Marco Polo

james-dunlap 2017-05-01 20:29

An interesting game. The use of Marco Polo was an interesting game mechanic, but seemed to not work well. When I was near the escape pod, I got a response. When I was in the hills next to the forest, I got a response. When I was in the forest, well... Also, both Marco and Polo came from only one speaker. It could have been an interesting addition to use positional sound to help indicate the direction the child was in. Also, is the escape pod even fixable?

I am also a little confused on your opt outs. Are you opting out of audio or are we just ignoring the music when judging?

veryeviltomato 2017-05-01 20:44

Message "There should be 'MarcoPolo_Data' folder next to the executable" shows up!

hampst 2017-05-01 21:00

The art is fairly basic but charming, and after playing for a while I was quite engrossed in the world. The voices, art and music come together nicely to create an eerie mood.

I thought the story bits were well written and entertaining, although I'm not a fan of the font choice. Although the font might fit with the game's theme, it's not that easy to read. Given the amount of text I would definitely choose readability over style.

I found the monster encounters frustrating. It did not feel like you were given a fair amount of time to run. Running in a point and click didn't feel like a natural response - perhaps because you have limited control of your movement speed and direction. I would have preferred another way of evading such as distracting them with an object.

The voice mechanic was an interesting and a nice touch, although I think it might have worked even better in a 3D environment (with directional 3D sound).

nathan 2017-05-01 21:00

@veryeviltomato Sorry! I have literally no idea how that happened (more specifically, how i did not notice) - I had uploaded the EXE instead of including the data folder. I have amended the hosted files to have a ZIP that includes both now. Sorry again.

nathan 2017-05-01 21:10

@james-dunlap Thanks for your feedback. You will not always get a response, that is one of the points of the game - some times, you are just simply out of range. The idea is that your child will not stay in a single spot and will move around if they deem it safe to do so. It really all depends on if you have disturbed....things....and those...things have passed through the right areas. Also, the forest is designed to be intentionally disorienting (the world in general really too).

The one speaker issue - you know, that is probably how i exported the audio. I do like your idea of using positional sound as a potential update, but we finished what we could in the time, and the one speaker issue (since it was not intended to indicate direction) is not game breaking, so i will have to leave it til post-jam.

The opts-outs, i will admit, i am not clear on this, in terms of rules, the sound effects were all made by us but the background music was not, so i was not sure if we OK to stay in. So i will do the fairer thing and just opt us out of sound.

I can guarantee you that the escape pod is fixable. There are a number of references, in the instructions, the panel itself to give you a clue on this.

Thanks again for the feedback, hopefully these comments help and you will give it another go and see if you can complete!

nathan 2017-05-01 21:17

@hampst Thank you for your feedback! :)

We had actually gone for an intentionally simple art style - we had an unexpected drop from the team at the 11th hour, so one of our coders jumped in to take that on, and we wanted something that, if needed, others could easily replicate throughout development.

I absolutely take your points mentioned - During development, we had discussions about a better way to handle the terror encounters, we did want a more interactive process there, but in the end, time bested us. Once you get used to the areas and the exit points, you can escape, but we didnt want to make it TOO easy, we probably erred a little TOO much on the difficult in the end. Good point on the font and readability, something we will keep in mind for next time!

Thanks again.

juri 2017-05-01 21:38

@Nathan has replied to everyone's points nicely so far so i won't belabour this too much - but thanks for the input guys, and sorry if the monster encounters are a touch TOO unfair,t hat is my bad ^_^;;

bonobo 2017-05-02 06:39

I was SPOOKED yo! I really liked the concept and originality of the game. I liked how u implemented the game of Marco Polo into a space spooky game. I LOVED the sounds that you use to say Marco and Polo! Cracked me up! It would have been nice to implement a way see the instruction on how to play the game. There were times that i would forget how to do certain commands and actions. Overall really like the originality and sound of the game! And if you can, check out my game! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/soleil

meronsoda 2017-05-03 02:33

Oh boys, I am not much into horror games, but I tell you: your idea is really good. I can see the core of your game design, right through the lack of an artist. It is ok, I get the picture, I get your message and I think it is good.

You know, games and art are languages, ways of communication. Although I can understand what you say, most people don't without a polished work. And that's why I actually think you guys **must** try to polish this. Because it has potential, but almost no one can see it right now.

P.S.: that centipede scared the hell out of me. Sorry, but THANK HEAVENS THE ART WAS MADE BY YOUR PROGRAMMER! I don't even want to imagine my heartbeat rate if this was a polished piece!

meronsoda 2017-05-03 04:24

The bugs you (@juri) reported in my game were patched. Thank you for dedicating some time to my prototype.

linus 2017-05-03 22:55

This was a good game, horror games are not my favourite type of game but the story behind the game was quite interesting! The programmer art was real though haha, it is always nice to see these kind of games. I wasn't able to complete game but that might also be because I've played ludum dare games all day and am really tired now, maybe I will check it out tomorrow aswell. Good job!

meronsoda 2017-05-06 14:26

Oh, and before I forget: there is too much text at once, it is overwhelming. You need a solution for that. Either reduce it or dilude it in several ballons throughout the game, I don't know. But you need a way to make them read without taking too long to get to the actual game.

nathan 2017-05-06 20:40

@meronsoda Yea that is a good point. The instructional side of the game we definitely want improvement on - it ended up being one of the last things we plugged in, so needed to be "quick and dirty". Our vision for it was something more akin to a proper tutorial. Thanks for all your input/feedback.

invader 2017-05-08 17:12

Engaging adventure! Definitely 5/5 on mood! :)

ryte2byte 2017-05-09 07:11

Certainly an atmospheric experience! Quite an accomplishment! I loved the Marco/Polo gimmick! The 'other' Polo response to your call is quite sinister. I think it'd take more time to figure out some audio tricks to do justice to the system, but it is a very cool idea!

I'll be honest: A lot of the hot-spots for movement drove me completely batty. As an example, I thought I figured out that to get out from looking behind rocks It was kinda upper left. Then I hit one that had the 'move back' spot in the upper middle. The hot-spots for the wires in the ship were incredibly odd as well.

nathan 2017-05-09 07:46

@ryte2byte Thank you for your feedback! :) Honesty is the best policy on these jams and i completely agree with you on the movement hot-spots. I was super upset that we did not get a chance to make that more intuitive - we all sat down afterwards to chat about the million-and-one ways we could have made that better. The hot-spots on the wires SHOULD be the ends (exposed wire sections).

Thanks again!

skruffye 2017-05-15 02:03

Really liked the mood and, although I found the voice work for the child to be somewhat comical, I wasn't laughing for long before some red-eyed shadow thing made me jump out of my skin!

The map was a little hard to navigate and I wasn't always entirely sure what it was that I was looking at, but it's certainly nice to see a point and click game this LD!

The music fit really well and congrats on being the first game this LD to actually make me jump. :P

Keep at it!

-Skruffye

pschichtel 2017-05-15 17:47

Great mood, but the marco-polo voice over kinda killed that. Interesting game none the less!

tuomo 2017-05-16 09:38

You created great atmosphere here, story sounds interesting (I tried couple of times and died really early on).

I have to agree earlier commenter that the action in point’n’click game isn’t the best possible solution and given the tiny amount of time you have to react (and find a hotspot on screen) doesn’t help. The marco-polo mechanic is cool. I didn’t get to use much as I died constantly.

Music and sound really make the mood. Voices are bit rough, but overall sounds are great.

Visuals have couple big flaws in them. Typography needs some serious rework, game with this much text (intro, instructions, in game messages) needs to have great legibility. Font you chose for the longer texts is nice, but doesn’t have the best readability. Longer texts should be always aligned or justified to left, centered text only for couple of sentences. Combination of green text on blue background is really awful color combination. The first screen of the actual gameplay is really confusing. I got lost outside constantly as point of view get changing between looking back and and forward. Compositions on most of the backgrounds need rethinking, clear focus on exits and important hotspots.

Although my feedback sounds really negative, I actually enjoyed playing this. With some work this could become really atmospheric and interesting title.

garethiw 2017-05-17 17:02

Once I got the hang of navigating around this became eerily enjoyable! On my fourth try I managed to find my child, which was cool. But then I ended up in a forest and when I eventually got back to the ship I was eaten. Which was a shame.

gama-croma 2017-05-18 14:22

Careful with the darkness, even though it's dark, you should always have at least some light/ bright elements, for contrast and focus, or try somehow to add depth to your rooms, as it's not clear what is what.

justin-toyo 2017-12-04 01:37

It's a really cool game, at first the wires were a bit weird to handle but I got the hang of it and I like it!

juri 2017-12-04 02:16

Hey Justin! Thanks for the comment! Very glad you like it, we were rather proud of this :). Keep your eyes peeled for our submission for LD40-Jam somewhere in the next errr.... probably within 18 hours?

pond-loach 2018-05-04 16:54

please leave a web version thnks