FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → Infectious Void

Infectious Void

By odrez

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall2073.6277
Fun3633.2277
Innovation2453.3677
Theme3813.3576
Graphics104.4055
Audio413.9152
Mood104.2475

Comments

bigmetre 2017-12-04 05:40

Sounds, visuals and juice are good but there is a lack of visual cues on what is happening.

damoy 2017-12-04 10:47

Quite a good entry ! Congratz for the work :)

falk-bruskeland 2017-12-04 10:50

Nice game! I like the atmosphere. Overall, good job

noa-calice 2017-12-04 12:37

The art is magical ! The only frustrating problem is that I'm always dying as soon as I push the second lever...Anyway beuatiful creation !

odrez 2017-12-04 12:51

@noa-calice Thank you! The sickness mechanic will kill you if it grows too strong. I thought about adding an indicator to the UI to let the player track the current sickness more easily. I left it out in the end, but going forward I would try to make it clearer how much sickness has gathered. You can have a maximum of 4 sickness and a lever gives you 1. However, the teleportation potion gives you 3, making it impossible to open the door ahead. You need to walk over the spikes in that part. :)

Sickness can be tracked by looking at the character and the top of your screen. If there's already a lot of it going on, chances are high that using a lever tops it off.

@bigmetre: True, giving these mechanics the proper visual feedback they deserve is something I'd definitely work on next.

henriksoderberg 2017-12-04 14:27

Really nice effects !

rewzu 2017-12-04 14:29

Nice idea for a game. Audio and graphics are nice. :) Although I think that the UI should give information about the "sickness". Also this game definitely needs more levels.

grostonton 2017-12-04 14:31

really nice job on the amosphere, graphics and sound ^^. But as @noa-calice said, i die too mnay times when i switch the lever.

jeysym 2017-12-04 14:37

Visuals are very nice (and scary). Also the sickness mechanic is really interesting. Good job ;).

jackisaacs 2017-12-04 14:39

Visuals are amazing!!

odrez 2017-12-04 14:44

@rewzu Totally agree! Given that the sickness mechanic is properly telegraphed to the player, it'll give many cool opportunities to create small puzzles that make you think about which items to use or doors to open. This would be nice in additional levels and I would like to continue development on this to explore the possibilities of this mechanic further.

noxbuds 2017-12-04 14:59

The music and graphics create a strong atmosphere/mood. Very interesting interpretation of the theme, I quite like the sickness mechanic. Though I agree with some of the above posts that there do need to be a few more visual cues, such as it being more clear whether the spikes are up or not and how much sickness you have

odrez 2017-12-04 16:31

Hey guys, the health bar was missing because the UI didn't scale with the resolution. I fixed this in all available versions.

Also check out the itch.io page for the game! https://fumikogamestudio.itch.io/infectious-void

sozey 2017-12-04 18:40

This is one of the games with the strongest atmosphere, it feels really intriguing and makes you want to explore further. The graphics and audio work great together to convey the feelings.

thetophatnoob 2017-12-04 19:10

My only real complaint was that it was so short and had an abrupt ending. Besides that, it had a wonderful atmosphere and I kept getting the feeling I was playing dark souls. The graphics matched up perfectly and the style of music would have fooled kept me immersed. Overall a wonderful game.

fenerax 2017-12-04 19:16

Really good mood and graphics.

odrez 2017-12-04 19:24

@thetophatnoob <3 thank you for the comparison. I would love to be able to work something that gets even a small chunk of the souls exploration-drive and melancholic storytelling. I'm sorry that it's so short, I knew that I wanted to do one full level and due to some distraction on sunday I had to cut the planned bossfight. However, I think this game will need a full world to explore to do it justice, so the ludumdare version will always only be a hint of what could've been. My goal was to create a prototype that could be made into a full game at some point, so I think I got that one.

thetophatnoob 2017-12-04 19:35

@odrez I definitely think this has a lot of potential it checks the same boxes a souls game does for me. In that it was immersive and the feeling of learning the level and gameplay to become better. Obviously, you had time constraints which would limit any big development but for the time given It was very impressive. If you could have managed to add a boss fight then this short level would have ended perfectly.

silvervalegames 2017-12-04 19:45

The atmosphere you created for this game was great!

chipmonkey 2017-12-04 23:38

Cool game! Adding controller support was nice :)

Art was awesome. I loved the shadows/light that would erupt everywhere and the mood set by the game was great. As far as the gameplay goes, I get the idea that taking potions made you more shadow-ey, but I wasn't sure how to tell when I was about to die by the shadoweyness. I drank the first potion and flipped the switch after and (I assume?) what happened was that I was consumed by darkness and died. I didn't really have a gauge on how far along the darkness had consumed me (only kind of dead? Half dead? zomg I'm on the brink of sadness dead?). Additionally the spikes were kind of hard to see. I was having trouble finding the safe area between the spikes after they retracted.

Those were the only complaints though! Great job! :D

bridgs 2017-12-05 01:06

Solid tone and atmosphere. Would love to see much more contrast between the game objects and the background. The only way I could tell there were switches was the prompt when you ran over one.

jcmonkey 2017-12-05 01:53

it felt wierd having to use my left hand to attack.

mosegames 2017-12-05 02:20

It look amazing

mrleeperry 2017-12-05 04:05

That was really slick! The different swirly effects and overall style was well done. I really dug that.

jeffchen 2017-12-05 05:20

Amosphere is good!And i like the graphics

jiri-hysek 2017-12-05 11:01

Wow, impressive visuals and atmosphere! Although I keep dying I love this game! Really good job!

cerno-b 2017-12-05 11:52

Full marks on mood!

Unfortunately it looks you ran out of time. I would have loved to see more.

The visual effects and animation are very beautiful. I think some visual and auditive feedback would have given your attacks a little more heft, but I can see how that might have worked against the solemn atmosphere.

11tomi12 2017-12-05 12:34

Great graphics and smooth gameplay!

sarrixx 2017-12-05 15:22

Really interesting mechanic and your art and audio is great! Bit of a short experience but the polish on it is awesome. Although I did die right next to the health potion at one point, and when I pressed space to respawn I ended up drinking the potion and continuing haha :P Kudos on a great job!

recursor 2017-12-05 19:38

The music sets the mood very nicely and I, like so many others, love the art style.

reality-blind 2017-12-05 20:27

Nice game and impressive for a compo !

sholf 2017-12-05 20:35

Very neat game. The art is great and very well animated. The music and the reverb'd sound effects really fits with the game theme. All in all it's a beautiful game.

adrenallen 2017-12-05 23:33

Fun but as others have said, there is a lack of visual definition for the enemies or obstacles. It's too easy to walk into a death and not even realize what happened. Visuals are otherwise fantastic, the effects used are great. I also like the story telling.

fakeyou 2017-12-06 07:21

Great atmosphere! especially the haunting music and sound effects. I agree with other commenters that the 'sickness' value needs to be communicated to the player. I figured out that the teleporting potion was killing me after a few tries but I though it was just some timer thing, the next guy says something like "did you eating something wrong".

tangentspacegames 2017-12-06 10:53

Quite polished, very atmospheric. Really cool :)

exnihilo 2017-12-06 12:48

Somehow I felt the visual cues actually did a great job at conveying the sickness' progression, and the minimalist UI worked well with the overall impression of loneliness and despair. It does feel like a tutorial level, but one that definitely makes you want to try out the full game.

odrez 2017-12-06 13:00

Thank you all for your lovely comments! Somehow graphics and audio was opted out when editing the description of the game, I don't know if it's a bug but well, it happened. I put them back up there, only humor is supposed to be removed.

Have a nice time, everyone.

cyberpunks 2017-12-06 20:34

I really enjoyed the moodyness and atmosphere of the game! Also the design concept is great and the graphic vision, quite unique. Nice entry! Good luck!

radmccool 2017-12-07 11:06

cant really add anything new... the atmosphere was really good. i liked the simplistic animation and characters. the black particle effect thing worked really well too. The sound is the best ive heard so far. It really added to the feel of the game and helped tie the whole thing together. The first potion was cool, getting past the spikes but realising you had to go back and deal with them was really smart, however im not sure what the second one actually did.

mr-madcat 2017-12-07 16:26

Pretty solid entry. Looks and feels good. The atmosphere is als well done. Controls were a bit awkward, using left ctrl to attack, but overall vry well done.

bradur 2017-12-08 07:07

The game was quite short but it was very atmospheric and beautiful. Nice work.

seano 2017-12-08 12:31

lovely mood and gameplay. clear goals and mechanics, great game!

legulysse 2017-12-09 17:09

The art, audio, and overall mood are very nice. The particles effect in particular got me hooked. Congrats for that !

However, the gameplay is very confusing : - I often get hit by enemies without seeing them swing, I guess they die the same frame they attack ? - Its very unclear at which point the spikes stop being deadly, it seems like it's a few frames before they finish moving down. Depending on the slopes, its very hard to know where to stop moving to not step on them, and its frustrating. - The blue potion teleporting you is a bit confusing the first time (maybe use a scroll or something different ?). - I guess using the switch hurts you by 2 points, but there is no feedback for that, the death screen still shows my 2 red potions.

If you manage to get all this more clear and fair to the player, it would be a solid base for an adventure game o/

sean-s-leblanc 2017-12-10 09:03

Interesting entry! It's a bit rough around the edges, but the art style and audio do a good job of conveying the atmosphere.

- noticed a bug where if you die while standing close enough to the teleporting potion, pressing space will teleport you and kill you again instead of respawning - given that the primary mechanic is mostly interesting as a puzzle mechanic, the enemies seem like a strange addition. If there were more ways to interact with them it might make a bit more sense, but as it stands all they really do is test your reaction time. - the health values seem to be a bit fudged; the lever would always kill me after using the teleport potion, but didn't kill me after skipping the teleport and getting hit by an enemy along the way.

Would have been interesting to see more of this!

archimagus 2017-12-10 19:34

This game is beautiful. I love the graphics, and the mood is great. Unless I am missing something, it's super short, I wish there was more to it. I'm not sure how it ties into the theme, I mean, I guess the More shadows the worse it is, but I didn't see any way to affect how much shadow I had. Can't progress without taking the sword, can't avoid killing the people, taking the blue potion means instant death no matter what. I just don't understand what's going on. Oh... left ctrl as the attack button is awful. My pinky finger is protesting.

In any case, like I said, the game is beautiful and has a great atmosphere. Just a little more game would be great.

samusoidal 2017-12-10 21:55

I love this one! The graphics and sound were excellent, the controls were concise and intuitive, and the puzzles, though short, were well done. I would love to see a post-jam version of this one!

supr 2017-12-12 15:59

nice graphics