Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD38 → Agoraphobia
By kodiqi
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 381 | 3.38 | 28 | |
| Fun | 615 | 2.69 | 28 | |
| Innovation | 253 | 3.38 | 28 | |
| Theme | 65 | 4.07 | 28 | |
| Mood | 154 | 3.73 | 28 |
Very clean and expressive little game ! I liked the simplicity of the gameplay which is instantly intelligible and clear (which is pretty rare considering the time we had) and also the atmosphere. The anxiety level totally worked on me, I was pretty nervous any time I was too far from home, so good job with this agoraphobia metaphore !
This game might not look fancy, it works very well! Clean visuals and clear goals. The minimalism really heightens the mood. It became a little bit repetitive after a while, so it would be cool to see some other gameplay elements.
Very well done!!
Haha, thats really cool! :D Especially because I know how man with agoraphobia feels...Great idea and great job :)
The best thing about this game is that after one play through, I immediately knew exactly what I had to do without a tutorial. This is because the game had really clear, simple design :) The tone is very fitting, a really interesting way to view agorophobia. It's oppressive, without putting me off. It would be great to have some way to keep track of progress (high score? Time? Nicer house?). The gameplay was a bit repetitive, so if you add some levelling up or new gameplay elements as the game progresses, I'd love to play the next iteration :)
Simple but clear. Very easy to understand.
Interesting game, but there wasn't much to do and you lost really fast.
Interesting game with a great topic, simple and clear. Sound is fantastic to make frantic senses. Congratulations.
Thanks for all the feedback. Did anyone manage to finish the game?
@la-mecanique-du-plastique @drtizzle @andrey-voznuyk @shamps @geeitsomelaldy @smbe19 @furazin
This was a simple game with a great concept. I had to remember the definition of Agoraphobia to figure out why I kept dying. I love this interpretation of 'small world'. It's always interesting when we can take away some empathy for certain aspects of a mental illness from a medium like video games. Well done!
Great game! Great concept, very artistic. a wonderful example of telling a story through gameplay
The Concept and mechanic of straying far away from the house was cool! The visual and audio effects were the right amount of intense and got me feeling like I was in the shoes of the character. The range of the view and seeing things in the distance was cool, I could see things that felt so out of reach and wanted to grab it but was too afraid to stray far from the house which is so cool. awesome take on the theme thank you for such an amazing experience
@iron-leonem Thanks for playing this game on your stream, much appreciated.
Good idea overall, its simple but it works! Like I said on stream, the powerups spawn a little bit too far away from one another, so you aren't likely to try and take a chance on grabbing more than one at a time. My two recommendations are,
1- double the amount your house grows when you take a powerup, so you might consider grabbing a second one to shorten the distance of your walk back to the house,
2- grabbing a powerup has a chance of immediately spawning a second one, a little bit further away, to tease the player into going further out.
Played it on stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139989925 (at 34:22)
Nice take on the theme! Graphics were simple but worked. The white field really added to the sense of isolation. I probably played longer than I had to, wasn't sure at first what the end goal was besides growing my house (which became huge) but when I figured it out the end was very fitting and the lack of instructions serves the game well imo.
Very effective at the goal of making you feel anxious about leaving the house. The sounds and visuals are very good at eliciting that emotional response.
It took me a while to realize that your house stays grown larger even after you "die". Since it had started getting a little repetitive, I just started staying out longer and collecting all of the upgrades I could before passing out, and there was no real penalty to this. Eventually I had collected so many that the house didn't get any bigger, and I thought it was a glitch. Turns out you're just supposed to go off the map, which is unintuitive.
But I had conquered my fears! Thanks for the game.
Heeeeeeeeeeeey, I made it to the end! :)
This is a very interesting idea, and for the most part it's VERY well executed. It really gives you a sense of what it's like to experience Agoraphobia, and there's legitimate tension whenever you decide to leave the house. The art style is simple, but suitable for the concept. Anything flashier feels like it would be unnecessary.
I did sometimes think that the message of the game was kind of undermined whenever a health pack or "house-up" would spawn inside the safe zone though. It might be worth it to take extra care that that doesn't happen (unless that was intentional, and the meaning flew over my head...)
Also, I think you could stand to improve the pacing a bit. Because the gameplay doesn't change throughout the course of the game, it might be best to maybe shrink the overall field to ensure that more players reach to the end and get a chance to really consider what your game is trying to say. Otherwise, the frustration of making minuscule progress for minutes at a time might overshadow any sort of introspection you might want to evoke in the player.
Otherwise, I felt this was an awesome entry. It's rare that game jam game try to make you think on an introspective level. Thank you for making this!
I Played this in Stream Today at Request of the Developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekGMbpHGKUE
Really good take on the theme, it reminded me a lot of my own anxiety about the outside world. I had some thoughts on improvements that could make the game slightly more approachable.
Very simple game, but interesting. I had never heard of Agorophobia before, but it makes sense after playing the game. The heartbeat and flash effect worked well.
Interesting take on the theme. The stress of getting far away enough from your house to collect items really conveys the concept well. I feel like the items could be a bit closer, though. After collecting the first few close ones it becomes almost impossible to get back to the house in time. It's probably intentional that the items get harder to reach as the game goes on but this increase should be more gradual. The graphics and audio are fairly simple but they work well enough. I especially like the effect of the red pulsing as you get too far away from the house. There should probably be more penalty for "dying", though.
Neat take on the theme. The graphics may be quite simple, but they don't take away from the stressful feeling of leaving the house.
I love the twist that you have given the theme. With few elements you achieve to transmit the tension from leaving home for people who suffer it. Simple game but effective. Very interesting entry.
I really liked your take on the theme. You did a great job of communicating the player's anxiety in leaving the house and made me feel anxious trying to get them back. Great job at focusing in on the feeling you wanted to communicate and building a game around that.
Neat concept! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGAiipylkqo