Reply
SlippersSubmitted61 days ago(+1)

This was awesome, the sounds effects really did it for me and gave me some laugh out loud moments early on. I'm just trying to imaging you recording the little squeals.

The combat was great, it did become a little tiring towards the end as I had gotten lost and done many extra encounters.

Overall this was such an awesome entry and it's really polished. The audio really seals it for me as one of my favourites. Thank you.

Submitted
The Facility
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper57 days ago(+1)

Thanks Slippers!

I have to admit, the audio was all done using text to speech as I didn't have time to record my own lines (as much as I'd have loved to).  I somehow managed to get the text to speech bot to make that squeal noise, so there was no way I couldn't include it in the game! 

Really appreciate the feedback, and so glad to hear you enjoyed it, especially the audio as I had a lot of fun putting the music and sound effects together.  

Reply
EnygmaticSubmitted61 days ago(+1)

This was kinda neat, the spelling combat was pretty fun and I liked the character sounding out the letters. The art was nice and the movement felt nice, though the lack of backwards movement was a bit odd.

I sadly didn't get through the whole game, on the green floor the way to the next level was seemingly blocked and I couldn't clear it. I feel like I got the gist of the game though with the typing out spells to cast, and then acquiring new spells and health increases with each level.

I agree with the other commetns here about shortening the enemy turns, because the couple seconds of down time really adds up after the first few encounters.

Overall I think this was quite nice, though the combat did feel a bit repetitive after a while. Perhaps it has some interesting twists in the higher levels that I missed? For a jam game though I think the scope was appropriate, and I mean that as a complement as someone who sucks at handling scope.

Good work!

Submitted
Neptune's Children
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper57 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing!  Really apprecaite the feedback.  

I definitely agree about the combat being very slow, giving the player the ability to skip the combat text would have helped a lot.  

No problem that you didn't finish it, I appreciate the level design is reliant on being a maze with not much else to aid the player in their sense of direction.  The idea was that the red vines lead you to the tree roots which need to be destroyed to unblock the exit door, but agree this could have been fleshed out a bit.  

Thanks for your compliments on scope, it's such a hard thing to manage with game jams.  I was really impressed with how much you managed to cram into your entry, so thanks for taking the time to play mine too. 

Reply
BeardedCynicSubmitted61 days ago(+1)

If Mabis Beacon came from the abyss, with a very limited vocabulary, and became a Wizard, that would be this game. You revived a part of my childhood that I never wanted to remember, truly a cosmic horror! haha

Seriously though, I played it until the end, and the gimmick worked really well here! This is definitely one of my favorites so far in terms of execution and novelty.

Things I enjoyed:

-The spelling gimmick was good here!
-I think the prose was excellent, and the whole thing was clever well done!
-Controls were smooth and felt good to play
-The art was solid and felt at home
-The tree and spell acquisition mechanics also felt like a welcome addition!
-I love how you got the typing and voice system working; it was fun to play with randomly!

Room for improvement:
-Variety and variance! I know this is really hard to pull off in a jam, but the typing gimmick had outstayed its welcome after about 10 minutes when I realized all there was to the combat was combining the two easiest spells that would add up to kill the monster. Damage type, different effects, a way to modify the words, a mechanic that made you solve the fights in a limited number of turns, anything like this would have been a massive enhancement in my opinion.
Music and sound effects! If you had more time to incorporate some really good BGM tracks and more interesting sound effects, you could definitely elevate this significantly.
-More player choices! I wanted to have the ability to do something else that was deterministic; the whole experience did feel a little too "on rails."

Overall, though, I loved it; great submission!

Submitted
Aardwolves: Cosmic Exterminators
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper57 days ago(+1)

Hi BeardedCynic, thank you so much for playing and for such valuable feedback!  Really awesome to hear you stuck it out until the end.

Thanks for your feedback on the prose, I made a mistake choosing to make everything rhyme, as towards the end it made it much harder to write in the riddles in particular, I'm glad it paid off however!

I completey agree with your feedback on variety, the combat is probably the weakest element of the game due to this, as the main gimmick with the typing only goes so far.  I would love to add spell variety,  with different damage types etc.  One of my original intentions was to have an enemy that can 'curse' you, which removes certain characters from your keyboard.  I also played around with having a 'mana' pool which limits the total characters allowed in a word until a recharge, but all of these ideas were scrapped due to time contraints at the end.  

I really appreciate your feedback, and will definitely give your game a try too! 

Reply
inquisSubmitted61 days ago(+1)

Cool game:)

Great concept and good realisation.

Submitted
Call of Darkness
Reply
wolfheatSubmitted61 days ago(+1)

Nice entry! I did finish the game.
There was bit to long wait before entering a new command, this could be done quicker to not let the player lose interest of a locked game with predetermined enemy attacks. The riddles were easy enough but fun. Harder for non natives though. the 15 atk spell I had to look up on internet to figure out.

The general scope of the systems and levels are suitable for a jam. So good job at the scope.

Submitted
Dungeon of Dreams
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NPJarcadeDeveloper61 days ago

Thanks for playing and for the feedback.

Much appreciated!

Reply
streetlightdriveSubmitted62 days ago(+1)

Great great game! Got my revenge! The spell system is cool, and the graphics look great, especially the battle entry effects. Battle was a little slow, which made healing really slow too since the enemy always got an attack off anyways. Teleport was effectively useless as far as I could tell. The sfx were nice and the bgm was subtle enough. The green level reminded me of laser tag for a bit! Level design left a little to be desired as most of it was just one block dead ends. But I wanted more spells and riddles! Especially the riddles. Very good quality game!

Submitted
Ruined
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper62 days ago(+1)

Hey, thanks for your feedback! 

Glad you managed to get your revenge.  I completely agree, teleport turned out to be useless as the enemy will always get an attack in next.  Combat needs to be a bit more fleshed out. 

Thanks for playing, and really pleased you liked the riddles!  I was a bit worried they'd block progress for some players. 

Reply
CyberToastySubmitted62 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

I really liked the game, art and sounds are good and really set the mood, movements is also really fast and fluid. The level design if maybe a bit too simple but it works. I really like the fight system, maybe being able to cast multiple spells in a turn would make it even more fun. Like CryptRat said below speeding enemy turn can also be nice, it can quickly get a bit long. 
Overall a really fun and solid entry with a great atmosphere and really nice concept of a combat system. Love the wizard face expression.
Oh and the intro was dope !! with the voice and everything, awesome. 

Submitted
Errance
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper62 days ago (1 edit)

Hi CyberToasty, 

Thanks very much for playing and for your positive feedback.  Much appreciated! 

I'd love to add some updates after the jam ends.  Casting multiple spells is a great idea and would add a lot of variety to the combat.  Completely agree the flow of battle is a bit slow.  

Really glad you enjoyed it though and looking forward to giving your game a try.  It looks very cool!

Reply
CryptRatSubmitted63 days ago(+1)

The wizard finished them and had his revenge. 

He prevously failed his English test with the "Abuse and Confuse" word.

My only lament would be that the enemies' turn takes too long. I think the game could also use some kind of finite resouce too, and I'm saying that as someone who would then have had difficulty completing it given how bad I am.

However overall the game is pretty cool. Movement and perspective are perfect, art is overall pretty good with the best part being the wizard's face expression.  The default difficulty was right on point for me and I really like that you can technically miss some spells, obviously I mapped the dungeons just to be sure then which I like to do.

Very fun entry, thanks for sharing.

Submitted
To death and beyond
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper62 days ago(+1)

Hey CryptRat, thanks for playing and great to hear you got to the end! 

Really appreciate the feedback.  I had plans for finite items that can be consumed or spelled, in some way to benefit the player, but sadly ran out of time towards the end.  I might do some minor updates after the jam ends, and would love to add a map system too! 

Thanks again, and glad you enjoyed your playthrough! 

Reply
ColdEmberSubmitted63 days ago(+1)

Nice game with a lot of juice going on. I went with a couple spells before walking in circles huhuh.
Is it normal that the time in between typing your spell, and the ennemy acting is pretty long ? I'm talking waiting 5 sec between each "turn". Am I missing something ?

Submitted
Duat
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper63 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing and glad the juice paid off!

The levels are easy to get lost in, if I had a bit more time I would have added a map.  

And agreed the turn based combat can be a bit slow, I actually sped it up before release but a button to skip text flow would be useful to keep up the momentum. 

Really appreciate the feedback! 

Reply
TheSnowlySubmitted63 days ago(+1)

great now I'm a master at spelling "arachnophobia" lmaoo

Insane game, very polished. I have not made it to the end but I would have liked to see the writing mechanic be taken even further (For example with ennemies altering the way you write or idk). Otherwise It's my favourite game atm. Congratulation for a solo dev to have made such a great game!

Submitted
Dungeon²
Reply
NPJarcadeDeveloper63 days ago (1 edit)

Thank you so much!  Really glad to hear you enjoyed it.

I had planned to incorporate the spelling mechanic into combat a bit more.  E.g. blocking incoming attacks by typing, or certain keyboard characters being removed via a curse or something like that.  

Really appreciate the positive feedback though.  Thanks! 

Reply
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