Healer's Handbook
A downloadable game for Windows and macOS
Behind every great team of adventurers, there is a skilled healer. Without a skilled healer, even the mightiest of adventurers wouldn't stand a chance against the most powerful opponent of all - God. You are this healer. Unfortunately, your adventurers are not the most powerful. In fact, they're really not very powerful at all. They have no business challenging God. And yet, here we are. Sigh. They just insist they can do it. They have no chance. You know it. God knows it. But I guess we'll go through the motions.
You've sworn the Hippocratic Oath. Your hands are tied. You must keep these adventurers alive as long as possible - no matter how inevitable their fate may be.
Inscribe runes on your spellbook to cast healing spells. Maybe if you keep them alive long enough, the adventurers will at least like try to attack or something at some point.
🥈Awarded 2nd place overall amongst nearly 2000 entries at Ludum Dare 50🥈
Download
Install instructions
NOTE: On the Mac version, you need to run "healers-handbook.love". If you see this error message, try right-clicking the file and selecting "Open" from the context menu. Sometimes, this will only succeed on the second or third try (I swear!) so give it one more shot 🙏
Comments
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If you play support in LOL or DOTA that game is for you
think you guys might make an expansion/sequel? even possibly a way to beat god?
Thanks so much for playing! We played around with expanding the game, but things just didn't work out. If you liked this game though, you might like some of the other game jam games I've worked on. You can find them all on my itch profile. Downpour and Little Oni were made with the same team as Healer's Handbook
darn, i swear if i was to learn an attack spell i could beat god.
Thus is the plight of the healer. You can blame it all on Steve if that helps.
By the way, the theme for that jam was "delay the inevitable."
fair enough
So much fun! I'm not sure if there's necessarily an ending, but it seems like I at least haven't gotten the highest score yet, and I look forward to playing again to try for it!
The art is really well done, and I love the story. A D&D group who's eyes were a bit bigger than their wisdom checks trying to take on a boss at level 1 is hilarious, and I've been the healer in those sorts of sessions XD
My only real complaint if one could even call it that is the obvious one; drawing with a mouse is uncomfortable. I played a similar game in the past and I found the cure is to use my drawing tablet instead of my mouse, but I wanted to give it my absolute best before changing hardware.
What I learned is that this is a tough game, haha. I had a theory of maybe letting 2 people die so I could focus on the one, but it seems that having multiple is more helpful to spread out the problems. The god will make an attack at intervals to whomever is around, so the moment you lose one, you are just about doomed. Which is D&D basically.
I had a lot of fun with this, and I'm getting myself up to another try with my tablet soon, maybe I'll be at least slightly better! Thank you for making this!
Thanks for the review Sawyer! I'm glad you were able to connect so much to the game.
which teammate is steve?
Lol Steve didn't make it on the team
what do the books do?
The books are just to show your progress. 5 books is the max!
damn, i got all 5 though. i thought they would unlock more journal entries.
Good job! Not everyone has been able to get to 5 books. It does mean though that you've seen all the content the game has to offer. That's all we were able to do within the game jam. Thanks for playing!
Error
src/util/calc.lua:9: attempt to perform arithmetic on local 'n' (a nil value)
Traceback
[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler'
src/util/calc.lua:9: in function 'round'
src/game/systems/inputSystem.lua:141: in function 'callback'
src/lib/concord/world.lua:283: in function 'emit'
src/util/overworld.lua:172: in function 'update'
main.lua:22: in function 'update'
main.lua:130: in function <main.lua:111>
[C]: in function 'xpcall'
windows
May I request a Linux version, please?
Such a great game! The story is really funny, thanks to the witty writing, and the gameplay is intriguing. I like a lot the idea of casting spells drawing them.
The game gets boring quite fast though, I think that if you polish it and add a bit more variety it could improve a lot!
This made me laugh! Amazing writing. I loved the intro text.
Very cool idea! Similar premise (but wildly different execution) from my submission, where you also play as a healer who has to keep the party alive.
(hope you don't mind me linking here: https://notexplosive.itch.io/ld50)
I've activated 5 books. Is there something beyond them apart from the inevitable?
not yet -- we didn't have time to flesh out a deeper endgame due to the game jam time constraints. if we decide to work further on this game, that would likely be a focus area