Spellody is a music based hack and slash game. Cast musical attacks by swishing your magical keytar at the neon enemies!!!
Playthrough of the game on YouTube:
How to play:
- Move with WASD and Mouse - Left or Right click on enemies to cast spells on them or yourself - Left clicks cast "Major" spells which are RED - Right clicks cast "Minor" spells which are BLUE
- Create shapes using the Spell Icons, but don't use the same one twice - The icon you start your spell on determines the spell type you cast:
- Green Triangle = Range attack - Magenta Diamond = Melee Attack (teleports you to the enemy) - Yellow Square = Speed increase spell - Cyan Circle = Healing spell
- Start with simple line spells (Example: Green Triangle to Yellow Square is a "weak ranged" attack) - Then move to angles (Example: Magenta Diamond to Yellow Square to Cyan Circle is a "medium melee attack) - Finally use all 4 shapes for the most powerful attacks! (Remember, don't use the same one twice)
- Enemies are weak to the colours on their skins - Example 1: GREEN & BLUE spider is weak to "Green Triangle / Ranged" attacks done with a "Major / Left Click" spell - Example 2: MAGENTA & RED dog is weak to "Magenta Diamond / Melee" attacks done with a "Minor / Right Click" spell!
I can't really figure out how to do an attack. I click the enemies and some symbols appear? Then i drag over the symbols and some sounds happen? But nothing that looks like an attack. And then they kill me
@wheybags There are no attack "animations", but if you do the correct spell type on the enemy it insta-kills them. Otherwise you chip away at their health bar. Clicking on the enemy also freezes them in place.
Interesting idea. I like how your attack resonates with the background track. Combat is quite difficult to grasp though. It's not a bad thing per se, but it might be better to ease incoming difficulty even more, like 1 note, 1 enemy at first.
I can't seem to figure out how to rotate camera, was it intentional? At some point level design obstructed the enemies. Sorry, I'm a bit stupid and tired after jam, so can't figure that out.
Interesting little game! It seems like we thought about similar things when building the game for this jam. Even the styling is similar :D I've played quite some of this little game. The only thing that's confusing for me, is what exactly do my spell combinations produce. Non the less, I enjoyed it a lot.
It was fun, it reminded me of playing Magicka; mixing different "elements" to get different effects. When I got the chance to use more notes, sometimes I actually wished that I could go back to just using one or two (especially for the sphere enemies who get one-shot anyways). Maybe if we let go without selecting the maximum number of notes we could still get the effect.
Combat is slightly confusing, especially as you can't cast combos the moment you gain larger ones, and the speed up didn't appear to work? Definitely dig the music evolving as you go along, despite the bass being so dominant in the music balance for a while. Interesting concept, would like to see this more polished up and refined cuz this spell creation mechanic is something I dig a lot! Reminds me of an incredibly obscure PSX JRPG called Nemuru Mayu where the rhythm of spells determined if you passed or failed casting them, I know this isn't a feature of this game, but using music as a basis for combat is always a cool idea!
The design and music was absolutely fantastic, but I didn't really understand the spell system, and was just able to rush to the last room without killing anything. I love the synthwave theme though.
The sound is so cool, I like your idea. But the controls -- like how to attack an enemy is so confusing. And once the game is over, player can't restart at once. I think it's better to press some key to restart.
Really unique idea, good mechanics, but could use a little more polish. I think it'd be a lot clearer if you showed the attacks as combos, vs single notes. It took a lot of looking to figure out how to play it. I really like the additions to music over time
Oh WOW! Knowing it was a musical game I had high expectations for the music, but the way it get more and more intricate as you progressed was just fantastic!!
Your team made a big submission, I like your style, sounds and idea. But I think, that combat mechanics can be better, if you try to make it more rhythm-based, like in Patapon. When you need to combine 4 notes in different melodies with different effects.
I love the style of this, but I just couldn't "get" the mechanics. Just as I was figuring out how to kill bad guys by combining two runes and wanted to practice it a little, suddenly the dogs that take three runes to kill show up! The shape-casting mechanic seems really interesting, but because it's so novel, it needs a more gentle touch introducing it to the player.
Really fancy battle mechanic. It was pretty cool to figure out the different attacks and note combinations. The evolving soundtrack was also really nice. Graphics fit the sound as well.
The only criticism I can give is that the camera makes it hard to see the enemies sometimes and tends to clip through geometry. Other than that, really nice work!
Well you finally made me lookup basic musical theory. 0-clue how the attacks work, why am i getting transported (felt like a bug). Overall liked the music and 3d models. Feels like a large ambitious idea for a week, rather than a weekend.
Hi will smith is Back. This time some actual feed back.
Gameplay was a bit confusing but fun nontheless. I loved the Audio and 3D models.
@birdybirdkirby If you want to, I can integrate Accorgians and Techno-Spiders into the God simulator Genesis 1, so they can roam the fields of will smith :D
Really interesting entry! Visuals were top notch and it felt very nice to ominously float around with my keytar but DAMN i had a hard time figuring out how spells worked. There was a solid 5 minute of me trying to damage a pumpkin and corgi to no avail, trying every existing combination, had to refer to guide several times and still made no sense, did i break the game? :'^) Sounds played after spell casting really interfered with music playing which was kind of sad but in general the concept was very interesting and nicely made, i just kinda sucked with spell casting hahah
A seemingly wide-ranging game that didn't have time to end. The idea is very good. Killing aliens with a keytar has always been my dream. The scheme of matching figures I remember the game "Aquaria" by Derek Yu (Spelunker). If the characters were animated it would be a plus point. I found the music boring. Even with the fact that the arrangement is increasing the number of instruments, the looping is very small.
I had some difficulty understanding how to cast spells, but after reading the tutorial on this page, I got into it. The art style is quite outstanding and the music is great as well. I wanted to rotate the camera though (or to hide the objects that are overlapping the view). And I also had my mouse stuck very often which is very uncomfortable when casting spells. Sweet game!
I had some trouble getting the spell wheel to work. It would often select things immediately upon opening, or crash into the screen border, UI, or level geometry making some of the icons impossible to select. I also had to alt+tab back to the game description page to remember what each icon did, since there's no indication of that on the spell wheel. The art and music are pretty good, and I like how the music adds layers when picking up the spells.
At the end I really liked on how I was trying to fast cast some notes and it syncronized with the ambience music! Sometimes i was trying to teleport to distant enemies but the wheel notes was not appearing entirely. That was the only thing that i felt like, "Oh, this could be different". Awesome music, awesome concept, i really liked it!
The graphics and audio are clearly the main draw here, and I think both are well done. I appreciate the game's attempt at making the controls of the game cohesive with the music-based theme to support its aesthetics. I don't think the game did a great job of teaching how to make spells, and how effective each ones were. When I did figure out how to cast spells, I still felt the game relied on too much trial and error. I couldn't make out which spells were effective against which enemy, and the screenshot images didn't describe them well enough for me to figure it out.
I recognize there is an audience out there that likes to experiment and memorize which spells does what, and what to cast, but that style of gameplay simply isn't for me.
Comments36
I can't seem to figure out how to rotate camera, was it intentional? At some point level design obstructed the enemies. Sorry, I'm a bit stupid and tired after jam, so can't figure that out.
Really like the hud and note input.
I love accorgions so much though.
The only criticism I can give is that the camera makes it hard to see the enemies sometimes and tends to clip through geometry. Other than that, really nice work!
I had fun! The background music adding a new track every now and then at the start kept up the hype, very good work!
Gameplay was a bit confusing but fun nontheless.
I loved the Audio and 3D models.
@birdybirdkirby
If you want to, I can integrate Accorgians and Techno-Spiders into the God simulator Genesis 1, so they can roam the fields of will smith :D
Congratulations for the game!
I recognize there is an audience out there that likes to experiment and memorize which spells does what, and what to cast, but that style of gameplay simply isn't for me.
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494941349?t=1h29m36s
Hope you got some valuable feedback on your game and looking forward to seeing you next LD jam if I dont catch you before then! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin