FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD40 → Ignorance is Bliss

Ignorance is Bliss

By aurel300 and EidoVolta

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1133.9445
Fun5423.3445
Innovation164.1945
Theme8862.9844
Graphics884.4149
Audio284.2149
Humor5153.0540
Mood124.4547

Comments

voxel 2017-12-05 03:28

This is amazing. I've seen two endings so far but haven't worked out how to get more v-numbers (if thats actually possible), but this is probably the best LD game I've ever played. Amazing work

cmlsc 2017-12-05 14:45

So, I waited for the game to load for about 5 minutes then refreshed and waited again. Still nothing...

hdtv 2017-12-05 14:47

The game looks great. The visuals, sound effects, and music all contribute to feeling the time setting. I'm confused though :( Unsure how to progress in the game..

devastus 2017-12-05 21:46

Ooh, I'm a sucker for cyberpunk stuff. There's some really good stuff here, I really like the atmosphere you've created! At some dialogues you're maybe changing songs a bit too often which breaks a bit of the mood, but nothing too serious there.

A lot of stellar work done in a very small timeframe. Very well done, big thumbs up!

vkmicro 2017-12-06 00:13

Your previous entry also really impressed me but this 1 was quite something. The graphics are very unique and super retro which I absolutely love. The gameplay is quite simple and straight forward, tutorial might just be a bit too long but not difficult to get through and understand. Very intuitive gameplay and fun entertaining game. Well done :D suuuuupppeeeerrr!

micahtron 2017-12-06 01:52

Really like the retro/cybernoir aesthetic! It took a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing; gathered that I was a sentient AI hooked into the surveilance and communications network, but wasn't sure what the goal was. Still, great job on immersion and a unique minimal interface. Hopefully you'll expand on this in the future!

rik-thunder 2017-12-06 10:11

looks like vectors on the map. very cool I like the faces o.o the buttons ...BUTTONS!! are very cool

music is suspenseful! i like.

I found myself playing it for half an hour already. ..I got stuff to do xD. pretty interestign thing. I need to come back to this one.

caramelcode 2017-12-06 23:35

Wow! This is super amazing in every category! I really love the old dos retro style graphics. My only question is why why flash and not HTML5?

boorik 2017-12-07 10:55

Love this old school style. Nicely written. Good job.

laguna 2017-12-07 13:27

Great game! The artstyle is quite unique and as a huuuuge cyberpuk fan, I immediately felt in love. The musics also adds very nice to the feel of the game and is very bladerunner-esque. Nice! At first I felt a bit left alone after talking to the mayor.

gamepopper 2017-12-07 14:02

The 3D wireframe visuals look incredible! Definitely love the cyberpunk vibe!

honest-dan 2017-12-07 14:12

A rich and deep game. Unfortunatly it wasn;t running optimally in my browser, so I'll avoid ranking it until I get another go. But seemed a huge game for a jam - with great vibe and an interesting game mechanics. Seems a game you could invest a good amount of time in to progress through the story, rather than the usual 120 second jam experience.

cmlsc 2017-12-08 06:21

I've waited about 10 minutes and the game still hasn't loaded. .-. Could you make a downloadable version?

fireslash 2017-12-08 23:04

Ye gods the aesthetic on this game is amazing.

I found the actual game to be fairly hard to get in to. I didn't really get anywhere, and found the tapes interface to be painful. Text scrolling is also annoyingly slow, and it felt punishing to go back and look at more info.

That said, the core idea is great. A few QOL tweaks and a bit more hand holding in the beginning could turn this into a really great game.

umsingelopugmanco 2017-12-08 23:19

I'm amazed on how you were able to make this game.

Great writing, visuals, sound and feel. My worst nightmare delivered in a great cyberpunk fashion.

Congratulations on the amazing work.

Btw, Cell-3 tower has some text overflowing from the districts it covers.

galan 2017-12-09 01:00

Everyone has already said the most important things: your entry is amazing. There's so much going on that I barely got anywhere, but I definitely plan on digging deeper into this one after scoring some more games.

ciaranw 2017-12-09 01:14

A flash game? Wow, haven't played one of these in a while! This game has clearly been very well made, so great job! Visually fantastic, with the wireframe city, rotating tape reel, character art and even the different texts for different characters, it felt very polished! The audio was also fantastic, and I loved how the music changed with different messages. The writing was very good too, and I like how the different characters hd distinct personalities. All in all gave the game a great atmosphere!

There is a little room for improvement though, it would be nice to be able to scroll back through conversations, especially when selecting tapes as that felt a bit clunky.

Fantastic!

(Only downside is I don't see how this links to the theme?)

umsingelopugmanco 2017-12-09 01:19

@ciaranw What I understood is that the more tapes you have, the harder it is to manage them (thus the chance of you sending the wrong tape to the wrong person increases)

edmond00 2017-12-09 01:34

Impressive work ! The cyberpunk mood is gorgeous! I would like to know which music you used for the game (I think there is a deux ex one ???) I think however that the player is too much lost at the beginning. Even if it is a game that need some time to be fully appreciated, giving clearer goals at the beginning and let the player try the mechanics of the game (wiretapping/sentinel) through small mission could let him be more easily involved by the story and understand how the game system work. The fact that you tape the conversation and need later to send them force the player to be attentive and this is great as you don't now precisely what you are looking for at first this is a little frustrating. Hopefully, the atmosphere is very intriguing so I still want to progress to know a little more about the game world !

aurel300 2017-12-09 14:09

@voxel Well … I'll be honest, due to a bug, the v-numbers which you can technically discover don't show up in the phonebook. Having said that, there are no dialogues for the additional v-numbers, so you lose nothing x)

@CMLSC As we discussed in the IRC … you need flash player, and apparently a somewhat better computer :D Sorry! I might do a desktop build if I extend my library, but no promises.

@HDtv, @vkmicro, @micahtron, @rik-thunder, @boorik, @Laguna, @gamepopper, @galan Thanks for playing :)

@devastus Yeah, the part where the music changes was a weak attempt at humour. Oh well!

@caramelcode Yeah so … My library in theory supports Javascript builds. I was planning to release both a Flash version and a JS version (because the latter might not have very good performance depending on the browser / computer). During LD however, one of my JS builds would freeze the browser a lot - I think it has to do with the way the city map is rendered (pixel-by-pixel software renderer), which is something I haven't really optimised for in the JS targets of my library. Not to mention the game relies a lot on gapless audio loops for the music, which is something that is not easily possible in JS right now. Sorry!

@honest-dan Thanks a lot for being super patient on stream with the game anyway. Hopefully you can experience it without the lag at some point :)

@fireslash I agree. The saddest thing is that I actually developed most of the game with a debug mode where the text scroll was more or less instant. I should have made that an option / triggered it automatically when the player double clicked. Thanks for playing!

@umsingelopugmanco Thanks :) I noticed the overflowing text but didn't really mind - it was the cell tower for all the residential apartments and that was pretty obvious x)

@ciaranw Yeah so … Initially the theme was meant to be incorporated with "the more -information- you have, the worse it is". Not only because you are uncovering the conspiracies of the city you are overseeing (while being part of one), but also because as an AI you are becoming more and more sentient the more contact you have with people - eventually leading to you becoming "sentient" / rampant after a period of feeling more and more trapped in your mission. But, tick tock. :)

@edmond00 The OST for this game is all original compositions made by @eidovolta. There is a single track which you mention that samples Deus Ex - UNATCO as a tribute. :)

Thanks everyone for your comments and feedback!

sorlok 2017-12-10 01:33

Really cool game! I loved the aesthetic, and found general control of the game fine. I had a somewhat difficult time tracking down leads, but that's mostly on me. Great job!

commanderstitch 2017-12-10 01:49

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oniwaka 2017-12-11 21:13

cool graphics and great music! awesome writing as well. the font was a little hard on the eyes though

tangiblegames 2017-12-11 21:50

Graphics and Audio are perfect. A large game that I would like to play through, but alas don't have time. Text scrolling on click could be made faster. Other than that, awesome!

wheffle 2017-12-12 04:30

Wow this game is insane. I can't believe you guys finished this in 72 hours. There is so much gameplay here... I'm going to have to play through it to get a few more of the endings haha. My only gripe is that some of the music tracks are very repetitive, but even so I'm not sure how you guys made so many different tracks in time. Seriously, well done. Very awesome.

gruhh 2017-12-12 13:02

The aesthetic choices are interesting, the game is beautiful. But I believe there is a lot of text in the beginning of the game, it would be interesting if there was some gameplay mixed with the text.

As ecolhas estéticas estão interessantes, o jogo está bonito. Mas acredito que há muito texto no início do jogo, seria interessante que houvesse um pouco de gameplay misturado com o texto. :flag_br:

angriestscv 2017-12-12 16:30

Well this is a surprise. Flash is dead. Neither chromium or firefox can run flash out of the box anymore.

stadoblech 2017-12-21 12:36

amazing concept!! But choice of font (very small, unreadable) forced me to stop playing it after while :( which is very sad :( because this deserve to be played. Im sure im not only one who was discouraged to continue because of choice font...

ludipe 2017-12-22 12:31

The beginning of the game was a bit slow and painful, that said, it's amazing. I digged a lot the presentation and overall aesthetic. It's also super polished, well done! :-)

axoona 2017-12-23 00:50

I really loved the cyberpunk mood and the story is intriguing!

I also agree with some of the comments that the font is difficult to read and it could be made easier to scroll back and forth through the recordings. But it's an impressive entry anyway!

sirpumpy 2017-12-27 02:07

I wish I could scroll a little quicker through the dialogue, though the aesthetics are fantastic. Great work!

youbestrong 2017-12-28 01:41

Ah damn, I wish I had gotten to this one earlier to have the time to play through more of it. It looks great and I love the music. I did find the text a bit small and slow though. But in any case, your game has an amazing amount of content for the time given! Great entry!

2018-01-08 14:17

Really nice game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 40 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qheLSmToOo