Game of the Name
This game is from ldjam.com, which is currently unavailable.
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You can try viewing the original page on Web Archive (may not load correctly).
True names have power. The resonances of a name with the words around it define the shape and abilities of ones being.
Game of the Name is an auto-battler where you summon forth creatures to fight an eldritch entity. The names of these creatures are systematically connected to their stats and abilities. For example "walter" has an elemental affinity with "water".
Each creature has two abilities that can be combined with the abilities of up to 4 other teammates to create countless combinations.
Type names and hit enter to summon, summoning the boss in the center will begin the fight and prevent further summoning until the battle is completed.
You can hover over the names of abilities for a tooltip with their description.
Number keys 123 for 1x, 2x, and 4x playback speed, respectively
* This time I decide from the start to ignore music entirely. It usually takes me a long time to make something that ends up not very good. It's a fun learning process but not worth the time with only 48 hours.
* The generation based on names uses a Levenshtein distance calculation and a thesaurus to score a "resonance" between a name and a concept. Game design wise it's likely just a gimmick, but it was a fun experiment anyway. It offers somewhere between complete RNG and full control over stats, but I'm not sure if the control you have is legible enough to not just feel like RNG. About what I expected but I liked the thematic parts of the idea with summoning based on True Names.
* The auto-battler part of the game is a tried and true mechanic from other games, and definitely could lead to some fun gameplay with a bit more time in the oven. I had a lot of fun thinking of different abilities that can interact with each other, although I was only able to implement a few. This has planted the seeds in my head to make another auto-battler.
Game of the Name is an auto-battler where you summon forth creatures to fight an eldritch entity. The names of these creatures are systematically connected to their stats and abilities. For example "walter" has an elemental affinity with "water".
Each creature has two abilities that can be combined with the abilities of up to 4 other teammates to create countless combinations.
Controls
Use the arrow keys to or click on the circles to select which circle to summon in.Type names and hit enter to summon, summoning the boss in the center will begin the fight and prevent further summoning until the battle is completed.
You can hover over the names of abilities for a tooltip with their description.
Number keys 123 for 1x, 2x, and 4x playback speed, respectively
Notes on what I've learned (feel free to ignore this if you're just playing the game)
* The game is mostly custom C++ with a few libraries to do small isolated tasks. This was my first game trying out Vulkan for rendering. It actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting based on how scary some people make Vulkan sound. Sure it's a lot of code compared to OpenGL, but most of that code is simple data specification that can be copy pasted and slightly tweaked to do different things. Once I have it better set up I don't see it being any harder than OpenGL, and the better support with gpu debugging tools probably ends up net positive for ease of use.* This time I decide from the start to ignore music entirely. It usually takes me a long time to make something that ends up not very good. It's a fun learning process but not worth the time with only 48 hours.
* The generation based on names uses a Levenshtein distance calculation and a thesaurus to score a "resonance" between a name and a concept. Game design wise it's likely just a gimmick, but it was a fun experiment anyway. It offers somewhere between complete RNG and full control over stats, but I'm not sure if the control you have is legible enough to not just feel like RNG. About what I expected but I liked the thematic parts of the idea with summoning based on True Names.
* The auto-battler part of the game is a tried and true mechanic from other games, and definitely could lead to some fun gameplay with a bit more time in the oven. I had a lot of fun thinking of different abilities that can interact with each other, although I was only able to implement a few. This has planted the seeds in my head to make another auto-battler.