purrseus 2018-12-04 17:05
I'd love to play it, the art looks superb. However, there seems to be no download file attached on your itch page 🤔
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD43 → Dark Roads
By sebastianscaini, del-nordlund, Flatterp, reillymack, Jay Menominee and James Pratt
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 648 | 3.28 | 30 | |
| Fun | 865 | 2.74 | 29 | |
| Innovation | 309 | 3.42 | 29 | |
| Theme | 72 | 4.20 | 29 | |
| Graphics | 31 | 4.53 | 31 | |
| Audio | 54 | 4.03 | 31 | |
| Humor | 533 | 2.79 | 26 | |
| Mood | 65 | 4.05 | 30 |
I'd love to play it, the art looks superb. However, there seems to be no download file attached on your itch page 🤔
Hey, I can't find a download link, on itch.io, maybe you could add a direct link?
I really liked the art style! Good work there
The download link should be fixed now.
Really nice art. design, but the game crashed on loading. Then I've noticed that there is no exit menu or exit key. I think it would be nice to give player an option to quit :)
Wow, loved the artstyle! Great work!
Great artstyle!
I really loved the art style! I got some crashes but game seems nice overall.
I really like the idea behind this. Would love to see a full version of this with more choices and illustrations.
I did find it weird, however, that (in my play-through) after Elijah had died, Kate was still talking as if he was there by responding to something he wasn't there to say. Maybe this was intentional and I missed something.
Great entry overall!
Professional art level, good job!
This is a fantastic entry artwise. And it has great writing aswell. Please try out our game aswell: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/screw-them
Very polished and well-executed game! It's great to see good writing and personality in the characters.
For next time, a push for consistency in the car scene (with regards to who died) would be awesome to see, but I realize this is already a ton of work. Well done!
What's your process like for prototyping a story-driven game? Are there tools that make it easier?
4 controllers... art looks nice, sound aseems to have some quality, it would have nice to play but dont have 4 controllers.
Nice mood. Would be better with less crashes :wink:
* The art and the overall design seem to be really well-done. Great job there. The music also helped bring out the kind of mood one would have while driving through darkness in he middle of nowhere. * The idea of experiencing the same exchange after a tragedy, but with disembowled voices was a pretty interesting idea. Gave it the feel of a folklore from the midwest. * The idea for the controls for was pretty great, although finding four people to play locally is easier said than done. Finding four controllers casually lying around even tougher. I ultimately played alone, but I'll still acknowledge the innovative aspect of the idea. * The deaths themselves were gruseome in the perfect kind of way, I felt.
The game does suffer from a issues, admittedly. * I don't know if it's just my PC, but it took ages to load after pressing any key on the menu. 30 seconds to a minute, if I had to estimate. * The characters could've used some more interactions, if only for the sake of making the sacrifices feel more meaningful. Speaking of additional text, it would've been, in my mind, somewhat better to expand on the endings. As it is, there's not much reason to replay, as it basically comes down to "we made it". * There's actually, I'm pretty sure at least, a bug while picking who decides on where the car drives. Players 3 and 4 are switched around, I believe. * I am assuming the events that happen upon choosing the road are randomized to an extent? Assuming they are, I would add some kind of check to make sure a player can't experience the same scenario twice. (I got the car getting stuck one two times in a row.)
Overall, a solid entry. A pretty good idea that could've done with having a bit more meat. For the time it was made in, it's understandable, even if it unfortunately affects the overall experience.
Overall design idea and concept is very interesting, I will get bunch of friends and will try it with them to get the full experience. Visuals are nice, sound is good -screaming radio voices might be little less loud, it gets more annoying over time, more than scary imho. I like the idea of experiencing the story through local multiplayer!
This is very very high quality! Love the amount of personality the character art conveys. The "same cutscene but with missing characters" thing only works well the first time. The radio distorted music fits really well too. I'm not big on VN so i find it hard to know hwy it didnt grab me a lot and I was skipping a bit of text even though ti all seemed great, but maybe its a bit too predictable for such a text-based thing, like your eliterally choosing what will happen and the structure of the game is a bit too evident. Incredible game!
Great concept! Kind of hard to experiecne it alone, though
Is there a video of this being played? It could help people rate it who don't have 4 controllers. (And 4 people)
Wow this game has some intense atmosphere. The music is a great part of this keeping an errire tone the entire ride along this dark journey. I loved the generally creepy music mixed with the art and story. Especially when the friends would talk over the radio, that was a neat idea. Great entry.
couldn't get the game to load. Got as far as 'press any key to continue' but then it would always crash. On Windows 10. Shame, I like the idea. I'll try on someone else's laptop, with some friends.
Oh, if only they knew what awaited them...
Dark_Roads_2018-12-07_13-41-35.png
You all know by now that I admire your work, and the artwork and writing of this one makes it into an unnerving visual novel of sorts. Some hiccups here and there from odd design decisions, but I believe it achieved its goals.
I must say tho, this entry is not exactly intuitive, nor do I believe there was a reason to require 4 players. While I can understand some idea to test something that goes beyond just tying a character to a button or pressing 1-to-4 to choose who does what, I believe this entry would give a better experience if there was a "single player" version. I do like the idea of having 4 people playing and all playing a very wicked version of "chicken" to see who survives until the end, but it's very hard to find around here a group of 4 people who would make the experiment work.
As usual, I love the art. The narrative was quite good too... but it kinda felt like it fell apart at moments. Without enough time to explore characters, it felt very cookie-cutter whenever anyone needed to sacrifice themselves, and the ending.
Not a bad experiment for a visual novel, but not exactly a thrilling experience for those without local friends to make it work as intended. Here's hoping you can get at least a few groups that can share some insight on how it went. Anyhow, [we're](discord.whalesandgames.com) looking forward to seeing what's next for the team! Cheers! :whale:
artistically neat. Incredible ambience.
Drawing is like the game Darkest dungeon, I like it) A little lacking optimization
Ha I love this, the aesthetic (especially the audio!) and tone is perfect, and I went from perceiving the looping of the dialogue as a bug or lack-of-time thing to a clever design/narrative decision, which is really cool. That said I think there were some things that definitely seemed to be going wrong, like me sacrificing Rudd and then him just... still being there. I think this is my favorite of your jam games that I've played Sebastian, I'd love to see a more cleaned up and coherent version of this.
This feels... unfinished... like REALLY unfinished.
That one dialogue interaction works one time and no more. People reply to characters that are aren't there, the car moves without a driver, no one talks about any of the events they just saw. Sometimes, the textbox said a character lived when he died, and vice versa.
And beyond that, the choices feel meaningless. Never did I weigh the decision of who should choose where to go on the intersection, since I had no way of knowing what was where. Never did I consider the ramifications of losing any particular member of the group, since there were none. It was like playing a game in which I flipped a coin three times, earning a point for each heads, and no matter what, I won.
I know I played alone, and that this is (I presume) intended to be a multiplayer game, but regardless, these points still stand. I played it several times to see if there was anything at all I was missing, but it just feels so devoid of content, or anything.
It's a shame too, since the style is nice.
Wow I liked your game.
It felt a bit raw and unpolished but I find it has **much** potential - I mean the story is quite mystical - which I like. It leaves many questions open. Where are they going? Are they being hunted by something or someone?
Congrats to the art style! I only wished that there would also be some animations for the car stopping sequences.
I like the idea of it being a multiplayer visual novel - I think I have not seen anything like that before. I suggest someone else to be the car driver the next time. How hard could it be to drive that car without repeated crashes? :smile:
The audio quality of the radio was superb but the song got just a little bit annoying after some time. It was a bit strange to also hear the radio during the scenes where one guy fell into the water. I was expecting some creepy sounds there as a player. Especially seeing that the audio quality is at a high standard already I have no doubt that some scene-dependent variety to the music can do magic here.
Thank you for making this and I hope to see more of it in the future! :smile: