Imp Unsummoning
Category: Jam / puzzle–action
Stack: Unity 2D, shipped as WebGL (drag-and-drop runes into slots on the wooden bar, aim, then OK to launch)
Play it: Ludum Dare 55 entry
Team: tortoise, nilnull (me), riv-roy — credits as listed on the jam entry.
No AI engineering assistance: Unity, C#, and this WebGL build were done without agentic coding tools. On this site, Rapid Prototypes is reserved for AI-assisted TypeScript/JavaScript browser builds; jam ships like this one sit as their own project instead.
WebGL session
Annotated capture of the in-browser build: rune tray, core + modifier slots, aim-then-click targeting, and OK to send — golf/pinball-style motion on the scroll.
How to unsummon imps
Jam-page diagram (mirrored locally; original on jam.host).
Premise
Imp Unsummoning was a three-person Ludum Dare 55 game. I proposed the rune combinatorics loop: you drag runes into the wooden bar slots (core + optional modifiers), take aim, then hit OK to commit and send the shot in a golf- or pinball-style motion across the parchment with 1-bit imps and obstacles. The team signed off on that direction and we shipped under jam time pressure.
What I owned
- Core mechanic: Rune combination rules and how they fed the send / resolve loop.
- Level design: I built the levels. Geometry was laid out around specific rune combinations as a hard constraint — each stage was meant to read as “this combo matters here,” not generic tile soup.
- Runes (art): I believe I drew the rune symbols; memory is fuzzy on every asset after the jam blur.
- UI: A teammate handled the main UI; I did not own that layer.
The jam meta was honest: teammates were partly using jams as a finish line for actually completing games. I picked up level workload so we had coherent stages instead of a mechanics demo with nowhere to play.
Personal aside
I still do not gravitate toward 2D games in general. I took the level and sprite workflow anyway because I had figured out how 2D sprites and scene setup needed to work for this build, and someone had to close the gap before the deadline.
Links
- Ludum Dare 55 — Imp Unsummoning: ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/imp-unsummoning