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Runeweaver's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #33 | 2.943 | 3.133 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
Runeweaver is a genre fusion of dungeon crawling and Yahtzee. The protagonist is hunting for his master's lost treasure, a magical collection of runes.
You can't miss the chickens. They are a central theme.
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Comments
Really neat graphics! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the games from the Dungeon Crawler Jam.
Fantastic art style, nice atmosphere and cool concept for the fights too.
The game desperately needs some tutorials about how it works though or at least a description on the game page. It took me a whole fight until I started to understand it. And that made the fight extremely tedious since the balancing is completely around needing to build combos. I only discovered the redraw button after I accidentally locked a die.
But even when I got to a decent understanding of how the counting worked, I still didn’t understand the math in it at all. The multipliers don’t add up in any sensible way, and since we don’t see the dice when seeing the score it becomes very confusing. And also slow. I’d really want the summary to be on the same screen and still be able to see the dice.
The other problem with the fight is that I can’t inspect my bag, and that means I don’t know really what might or might not be worth locking. It’s fine to require me keeping track of what has been drawn, I suppose, but at least between fights I should be able to see the contents. And even better be able to select some to not be included / build my deck.
It is still a very interesting game to play, but it feels like relatively smaller adjustments guiding the player in, giving a bit more information in the fights, but mostly making the fights much faster (which they would be if we could get more multipliers too) with less clicks and waits after each attack, then it would have been quite a large jump in how fun and engaging it is.
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/-C9ilt9MLy4
The art is great for the game and the intro is really good, i like that got good story for it. The combat thought might been good but it is really confusing and i felt like i could not hurt the spider as only dealt small damage and it healed many times.
I think the game could be amazing, it just need bit more balance with combat and explained better so easier to understand what going on with it. Otherwise great work on the game.
Awesome concept, and I really like the art and story, the dungeon looked great and I was excited to be exploring and exploding chickens with lightning bolts.
Unfortunately, I never quite understood the combat. I've played yahtzee where you can put aside some dice and reroll others but I didn't see this option here. I didn't really know what the runecards do, I guess give specific bonuses and starting dice requirements but overall I just couldn't pin it down. Full house didn't work with color apparently either (3 blue 2 red for example). I think I randomly took damage and healed the enemies as well. I'm not sure if these are actually bugs, but might just be me misunderstanding the combat mechanics. Also, the first enemy I fought had 150 HP which I struggled with, then encountered a 45k hp monster. A massive difficulty spike. Also, I think the big page pulling up mid combat to calculated all the bonuses is not needed, it should be a quick flash on the screen to not break up the combat pacing.
Overall, this had huge potential it just needs some more explanation on how the combat actually works. I recorded my gameplay here
I've been working steadily on it since the competition closed and will have a much improved game to release in the near future, complete with an actual tutorial and tons of bug fixes and new enemies and features. Thanks for playing it!
Terrible on-boarding... fun as hell game!
Very moreish gameplay loop once you get the hang of it.
(I do wish you could undo moves though, but I guess it forces you to focus that you can't.)
First playthrough:
Do I suck or is this really really hard?
Does the order of the numbers matter?
Wait, am I spontaneously losing health?
Is this meant to be like Poker?
I'm just starting to get good but Iost so much health!
Second Playthrough:
Oh it's like Yahtzee... I need to lookup the scoring for Yahtzee.
So as long as I have the numbers... wait does the order or colours affect the multiplier?
I'm kicking a little ass now, but damn I'm lost.
I died... and my capture got corrupted...
Third Playthrough:
Pressed M. There IS a map.
I figured out healing!
Still don't know what Mana does.
I am God now!
I beat the Boss!!
... and my reward is being entombed underground with no means of exit. Rats!
The one thing I was never clear on is whether there was a diminishing return on collecting dice. At first you really need to rely on straights, before higher combinations of numbers and colours are unlocked.
But unlike Yahtzee where you have a set chance of getting a roll you need, pulling from an ever-expanding collection; wouldn't it reduce the likelihood of drawing one that's contextually useful...?
I mean, I guess I never struggled once I got going. But maybe, once you hit a certain threshold of dice, you unlock addition re-rolls to offset that potentiality?
"wouldn't it reduce the likelihood of drawing one that's contextually useful...?" -- YES!
Killing chickens for their runes is voluntary (unless they are blocking your path). And you can see their color ahead of time so you know what color rune you will get. But understand that the game is incomplete. There are some mechanics that I intended to have that I just didn't get to. I am continuing to work on the game though, and hopefully will solve some of these problems.
To answer some questions:
For onboarding, all I had time for was tooltips :(
Order doesn't matter.
You can only lose health from walking into chickens or when then enemy takes a turn in combat -- nothing spontaneous.
It is meant to be like poker and Yahtzee -- there is some overlap there. You can lock runes and redraw once per turn somewhat like Yahtzee or draw poker.
Mana is only used for your lightning spell to kill chickens. It's not well balanced currently.
There are a few sad bits. I accidentally left the last boss with 1 health. There is no way out of the dungeon. You can go to lower floors but they are empty. My next version, after the competition closes will resolve these issues.
One of the big pieces that didn't make it in, is that you will eventually be able to play up to 3 runecards at a time. You will redraw runes each time you play 5 runestones, but if you have to play an empty runecard, it will damage you, like the spell blowing up in your face. Runecards will have properties on them that are more interesting than All mana x2 and All damage x2. I envision wild runes, cursed runes and ways to prune your collection. You'll eventually do millions of damage and be rewarded for overkills. You'll also face monsters with millions of health.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
After watching your videos, I do see some bugs, and one of them looks like the spontaneous damage you mention. The monsters healing is a bug. You taking damage from your own turn is a bug.
This is a hell of a beautiful dungeon but I can't fight this crab anymore)
Interesting concept, but I kept getting locked into combats with only 9 runestones and just spending turn after turn with nothing happening.
What a nice game! I spent around hour finishing it and at first I was at loss about all the combat mechanics (not an expert in Yahtzee or a poker), but after some crawling and battling it clicked and I was able to do insane amount of consistently.
I didn’t understood what curse did and mostly I used any dice which is not damage dice as a way to build a combination for the damage dice.
Dungeon was a bit too big for the jam in my opinion, I started crawling the minimap at some point, instead of exploring the dungeon due to its size.
Music, sound effects and graphics were all spot on, very nicely built game I might say.
Well done, I see this is your first game on itch, super impressive!
Thank you.
Ok I feel pretty stupid right now, but I can't really figure out what the runestone mechanics are or why I can place runes on the slots or not sometimes... :(
There are tooltips that say what you can play when.
But basically, match a color or a numeral to the previous one played. Or you can match +/- 1 on the numerals to try and get straights, like in poker or Yahtzee.
You want to get 3, 4, or 5 of a kind, colors or numerals, or a small straight, like 3,4,5,6, or a large straight, 2,3,4,5,6, or a full house (a pair and a 3 of a kind together). These give you big multipliers. All the multipliers get factored against the number on the card for final values.
Red runes do damage.
Green = healing
Blue = mana
Yellow = block
Purple = weakness curse
I guess there´s use of AI for the pictures and everything, but the overall game looks very good, as well as the music. intro and gameflow. Funny idea about the evil chickens. Addictive gameplay, although it takes time to get how it works. Well done!
I have defeated the fiend who has terrorized my town!
Super fun! Best part was defeating the Large Clucker and jumping from level 4 to 11, this fight was super tense and I was lucky it didn't finish me off a couple of times.
I started to map the game halfway through which I guess was a good idea, it's a big floor. The length of the game felt just right by the way.
The 2d part looks amazing : the intro, the UI, as well as the main wall texture, it looks great too. Movement is perfect. Finally the combat system is very fun to play with, going with big x1250 (x5x250) sets is super satisfying and choosing which runes to keep is rarely a choice as obvious as you might wonder at first.
I think you can't pick items?
Great game overall!
Thank you for the kind words and for playing my game.
You can press M to get a full screen map.
No, you can't pick up any items. It's a feature I had to cut for time.
Very nice graphics and gameplay!
It took me a while to understand the mechanics though. But it works well once you figure it out. The only thing that seems to matter in the fight are damage so after a while I just went with saving any red runes and hoping to get 3 or 4 of them to continue the story. I think I only met one boss but it had 1 hp? Killed it in one go. I also got down to level 2 but it was a small empty room. I decided to call it then.
I think the foundation of this game is great and can become a real game with more time put into it. There is some adjustments and balancing to be made. The movement felt good but at times a bit unresponsive if you get impatient for the next input.
The second box at the fight screen was hard to understand as well. I guess it is an additional multiplier that's always added.
Also having the ESC key close the game caught me off guards. I was looking for a menu but exited the game unknowingly. Have this open a close panel or menu. EDIT: I pressed ESC again and noticed there is a menu that pops up for a brief second but the the game exits directly.
All in all I really enjoyed the game!
Good Job!
I totally forgot to put the final boss's health back after I was testing killing him. All the very rough edges you encountered come down to the fact that I simply ran out of time and was really rushed at the end. If I'd even had time to play through my own game once, I bet it could have been a lot better. Thanks for playing it and leaving feedback!
One feature that is something that I haven't seen in crawlers before is the Backtrack spell. I didn't get time to tutorialize it. Press 'B' to see what happens. It's a quality of life spell.
This sounds like an interesting idea, and from what I see on the title screen, the visuals look great, but the Play and the Quit button don't seem to work ☹️
Ugh. I put in a text element last second and covered up the buttons. Seeing if I can get it patched.
It should be patched now so the play and quit buttons work.
I'm glad you could push an update, it seems like you put a lot of work into your game. The illustrations are gorgeous, so are the dungeon textures. The atmosphere is spot on!
Is there more than 1 floor? I got stuck after killing two spiders and getter 3 runes from the chicken. The minimap seemed complete, and the only door I saw wouldn't open. The combat system has a lot of potential, but during my playthrough I rarely had a worthy combination and did little to no damage most of the time. I saw that you can lock some runes and redraw, but the option didn't always appear. And since the spiders could heal themselves, one fight took around 10 minutes to complete. At the end, I pressed escaped and clicked the "No" button to not quit the game, but it still quit, which made me lose progress.
Other than that, I found your game very polished and visually impressive, big fan of the art! And I think that with a bit of balancing, you're on to something with that battle system. I love how you integrated chicken into the plot and gameplay, too!
Yeah, I simply ran out of time. I only got enemies in the level in the last hour of the Jam and I never got a chance to play through it. There is one door that I know of that will only open from one side, but all the other doors should open with a lever or a pressure plate.
I meant for there to be random levels, and they are there, but they are empty :(
So I made the first level huge. There are two bosses.
As far as combat goes, it's all in the bonuses. You can do 2 damage, or you can do 2,000,000 with stacking bonuses. I found the straights are easy to get early on.
There are about 20 chickens to find to get more runes.
I want to spend more time on it and fix the bugs and add more content, because I think the combat can be fun. The cards will eventually be rewards from fights and have Slay The Spire type abilities to make combat even more interesting.
Thanks for checking it out though! I almost decided to quit the Jam because I didn't think I could even get that far. I worked straight through the last 30 hours.