absolutekaoss 2017-12-05 01:14
Nice mechanic :D
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → The Darkest Light
By zblah, eryph, JossComposer and TuilePiment
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 109 | 3.94 | 68 | |
| Fun | 420 | 3.47 | 68 | |
| Innovation | 188 | 3.66 | 68 | |
| Theme | 188 | 3.94 | 68 | |
| Graphics | 196 | 4.14 | 69 | |
| Audio | 69 | 4.00 | 66 | |
| Mood | 28 | 4.23 | 67 |
Nice mechanic :D
Super cool graphics ! :o Best game I've seen so far guys great job ! come check our game <3 : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/lamattractive
Such a game , i have only one regret , ghost's sound destroyed my hears
@lhouyez So sorry to hear that :( we had sound problems at the end, we will upload another "out of jam" version in the next days to fix those bugs.
Nice game! FYI: You should rename your Build Folder to The Darkest Light v1.2_Data instead of Build_v1.2_Data :)
@giucapan Thanks ! We did an update on itch.io ;)
Good mood, and really fun ! "Please turn off the light ... now ... haaaa !!!" :-D
Fun game! I like the light up mechanic with the hidden traps. Good job!
Nice art and great music! The mood of the lighting and environment textures are very well integrated. Would be great if the character and ghosts were animated also.
Nicely done! That's an interesting mechanic for sure. It's really thematic and although I didn't quite like the graphics (no animations, looks too static-y), the overall suspense and discovery of the game brought it all together. Good job.
Mommy, hold me I'm [scared](http://replygif.net/i/120.gif) that atmosphere is intense. Great game!
Nice spooky game and good approach to the theme. The movement could be a little better.
@lance-krasniqi @siepiau The animations will be the first thing we will work on (after some rest ofc) !
@grey Happy to know that the intentions are working !
@johnnyo We let the character hard to control (slow rotations, no strafe) to maximize the "i'm weak, i'll be dead soon" effect. Besides that, what improvement would you suggest? :)
Really cool game! Reasonable difficult and everything was clear for me :)
First coming of ghost fucking scared I even saw screenshots . Sounds well designed. I personally dont like tank movement.
Pretty atmospheric, sound and visual design works good together.
One of the ideas that appeared in our brainstorming come true, it is impressive to see those coincidences. Good game!
This game is AMAZING. I love the simple graphics and the atmospheric sounds and music! The concept is so unique and fun to play. One of my favorite games so far. 5 stars from me!
Play movement animations could be added but all is forgiven. Wonderful job! congrats.
I'd have liked a more direct movement for the character. The game is scary, the mood is set up very well. The amount of polish is great, except for the missing charater animations. Very solid entry.
Great entry! The "help text" was annoying and not very informative, but I got past it eventually. :)
This game definitely hits the spot regarding mood, graphics and audio. You manage to create a very tense atmosphere, and even the missing animations can be kind of replaced by the footsteps to signal movement.
The movement itself would be a little better if you could instantly move in all directions, say with a keyboard in all four, or a controller full 360 control, because it made running away from THEM quite difficult. When they appear in the light, I'd also welcome a little "waking up" animation or some other form of delay, because like this, I died way too often just because they appeared right in front of me :/
One last detail that I love is the faint heartbeat when you stop and listen :)
Good job!
Hey, i'm not currently tagged, but i'm the programmer of the team Zblah.
@illabom Thanks a lot for your support, as a team composed of juniors in game industry, it means a lot to us to see this kind of enthousiasm !
@drauthius The choice of bringing some text to the game was a dilemma during the jam... We decided to let it to be sure that everyone understood the light up / light down mechanic, knowing that some players could be annoyed. But if we update this part of the game, a proper tutorial will be added to get rid of this. Thanks for your feedback ;)
@somethinboutgames Great feedback ! It got us think about a movement update that could do it ;). The "waking up" animation was also an idea, we had a hard time balancing the ghost AI. Saying that, i'm thinking about a way to do it with a proportional timer based on distance, it could do it !
And to the next jammers letting feedbacks : don't hesitate to tell us what we did wrong, it makes us better game developpers ;)
The game is very coherent: visuals, mood and graphics. And the music is great. We always love to find games that work so well this category.
SOME IDEAS: The main character is too "static". I see a knight with a cape, so I would like to see some animation when he walks. We know that one weekend is not enough for all these details but i'm thinking that the hero could be a statue or a stone-made hero (a golem?) so you don't have to worry about that.
Good job, guys!
nailed the aesthetic
The aesthetic look: great. Maybe the movement felt kinda weird, maybe it was me. But in general: Nice entry.
Check out mine too if you can :D
@miguel-montero thanks !! Coming ;-)
Hey folks, really nice game! The audio and mood are superb. The atmosphere is just awesome. The idea itself is very interesting and really well executed I agree with the others that the movement feels kinda static.
But hey its Ludum Dare I can feel with you :grin: Great job!
Good mood! The mechanic was pretty sweet too.
Great game! I liked the atmosphere. I think player rotating would be easier using mouse.
I like the fairly unique mechanic with the light. I don't normally like scary games but I still enjoyed playing this one. Well done. Your graphics are far better than ours (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/life-is-a-balance).
Wow, cool idea for the game! Fits the theme just fine. For some reason on my PC only arrow keys were working for the movement, not WASD, but thats okay. The graphics and soundeffects are really good and fitting the idea, background music sets the fearful mood perfectly and lack of vision gets you lost in this maze in no time. Great work.
First, thanks for playing and rating my game! :) This entry is an entry with the best mood i've played so far. The idea is great and well implemented. I've enjoyed playing it! With a bit polish this could be a title to throw money at :) For example you could build in some more elements of Dark Souls. I immediately was remembered of this title by your entry. Good job!
Absolutely amazing. I understand that you tried to make players a little bit confuse, but maybe u will find some way to show players where they were before because sometimes i felt like i was in the same place more then once. I don't like games where i cant do anything, but this one was rly interesting. Keep it up !!!
Thanks for your amazing feedbacks, it keep us up to maybe push this concept further ! :)
@Annie Owl : You're PC is totally fine, this game is supposed to be played with space and directional arrows ;) we forgot to clean our InputManager from some unused keys.
@samurai-spark : We will definitely add animations and more polish to our characters in some time, it was the last thing on the long "to do" list of our only artist :)
@diablol Our intention was to maintain a little discomfort about how the player interacts with the game. It's the same idea for the character controller, who doesn't permit strafes or quick turn back. We had an hard time to figure out how to use the mouse without making the movement trivial, maybe you're thinking of a way to do it ?
@finbobby123 : We love games with single mechanic :) We will check your entry !
@Marin0104 : Thanks a lot for playing our entry too :) You're right, we're huge fans of Dark Souls and fantasy in general, and it was a major inspiration for our level designers.
@Norbert : Your comment warms our hearts, thanks a lot :) You're absolutly right, we have made the choice of modulars assets that can be flipped, but we were short on time for this kind of polish. Another thing that we couldn't manage to do right : the fire which unlock the doors was supposed to be a little light up before you reach them, but we can't find a way to work our shaders without a huge loose on graphic polishes.
Good work on the Audio. Sometimes quite hard to escape but i like that. Played the Jam build and the fixed build. Good job. And thank you for checking out my game :-)
Well done ! Interesting gameplay and it fits well the theme :smile:
Interesting gameplay mechanics! I like it alot! It really fits the theme! - Fun, solid adn innovative gameplay! - Nice graphics (animations would be nice though) - Good audio. - Nailed the theme. - Mood is on point. - Overall a very good entry! Good job!
Really nice concept ! You really NAILED the theme with this one ! If it had animations, it would've been incredible !
Nice work !
Great use of the theme, and the game looked great too.
Really solid overall, i liked the idea of exploring with a torch to light your way but having no way to deal with enemies other than run, The graphics and music are awesome, the mood is really great and you've nailed the sense of tention when being chased by the ghosts.
If i had to nitpick i'd say that the only negatives would be that the lack of a walking animation felt weird, but it's not really that big of a deal anyway.
Nice game you made there, good job to you guys :)
@nokusu thank you very much ! With all the feedbacks we've received, I guess working on the animation of the character will be our priority ! See you around !
Can you do a macOS or web version? Merci d'avance!
Amazing game! Great concept, great graphics and sounds. I just shouldn't be playing this thing at 1 am, haha. Spooky as hell.
I liked the concept and the game. It fit the theme really well in my opinion.
The only complaint I have is that I personally don't like the movement, but that might be just me.
Anyway, great entry!
Nicely done. I enjoyed playing. Here's my play through: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/208225237 Got stuck after a while since i couldn't tell if I was going the right way. Good mood and the graphics were stellar.
@Seb_degraff : we work on a macOS and Linux versions, it should be uploaded before Monday ! Merci à toi !
@iluvatar : Thanks for playing !
@lexi : Thanks for your feedback ! Your not the only one to complain about the movement, it's a tricky part between a good feeling and our intention to weaken the player against the ghosts. We think about to rewrite this part soon, don't hesitate to if your have any ideas !
@terryg : a big big thank you for your playthrough, it's very instructive for us to see how peoples play our game ! Unfortunately, we know we have a lack of signs and recognizable landmarks, that explains why not everyone get to the end :( We have set a list of thing to do, we will upload a polished version in a few weeks !
A little spoiler to help you to find your way : in the three branches path, the right one is the good way to go ;) you were very close to find the next corridor in the room with the hole.
Gorgeous graphics and interesting mechanic! Only thing that bothered me a bit was the movement of the camera.
great tension, i really felt uncofortable when ghost where chasing me. Great job with the music as well! Really solid entry!
Thanks @zblah!
As said above, the camera makes it hard to orient one self! But it's a good idea notheless. Some checkpoints would have been nice, I kinda suck. Good use of lighting also, are the shadows disabled because it made thinks even harder ?
Maybe tank controls are a bit hard to get used to... but with controller support or arrows/mouse I'm sure it could become way more usable :) Nice work though!
Really nice job with the art and sound, which really coordinate well with the main mechanic and horror theme. Even the choice to go with tank controls is interesting. They certainly have a big impact on the game, making it harder to change direction to flee from the ghosts, and thus making it more of a commitment to move. Many times I died because the ghost appeared two feet from me and I pressed a side direction, to merely turn in place and die.
This added to the tension and horror since I knew it would never be trivial to flee.
What hurt my experience the most was the full restart. If each portcullis was a checkpoint, I certainly would have played to the end. Eventually though, it wore me down having to repeat the same sections.
But the main thing was that you nailed that spooky high tension - and maybe checkpoints would have ruined that. Lot of really nice elements here, well done!
@huitre @pkenney First of all, thanks for your feedbacks ! That's really strange that you didn't encountered checkpoints.
I've tried it and they are were we placed them, maybe you didn't manage to reach them. I think the first "fork" is a little bit too hard at the start, we saw that too late. Stay tuned, we will update a animated / rebalanced version at the end of the rating time ;)
//SPOIL
After the 2 first doors and the first hole, turn right. At the end of the corridor, there is a checkpoint. They are not marked, but i think it could be great to have a "progression marker", because reaching the first check point is less than 20% of the game.
Let us know if you get to the end !
//SPOIL
Wow that was quite fun to play loved it, the atmosphere was on point. I actually jumped when i heard the ghosts come.
The game is quite fun :D Really nice graphics and idea for the theme! The only problem is the level design and especially the mob placement that its really difficult at start to get around them but after you learn how to trick them gets really easy... Other than that really great game :D
Fantastic Job Guys! If I had to recommend something that I think would improve the game is a mini map. But on the other hand I only played ver.1 so you might have beat me to the punch! A very strong submission Great Job Guys!
@billeclipse The problem of the level design come from the balanced between the subject of the jam, the horror feeling and the GamePlay intention. The tests and the feedbacks helped us to solve it in the next update with something new(not exactly a minimap @creamybacon2), and some change in the level.