Best Friend

Category	Rank	Score
Humor	51	3.23
Theme	57	3.65
Overall	84	3.33
Audio	118	3.00
Mood	119	3.16
Community	127	3.03
Fun	159	2.85
Graphics	205	3.05
Innovation	270	2.63
Coolness	376	35

chainedlupine 2011-12-18 22:24

Congrats on finishing it! And I like the tunes.

The doggy is so happy in that one ending...

testsubject06 2011-12-18 22:32

Such a happy goggy!

mk_rules1 2011-12-19 04:15

i dont know how to get this other ending :/

jacic 2011-12-19 05:02

You monster :p ;)

I got both endings

jigxor 2011-12-19 05:04

*Spoilers*

Great endings! They made me genuinely feel bad for whoever was left behind! Graphics are nice too.

testsubject06 2011-12-19 05:06

Thanks guys, also mk_rules1 the hint for the opposite ending is on the button at the end of the ending you get.

greasemonkey 2011-12-19 05:08

Ok, this is the first game I get to rank. Goody!

There's not much here that I haven't seen before, but this reminds me that I should resort to the "multiple endings" thing some time.

I quite like how the theme wasn't played completely straight, as that could potentially result in something *quite* boring.

Speaking of boring, those corridors could be a bit shorter.

The graphics look quite good and I've gone and given you 5 stars even though there's a few sloppy things you've done (that dirt sure stands out as a bunch of individual tiles, doesn't it? something to note for next time).

Audiowise, that second piece of music was a bit short to be quite honest. But the music sounded fairly good and you definitely made sound happen when it should have.

Humourwise, I was quite amused at the dog ending :D

On the other hand, you did capture the mood fairly well in terms of endings.

Communitywise, I would suggest more screenshots + beta posts, but yeah.

aslai 2011-12-19 06:50

It's a quick platformer, and it's fairly generic. The audio was short and repetitive, which is a big no-no with chip tunes. The graphics were acceptable. The end messages were pretty funny, and no matter what, the endings always made me feel at least a little sad :(

testsubject06 2011-12-19 07:00

Aslai, the problem with that is, I SUCK at making music, period. That's the worst thing for me, which is why I added the mute music button.

binary_girl 2011-12-19 14:49

i quite liked the music actually.. think it was my fav bit :) goodstuff

mattrix 2011-12-19 19:01

Great little game. Got both endings pretty quickly.

I think this is a great use of the theme, most games I've seen seem to be just showing someone that's alone or lonely, but yours starts with multiple characters that *end up* alone, rather than starting alone.

danik 2011-12-19 20:25

There is something about this game that makes me a bit nostalgic. The graphics could have been better, and the music is repetitive but I liked it a lot anyways. Didn't manage to get the other ending though, despite playing it through 4 times.

testsubject06 2011-12-19 20:26

Danik, don't insert the tablet.

atomic 2011-12-19 22:35

Great idea! Gameplay could be more elaborated but overall this kicks ass as far as theme ideas go!

blennosoftgames 2011-12-20 04:12

Got both endings! Nice use of the theme, and solid gameplay. Well done, sir.

marudziik 2011-12-20 10:11

Both endings are pretty depressing, but I liked the game.

the-jack 2011-12-20 14:30

I got the "dog" ending. This was absolutely brilliant and a benchmark for about how long I can deal with platforming in my old age. Great work, thanks for making this. 5/5

testsubject06 2011-12-20 20:32

Thank you for playing Dark Acre

gaeel 2011-12-20 22:39

I couldn't find the other ending, but I had fun

kableado 2011-12-20 23:58

Brilliant!!

kunonooni 2011-12-21 02:38

I really like it :) Got both endings. Nice graphics, and good music. Great job Test!

asot 2011-12-21 02:51

Man, that was sad. I like how you put music in your game. Not too many people did that!

testsubject06 2011-12-21 03:27

I almost didn't :P

chaoslab 2011-12-21 03:53

I enjoyed that, matched well to the theme.

jeck 2011-12-22 13:28

Wow. Nice endings.

volando 2011-12-22 23:54

pretty cool loop

matthias_zarzecki 2011-12-23 19:50

Love the intro and the resulting "alone"-theme, where you get the motivation for the rest of the story. Good puzzles.

AND WHY DO THE BLOCKS LAUGH AT ME WHATS SO FUNNY

Ending is gut-wrenching (i.e. good). Reminds me of the things you have to do with the in my game :-)

nibelung 2011-12-24 15:49

Nice game, I thought I ruined the game by locking the dog. Then the dog ending. LOL. Nice!

okkwogg 2011-12-26 20:20

I hope that treacherous dog burns in hell.

iqpierce 2012-01-02 00:45

I haven't wanted to shoot a dog so much since Duck Hunt. :)

All right, a serious review. I got both endings btw, though it took me 3 tries. Spoilers below.
- The first music track was okay (definitely not great); the second track was quite poor IMO. However the fact that the music changes to a more somber track when you lose the dog, is a nice touch.
- It took me 3 tries because I didn't realize that putting the treasure/scroll onto the pedestal would mean letting the dog go free. The significance of this was unclear... obviously it's something I learned, and maybe that was your intention.
- My biggest criticism is that there really seems to be zero "gameplay" in the sense that the only interesting decisions are "do I go up, or right"? The one potentially interesting decision in the game is whether the dog lives or I do; but again, I'm not even aware of that decision until after the first playthrough. In other words it's just not very deep as a "game", it's just navigation of a maze and that's all.
- The fact that you had two endings was nice and not done enough. The emotional impact of them is well-done - the dog running away with the bone is pretty droll.
- One big flaw: at the start of the dungeon I had access to a button, but couldn't actually press it. The dog and I jumped on that button for a while. It's confusing and I'd imagine it could have been easily avoided (put another locked door in front of that button until the button can easily be used).
- One good thing you did was player teaching, making sure that they learned to use the button before proceeding; and the button themselves "afforded" pushing and being jumped on - good design choices, all.
- No bugs that I saw or anything like that - which is good for a game made on an LD timeframe. Keeping it simple was a good decision - better a game be too simple (but complete) than too ambitious (and buggy/incomplete).

Overall I give this a 3/5. Good effort - and probably better than I'll do whenever I finally dive into an LD attempt of my own...!

iqpierce 2012-01-02 00:52

Oh, so I am an idiot and didn't realize "real" voting is available only to people who made a game - I was unable to participate but thought I'd go around and randomly review people's games as my participation. Well I'll leave my review here but FYI you should know it's not contributing to your "real" score. Which is a fair system when I think about it - like I said, who knows whether I could do this well myself!

ghostik 2012-01-05 15:28

I saved his life! dog traitor! :D

Great game :D

sonnybone 2012-01-05 20:23

I love the way the dog AI works. Good stuff.

agersant 2012-01-10 01:59

Last minute rating. Good ending!