This is a super impressive submission for your first game jam, well done! - I feel like a bit more feedback from enemy attacks and maybe a detailed tutorial would've helped here. I don't normally play games in this genre so I was initially very unsure of what to do but as I played I got the hang of things a little more. The scope of this game is huge for a game jam, very impressed with what you have made!
Play game
Ms. Witchy's Magic Academy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #236 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Fun | #258 | 3.458 | 3.458 |
| Overall | #295 | 3.514 | 3.514 |
| Creativity | #471 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Preferred Name
Team name: Bun Squared
Programmer's name: Vivian
Artist's name: Tina
Newbie?
Yes - I'm new to game jams!
How does your game fit the theme?
Well, it's a game about a witch "just getting started" with her magical education!
...Of note, we didn't see that as an example until literally tonight.
Comments
The sheer variety of enemies, buffs, debuffs, and upgrades, especially considering the time constraint, is impressive.
The basics of battle were relatively intuitive because I was used to STS but everything else was confusing at first. For example, I took a ton of damage because I didn't understand that the firewall buff was actually thorns. A help menu and/or visual or auditory damage feedback would've been nice.
Additionally, the post-battle decisions were even more confusing. The card upgrades were relatively well explained and I think it's fine to let the player just try stuff out and learn, especially because there was a description as to what upgrading a card with a certain element would do. But then there were two cards and I could only choose one of them and I had no idea what that meant. Was that still part of the upgrade process? Then there were lots of symbols and it kinda resembled the upgrade process from before so I thought maybe that too was part of the card upgrade and suddenly the next combat starts and for several encounters I had no idea that I was choosing the path to the next enemy.
The first miniboss felt weirdly luck-based. To reference STS again, if I see an enemy with thorns I know it's my fault or my deck is not strong enough if I let them get to 15 thorns. The miniboss was alone and had so much health that once I got unlucky, she got to 15 thorns and I just had to wait for maybe 10 turns, use only use block and wait for the buff to dissipate.
Other than that, the game had nice visuals and gameplay and for your first game jam submission it's really good.
Cute and fun! I'd love to see some visual effects from enemies, it'd make the game more understandable and pretty! Great job, I loved this game!
The Game is very good but i am too dumb to understand magic because my teacher teaches me physics instead of magic .i dont like him now because now i have found the academy that can teach me magic
Congratulation on finishing your first game! 🎉
You have a really solid foundation here for a fun card based battle system rougelike, super impress that you manage to pull of coding all the status effect ad their interactions during gameplay. With some polish, you got yourself a pretty neat game! job well done team!
Really good art and it is presented really well, but I struggled to know what to do sometimes. For your first game jam It is really awesome tho!
Solid foundation! I think the main things it is missing is some UI (e.g. hovering over effects or cards could stand to indicate what they do) and sound effects besides the music to sell some of the spells.
The basic gameplay is a pretty cool though! Solid cards and nice synergies you can get going.
the game is incredibly great! i love the art-style and concept of the game. well done!
Very complex and thoughtful system. Being given so many choices makes it really fun to build a deck and try out how far you can go. The first few playthroughs are really tough though since the number of effects and rules quickly overwhelm a new player. Things I would love to see is a bleep sound when an action is performed, because I often found myself playing 2 or 3 cards by accident.
The game looks very polished. I had a hard time understanding the upgrade system, and might need a better explanation. I found myself getting RNG-screwed in runs 2 and 3, or maybe I just suck at it haha.
The art style is absolutely beautiful! I love it. The cards themselves, but especially the back of the cards looks super cool! And the enemies are adorable! I love this so much!
I think a quick tutorial would've been nice. It's mostly self explanatory if you read the description, but for example, I don't know how often you can use power and items and how you can get more (well, just in the first round to be fair, then you figure it out). I only saw it later, but the reference cards are super helpful.
It was quite funny to me that I could use "Magic missile" on myself xD
Anyway. I absolutely loved the game and I really hope to see this be turned into a full fleshed out game!
Promising deckbuilder game! Just needs a little more visual and audio feedback with the spells to get more satisfying game feel. Overall, really good first submission!
Nice art style :) The short music loop starting standing quite a bit as I played.haha. Would have liked to have seen a little bit more feedback to player i.e sounds when casting spells etc. Also maybe just a little introduction/mini tutorial on how the rounds work and what the different effects are. But otherwise really good submission! A deckbuilder is always a ton of work
This is a really cool deck builder, I haven't played one of these kinds of games in a really long time! The artstyle is amazing too!
Cute art style and fairly solid deckbuilder. The only critique is the lack of info about what the status affects are and what they do. Having basic info appear when hovering over an icon would be very helpful towards effective gameplay. Good job!







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