the-enigma 2019-10-08 21:19
I can't find the download link on the itch page
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD45 → Never Ending Entropy
By codekoto, Anion_Z, Wolf_Neon and TheBlackAchilles
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 41 | 4.18 | 64 | |
| Fun | 101 | 3.93 | 64 | |
| Innovation | 193 | 3.71 | 64 | |
| Theme | 80 | 4.12 | 64 | |
| Graphics | 103 | 4.27 | 66 | |
| Audio | 103 | 3.92 | 64 | |
| Mood | 37 | 4.23 | 64 |
I can't find the download link on the itch page
@the-enigma its in description, just down the fixes
It's good! fully transparent here I didn't want to start over after dying "You have become too unstable" I was able to get my sight, shooting, black hole thing, and ability to speak to the others...
I got lost and couldn't figure out what to do next, and i walked into a room with basically thousands of those enemies in it at once.
Very nice use of theme, and the gameplay is solid! If the sight radius was a bit bigger I think I would have avoided that room.
You guys are in desperate need of gameplay screenshots and pictures for your Itch.io page and here! Seriously! Great work
@pandan Thank you for feedback! We definitely need more of it to learn where the players get stuck, because as a developer its hard to know how difficult is it to navigate yourself as well as how hard it is to fight. Unfortunate you didn't get to see the boss, we will decrease difficulty so people get to explore more and reach the boss room and get to the ending
You are right, we will make a small trailer and add in few screenshots
I made it to the boss but just couldn't figure out how to damage him at all, maybe I broke something? That aside the controls were tight, graphics and audio pleasing, wonderful progression, and lots of polish. Great work!
@solluxx Hmm, the boss should be working fine, did you shoot the black circles that rotate around the boss, the camera must shake if you hit him. Maybe we should add boss health bar so its easier to see the total lifes left.
Nice way of thinking about the theme. The gameplay is fun with good art. Well done!
@taldius Thanks for the comment, glad you enjoyed it.
@anion-z I shot at him and the black circles with all of my abilities, but nothing seemed to happen. I think I made it to him too early. There is a way to get past the guardians at the beginning if you get damaged too much. It will blow you backwards across the gap. That is a really minor edge case. Still had a lot of fun, ty!
Well done. This fit the theme very well all around, both from the sense of starting with no abilities gameplay-wise and also in the sense of you start in a universe with no space, no time, no change, etc.
The only real complaint I have is that the dialogues could get in the way of the game sometimes. Maybe have each one only display the first time? That way bumping into one of the purple lights during combat won't stop the game multiple times.
But otherwise the combat felt satisfying and you did a good job on the progression - it felt satisfying to grow more powerful, but the more powerful enemies were still a threat even as the weaker ones become insignificant.
Overall, a very good game. Thanks for sharing it with us on the stream!
@youngblade Thank you for playing it on stream, It was extremely fun to watch. The feedback is noted, though under the time constraints we found it difficult to iron out all the bugs and issues. (No, this is not RebornInferno)
Wow! Really nice way of using the theme, I really liked the mood of the game. The story was simple yet really good!
Вай, красавцы! Убить хаос, чтобы стать хаосом - очень годно!
Понравилось: + Плавное развитие событий + Постепенное обретение навыков и прокач + Баланс - в целом не слишком легко, но и прошёл я всё с первого раза + Противные мобы пачками с тентаклями в полумраке => кирпичный завод + Прикольный способ подавать наратив + Достойный визуал и пост-процессинг. + Сюжет - точнее сам факт его наличия. + Неожиданно включившийся звук (ну при очередной прокачке), а я до этого выкрутил на максимум у себя всё... оно там пол игры где-то пищало, думал, может напишу разрабам, может где чё в сеттингах накосячили... и Бах! Мой кирпичный завод выходит на новые мощьности! + Ничё не глючит, всё понятно как управлять, играется так, как должно играться.
Не понравилось: - Наратив иногда бывает не к месту, особенно посреди боя - у меня заруба, кирпичный завод, и в угаре мачилова я натыкаюсь на "нейтрала", и он мне своим бла-бла-бла - весь угар обломал. - Вряд-ли во вселенной есть прямые линии и коридоры. Сделай вы уровень весь кривой и изогнутый а не перпендикулярно-параллельный - от была бы бомба!
Что улучшить: - При том же объёма наратива, больше драйва, мочилова, мобов, пушек, бла-бла - думаю и сами это знаете - ваша потенциальная ЦА в игру за мясом идёт, а не на "роман почитать"... Ну и взрывов там каких завезите...(Кашу маслом не испортишь). - Редизайн уровня - все двери, переходы - всё оставьте как есть на своих местах, просто сделайте всё косым и кривым, избегая прямых линий ну кроме дверей может быть... - Сделайте например, что если рядом есть активные мобы - пускай нейтралы "окукливаются" (тригер делайте неактивным) - ну чтобы угар боя не ломать... - Ну и не охота дважды один и тот же текст читать, помечайте как-то "прочитанных" нейтралов...
Ну а в целом, молодцы. Имеете годный, отполированный продукт/прототип. Мои поздравления и респект!
@maxklimenok Блин, так все по полочкам разложить. Респект, так мало кто делает. Идея с редизайном неожиданная, но очень точная, я бы не додумался. После конкурса точно так и сделаем, про нейтралов, мы так и думали сделать, однако то за одно, то за второе цепляешься и времени не хватает...
Ты наверное единственный кто предложил идеи для дальнейшего развития и как мне кажется каждая из них правильная!
Я думаю побольше разновидностей врагов и оружия занести после LD. Да, Я давно уже работаю с визуальными эффектами, планировал добавить остатки тел врагов, взрывы и тд. Но немножко преувеличил с тем что я смог бы сделать за 3 дня...
Люди как ты навес золота, спасибо большое, все будет принято во внимание. Согрел душу и разжег мотивацию продолжить работу над проектом! :D
Большое спасибо за такой великолепный коммент, по больше бы таких.
Не ожидал, что многие русские люди также будут заниматься LD, ваш комментарий нам очень важен, так, как мы хотим стать лучше с каждым разом.
Мы рады, что вам понравилась наша игра, и с нетерпением ждем, чтобы она стала еще лучше, мы сообщим вам, когда сделаем следующую игру :'D
Игра понравилась, в визуальном плане нет нареканий. С навигацией были некоторые проблемы из-за отсутствия миникарты, вначале инструкций не хватает, что делать и как взаимодействовать с обьектами (которые вначале недоступны). Нарратив хороший, но паузы по несколько секунд, когда натыкаешься на врага, раздражают. Умер на последней стадии финального босса :D Хотелось бы врагов поинтереснее, имхо враги со скоростью выше героя и большим уроном, хоть их и можно замедлить черной дырой, не лучший вариант. Прикольно бы смотрелись враги с дистанционной атакой и какие-нибудь ловушки на уровнях. А так молодцы :D
@rensen Спасибо за коммент. Мини карта точно была бы не лишней, учтем. На туториал времени у нас просто не осталось но в будущем добавим. Да про диалоги так все говорят, сделаем что предложил Максим немного выше. Мы вообще хотели как минимум 2 типа врагов, но ясное дело работа над другими аспектами игры и работа над багами отняла наше время на это
Just awesome. Wish I could vote
@stonemonkeymark Your feedback is much more valuable for us then your vote!
Insanely good art direction and atmosphere
@darkmax14 thank you, we tried our best!
Nice game! As someone mentioned, the text could get in the way and might need some other trigger - maybe an interact button or make it trigger only once. Also it seems the games slows down quite a bit, when there are too many enemies on the screen and sometimes enemies could pass locked doors. I also think collecting 1000 complexity felt a little bit too grindy. But overall I liked it a lot. I liked especially some of the dialog being like "Hey, I did try to talk to you earlier" and the upgrades you collect.
this game was very polished and felt good to play. The only problem is that i have an insect phobia and the visuals and sound triggered it so much lol.
@nicu-comiati I am sorry to hear that D: Next time we will be sure to include a warning for such occasions! Thank you for mentioning that though, we probably wouldn't think of it otherwise.
And i am glad that you enjoyed the game ;D
The graphics are absolutely stunning, great job!
This game in three days? Are you kidding me? Fantastic job guys! As others mentioned before, grinding 1000 complexity was the downside of the game, other than that it was a fantastic complex journey. Kind of wanted to match the observer after becoming Chaos though, but hey, still a great game!
@zinkler We were going to make a second boss be the observer, though we didn't have enough time. Cheers for the comment. :)
Amazing game! Originally, upon first launch, it lagged so badly I was near quitting playing because "I'm not putting myself through this!"
However, after relaunching with the integrated graphics processor instead of the GPU, all was good, and amazing was game!
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten much votes! This game is well made! Rarely a bug found, graphics amazing, objectives clear, amazing story, nice twist at the end though. My max complexity at the end was 1400, then I got poofed :rofl:
You should still work on performance, dude. I've got i7 and it's still lagging xD Anyway good job man.
@ryjcio Thanks for feedback. Yes we know that performance is bad, didnt have time for optimization. For us it runs fine though, my processor is i5-8300H. We know that older PC's are gonna struggle for sure, however maybe you ran it on GPU and not CPU?
@itsdanidre We are glad you enjoyed it. We did not have much time to rate other games before, thats probably why we didnt get much votes D:
I really enjoyd the graphics, they really put you into a proper spooky mood :sweat_smile:
I admire how you introduce new abilities gradually, that way it's simple to understad and master them :wink:
Great game. I do believe more people should play this.
Wow! amazing! everything is well done, I especially remember the atmosphere which is totally disturbing, with the fx, and the story which takes on its full meaning in the theme. A more than solid entry for this game jam! congratulations
Great entry! The visuals were great, as were the sound effects (which is a shame that you unlock them so late in the game). There were a few orbs spread around the map that looked as if running into them would do something but it didn't. They may have just been there for light, but it wasn't clear which ones did something and which didn't. The orbs that helped direct and tell the story were a nice touch. I made it all the way to the boss, but died and had to start all over, which was very punishing. Regardless, great job!
The gameplay and progression were generally cool, though with its degree of nonlinearity it was sometimes easy to miss the bits you should have collected (I took down quite a few wisdom-bearing creatures before unlocking Wisdom).
The game is strong in story department, though I would've preferred if I could activate the dialogue with intelligent creatures myself (e.g. by right-click or F to pay respects or something). In particular I like how the ending neatly wrapped the story up - personally, I kinda rooted for chaos, though I'm also the kind of person who went "oh, look how adorably they wiggle their tentacles" when looking at the enemies. #TeamChaos
(that said, I would really like to see an interpretation of chaos as something other than organic horrors, but I guess it is pretty well-established)
As someone who firmly believes you cannot have too many particle effects (as long as your GPU can handle it), I liked the visuals here a lot. The audio was fitting, too, too it's unfortunate that it really played part around the endgame. Also, the initial portion of the game could have really used Yakety Sax, but I understand you might have not wanted to use it so that you could be rated in Audio (and/or copyright reasons, don't know what's the copyright status of Yakety Sax).
Overall, quite a fun and original entry, with a well-developed story. Well done. ^^
I went through the game to the end and I really liked it! There were a lot of games in the universe formation setting at LD45, but you came up with the theme perfectly. The most important thing is that this game really challenged me. Nothing made me nervous the way the Prey's Mimics did... but your enemies did it! Minimalistic, but nice graphics (I must say that I have an old computer and it slowed down, but I still played). Nice music (I would like just a little variety). And an interesting plot! Great entry for me :)
@mharring thanks for feedback, you could have collected sound in the beginning, its a green orb that you get after time after the doors can open, you can enter that room. Sorry if the lights confused you, I thought I deleted all big lights but I apparently didnt xD
@alphish
About the Chaos, when you kill Chaos you become Chaos,
in reality we planned a fight with Observer as second boss which would teleport, spawn enemies etc, and the player would gain abilities that Chaos had, we have part of it coded but we did not have time for the rest and few bugs prevented us from adding it.
Chaos in this game is perceived as something that allows for evolution, and progress of the species, so its not the bad guy at all, the observer actually is.
Yes the dialogue systems definitely needed some work around.
And yes we strongly wanted to use only our own assets which we did, except from a font! But thanks for recommendation
@daria-toni Sorry if you didnt like the graphics, we relied much more on particles than actual sprites and believe these decision would give a certain horror mood to the game!
@anion-z как показывает практика, я ужасно выражаюсь по-английски) Мне понравился дизайн и ваш стилистический выбор, я лишь хотела сказать, что мой не самый мощный компьютер немного проседал, но это лично моя история, я все равно прошла до конца и получила удовольствие)
Pretty graphics!
@daria-toni Интересно, оказывается здесь много кто говорит на русском :D
Нет, английский у тебя замечательный, я просто не так понял!
Cool concept & atmosphere. I liked the gradual introduction of mechanics, though it wasn't clear how much "complexity" and "stability" affected gameplay, especially since when I "died" (?) I seemed to just respawn right there. The level design was a little bit confusing at the beginning, especially since I got the ability to shoot last - made me think I was missing something. Enemies felt a bit like bullet sponges too, and since there were so many of them, the gameplay got a bit stale. Getting the accelerator made things feel a bit more balanced. I was excited to get some bullet hell type mechanics at the boss but circle strafing made that pretty easy as well. Still a cool experience & mood, nice work!
Great art and FX, nice game! :)
Absolutely amazing atmosphere, music and visuals just fit together so well.
@adhesion Complexity increased your speed power, bullet damage, health, regeneration, fire rate and bullet speed ! Stability drops each time you die, if it reaches 0, you become unstable and the game finishes. Thats how much effect it has on the gameplay.
We purposefully downgraded all the enemies and the boss since players could not defeat them, instead of exploring the rooms and getting above 1000 complexity they rushed to the boss and died. Personally I would make the game with less enemies but harder ones and much less stability.
Level design was nearly linear, sorry if you missed something, you probably decided to go backwards right?
Definitely one of the best games I played this LD Jam. Very cool story, mystic and fitting the theme. Perfect usage of minimal graphics. Very nice lights and particle effects.
Game Juice is just perfection. The shaking camera, the background particles, the simple animations. Postprocessing, camera laggy just enough to feel organic.
Good job fellow slavs!
My only suggestion - adding some kind of marker to show the way or a map. In the end it was hard to find a way to unexplored area.
@lilkrit Map is definitely a great idea, but obviously we will add it after LD ends.
Btw, only some of us speak Russian, @wolf-neon is British, we had to translate some comments to him, its funny how many people with fluent English, are actually Russian speakers. Guess they lived in a foreign country for a long time, just like us
@anion-z Of course. It's impressive how much you got done in those few days anyway!
And I'm not a Russian speaker, nor living in English speaking country haha. I'm Polish, but that's still slav ;)
Woah, that was solid!
The graphics are on-spot - and I hope I'll learn to make pick-ups feel as good one day!
Enjoyed the power growth a lot. It was slightly difficult to navigate the maze, so I kinda wish the Neutrals I've talked to were marked somehow... same may be said about doors, I guess.
Indeed I was expecting the fight with Observer (and/or a different ending on killing the Chaos uncapped, but, judging from your previous comments, getting there _capped_ would be the alt-ending?) but the wrap works really well already.
Overall, I'm amazed at the amount of stuff you've managed to do in the timespan given!
This is a really beautiful game, interesting story, and quite fun. I will say that the postprocessing effects seemed a bit heavy on my computer, but I know optimization isn't at the top of priorities during a game jam. I also wasn't a huge fan of the final phase of the boss fight, it was so much harder than anything else in the game but you have to start from scratch if you lose. But overall it was fantastic, the visuals were very good, and reminded me of Prey with the environment turning into monsters and attacking you. Really great work!
@neon-glass thanks for a great feedback, unfortunately we didnt have time for managing navigation correctly, its our fault. Pick-ups in this game impactful because of: screenshakes, particles, post processing, and appropriate sounds combined, time-slow, pitch and volume decrease of the sounds which helps player concentrate on the pickup!
WE WISHED for a fight with observer, we had coded around 90% of it, but there were bugs that prevented us from adding it to the game, as it happens with every jam :D
Great to have people actually finish your game and give constructive feedback, helps you improve!
@brokenmirrormedia Not so much post processing as I guess unoptimized level design and some of the codes, we are pretty experienced in the game feel, but when it comes to optimization, we need time, a lot of it, sorry for that..
'Final stage of the boss fight' speaks for itself doesnt it? We wanted the player to feel under pressure of dying, but again even if he did, not much is missed it was close to the end of the game :D You wouldn't restart as long as your stability is above 15%, otherwise yes you restart (In my opinion players who were careful from before and took their time + smart play are rewarded with easier boss fight! On the other hand players who rushed a lot should feel the consequences...)
We maybe made the boss fight a bit more difficult, but trust us its not even 20 % as hard as we planned it to be xD
@anion-z May we have a hope to see the Observer fight post-LD, then? I'd definitely replay for that! :D
@pandan Yep! We will take a short break and then start to work on postLD version
that was insanely good, that felt like an actual game I'd play, honestly one of the best game I played from the jam, well done.
The idea of gradually building up abiities and even the audio and UI over time is really well executed. The overarching narrative comes across well without ever weighing the game down. Plus, the serene and contemplative atmosphere meshes surprisingly plesantly with the tension of running and fighing the enemies. Overall, you took the theme and and ran with it in the best way I've seen so far in the jam; very impressive.
@digital-pie and @grahamax We are glad you liked it!
This was quite nice! I especially like the atmosphere of the game and the extremely polished VFX! I got to the boss, but then I died. There was a time from around 500-1000 complexity where I felt the game was getting a little bit too grindy and I thought I was lost, but it turned out the level was designed well enough that I happened into wherever I needed to go from just wandering. And the shooting power up you find is very satisfying!
Great job!
@pichuscute0 sorry if it felt that way! I think variety of weapons and enemies would have fixed that but unfortunately we didnt have time to implement the 2nd enemy type
Very cool design and story, too bad my GPU had an issue and the game has frozen, so I didn't have the opportunity to finish it (though my stability was almost gone, maybe I'd have to restart anyway), an auto-save would be nice :) At first it was very disorienting that there were only a few objects to interact with, but in spite of how much wandering it required, it grew into a game which is hard to believe that was only made in 3 days :) My major complaint is that the text appears too slowly, and that clicking completely skips it instead of first displaying the entire sentence. With text consisting of multiple messages it doesn't make much sense from a logical standpoint - if a player skips the first sentence in the middle, why even bother showing him the second sentence? He won't understand the context anymore. Also personally I hate it when games let players accidentally skip any part of the story - some games solve it by providing a history of last messages, e.g. look at GTA:VC, you get Briefing in the menu :) Also by the way, not everyone will understand the LMB/RMB instruction. If you make some post-LD effort, I'd make sure to remind players if they haven't used it :)
@scsc Im sorry to hear you didnt have opportunity to fight the boss and see the ending, we know that the game is badly optimized. Try to run the game using CPU instead, some people said it helped them. The game is very unfavourable to low end PC's because the text is displayed based on frame rate, shouldnt have done that. In what way is LMB/RMB confusing btw?
@anion-z Okay I gave it another try, but I lost too much stability by being careless when hurrying up, thus I lost after destroying the first HP bar of the boss... :) I'll try to finish it later, but it feels tedious to re-do the beginning :P You're right, the text is now faster. I wasn't on a low-end PC, just had some trobules with my driver and forgot about some background GPU eater :)
When it comes to LMB/RMB, I believe most people other than game developers/very experienced gamers aren't used to that acronym, and they are supposed to be your main consumers post-LD :) To be honest, first time I read RMB, I subconsciously felt like it wasn't important and it slipped my mind. And there was also too little emphasis on it, as it was just at the end of a relatively large block of text - which was also only displayed temporarily. Luckily, the second time I tried to click and found out that I can fight - though it wasn't like I really had to, as I was always faster than the enemies, and they kept getting locked out :) Though it took me a long time to realize that I gain the required complexity from the large enemies after I got told to get 1000, as after several minutes of playing I only managed to rise from 500 to 510.
Nevertheless, I think the text skipping issue is still relevant even though it's fast, even if only as a misclick prevention. Also I would vote for making the text appear from the left and not centered, as it's impossible to read it during the transition :) Plus a fun fact, I was afraid that the Superspeed buff is some enemy trigger, so I took my time cleaning up the room first :D
@scsc Yes ofcourse, postLD version would have much more things explained, which we didnt have time for in LD so we wrote about controls in description instead. The thing about 1000 complexity, one of the neutrals says it to you but yes we shouldnt rely on dialogue for telling these things thanks for feedback!
I played this game on stream with @omiya-games.
This game's controls and feel are exceptional. Fighting enemies and moving around feels great.
I did get lost a bit, but it wasn't a serious issue and I found my way quickly.
The way that the enemies turn into monsters is awesome.
The boss fight at the end is great.
On the other hand, the info dump at the end, was not really necessary. As you can see in the stream, we all thought was a bit too much.
https://youtu.be/No9PjQTpi0s?t=4742
@allbetsareoff we took all your feedback into consideration!