simple-ghost 2017-07-31 17:55
Really interesting idea. My only complaint is that environment is really dark and crazy hard to navigate.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD39 → Drain
By morphine
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 31 | 4.04 | 48 | |
| Fun | 244 | 3.32 | 48 | |
| Innovation | 36 | 4.00 | 48 | |
| Theme | 32 | 4.19 | 48 | |
| Graphics | 188 | 3.63 | 48 | |
| Audio | 7 | 4.29 | 46 | |
| Humor | 1.83 | 8 | ||
| Mood | 20 | 4.19 | 48 |
Really interesting idea. My only complaint is that environment is really dark and crazy hard to navigate.
**Wow!** This is incredible. The sound and the voice are really good! The room is a little bit too dark. The light should be brighter at full power. I fall always off the platform :smile:
Hey guys - the darkness is what I call artificial difficulty :) Thanks for the feedback!!
Game was cool, interesting premise. You can definitely do a lot with the mechanic in terms of puzzles! I would have liked to see more emphasis on the mechanic in terms of a platformer instead of the darkness deal. Just like the rest of the comments, I too dislike how difficult it is to see anything.
Good work!
Wow.
I have noticed small lighting glitches in WebGL build - blinking/disappearing surfaces when looking around with mouse. If you also experience this, you might try increasing Pixel Light Count (or decrease light range).
I like the mechanic of borrowing and giving energy. The visuals are nice and simple, only the round objects would look better with more polygons IMO. The gameplay is slightly more difficult than I expected, but it helps build the mood.
Well done!
Interesting game, also the music was really nice. However the instructions disappear a bit too quick.
Great game, Nice audio. The last part that need to jump into the middle a little bit confuse for me. :)
Great mechanic and nice concept for the story. It would have been nice to see some more clever uses of the light/dark mechanic in the level design.
I didn't much like the "Falling off platforms you can't see" mechanic, but everything else was just great. Cool to see this kind of game in a jam, very atmospheric.
i liked the atmospheric feeling, the fall and die mechanic its weird, i would choose another kind of threat more related to the player itself, but still nice to play
Gorgeous. your drain mechanic, and using to activate stuff was really fun to mess around with, this could get reallll creepy
I love how the mechanics tie loosely into the story that is being told. The darkness makes the game difficult, but in a good way (my opinion) and it is consistent with the story behind the game.
The doors didn't take 100% power to open; that's not necessarily a bad thing, but since other items in the game required 100% power to correctly function, maybe it would be good to make that consistent. Maybe make it so that doors with less than 100% power automatically close again after some period of time? But that inconsistency isn't that much of a problem.
Overall, I think this game is great. Thanks for making it.
The reason doors don't require 100% is because the intention was to have the user go back and steal from them after they opened them and to learn that they don't have to fill them up entirely. The only thing that requires full energy are the pillars everything else is variable. Thanks for the feedback!
Wow, really interesting idea! I like it a lot. The environment is really dark and hard to navigate, but I guess that's the whole point. The transferring mechanics allow you to make it without falling. The only thing to watch out I guess, is avoiding that the player not keep moving the mouse everywhere to see if the pointer goes red and there is a light source there. Other than that, good job!
Nice quality voice overs! Reminds me of The Witness. The screen was a little too dark for me, I know that's kind of the point but I couldn't see where I was going. Nice work anyway :)
The voice overs are actually Amazon Polly!
https://aws.amazon.com/polly/
It's a text to speech engine
I had lots of fun :smile:, it is an awesome concept for the theme and a really immersible game!
I thought this was a pretty cool concept! I thought that it was a bit dark, and I got lost and couldn't figure out where to go after powering the first 3 beams. But never the less a cool concept!
Wow, what a great game. I really enjoyed it. Music was great. The voice over was great. Seriously, good job!
Good music, good sound, and great visual atmosphere. However, I found the cold abstract sci-fi visuals didn't fit the dramatic warmly "human" audio (kinda like a mix between Portal and a dramatic comedy).
The main mechanics is a great idea, and having to find the right balance between activating more stuff and not seeing anything anymore is challenging, in a fun way!
Just WOW!!! Amazing idea you had! (Thanks for the controller ;) ) The audio, the mood, the story! Perfect!
Congratz, it's the most polish game I have tested until here (on this jam) for a compo! Very good job!
Amazing game! Love the story and the voice over. Very intriguig. The music is also right on spot! Good job!! Again: that was fantastic! And I just noticed it's a compo entry: mindblowing!
You created a very amazing atmospheric game. The drain mechanic was simply brilliant and was a great take on the theme. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this game. Well done!
Beautiful game!
The music and voicing really adds a lot of effect and it's amazing for a compo to build such art! On a side note, darkness is not everyone's favorite obstacle in a game, it definitely adds an effect to the game. But movement becomes very disorientating with such low brightness.
Otherwise, great game! Good job!!
This seemed like a really cool premise and the mechanics were really interesting. Unfortunately, from the first two voice clips the game seemed too depressing for the mood I was in at that moment to continue much farther. Great job with the atmosphere and puzzle aspects though.
I loved it. I did not quite get that I had to walk back to the beginning at first, but I got to the end after all.
There was one lamp that I never reached. When you go left first, and after the bridge you see it to your right. Is that one only a decoy or is there something hidden over there?
Really excellent polish, unique take on the theme, and effective building of atmosphere. As others have noted, the amount of darkness can make navigating a little tedious. Great work.
This game is excellent. The audio fidelity is unmatched among any previously played game in this Ludum Dare for me.
This is a great game... I really wanted to finish, and I think I got pretty far, but it was getting a little frustrating falling off of platforms since I could not make out where the boundaries were. Perhaps a wee but more light? :smile:
You captured a great mood. I also have to check into Amazon Polly!
Hi everyone! I added a version with more ambient light (play online still) if you guys want to see the game without falling into the pit every time. It's much more ugly when you can see how blocky the world is but at least this way you can listen to all the audio logs and the different music clips.
A really great game ! The gameplay fit the theme very well and is very clever. Also the narrative dimension add some quality to the experience.
Good job :)
Very good game, I think the take on the theme is quite original and works pretty well. It was a bit too difficult for me, and having to restart from scratch made me give up after some times. But quite a nice entry, congrats!
Great idea for a game! Mood and Music were amazing and the voice acting was pretty good. Obviously the issue of it being too dark has been made clear. I think a good fix for this without actually making the game too easy would be: When you fill up the terminals that make the blue spires light up, the area around them should have a blue glow around them as well. (also make that a checkpoint so you don't start from the beginning if you mess up). That would make it easier to get back to those area, which backtracking should be hard, but preserve the challenge when initially turning them on.
Beautiful, immersive and intriguing. I was lost for a moment at the very beginning, but eventually it was easy to catch the flow. The theme is implemented flawlessly, and the overall mood is one of the best I've seen here so far, if not THE best.
Wow! Extremely atmospheric, I love the main mechanic of having to move around power to succeed. The child voice synth was impressive (I'm assuming it's not yours because that'd be nuts, but still), and I really liked the feel of the thing. Didn't actually finish it due to falling off edges in the dark, but that's...the game. Good job!
Nice mood with the song, and voice overs.
I like how the game balance between letting you see the level and using the energy to accomplishing the goal. When I turned on the game I expected a walking simulator, and I think the mood/narrative would work better without fail states. You could still get messed up in the dark but it wouldn't force you to restart. A example could be to have complex corridors or having a door close if you walk on pressure plates which you would have to avoid.
Also it pretty hard to make dark games because most screens have different brightness, so it might be a idea to include a slider, "slide until you barely see the icon" thing.
@ristoretto - yea I agree, but you know how these game jams go, hindsight is 20/20
Hmm well I liked the prospect of death, walking simulators are so 2015 and anathema to video games. Death here also played neatly into the peril that the player character / father was in, which increased as the player continued to drain power from the lights. I don't think there's anything I'd want to change about this game, it was very cleverly put together.
Wow, I can't believe you managed to do this for compo. Graphics, music, story, mood, puzzles - that's a complete set of features for an entire game, and you got it all in one submission. Walking times seemed way too long, but it wasn't that big of a problem. Amazing job on this entry =)
Thanks guys! I really appreciate the feedback