takusan 2017-04-25 11:30
Game runs allright, but after loading menu nothing happens when I click on start or help - thus I can't get past the start screen. Could you provide a small FAQ on how to play it? It seems interesting from the description :)
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Neuroso
By gamechoy
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 355 | 3.42 | 35 | |
| Fun | 542 | 2.87 | 34 | |
| Innovation | 534 | 2.84 | 34 | |
| Theme | 625 | 2.84 | 34 | |
| Graphics | 444 | 3.33 | 35 | |
| Audio | 88 | 3.84 | 34 | |
| Humor | 143 | 3.40 | 32 | |
| Mood | 131 | 3.78 | 34 |
Game runs allright, but after loading menu nothing happens when I click on start or help - thus I can't get past the start screen. Could you provide a small FAQ on how to play it? It seems interesting from the description :)
I played this on Livestream Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGr9VAOjIQs
I wasn't able to progress past the first level. I just hopped around for a bit.
@occultone Thank you for playing! You're supposed to "talk" with the statue by pressing 'e' on it, hopefully you can give our game another shot now that you know what to do.
@takusan Everything is working fine now, let us know if anything doesn't work!
I really liked this game especially the visuals.Great job!
Yes, now it works just fine :D And I'm really glad it does.
Intro and cutscenes, especially the dialogues with the muses (nice touch ;) also 'TALL SPIDER CLOWNS' ) is extremely well done. Even though visuals are simple, game really manages to be immersive and keep the mood, with humour in right places.
With the 'fear' level, I was going to complain that spikes are barely visible, so i had to take little steps not to accidentally impale myself, until it came to me that it's a mechanic to keep you walking like you're, indeed, afraid. And the soulution to that level, damn. Well, no spoilers, so just: hell yes, well done, especially the first mask/face :D
About the faiulre level... well, I gave up after 20 minutes, actually. Couldn't fight the hands, every time I got somewhere far up, some quick hand spawned right above me. Don't know if this is intentional or not, but it really delivers the point :)
All of the mechanics/metaphores for fears you've decided upon feel really good. Though the ghost didn't feel as strong as the rest of them, still it's all very solid and consistent.
I'll give it another spin and see if I can conquer the last fear.
What could be improved - small tweaks, like having skip and talk bound to one button, better text wrapping (that would require some tampering with formating), some hitbox tweaks. Nothing really crucial, since everything that matters for gameplay itself seems to be a conscious, and justified decision, nothing random/arbitral. And that's a hell of a work from Game Design point of view.
Now I'm leaving my ratings... basically one of the highest scores I've submitted so far. I love what you did. Cheers!
@nilanjan @takusan Thanks for the feedback!
Well! Nice work on the story and the mood. Very good experience!! Maybe the platformer part is too slow but there is a lot of idea! Really good! That's a nice entry. Sorry but I didn't finish the game, i give up with those hand who are too slow or too fast ^^
i cant finish it, was a little frustrating to me, first suggestion if you die in the first level, start over after the dialogue part, second suggestion maybe los visibility on second level is better than ZERO visibility
@takusan summed up what I could say about this game. the pixel art and dialogues are great. The window size contributed to the mood. Solid entry.
There are a lot of things I like about this game! And at the same time, I see a lot of different ways to improve it.
**What I liked:** The art was lovely, and the dialogue between the masks legitimately made me laugh. Finishing a level and returning to those bickering fellas was hand's down my favorite part! I also liked the unique aspect-ratio. It really lended itself to the mood of the whole game. In a similar vein, the soundtrack was wonderful as well.
**What could be improved:** You've got the mood, story, and art down for a solid foundation. What you should probably focus on next is polishing the gameplay a bit. I personally enjoyed the dialogue with the ghost on the first level the FIRST time I heard it, but after dying on several different occasions, mashing the Z key to try again started to get a little frustrating. In addition, spending some extra time to put in measures to guide your player where they need to go next. Particularly when the ghost started chasing me, there was no indication that the path to the right was suddenly open now (I just accidentally discovered it after dying several times). Lastly, I would say that the platforming itself was a LITTLE too unforgiving. Particularly concerning the 2nd level, where the low ceiling and wide spikes practically demanded perfect accuracy to clear them effectively. If your player spends too much time being frustrated trying to clear something, they'll likely not care as much about the frankly wonderful art, sound, writing, and style you've got goin' on for this game.
Honestly I feel like you've already got the harder to polish stuff down pat. Just tweaking the gameplay a bit to lend itself to a more enjoyable experience is all you need to have a really solid game here!
@coleslaughter @breno-m @rixud @vivoubos Thanks for the feedback! We've put in some tweaks to make the game less difficult, we'll be working on some other things in the coming days. Thanks again!
I agree with @coleslaughter - some kind of spawn or skipping the dialogues after you have died once is paramount. The visual style works quite OK, and I love the unique aspect ratio. One thing to think about is that the places / platforms you can stand on need to be more visual distinct than background and other elements, or it will be confusing. I don't remember where I read it anymore but a trick game designers have is to do the "muse test". It means that the path should stand out by just musing at your screen. I think that + polishing the movement and adding spawn points or similar would improve the game.
I'm using Windows 7 x64, and all I get when I run the game is a window with a black screen and the music playing in the background. I've tried pressing buttons and nothing changed. I've also tried compatibility mode and nothing.
Liked the game a lot! Music was great and the art was really nice too.
Top notch job on the music, very moody.
@dj-pale @tex-killer @fueelin @tat2tim Thanks for the feedback! Tex Killer, the main menu is really dark, it's possible your brightness is too low to see it, try turning it up. Let us know if that doesn't work.
After playing it all I can say is that I enjoyed playing it, it's got some really nice visuals, terrific music which fits just perfectly with the game, the concept is also really interesting and really elaborated, which is a surprise because of the short amount of time you have to finish the game. I found the gameplay also good, although it would have helped to put the end text button in another place cos it was kinda uncomfortable for me, but that maybe just me. Also, I had the same problem as @coleslaughter, after a couple of deaths, having to skip the dialogues got really frustrating so a skip dialog button or function would have also improved the gameplay a lot. But yeah, overall I thought the game was a really strong product, maybe improving some gameplay aspects would have made it a way better game that what it already is and I also wanna congratulate you guys for all the effort put into this, keep more games coming!!!
@gamechoy, yes, it was the brightness. Damn, your game is waaay too dark! You must be going blind if your brightness is always that high up. :P
That aside, your game is impressive! It has an immense ammount of content for a 72h jam.
There is a small bug on the dark transparent image mask for the first level: some offset at the beginning of the level is not covered by it, so it starts off already clear.
You guys did very good work with this! Thumbs up! :thumbsup:
Nice! I think you really nailed the vibe. Loved the music and the writing was really solid, nice ending too :) Gameplay left a bit to be desired since the platforming was pretty basic, but at least the frustrating aspects of death & failure played into the theme. One other improvement would be instead of skipping the text box with just one keypress, the first should display the whole text and the second keypress should skip. I skipped a couple dialog boxes just out of habit because of this. In any case this was a really cool experience, nice work!
That's a really AWESOME entry!
I love the message and the way you tell it. That style of the game is very charismatic and reminds me at Undertale, great compliment! The dialogues are quite enjoyable and made me laugh some times, "Spider Clowns":laughing: I agree with @adheison, atm you can skip to easily the conversions, but the dialogues are very important to the guidance of the player. The soundtrack fits the mood and situations perfectly. Love the music then you talk with the masks. :grin: The arts were more than dense and very lovely, good job! But one thing, our entries share the same fate: The average LD users doesn't have the stamina to play our games till the end. But in both games the end is important to the experience.
Keep it on, we appreciate your effort and creativity! :smile:
The atmosphere was great on this game - music and sounds were superb, whoever did them knows their stuff! I thought the general concept was neat and the writing was both sharp and amusing. The gameplay itself felt like the weakest component but perhaps due to the fact that the other areas felt extra fantastic.
The aesthetic was lovely and the dialogue between the masks made me laugh. Also I liked the gameplay. The soundtrack was wonderful as well. A funny game - a solid entry ++
I really loved this entry, the art was decent for a jam although could be better, Fear level was annoying as hell, humor and mood were spot on. Please keep on going making games like this, it could be easily translated into a platforming adventure with better visuals.
@giusex27 @tex-killer @adhesion @samurai-spark @faemir @geckoo1337 @oultrox Thanks for all the feedback! We're considering expanding this as an actual project, we'll see after results!
I definitely like your art style! Unfortunately, the game hanged for me after the Shame encounter (when I touched his stuff). Other than that, very intriguing storyline! Would've liked to play more!
It is astonishing that you made a game with this much character given the timescale, it is beautiful visually, but also in it's theme, audio and delivery. Really impressive, and it hit the right level of creepy/weird to keep me captivated. I REALLY hope you continue to work on this post-jam as it has a huge amount of potential, and everyone who entered should check this out. 5/5 Really well done!! :smiley:
@kcreanor @clegamecoop thank you both so much for your feedback! @kcreanor We had a great time making it and we're thinking about spinning it into a full-scale project over the summer :-) @clegamecoop I'm glad you enjoyed the art style! Sorry you encountered a problem, could you explain further what happened on that level? If it's an issue with the software I'd really appreciate any info so I can fix it.
@gamechoy Sorry, there wasn't any other indication other than when I touched the object, he got very upset and turned red, said something like "i told you not to touch my stuff" (sorry, it's been a few days) and then teh game froze and I wasn't able to move or click on anything. =/
@clegamecoop did you press z to advance the text? If that doesn't work I'm not sure what the problem could be. Thanks for playing anyways!!
That was rather enjoyable. I had a few issues when doing the second level with the platforming. But once I realized how to complete that level I stopped doing that thing I was doing wrong (attempting to touch every single spike in the level). I found the 3rd level to be rather easy compared to the second, and yes... I really enjoyed that ending.
My absolute favorite part was, the curiosity I got when I saw the orb and went to talk to it... "I told you not to touch my stuff"
I closed the game twice when I first started due to the low brightness of the main menu. :(
I experienced a similar problem to @clegamecoop when playing the html5 version. I think the game can hang when the ghost starts growing. Was playing on firefox, btw.
Now, the graphics and audio in this were top notch, and I'm a big fan of dreamscape games! A few improvements I would suggest include improving the contrast of the main menu (the text gradient means it's both lighter and darker than the background in some spots, which is pretty much the worst possible place for it to be) and letting players skip text with spacebar, so they don't have to take their hands off the movement controls to advance. This could cause trouble with players skipping text from trying to jump, but a solution to that would be to make it so that pressing the advance text button while the text is still typing will just reveal all the text before skipping it. This would help players who don't want to sit through the typing effect too.
Also, I have to say that ending it with a jump scare didn't seem fair to the mood you'd created. Otherwise this is a thoroughly interesting game.
It was quite a unique but very atmospheric experience and you definitely got me with the ending :O.... Graphics are fitting for the game as well as the music.... The last one with the eyes was outright very creepy...
Good job in general!
@mrtroy @rockhoppergames @kfischer-okarin Thanks for the feedback! I found the problem with the HTML5 version, I'll try to fix it when I can find the time.
I like your ambition a lot - good looking game, nice sound and music. Found some of the gameplay a bit frustrating - you have to be really on point in the first level to stay ahead of [REDACTED FOR SPOILERS] and in the second level the spikes are really tough to see.
Well done, thanks for sharing!
Awesome Game! I love the story and the creepy aesthetic!
Wow, I'm really quite blown away by this game. It's often very hard to find a Ludum Dare game with a good story, but this one definitely fits the bill! I was very immersed by the dialogue, the atmosphere was superb, the character design was brilliant, and the music was absolutely incredible. This is easily one of my favourite Ludum Dare games that I've ever played, and I've been doing this for a few years now!
That said, I felt there were a couple of things you could do to improve it. Firstly, the artwork was very nice, but it looks a bit odd if you resize the sprites so that the pixels are different sizes compared to other objects in the scene. Also, the lack of punctuation and grammar in the dialogue can sometimes be a bit irksome, and could potentially be a lot more emotionally-fueled with good use of it.
But these are just little things, and should make you no less proud of creating such a phenomenal Ludum Dare game. **Keep up the fantastic work!**
*PS: What program did you use to make the music?*
@kappaix @landon @max-amaden Thanks for the feedback! We have two music developers, one of them uses Garage Band while the other uses FL Studio. You can find the soundtrack here: https://soundcloud.com/cinnamontoastboy/sets/ld38-joel-keagan
I liked the narrative a lot, the story is interesting and the different levels were visually and musically appealing. The ending is misterious and thoughtful. As one other user pointed out, the punctuation and grammar of the dialogues could be improved and I found the Anti-Aliased text to be a little hard to read, but generally this is a great game!
Cool game, creepy and funny.