Pictomancer

A game made in one week for the 7DRL 2024.

You are pictomancer: you take pictures of your surrounding world and then can manifest them into the real world.

You are in an archipelago with the mission of restoring its peacefulness. Indeed, the ancient bell isn't in its altar anymore. Animals, elementals and other spirits are now very hostile to any stranger.

Run duration: 5-10min 

Goal

Take the bell from inside the volcano into the altar. You can find the altar outside the volcano, defended by dangerous wraiths.

Controls

This game is made to be played with the mouse only :

• Drag pictures into the valid range to manifest
• You can drag the map with the mouse.
• You can change the zoom with the scroll wheel.
• You can hover anything to gain some more information.
• The log panel (bottom-left) is scrollable (mouse drag or scroll-wheel)
• Some keyboard shortcuts are available (but you can't play the game with a keyboard only):
  • Movement: numpad, WASD/QEZC
    
  • Space to enter picture taking mode

Tips

• Try to understand how the picture mechanics work.
• You are not a close-combat expert at all. But you can find other ways to fight.
• You can carry up to seven pictures at once.
• Be wary of your resources. Taking picture consumes Photolumine, which you must find in the wild. And your stock is limited.
• The game won't let you manifest a picture if it would kill you.
• Some tiles can't be destroyed (for example the ones related to the goal of the game), except with another indestructible tiles. Be cautious, it is possible to make the game unwinable, for example if you override every instances of the bell with pieces of the altar.

Mechanics details

You might want to play a bit before reading this section, as I think understing mechanics is part of the exploration.

• Manifesting a picture will override every tile and summon copies of photographed entities.
• If an entity is manifested on a tile it can't traverse, it will die.
• If an existing entity is now on a wrong (ex: Wall) it will die.
• You can only capture what you know (unseen tiles and hidden entities won't be on the picture).
• But you can manifest into the dark.
• If you manifest yourself, you will teleport instead.
• Fire elementals are dangerous, but they also have one (quite obvious) weakness.
• Photolumine rocks explode when manifested from a picture. That can be useful.
• Wraiths are special: 
  • etheral: they can go through anything.
  • deathtouch: they will kill any entity they touch (including you).
  • slow: they only move every two turns.
  • they are only found near the altar, and go too far away from it.
  • you can't kill them except by one specific way. But you don't it to do it to win the game.

Credits

• Made in Kotlin with Korge. Sources: https://gitlab.com/drestin-games/7drl-2024
• Icons from https://game-icons.net/
• Fonts: FiraCode, Simple Mood
  

Post-submission patches

• 10/03/2024 - bug fix: there was one way to kill yourself with a picture