FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD32 → RELIC

RELIC

By camilleh

View on Wayback Machine

CategoryRankScoreCount
Coolness364
Humor354.04
Mood563.82
Graphics914.05
Audio1753.41
Overall3133.44
Fun6852.90
Theme7373.13
Innovation8412.67

Comments

met44 2015-04-20 01:59

Haha man it's too bad it's so short, story really had its funny moments !!!

Good work though, I liked the space physics too ^^

peejaygee 2015-04-20 03:04

Very 'Deep' for such a short time for getting it together, well done!

gravityscore 2015-04-20 05:30

Great job!

seankimdesign 2015-04-20 05:39

That was stunningly beautiful. The game felt like a prelude for an epic space odyssey, and I'm now sad that it's over. I really enjoyed the dialog as well as the humor. Awesome stuff!

mattv 2015-04-20 05:41

really wish I could make the text go faster! Love the art style and the voices are pretty good too.

raggy 2015-04-20 05:41

Very moody. Good job!

twiik 2015-04-20 14:24

Looks great. Loved the robot voice.

reheated 2015-04-20 16:11

Excellent art and a very entertaining story! The scenery is great and the characters too. I enjoyed the speech synth - nice touch.

mantis 2015-04-21 09:54

I really love the story. The jumping seems a bit off (problems with jitter on moving objects), but I WANT MORE! :)

the-capitalist-crayfish 2015-04-21 09:54

Loved the graphics, the story and the humor. My only complaint would be that the text moves a bit slow, but that might just be me. -Weloxux

phi 2015-04-21 09:57

I like the graphics style and the narration. It's a good start, but the buggy physics are a bit annoying sometimes. I'd love to see you do more with this game! Nice work.

plams 2015-04-21 09:59

It made me laugh a lot :) The thing reminded me a bit of Gary in Red vs Blue.

bobmorate 2015-04-21 10:07

This was actually an amazing entry! It's short, but extra kudos to you for having to learn without using the Internet at all! If I may ask, what TTS tool and effects did you exactly use to make the robot's voice? I'm very interested on this!

detocroix 2015-04-21 11:38

Best entry thus far. Really nice use of colors and nice visuals in general. The character was perhaps a bit janky because he only "moved" with his legs, rest of the body didn't do much to support it, and I found it odd there was "high detailed" -style mixed with "flat no detail" -style. Especially when comparing the floating rocks with character :)

sbot1101 2015-04-21 13:15

wow that was amazing! really nicely made.

ajopart 2015-04-21 14:04

Wonderful little story. Humor, Fun, graphics, mood *****. Sadly no real gameplay. Great job !!

prowler 2015-04-21 14:48

Awesome Graphics and a nice story :D. The mood is excelent although it's a short story.

Great work!

orava 2015-04-22 09:46

Looks pretty and has great mood. Gameplay could use a biit more.

dydx 2015-04-22 21:18

That was great, I really enjoyed it.

noxnode 2015-04-23 00:28

Eh, not my kind of game, I like more actiony stuff, but was funny :P. Great graphical style and humor.

techblogogy 2015-04-23 07:05

Very nicely done game. Great art, loved the Steven Hawking robot voice. Amazing job!

tuism 2015-04-23 07:50

It's barely a game, but I guess I say that in the best way I could mean it. The writing's pretty good, the graphics are decent, but as a "game" it was hold right, push enter a few times, jump a few really terrible platforms really slowly, and listen to some more MS Word robot reading.

The moving platform is glitchy when moving down. It's almost impossible to jump while they're moving down.

chaoscult 2015-04-23 08:12

Great little story. Really like things like that. Good job.

jhell 2015-04-23 08:30

Nice entry, nice atmosphere that could really have used some more music and sounds for immersion! I was a bit sad that there wasn't more choices in the dialogs, but what was there was cool.

eregaia 2015-04-23 08:32

nice ambience, would be cool if it had more adventury elements to it

horsed 2015-04-23 09:05

Very nice story and very, very nice graphics. The music is also really great. The platformer part felt a bit clunky. Other than that I definitely enjoyed the game.

shrapx 2015-04-23 09:32

a fun mix, i like the pixel art and the audio, and the little touches like the robot malfunction and his showing off of abilities :D

dickie 2015-04-23 11:01

Really nice universe you've created to tell your story in, I liked the depth of characterisation even though we were only with the characters for a couple minutes.

gameplay was a bit bland and could probably have been longer but due to the 'can't jump when rock is floating down' thing the platforming was unnecessarily difficult so appreciated it being so short as I didn't get too annoyed before the story wrapped itself up abruptly.

very nice branding and the other art was pretty nice to boot.

georgebroussard 2015-04-23 11:36

Nice job. I liked the sci-fi theme a lot.

sergi-montaner 2015-04-23 12:17

The story is nice and fun, but the game has little gameplay.
Spoiler: I laught at the Batman joke.

xanjos 2015-04-23 16:26

A bit short but I loved the story and the robot was pretty humorous. The only problem was that the player moved a bit too slow (the floaty jump physics is fair game since it is set in space).

sputnik 2015-04-23 16:37

Good "voice acting"!

seconddimension 2015-04-23 18:49

Really pretty backdrop and great overall look. I enjoyed the robot conversations

sbarrio 2015-04-23 19:00

I like the graphics and audio a lot, they set a really nice mood. Gameplay was a bit bland, though.

hmightypirate 2015-04-23 19:57

The game has rather hilarious moments.

As a downside, sometimes the astronaut does not respond correctly to a jump command.

The music and the graphics create an amazing atmosphere. Great job!.

ianburnette 2015-04-24 02:08

Love the atmosphere and the story!

photon 2015-04-24 02:13

Gameplay was pretty standard, but it had its moments...

"Except Batman, unfortunately."

Oh boy... definitely had some good stuff in there. :)

davikin92 2015-04-24 02:22

I thought that the robot would become my worst enemy, like in 2001: Space Odyssey which you clearly got inspired on. I was afraid that a colorful trip would start after I collected "the bed" hahaha.

Great humor and graphics! Good job making the robot's voice out from a voice from text software!

alfalfastudios 2015-04-24 02:35

Ha ha ha! Batman! Great graphics and loved the humor!

Great job!

huo-cuo 2015-04-24 02:45

Very humorous story. Maybe too short and without any challenge. It looks rather like a movie. Also the main character could have a real voice too.

muromets 2015-04-24 02:46

Very fun, great sense of humor! liked it very much !

sledknight 2015-04-24 02:55

Very nice looking. Loved the fades and story. Some weird issues trying to jump on platforms moving downward, and really short. I laughed several times at the robot. Nice entry.

chaosed0 2015-04-24 03:14

I think it needed more of a consistent tone, but otherwise a nice entry.

flwns 2015-04-24 03:23

I liked the dialogue, but had problems jumping, and I didn't the the lack of any ambient sound

novadream 2015-04-24 03:33

Sorta got slow at times; but the graphics, audio, and story were amazing! :D

criticalmammal 2015-04-24 03:49

The overall experience was enjoyable for the narrative and art/audio work. Though it was fairly disappointing in regard to its interactivity.

The parts where you do assume some control over what's happening generally feels like filler to try and meet the requirements for what a game should be, rather than serving any true purpose other than to break up the story progression a bit. I don't mind experimental games that focus more on a specific narrative, but in this case it feels like it would have almost been better executed as a short animated film than as an interactive thing.

The jumping/collision bug with the astronaut platforming doesn't help the problem either. The platforming portions already were a bit bland, but that bug just makes that whole section frustrating. Btw, I think the bug seems to be something to do with the switching or keeping track of the astronaut's "jump" status improperly. It seems like it keeps getting toggled to him being in a "jumping" state, then hitting the collision, toggling off, and somehow him getting toggled back to a jumping state again afterwards every frame. If you slide around on a platform it eventually sorts itself out somehow.

The narrative was well done and humorous. The main character being a "I'm just a guy doing a job" template made him less interesting character-wise, but the robot ironically enough compensated for his lack of personality. It was written pretty well otherwise and actually having the robot voiced was a big surprise (and a very nice touch).

The visuals were fantastic, and the audio as well was very fitting. The polish in these areas help maintain an air of mystery to the whole experience. References (and I'd assume inspiration) from 2001: A Space Odyssey were abundant and were pulled off well.

If you can figure out how to mesh some interesting interaction with your storytelling/art/audio you'll have something superb. As this currently stands however, it feels rather hollow. I think even small changes like having dialogue play while doing the platforming would at least give those sections a tiny nugget of cohesion with the gameplay. It feels too separated, I would recommend trying to find ways to intermingle things together so that the elements of the interaction compliment everything else you're trying to achieve.

hexdie 2015-04-24 04:15

Really fantastic entry! The writing was very good and I enjoyed the humor in it. There were a number of times where I expected things to get dark, like the robot would have turned on me. I actually hadn't expected the ending that was there and I enjoyed it more because of that. Great art as well. I think the only thing it was missing was some ambient sound or music in the background when you're trying to find the relic. Very nice work!

johngalt 2015-04-24 04:34

Intriguing storytelling. Enjoy it very much. Thank you!

kabutakogames 2015-04-24 04:37

I loved it! Would be awesome to see more of the robot

leaden 2015-04-24 04:43

I like your humor and that you prefer to make game with story. I hope next time you will merge your story with gameplay. Because there gameplay is something not nescessary.

scottthoo 2015-04-24 04:55

Good mood ! Interesting story

tmpxyz 2015-04-24 05:13

The conversation is very fun to watch. the jumping is a little odd, the legs shake on the stones.

camlang 2015-04-24 08:06

Nice take on the theme. Sadly too short.

gil_villarreal 2015-04-24 11:02

Enjoyed playing your pixel-art adventure story. Loved the minimalist graphics. The robot voice was a nice touch - did you use a text to speech engine? Well done all around.

runvs 2015-04-24 16:29

Truly awesome, Galdis incoming! I really like the robot with it's bed and pillow! Super awesome story! graphics are also very nice and +1 for audio voicings.
Controls though felt a little bit "floaty" but problably this is what it should be like on a distant planet with no gravity.

gunzil 2015-04-25 05:44

Nice little story, short and sweet. The sprite work is very good, though the text a bit small.

Despite having simple floaty platforming, you were able to make a little jumping challenge that contextualized the floaty physics with jumping on floating space rocks, and had it so you had to time your jumps when the rocks were at the correct heights, which was a pretty smart use of what you had. A death state when you touch the lava and a jumping animation would have helped a lot visually.

chronusz 2015-04-25 16:35

I feel as though the bot's dialogue would have been better without the text-to-speech synthesizer. I found it more annoying than anything, personally.

mikel 2015-04-25 17:26

Cool... great story... but definitely too short :-D

taro 2015-04-25 23:17

Aw, man. Seemed like you didn't have the time or resources to make everything you had in mind. Oh, well, I thought joke was funny.

jplur 2015-04-25 23:46

Hahaha nice! Perfect length for a LD entry, and great interpretation of theme

hazel-bun 2015-04-26 04:01

I couldn't really see the theme too well, but loved loved the humor, mood, audio, and general aesthetic. The ability to restart quickly was a nice touch. And, if you rid out the rock glitch, it isn't too bad. Great work :)

camilleh 2015-04-26 11:26

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to play, rate and give feedback on RELIC, I very much appreciate it and am happy that it made some of you laugh. I've read every comment back to front and wholly agree with much of the suggestions.

I'm very motivated to continue working on this little prototype and will take your feedback into consideration, including:
- more gameplay (I have a lot of ideas on ways to make it more fun and challenging, and not just a little interactive story)
- ambient audio
- more dialog options
- fix the buggy floating platforms
- ensure lava collision areas are correct
- better sprite animations
- integrate conversations into gameplay
- better death sequences
- shorten conversation speeds

As for the TTS that some of you were inquiring about, I used a website but unfortunately didn't write down which one, if I remember I shall let you know.

If any of you are interested in keeping up-to-date with the post-LD game, please follow my posts for some updates, postmortems and links to social media soon.

Good hunting,
- Camille

johnnwfs 2015-04-26 23:14

Being able to run through text faster if desired would be great. Otherwise a great job with the graphics and I like the mini-story going on.

hbocao 2015-04-29 23:09

Very good entry!
The art is beautiful and I loved the "Portal-esque" humor. Nice job!

renatopp 2015-05-01 21:01

It is pretty awesome work for 18h (not enough for a compo thou, IMHO), but the narrative is great and I would like to see a post compo version of it. Congratulations for you game.

robber 2015-05-03 13:26

love the style, very nice graphics and colors/mood. controls/jumping felt a little bit stiff, but the experience was just great, wish the character had a voice aswell

kirbytails7 2015-05-04 00:36

Not a bad first attempt. In the future, consider making dialog skippable; reading is much faster than listening.

embalaje 2015-05-05 07:55

Very funny! I love it. You made a great character with the robot.
Congratulations!

killako 2015-05-05 08:39

Theres a bug when standing on the floating platforms, that doesn't allow you to jump. Otherwise, great game!

pixzleone 2015-05-05 16:00

Nice game. Could have used some music during the game itself.

jmborden 2015-05-05 16:06

Cute game. I kept getting stuck on the platforms, had to wait a second to "stabilize" before I could jump again. Don't feel too bad, this happens in a lot of Unity games. High marks for humor and graphics from me.

mechamew 2015-05-05 16:08

What a winner! Great mood, artwork and writing. Main place where I can see some room for improvement would have to be on animation. The player character felt like he could have been brought to life a lot more than they were. Regardless, I think this is a great entry - hoping it does very well!

chaoseed 2015-05-05 16:11

Interesting, it kinda started out as one of those "spooky ancient space" stories, but it went in a different direction. Cute, though! The graphics were quite good. The controls/jumping were a little unreliable, but I suppose since there really wasn't to it there's not really any point in complaining.

volkoivan 2015-05-05 16:21

That one was really great!
Nice-looking, good music, funny dialogues and good plot that really have a plenty of ways to expand.
I give you 5/5 on all of the rating, because it was totally awesome for the compo entry!

novodantis 2015-05-05 17:43

Would love to see this with more meat on the gameplay bones (the moving platform glitch was also a pain, but it's one I'm all too familiar with from the old days of making platformers). I really loved the story and the mood was great. Nice dialogue, too.

2015-05-05 18:14

Despite having the latest firefox, this doesn't appear to run.

jordgubben 2015-05-05 18:42

Not the most complext gameplay, but definitely the best writing of all the games I've played so far.

norwalnate13 2015-05-05 22:08

I don't understand how this fits with the theme. I like the art though.

sublustris 2015-05-06 04:39

Great work! especially for a Compo. 5 for GFX and mood!

perecil 2015-05-06 10:44

Like other said, it was too short! I love all the references and the humor put in the game.

I'd like also more gameplay elements (moving stuff, and so on) if you plan to continue the game.

lamogui 2015-05-06 16:56

nice graphics

demy 2015-05-06 18:48

Graphics and humor are awesome. And it's finished wich is rare thing here.

frederickk 2015-05-07 03:36

Not very much gameplay but GREAT humor! :D
Definitely 5 stars on that!

stevesalmond 2015-05-08 09:05

Nice work, I really enjoyed the dialog. We seem to have similar tastes in space backdrops! :)

p4nurge 2015-05-09 15:25

Seemed to have some slight collision detection problems when jumping from moving objects? It's testament to how good this game is, however, that I persisted to the end despite that. Great writing, sound, visual design and atmosphere. I'd like to see what happens next!

ehtd 2015-05-09 16:53

Really nice game, short but interesting story. I guess only the controls were off. Jumping feels weird and that glitch on the rocks. I like that you are making this a full game, I have some comments that can make your full game feel lot better:
- Add moving arms when jumping or walking
- Voice acting. Use fiver.com for $5 buck audio. Cheap and awesome.
- Fix the bugs
- Improve controls

Good job. Looking forward to the complete version.

wilsk 2015-05-09 17:27

The jump key didn't seem to work sometimes on the floating rocks, but other than that an interest and good looking game with a cool concept.

traumendes_madchen 2015-05-09 18:59

Very interesting idea and I liked the robot thingy. The controls are a bit stiff though but overall it's quite impressive for a compo entry! It only needed some music to ease the mood =).

arcturusdeluxe 2015-05-09 22:05

Neat game. The narrative is quite well done and funny. Nice use of the speech synth on the robot. Nice graphics too! The gameplay is a bit slow and not that interesting unfortunately, though I understand you can't do everything in the time limit. For the full version you're doing, hopefully the platforming can be a bit more exciting. Overall a good entry!

omaha 2015-05-09 23:23

Nice work. It's amazing how much fun I had despite having much gameplay. Rather than "fixing" that, I think you embraced it, and it worked out wonderfully.

dorgam 2015-05-10 16:11

Batman Joke 10/10

2015-05-10 16:50

Visually-pleasing w/ some humor.. great work working with WebGL to submit in LDJAM! Beautiful portfolio online as well. <3

vortex 2015-05-10 18:25

The player should be able to move faster. It was really annoying having to wait for the rocks to bob up and down in order to jump up, but the (sadly short) story made up for that. I would have liked to have some voice acting for the player. It seemed a bit odd just hearing the robot and having to read the player

dejvo 2015-05-10 18:32

graphics are very good and music too. but you need to make it faster to walk and jump and also the lesser words the better but i liked it anyway

strega 2015-05-10 20:45

Nice little story! I liked the art and the humor a lot :D

sorlok 2015-05-10 22:58

Great game, and one of my favorites. Love the humor and pacing. However.... jumping while a platform descends doesn't work and is really frustrating (since some platforms don't have the ground for comparison). Glad to see you're working on this past the compo, and good luck!

mrshoestore 2015-05-11 00:19

you've got some collision problems with the moving platforms, I think this game looks very cool, but the pacing at the beginning is very very slow, and it was hard to keep my attention.

abuzreq 2015-05-11 07:55

The narratives are really good , the gameplay weren't much fun .