FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD45 → Beyond the Veil

Beyond the Veil

By wolfrug, Vesper and Joe Wright

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1903.8664
Fun3793.5064
Innovation3583.4563
Theme3243.6664
Graphics2054.1064
Mood114.4563

Comments

nachtwitch 2019-10-07 21:42

really interesting art there

jummit 2019-10-07 21:47

You did an amazing job with the graphics and mood. Well done!

swordishmage 2019-10-07 22:01

This was a very interesting game. I really enjoyed the story! The special powers were a little clunky at times but overall this was a neat little game!

philomory 2019-10-07 22:08

Controls were pretty clunky and some proofreading was maybe in order, but I really dig the writing and the graphics were pretty sweet too. I also liked the way your choices changed your stats. All in all a nice job!

wolfrug 2019-10-08 08:19

@philomory Yes, the writer despaired, so I uploaded a new version with her fixes. :-D Should be better now. Thanks!

coachsisyphus 2019-10-08 10:48

spooky mood and lots of awesome; perfect for the jam and October! Nice work all!

chocolat-endive 2019-10-08 11:06

Very nice! The mood was perfect. But I was stuck at the end on the message "of course you fight" or something like that. I did'nt see how I could escape. And so I fought. After the fight the message was stuck. I tried to jump so I died and respawn and the count/boss was here again.

Except for this little bug, it was a nice game!

beefbone 2019-10-08 11:21

After the first text boxes the game doesn't progress and I can't play it

anne-ogborn 2019-10-08 11:23

Very nice game. felt like I wished she moved a bit faster, but overall great.

wolfrug 2019-10-08 11:25

@chocolat-endive

Apparently there's a bug after defeating the end boss - there's nothing more after that except for a credits scene, but I'll try to fix it (it works fine in the editor, dammit!)

@beefbone What browser/OS are you on? Tested mainly on Firefox, although it's a regular Unity WebGL game.

akusan 2019-10-08 11:27

Very nice story driven game. Pretty cool use of the theme though. The music was very melancholic. Great mood setting on the game. Actually made me play up to the end. The game play needs some work though but overall pretty cool experience. Thanks for sharing guys!

eifersuuucht 2019-10-08 11:34

Cool visual novel!

beefbone 2019-10-08 11:40

@wolfrug I'm on Windows 7 and Chrome

jonathan-lorenz 2019-10-08 11:52

Very good mood! Didn't managed to kill the boss. A bit too much text for my taste. You almost have gamepad controls, just the interact button was missing for my xbox360 controller. Not my type of game but very good work overall!

ntimi 2019-10-08 11:56

Really nice game. I loved the mood and discovering the mystery of my death piece by piece. That was a great interpretation of the theme. :)

ambra 2019-10-08 13:30

Nice idea and art! Really enjoyed it! :D Good job!

wolfrug 2019-10-08 14:09

@beefbone Updated it just now, try again? It should work just fine on Chrome. Can you try with Firefox?

@jonathan-lorenz Ooh that's a good point, and should be pretty easy to implement in Unity!

Thanks all, again, and, good news - you can now actually finish the game, as I fixed the bug that prevented you from getting to the credits screen. My mistake :D

marcell-balog 2019-10-08 16:18

Ooh I really liked this one's theme. Great writing and design!

yomissmar 2019-10-08 18:00

So far this is probably the best character design I've seen in this jam, i really like her style. Combining the narrative with your capacity to use abilities is a very cool idea. Good job!

gamebuilder 2019-10-08 19:01

I had trouble with the 'E' control (the item circle would flicker and I would have to restart several times before picking up the item). Otherwise, a very good game. I like the graphics and the story.

wolfrug 2019-10-08 19:55

@gamebuilder Was there some debris (chairs etc) on the "memory spot"? If you pop in and out of the trigger, it tends to do that. If you were just standing on it normally, I'm not sure D: Browser and OS? (and thanks!)

revx 2019-10-08 20:30

I got totally caught up playing! It glitched once when the shadow killed me while I was reading about an object, but once I was done reading it was fine. Nicely done - thanks for sharing!

gamebuilder 2019-10-08 22:42

There wasn't any debris over the memory spot. I'm using Firefox with Ubuntu. I was able to reach the end of the game, however.

siarhei-pilat 2019-10-09 09:17

Wow, please accept my compliments. The mood is 10/10, kept me playing till the very end, great job. Lots of bugs, but the feel is great. And the music works so well with gameplay: shivers and goosebumps!

demuss 2019-10-09 09:26

Loved the mood and graphics, idea of merging narrative with gameplay is sweet, nice game

sageware 2019-10-09 12:41

I was very impressed with the graphics, mood, and music. Unfortunately I wasn't able to progress past the first knife-guy. Would love a hint to get past him. Also, couldn't interact with the silver/blue lights. Don't know what they do. Really want to play this game.

Update: The "Hold E to Interact" text does not show if playing the game in fullscreen. Was able to progress further. Excellent use of dialog and items. This game reminds me a bit of "American McGee's Alice" in terms of beautiful and creepy. Gameplay and story is very mysterious. Excellent work, one of my favorites of the jam.

hare-software 2019-10-09 16:12

Very nice build up to the big reveal and the graphical style in combination with the sound design really made the reveal scary. The artwork is really nice as well, great job!

selkkie 2019-10-09 23:14

This was super cool! I really enjoyed it. The audio and the hand-drawn visuals were fantastic, and the story was captivating. I also enjoyed the gameplay concept, uncovering more powers based on our reactions to story snippets is very interesting.

The combat was a bit of a fuss for me unfortunately with the hitbox of the count and the unforgiving instant death, and the fact that you can't face right (to use Wrath on count ghosts in that direction) was a bit annoying. Thankfully though, I was still able to complete the game thanks to the options you left available(spirit)- and that's really cool. And even after that, I still wanted to go back and see what happens if I defeat the Count.

Excellent work, I would love to see this polished up and possibly extended.

savvy-community 2019-10-10 09:58

Very nice game with cool ideas and good art :) Congratulation it was pretty interesting to play!!

toad 2019-10-10 14:13

It seemed really interesting, but unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to get the special skills to work, so I got stuck.

wolfrug 2019-10-10 14:41

@toad There's a little tutorial wall-hint in the beginning - you use your up and down arrows to make it work. To get past the first shade you'll have to use one of your three skills - Spirit (green) will let you fly over it, Melancholia (blue) will let you make a shield and walk past, and Wrath (red) will let you zap it to death. You get more of the different stats by interacting with the 'memory objects' (lightning-type things floating in the air) and making a choice.

Someone said they couldn't see the interact prompts for the memory objects when in fullscreen, so maybe that was the problem?

tero-pulkkinen 2019-10-10 14:50

interesting graphics with special kind of mood. Enemies are dark shadows, and there's other interesting items in the scene.

inferture 2019-10-10 14:57

It was great ! I liked the aesthetic and the mechanics of choices giving you different powers ! Were you inspired by the tale of "Blue Beard" ?

wolfrug 2019-10-10 15:23

@inferture That's the one :D Thanks!

space-nomad 2019-10-11 15:47

i had a lot of fun playing! although the graphics could be better and the controlls were a little slow and uncomfortable, but it was still tons of fun was there a way to not get killed? and what would happen if i escaped instead of fighting?

chuchugeralt 2019-10-11 19:33

Really nice game. I was into the story from the beginning. The hit-boxes at the endfight were a little bit off, but it was great to play!

nsadie 2019-10-11 20:48

This was really different and unexpected. Story, art, sound and mood was pretty good all round. The gameplay/fighting was a bit weird though.

daitse 2019-10-11 21:19

The art is awesome and th music goes well with the game. The story is kinda obvious but well narrated ! Good mechanics with the powers and choices ! I may have found a bug ? I chose to fight and won, then when I interacted with the corpse I only got the first text panel (starting with "So you chose to fight...") and it got stuck like this so I had to flee in the end. Great game though !

wolfrug 2019-10-12 07:09

@daitse Argh! What an annoying bug. I can't seem to reproduce it on my end, neither in the editor nor the build :-/ What's your OS/browser?

@space-nomad Lots of people have pointed out the controls being slow, and yeah, it's a problem :-D The issue is that her speed & jump height is dependant on the "spirit" (green) stat, which means that for people who don't pick that at all, she remains really slow and clumsy for the entirety of the game. In an early version, in fact, she couldn't jump at all unless she also had some Spirit. :D But yeah, it does make the controls feel very sluggish, alas.

And thanks to everyone else for your comments <3

daitse 2019-10-12 08:13

@wolfrug I reproduced it on my end, I'm on windows 10 and I use firefox 69.0.2 64bits. When I got the message I clicked, maybe something got lost at this point ?

raomer 2019-10-13 08:31

Cool litle game. I really like the mood, the melodramatic. The storytelling is fine and the art fits the theme :)

solah 2019-10-13 15:11

The story looks interesting but I'm not really into this type of games. Good job on the art also!

virimine 2019-10-13 16:41

Nice atmosphere! I felt very immersed and intrigued by the story. One thing, after walking in the room and finding the knife I would prefer a bit more space before seeing the bodies and not as soon as entering. Even a lot more space.. like walking and walking and not knowing what comes next... Suspense would build up! :)

kooshy 2019-10-14 02:20

That was _so_ cool. I love the story and mood. The combat and surprise platforming elements admittedly took me out of it a bit (I would be all deep in the story and tone and then randomly fighting a dude or trying to figure out how to jump over furniture) but at least some of those elements made more sense at the end. And the combination of choosing how to fill in your memories with it affecting your ghost powers was both immersive and _really_ good game design. Def recommending this around.

mrstari 2019-10-14 09:56

i love the mood and the Graphic :) Good Job ! feels a little bit scared :D

kultisti 2019-10-14 10:23

Good job with the story, got hooked immediately!

jnsoff 2019-10-14 10:50

for this time, this is one of the best games

goupixm 2019-10-14 19:27

Very good job, I love so much the story, it is interesting, the best point in this game ! I think the art is awesome and the music is perfect with this atmosphere ! Very, very good ! Good job :D

asfdfdfd 2019-10-14 20:13

I love how this game transformed to the gore horror! Could not win bossfight btw.

eduardo-yukio 2019-10-18 03:15

Things I didn't like: * The game is kind of buggy: when I hit W a blue circle appeared for just a moment and then faded, very confusing. I took a long time to udnerstand that the powers were related to the answers that I gave. * The sound effects were strangely loud. * When I put the game on fullscreen it doesn't changes the resolution to fit mine, which is smaller. I had to zoom out the screen to make it work. * I can only attack facing left.

Things I liked: * The mood is awesome! * Nice music. * Awesome art!! The items, the main character, the enemy and the room. Everything is very beautiful! * After I understood that the powers were related to the answers, I liked it very much! A nice concept! * Maybe the best narrative that I have ever encountered on a ludum dare game, it really got me engaged and curious.

When I realized I was walking towards the mysterious door of the story it felt very good haha, awesome game!

stmatn 2019-10-20 08:11

I like the game very much. The grahics are very beautiful.

I tried to max the stats once I figured out, you could increase them. On my second run I went for full melnacholia and found myself stuck on the boss. Is this intended? I wansn't sure, if this meant that the melancholic reaction would render you stuck with the count forever.

wolfrug 2019-10-20 17:39

@stmatn So the fully-maxed stat thing was a bit of a design issue, that I admit we didn't have quite enough time to iron out. However, the strategy for killing the count with no wrath is that you stand on the 'corpses' (swirly red things go around when they're active) which causes a rain of lightning bolts. These hurt you, but also hurt the count. By using your superior shield time, you should be able to just wait him out until he dies from the bolts. It takes a bit longer than with all-wrath (or even some-wrath), but it should work!

With pure spirit you CAN kill the count this way, but as you have no protection from the bolts yourself it's really hard; although you can of course just escape instead!

angiekatneko 2019-10-21 00:20

I really liked the sound and mood of it all. Combat with the count wasn't very satisfying, but fun overall.

2019-11-04 17:23

Creepy game. I included it in my Ludum Dare 45 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/98_o2aOM-SQ

wolfrug 2019-11-10 19:01

@jupiter-hadley Thanks so much Jupiter! Big fan of your Jupi Plays series, and an honour to be included :D Just too bad the game inexplicably bugged out and you couldn't get past the first enemy, lol. Such is gamedev/game-jam life though, I guess! Thank you anyway!