ciaccodavide 2017-12-05 15:42
Gorgeous screenshots! Sadly it doesn't load on my old laptop, once I get home I'll check it out!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD40 → The burden
By LieropArt, mathijs750, eltee91 and Abe Vos
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 915 | 3.06 | 42 | |
| Fun | 1085 | 2.48 | 42 | |
| Innovation | 1064 | 2.44 | 41 | |
| Theme | 958 | 2.86 | 38 | |
| Graphics | 165 | 4.20 | 42 | |
| Audio | 91 | 3.93 | 41 | |
| Humor | 1 | |||
| Mood | 61 | 4.06 | 42 |
Gorgeous screenshots! Sadly it doesn't load on my old laptop, once I get home I'll check it out!
Thanks, ciaccodavide, the game is not very optimized for webgl and there's definitely something in there slowing down the build but we have a good idea why that's happening and we're looking to fix that at some point.
It seems nice, if basic. Got a lot of atmosphere to it. I'm not sure how the burden of collecting these things is supposed to manifest... the more you have, the harder it is to see, due to the glowing? Unfortunately, the more of the thingies I collected, the worse the slowdown was on my computer, even at low settings. But that's probably just my computer. I got to a big glowy thing up some stairs at the end, and then an opaque white rectangle appeared and obscured all but the top and bottom of my screen, so I'm not sure how it was supposed to end.
It looks really really nice but there doesn't seem to be a lot of actual gameplay, other than walking around at least.
You are both absolutely right, we had gameplay ideas that didn't make it into the final version. The pickups were supposed to be put inside energy conduits to open up doors and other things like that. The negative effect of carrying pickups was supposed to be that they would also tug on and slow down the player, and there would be a dark force chasing you. In fact, in the current build you can 'drop' the pickups with the Spacebar, so the idea was that the player could 'lose' some pickups if he was slowing down too much. Due to development problems early in the jam we had to completely re-do all the technical stuff so that's kind of why things are so minimal right now.
We are working to fix the framedrops as we speak. We have a good idea what's causing them.
We are determined to finetune this project, redesign some of the gameplay and make the story of the game slightly more clear without taking away too much of the magic and mystery. I can't exactly say when that's going to be done however, but we will update.
Very solid entry. The atmosphere is just gorgeous. I really liked it.
I was however a bit confused when the screen faded to white. I thought I could sometimes see some faint shapes in there, but I couldn't really understand if I was supposed to do anything at that point or if that was just the end.
Anyways, keep up the great work.
Thanks Mr.MadCat! The white-out is simply the end.
Cool little experience!
Very pleasant to play, would to love to hear a little bit of the lore :3
Mighty atmospheric, the audio works wonders there. Great graphics, yet a massive lump of light orbs is way too bright for comfort. Then again it is the only thematic aspect at the moment.
It is a real shame you got none of your ideas in. The darkness chasing the player sounds proper intense. You might want to write about the lack of features in the description too. In this case I kind of expected it looking at the screenshots (too much like Journey!), but even then I found the experience disappointing the first time around. The laggy WebGL build does not help either.
Brace yourself for rough scores, I don't rate what could have been.
Overall: *Below average (2.5)* Fun: *Abysmal (1.0)* Innovation: *Abysmal (1.0)* Theme: *Bad (2.0)* Graphics: *Great (4.5)* Audio: *Great (4.5)* Mood: *Amazing (5.0)*
Aww what could have been... but it looks and feels fantastic! I just wish there were more mechanics and things to do. Maybe next time? Good job!
Very interesting, too bad you couldn't finish it on time. To start with, atmosphere is absolutely amazing. I really felt as if I were on a mystical and mysterious journey. Music greatly helped in creating this mood. Unfortunately, game lacks an actual gameplay. I just walk around and collect stuff, and absolutely don't know what is it for. Also, couldn't feel the theme, but reading from your post beware: just slowing down player could be frustrating and irritating mechanic, the same with the light that just obscure screen.
Absolutely great start considering mood, it's a solid base to create story-based game, but it needs to be a GAME. Also consider some clarity improvements (end screen, what does glimmering stuff do).
Wonderful mood, good graphics and audio, but like everyone else said, it needs some gameplay. On the Windows build, the collectibles following you eventually started to glow so bright it was difficult so see what I was doing, though. Also why would you invert the mouse controls for the vertical axis?
@grentacular thanks for the feedback. The windows build is the original jam version. The webGL version has fixed the inverted y-axis, and some other rendering issues. We're working on a fixed standalone version right now, since quite a lot of people are having issues with the web version.
very controversial game, it looks very plesant but gameplay just isn't fun =( especcially if you played Breached yeah and i could agreed with other commentaries about y-axis, it annoys
@hiki911
Which build did you play? The windows version or the web build? The y-axis camera movement is opposite in these builds. The most recent build being the web build, since we changed it because there was negative reaction to the original y-axis setup.
@lieropart web version is stuck after logo for me(black screen), so i have downloaded and played windows build
We have uploaded fixed standalone builds of the game. Hopefully this makes it possible to play the game for the people that have issues with the webGL version.
@hiki911 Have you tried just clicking the screen after the logo is shown? If that doesn't work, which browser are you using and are you having no problems running other web builds from other LD entries?
Thanks for your feedback and response!
@Mashas Have you participated in any gamejams? I can't find games in your account. If there's anything you've worked on I'd love to take a look at it.
@Bartol44 Good point about the 'slowing down' mechanic, negative player feedback is usually a bad idea.
@lieropart yeah, clicking on black screen resolves a problem. So maybe it's a good idea to add this notice in game description so other players will see it
@hiki911 Thanks for the confirmation! Going to check out your jam entry asap.
@lieropart Well thank you kind sir/madam, I sure have!
I worked together with @smiley and the game is published on his account. :video_game:
I got to a point where the screen went all white with a crescendo of music and then it appeared to just be stuck. Atmospheric and moody, but a little unclear insofar as an end goal is concerned. Seems like the kind of thing where a story or other narrative could help drive the game forward. Would love to see you get more of the game in place. Hope you're having a great LD. :)
Got Journey vibes and I'm sure it's an inspiration. Looks and sounds great, very atmospheric. Too bad you ran out of time. Might check out the post jam version!
Really nice audio and atmosphere. Good flower / journey vibes. Nice graphics.
Honestly I know it's sticking to the theme, but the brightness became annoying and made it less fun to play. Also I was unsure what to do at a point-- I had a ton of lights and the direction it seemed I was supposed to go there was an invisible wall. Regardless, an impressive jam game!
A sweet and satisfying experience. Quality finish and left me wanting to know "what's next?" Great job
Great atmosphere, art and audio! The glowing shapes you collect started to obscure the view a bit after a while, which is a bit annoying, might be worth fixing that.
Such an amazing experience! Did you guys got inspiration from Journey? I love the game!!!!
Nice trip
The graphics, sound and mood in general were really nice.
But there was no actual game behind it to back it up which is really sad...
Also if you move your mouse too fast the camera kind of gets stuck.
I am looking forward to what you are going to further develop!
very charming and good looking, a few optimization problems and i couldn't find a clear objective but if you can acomplish those two in the future will be a good game
very nice the art and audio, good stuff. Can't wait for more.
Very promising. Your team obviously has something going, maybe just direct it toward a more complete product and I'm sure this could be a really engaging and atmospheric experience!
The atmosphere in this game is great, if only the loud collecting sound and the bright shining crystals that get in front of the camera when following you, wouldn't break the immersion frequently. This has a lot of potential though!
Pretty neat little game, reminded me a lot of Journey. The atmosphere was really nice, and the game looked surprisingly good for WebGL. The audio was very well done as well. I guess the theme was sort of there, the character seemed to control worse when you collect a lot of the orbs, but that is kind of boring imo, and there also wasn't a very obvious goal. But it does definitely seem like you didn't get to do everything that you wanted to, so I won't hold that against you too hard. There definitely is something here that you could expand on to make a really cool game.