Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD36 → My house is over there
By kyyninen
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|---|
Hi, nice game and congratulations ! Simple mechanics that still offered a decent amount of challenge.We're realizing a video with several games of the Ludum Dare #36. We made the same thing at the previous jam.
Can you add your game on indiexpo.net ? (it's free)
So we can include also your game in the video ;)
p.s. write #LDJAM in the game's description.
Well this game is spooky. I like the atmosphere. The mechanics are simple yet satisfying.
It was really fun, playing the game. Exactly the right taste and amount from everything. Lights, buildings, atmosphere, titles, etc.
Keep the good work up! Great job!
Kind of reminds me of "The Beginners' guide". Quite lonely atmosphere.
@ValiaP Funny you should mention it... I played that game first time just last week and thought "Man, I wan't to make virtual worlds that don't make much sense to anyone but me!" I didn't set out to do a homage, but my subconscious must have thought otherwise.
@yotam180 Glad you liked it and thanks for the feedback!
@steph88 Can admins do something about this particular spam bot? I've seen this identical message on dozens of entries.
I did only play a few seconds because well I was afraid that it is something with jumpscares and well I hate jumpscares. But from what I have seen I liked the naming of the graphics settings as well as the atmosphere although the atmosphere forced me to quit the game because it was so spooky. Graphics also looked decent and lighting was okay as well.
Nice atmosphere, i love the fact that you put some "life" in the form of the cars passing by, it adds a lot. I feel like i missed some dialog sections because i have no idea what's going on, i just know i found green lights.
There is something weird going on with the foliage when you get up close and the map ends abruptly in blue space but that is just nitpicking, the map is large and well made. Great work!
There was a real sense of exploration in this game i really loved the eerie feeling of walking through almost pitch black to find these mysterious green lights. I don't know if it was intentional or not but the cars created a traffic jam and all their engines together made quite the scary noise.
I really liked the gameplay and the feeling that this game gives me.. Minimalistic models but still very nice to play :)
I really like the setting and environment, maybe I'd add some ambient light like really dark blue, probably is a bit too dark. A nice touch adding cars, seems like that your game lives. Also the dialog is fairly simple but effective
-itsandrea
Absolutely loved the wee cars, their lighting, and the fact I couldn't jump on top of them and make them move to get me from A to B ;)
I definitely loved the low-poly style straight from the screenshots, but when I opened the game I noticed the bush/Tree textures did not match low poly style - not a big deal at all - but I loved them rustling in the wind.
Text hard to see in light sometimes - consider using a stroke outline or dropshadow.
I fell off the map and you replaced me :D thanks
When I walked into the green light and disappeared and 1/4 came up i actually SCREAMED haha. This is so awesome, but I think I'll stop here as suspense games make me way too freaked out - that's how good a job you did!
- Vicky
I can just agree with other commenters. The atmosphere is really outstanding. I collected all Lights and found my House. Also loved the monologues - especially when you jump off a cliff :D
PS: This was the first entry I played and just realized that the first comment is a spambot and I answered it before ^^
great atmosphere.
The game is actually pretty good. Its atmosphere is interesting, it looks like an old man lost. But the game is not related to the theme.
Great atmosphere, simple concept but very relaxing, although so much black makes my head hurt, trying to see what is around me
Agree with everybody else, but I got lost a lot, so I couldn't finish it. I'll try again soon!
Really nice game ! I like the atmosphere, and like others comments, it reminds me a lot The Beginner's Guide.
The pitch black is a bit confusing, as the player's goal, but gives a interesting experience.
The way you're guide the player with lights and roads is very effective, and give a real sense of exploration.
Good job on this !
I just wish there was voice acting
Thanks to everyone for your lovely comments! Each one is appreciated.
@MaximumIllusion I apologize for being a bit misleading, there's actually no jumpscares or similar horror elements in the game. There are few loud noises, but I'd say they are avoidable and well telegraphed ahead.
@metalhaze Traffic jams are not intentional, AI drivers are just the worst. I'll try to cook up a fix for post-jam version. It was the crossroads with the monologue about traffic, right?
@sudorossy There should be more ambient light than there seems to be... This is the first time I've lit a 3D scene in Unity and something weird happens when baking the lightmaps. I considered using only realtime lighting but that would probably have been murder on performance.
@Whitepot Studios Originally I tried to stay as true as possible to the low poly stylings, but I wanted the foliage to have a certain look. Rustling leaves were impossible to achieve with ancient technology :) Good suggestion for text.
Very nice atmosphere, and a real sense of place. Really enjoyed it :)
I like the atmosphere of this game! The entire time I was waiting for a cheap jumpscare, that didn't come, haha. I'm not sure if there was supposed to be an ending, because I found my house after I collected four lights, but nothing happened. Apart from that, I like this game a lot. You captured the atmosphere of a night stroll very good.
I love the atmosphere, it really feels like I could be walking around a quaint neighborhood at night. I think the idea of a simple exploration game like this is very interesting, especially with that fact that there wasn't obvious guidance.
This game is very tense, the sound and graphics produce a unique atmosphere that really got me into scared mode. I was expecting monsters jump scaring me unconcious, but fortunately I found none. Great job with the atmosphere!
Cool atmosphere, as everyone has said. I'm not sure what's going on in the game or how it relates to the theme though. :)
I found four green lights (though the text went "1/4" -> "3/4" -> "This is the last one" -> "This is the last one") and then I found my house but I apparently don't have my keys...? No idea what that was all about, or if I can find my keys.
WOW, Amazing that you did this all in 74 hours. Atmosphere and environment are on point but a little bit of direction can be added.
I loved loved loved the atmosphere, and I see I'm not the only one. I'm sure it's far from easy to hit the right spot with the combination of light, shadows, sound, ambience, etc to create something that works so well.
I think I spent a good 15 minutes just wandering around in the dark without going for the objective, occasionally lit by the passing cars, because it just felt GOOD to do so.
I can't even explain it properly but I think you have a raw gem here!
I enjoyed the graphic and the tone of the game. At first, I was a bit scared though because I thought it was some kind of slenderman-game thing. However, I just ended up walking and exploring the map. So simple yet engaging.
Very much enjoyed walking around. The darkness and how well the lighting worked and the sense that the game was encouraging me in that I was progressing and doing the right stuff even if it was very sparse with information and hard to see yet I never felt lost. It was quite hard to find all four check points and maybe there was a final thing after that, but I missed it. One of my favorites was leaving the map. It also helped a lot with finding the checkpoints. I don't know what should have been made differently or what could be improved, but possibly have an even larger but diffuse trigger for when one is getting closer but can't yet hear the checkpoint. Also if there was a true ending then the 4/4 message should probably be tweaked or some clear effect happen to the game world to hint it. Great entry though.
Very atmospheric game, from the first second mood is just overwhelming player. I really liked walking around this town and looking for green house. When i got too far into the woods and sounds effect / music changed i was really on my toes not knowing what to expect. Really cool game and pretty looking. Cars that drive around town add a lot to the atmosphere.
BTW: i found some floating trees above the ground and even one car was hovering above street. I just want to let you know that there are some minor bugs.
I really love that mood really good sound design only thing i would complain about sound are steps are sometime to loud. I also liked that you added custom names for graphic setting :D. Unfortunately after 3/4 portals found something killed my PC. Other advice i could give it work on shader that would simulate what you really see in darkness because its not totally blackens. If you put some greys in darkness that would be great experience with connection to that sound design.
what an atmospheric game! it was really compelling to explore, and the darkness emphasized how big the space you created was... it was impressive, for the short span of time to develop. i liked the slow introduction to an objective, the bright green served as a good beacon to follow, because you could see them distinctly in the darkness. unfortunately i couldn't really figure out if there was an ending, i found all the green lights and i couldn't figure out what to do next.
but all in all, great!
I'm humbled and overjoyed that so many people have found have enjoyed this game and found it immersive. Thank you for all the support!
@eott, @HellBlazer, @local minimum, @cakeknuckles and others re: ending.
Spoilers, I guess?
There actually isn't one. I originally was planning on having two endings (one for just founding the house, other for founding all the secret stuff) and even had some assets made, but my computer crashed and I lost hours of progress just before deadline. In current version all progression is illusionary (and apparently pretty buggy) and there are no extrinsic rewards for exploration... However, I personally think that any kind of closure in this kind of game is pretty arbitrary anyway - players will play as long as they find the experience intriguing and when they've had their fill, they quit.
Of course, in the eventual post-jam version there might be something waiting at your house when the scavenger hunt is done...
@Zeriver Bug reports are highly appreciated. I didn't have much time to playtest before submitting, so there must be lots of this kind of stuff around the map...
@xesenix Do you mean PC as in your computer or the player character? There shouldn't be anything in the game that can cause game ending state to occur...
Night vision actually sounds brilliant idea, however, I have no idea how to start implementing that kind of shader work ._. I'll start googling around and see what I can do!
@kyyninen unfortunately it was my computer that crashed and it wasnt end of game it was and of system :P maybe its caused by some combination of games that i installed from ludumdare
You made a nice relaxing world to walk around in, but where is my ancient technology? :)
Also might be fun to turn on a few camera effects so it's like you're drunk and trying to find your house in the dark.
The atmosphere is amazing, the virtual world is well made and then there's nothing to do.
After going through all of the green teleports I found my house and got prompted to fill up the tank of the car. Couldn't find any fuel unfortunately. That's the end of that then?
Exploring the level was enjoyable as always (jumping into the void was fun as well), but I was waiting for something, anything, to happen. Maybe the world could become a little bit weirder every time you teleport? Sneaking and avoiding detection could also work, taken the late night setting. You did run out of time and lose some progress of course, so I'm not really complaining. It is a solid effort.
Also I'm pretty sure I saw a flying car at one point… Might have been the darkness playing with my eyes though.
Really neat atmosphere. I included it in my compilation video series of Ludum Dare 36, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/Ym4iAq-_TIg
@xesenix Ouch. My condolences!
@Captain Awesome Yeah, the theme really didn't come through this time... Originally I was planning to make something aesthetically similar to early FPS games - low-poly models, billboarding sprites - but further I got, more I started to slip from that goal. At one point I was even considering doing a Doom level, but this happened instead. Good thing there's no ratings this time :D
@HuvaaKoodia Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, currently there's not much to do and some of those texts are pretty misleading. I probably should have made the gameplay-lessness clear at the beginning of the game, or add some kind of world state changing event when front door is reached.
Those are actually pretty solid suggestions for adding more structured play! I'm already implementing some ｍｙｓｔｅｒｙ stuff inspired by them, hopefully I manage to release a slightly extended version before commenting ends.
@Jupiter_Hadley Much appreciated! It's actually extremely helpful to see someone playing this game for the first time, gives me a chance to see where there is room to make some improvements.
Nice game! Very atmospheric! x) Really liked it! Didn't know, if I am doing something right, but I enjoyed it very much xD
You can see me play here if you want to x) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEnRXhROZM8
@Molpe Thanks for commenting! I enjoyed the video and I'm glad that you liked the game. Yeah, the environment scale is all over the place and it's one of the main things I'm trying to correct in the extended edition. Sadly I didn't manage to get it done during the commenting period, but it will be released during October. I hope.