Summoner Tycoon

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.14
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.91
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.13
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.78
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.78
Welcome young summoner! Ready to make your mark on the world? Put down some roots? Build your house on a layline to generate excessive amounts of mana to overcome your enemies? Well come on down to Summoneropolistownville where we have vacant lots to spare! Set up your very own home with your friends. Conjure up some cute cuddly slimes ~~more to come later~~. We hope to see you soon!

Summoner Tycoon is a Tycoon game. The gameplay is simple. After you spawn in you claim a plot of land and start to accrue a currency. In this game, mana. You do this at the layline ~~totally not based off of the devil's trap from supernatural. I'm not addicted to that show now hush!~~ And use the lecturn to summon your very own cute workforce to gain faster mana and build your dream home! ~~Amenities coming in future patches~~.

This game has plots for up to 8 players. To get started enter your name and enter the IP of the host... unless you're the host. One of you then hit host and the rest hit join. When someone hits start game it starts up for everyone! ~~Careful to not join after the game starts up... things get weird and alternate versions of you are also *summon*.~~ You should be able to have up to 32 players if some want to team up and help gather mana. If you need to port forward, the port is currently under "8910"

The game ends at the second lectern. There is nothing available in it at this time. More to come later ^-^


Playable in browser over at itch.

WASD
Click to activate near objects.
Mouse for camera
Alt-enter to fullscreen in exe
Esc to close
Use lecturn to get your mouse back.

-- Future updates planned --
* more summons
* more decorations
* ability to command summons and not just channel mana for you

* summon COMBAT maybe? :thinking:
* fix duplicate summoning bug and set up dedicated server. I SO wanted this for the jam. Darn bugs and glitches XD
* slimes able to merge?
* Character select screen. More hairstyles, outfits, etc to choose from.

Credits:
A very big THANK you goes to my artist who did the cover art for me. She's very talented and can be found on X under ProfessorYaura, and her kofi at:
https://ko-fi.com/project4yaura

Character and Slime sprites are from this wonderful sprite creator, almostApixel:
https://itch.io/s/72909/smallburg-complete-pack

Wall textures from:
https://www.textures4photoshop.com
Genres: role playing
Tools: Godot

Comments24

Prepe16 Apr 2024, 18:24
I am sorry but I tried to start the game and it didn't load after I hit the start button. I tried to reload the game and now it doesn't even load the main screen, it just sits at like 80% loading. Would love to try, sadly wont work for me, maybe someone else has more luck.
LDJam user 273626
LDJam user 273626author16 Apr 2024, 22:40
Over on Itch? I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah I found out that aparantly the latest version of Godot has issues with browserbased. It works better on Itch than here at least. There is still the downloadable version if you want to try. Thanks for the attempt though! ^-^
Sicosiber
Sicosiber18 Apr 2024, 17:32
Itch worked for me! Cool game you got here! I always like me a good 2.5D game! I'm not super into camera rotation with 2.5D stuff generally, but I felt it worked pretty well with this game, great job!
Ryrumeli18 Apr 2024, 17:43
This is by itself a technical marvel, managing multiplayer in a jam! Unfortunately I couldn't play online (No friends to play with, woe is me T_T) but the basic mechanics are interesting, it feels like a fun cozy game, which in itself is pretty cool. While I find combat options could be implemented like you mentioned, the strengths here are interaction and hijinks that can arise from it, building options, mechanics that incentivize collaboration, costumization and self-expression, that should be the focus on the plan to take this forward!

Also minor thing, I felt stuttering with the camera at times in the Itch.io version which I hadn't with other games, even Godot ones. Could be something just on my end but saying this just in case!
Nomus
Nomus18 Apr 2024, 17:44
Interesting concept, I like the ability to summon to grind
I like that you can setup your server too to play with friends
I couldn't spend a lot of the ressources though, and couldn't use the necronomicon on top
TheMoonrise
TheMoonrise18 Apr 2024, 17:51
Unfortunately the web version didn't load for me. Just a grey screen after I pressed start.
Dan Allison
Dan Allison18 Apr 2024, 17:53
Super impressive to get an online game working in a game jam, feels like magic (Which is very on brand for the jam)! Very fun idea too, I enjoyed amassing an army of cute slime helpers to get me mana. Could this see being a lot of fun with other players too. Good job!

One thing I'll add is that the game only worked for me when I clicked on the host game button before clicking on play. If I clicked on play first it would get stuck so that might be why @prepe has issues.
Momo_Hunter
Momo_Hunter18 Apr 2024, 17:59
Interesting concept you got there. Unfortunately I also don't have any friends to play that with, but was fun anyways. I didn't quite get how the slimes are scaling and some just went _somewhere_ and did not start the attack animation, but overall very solid work with the multiplayer
cheesepencil
cheesepencil18 Apr 2024, 18:36
Maybe I just didn't get it, but I wasn't able to summon anything. I hosted a solo game, claimed a plot, chose my walls (but walls never appeared). I went to the lectern, chose my summon type (fire, same as the walls I wanted) and then... nothing happened. Clicking around the summoning circle didn't appear to do anything either.

Might just be too clever for me, but the character sprite is cute and multiplayer in a jam is *always* impressive, so good job
Wendel Scardua
Wendel Scardua19 Apr 2024, 13:34
@cheesepencil the summons and the walls consume the specific element "runes". When you summon runes it adds a random amount to each element.
Ategon
Ategon21 Apr 2024, 12:33
Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! If you wanted to watch it again in the future heres the vod of the stream (with a chapter for your game)


And I'm the host for the ludum dare score chasers tournament this Ludum Dare. Wanted to ask if youre fine if I put some gameplay of the game in an intermission video. Last year for reference:

LDJam user 273626
LDJam user 273626author24 Apr 2024, 03:33
@ategon thank you very much, I would be very honored to be included! Thank you so much for playing my game! I've already taken your suggestions to heart and made changes to the game ~~which will be uploaded after the jam~~ thanks to your thoughts. I look forward to catching another stream of yours! ^-^
LDJam user 273626
LDJam user 273626author24 Apr 2024, 03:35
@cheesepencil Thank you for playing my game! To be able to gain the other currency you have to stand in the circle to gather mana. This will allow you to summon runes to give you a random elemental rune to purchase more from that lecturn, or to summon walls with.
LDJam user 273626
LDJam user 273626author24 Apr 2024, 03:40
Interesting concept you got there. Unfortunately I also don’t have any friends to play that with, but was fun anyways. I didn’t quite get how the slimes are scaling and some just went somewhere and did not start the attack animation, but overall very solid work with the multiplayer

@momo-hunter Thank you for playing my game! The slimes have a VERY dumbed down pathing ai. Look at closest circle and go to it. If they're on the same position for 2 frames they'll chose left or right and go that way for a little to unstick them. I thiiiink I need to delay that rerouting a little since they're seeming to jog a bit too much. But the cellar does help to corral them. And as long as they're close they will still channel even if not doing the animation. Each slime adds 1*delta iirc mana per frame. each player gives 3*delta. I WANT to rework their ai and allow them to merge together to allow others in (and level up their channeling)

Thanks again for checking out my game!
coffie25 Apr 2024, 15:12
First of all, I can't believe you made an online multiplayer game for LD. It's usually not recommended because, as other comments said, most people playing jam games want to play alone. But it's also not recommended because of how hard it is and I, as a programmer, am amazed to see you actually got it to work! Congratulations.

I got pretty far in the game, but couldn't figure out what to do after unlocking the lectern. Using it consumes mana, but nothing seems to be happening.

There are some technical nuances around colliders and graphics (unsolicited tip: disable bilinear filtering for pixel art sprites — you want to use what Unity calls point filtering, it can also be called "nearest neighbor").

In summary: great technical achievement and I like what this could potentially be, but the game is not really intuitive which ruined the experience a bit for me — sorry.
atmospherium
atmospherium25 Apr 2024, 16:49
As others have mentioned, it's impressive you got a multiplayer game working over the course of the jam. I didn't have any friends available, so I just did a single-player playthrough and successfully built my house of slime. The art was simple but engaging (which is exactly what you need for a game of this type) and the mechanics made sense without too much trial and error.

It seems like the multiplayer aspect of the game is set up for parallel gameplay and passive competition, more a race to completion than building up a slime army to invade your neighbors. Is that the vision you have for this project moving forward? I could see some possibilities for things like collecting wild slimes or some version of zone control that could work well with the foundation you've built here. It'll be interesting to see if you develop this further.
Arthurds26 Apr 2024, 00:06
me and my slimes vibing in my mannsion
TheNerm27 Apr 2024, 14:06
It's a technical marvel that this game runs as well as it does.
Rowlof27 Apr 2024, 15:47
Nicely done for a jam
LDJam user 280707
LDJam user 2807071 May 2024, 00:08
Played the game, had a fun time with it!

Online multiplayer will never cease to amaze me in game jam entries, so nicely done! ^^

The sprites and animations are adorable, and it reminds me of those old roblox tycoon games I played when I was a kid, so taps into the nostalgia factor for me!

I did have a handful of issues; The web build didn't really seem to work for me, audio didn't really work and the summoning/mana generation seemed to break a couple minutes every time I played. So I played the downloadable build, buut.. That build has a million of every type of mana xD

I also couldn't use the book on the second floor, and the second floor itself seemed invisible, which was odd.

The music was also really nice, and I liked it a lot, even though it didn't seem to loop?

Overall, I had a fun time! Some issues, of course, as you'd expect from a jam game, but a really nice little game! Good work! ^^
shared
shared1 May 2024, 22:01
Our games have almost the same name lmao, very different games though. The gameplay and overall look of the game reminds me of tycoon maps on a game I played a bit as a kid, and I assume that's on purpose !
TentacleDream
TentacleDream3 May 2024, 14:26
Great work! Impressive multiplayer for a jam! basic mechanics are interesting. Feels like a fun, cozy game, which is cool. Combat options could be added, but focus on interaction, hijinks, building options, and mechanics that encourage collaboration, customization, and self-expression. That's the way forward! Apologies for any errors!
Elvendan3 May 2024, 15:49
Nice base building game. Hope you'll add more content in the future!

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