Spellbook Shuffle

by ice9
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.71
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.58
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.68
Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.34
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.94
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.15
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.22
A tower defense where you don't know the rules of summoning! https://awesson.itch.io/spellbook-shuffle

You wake to find a note left by your wizarding master:

You summon monsters into a lane via a summoning circle with either 2 or 3 ingredients. Every game these "recipes" are randomized, so you'll just have to experiment!

As a studious apprentice, you can take notes of summons which you like by pressing the number keys . These will be saved into the respective slot at the top of the screen. (This is informational only - you will still have to pick up those ingredients and use them to summon that monster again.)

There are a variety of monster types, with different fighting styles. Ranged, tank, etc.

There are also elemental variants of most monsters, which have strengths and weaknesses.
* Fire is strong against, and takes less damage from, Grass
* Grass is strong against, and takes less damage from, Water
* Water is strong against, and takes less damage from, Fire
* The elusive Rainbow summons are strong against everything

Controls:

- You move with WASD
- Press SPACE near an ingredient to pick it up
- Press SPACE near a summoning circle to use your current ingredients to summon a creature.
- Press a number key, 1-5, to save the recipe for the last summon. It will display at the top of the screen in the numbered slot.

Comments16

Alkemiste16 Apr 2024, 11:54
Maybe a slightly faster difficulty ramp would help to grasp the concept faster by forcing you to try different strategies... but well executed overall!
pres2300
pres230016 Apr 2024, 12:32
This game was on point with the theme! I enjoyed the variety of enemies and what you could spawn. I suffered from tunnel vision on some of the lanes and some enemies would sneak by and attack a portal I wasn't paying attention to. Some sort of visual or audio indicator that a portal is under attack would go a long way, I think. I liked that you just have to know what combinations do what after a certain point. Nice work!
Balgorode
Balgorode16 Apr 2024, 12:33
Nice work! Though definitely could have been faster paced. Also spamming hydras is so op lol xD
SNIFFbl416 Apr 2024, 12:43
A very cool idea and a good mix of genres! Adding a few animations for the summons would make it simply perfect!
ZEN
ZEN16 Apr 2024, 20:11
:eye: :star: :four_leaf_clover: :mushroom: :sunflower:
Love the monster casting meets tower-defence genre mix. Great submission!
ice9author16 Apr 2024, 23:09
Thanks for playing and the feedback!

To those mentioning the difficulty, maybe we should have added a setting. Midway through development it was pretty hard and maybe we went too far the other way in the end. But it does ramp up over time - let us know your high score of Monsters Mashed :)
Zhirui18 Apr 2024, 03:20
Had fun summoning the creatures! A wave/level system would be a fun option as well :)
Gabriel Mendonca
Gabriel Mendonca18 Apr 2024, 05:37
​Fun game and cool concept, easy to play and very enjoyable :D :D
BenjaminW18 Apr 2024, 05:50
Nice game! I thought it might be frustrating to have to figure out the spells, but you literally had a creature for every combination (which I thought was great) so that wasn't at all a problem Dx Simple and fun, is what you expect it to be :)
M.Kusy
M.Kusy18 Apr 2024, 11:11
Fast paced and fun. Got a little lost and just summoned stuff at random, but in the end I got the gist of it.
I like the lighthearted graphics and pokemon vibes.
saintchristopher777
saintchristopher77719 Apr 2024, 13:49
Well done! Fun mechanics, and everything works as expected. The art is really good. Only thing missing is music and sfx. Great job!
MatthewDrake
MatthewDrake19 Apr 2024, 21:46
Fun mechanic, it was pretty interesting trying out different combinations and trying to find what I needed (especially when the Water Birdageddon happened.) Fun game overall!
Bearacus
Bearacus20 Apr 2024, 18:11
Nothing made me happier then when I summoned the rainbow slime! I thought the loop would run in wave, after somepoint when i had realized i was 60+ monsters mashed i figured there was no end to it so I felt like I had done everything. The Idle animation for the PC could be slowed down or held for when they would get hit.
Anastasia_Lukiy21 Apr 2024, 18:50
I loved the graphics and that I could create recipes, the creatures looked very cute!
Liu Pa Yueh21 Apr 2024, 18:54
Always happy to see more female protagonists!
HaaYaargh
HaaYaargh28 Apr 2024, 17:05
Mashed 150 monsters before ending early.

I like the concept of figuring out combination, sending summoned creatures against opponents they have advantage over, but I don't think I was good at it. I had two or three combinations more or less deciphered out, but usually I just spammed intuitively, which kind of worked as I lost only one portal health, but that's because I lost focus for a moment.

So as I mentioned, I might be bad at it, but if I were to work on this more, I would try to make the rules clearer to obtain, communicate more what is what and then reshuffle every new level/round.

Overall, pretty enjoyable game, pretty innovative. Well done! :rainbow:

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