Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD46 → Angst
By silas-reinagel, Noah Reinagel, jaroslav-vozar, graphicedit, Amerigo Gazaway, Gordy Keene, BearlikeLion, Max Louis and KamuiHand
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 672 | 3.72 | 120 | |
| Fun | 1735 | 3.07 | 119 | |
| Innovation | 541 | 3.64 | 119 | |
| Theme | 1582 | 3.49 | 119 | |
| Graphics | 186 | 4.39 | 122 | |
| Audio | 126 | 4.09 | 118 | |
| Mood | 96 | 4.22 | 119 |
Really love this game, absolutely love the concept! Despite the small bugs, I can seriously see the potential with Angst! I particularly love how you come out of the "mind" and back to the office, it mirrors reality very well. Nice work guys, you should be super happy with what you've created!
as someone with anxiety I love the concept and the realness of the panic attack scene. got stuck on day 5 with nothing to interact but maybe I just get anxiety clicking the right stuff as it may trigger another panic attack scene :D
great game! I love the graphic style!
@keybol thanks so much! It was so tricky to get finished up. We had to chuck out a whole bunch of content which is a same as it gave players the context they needed. The office scene is pretty much empty too haha. I think we'll continue to finish development on it.
The game was really fun to play and I liked the dialogue. The art was amazing!!! I was stunned when I saw the blackout-world. The sounds are really fitting and create a great atmosphere. Really liked the contrast between the work tune and the nightmarish soundscape. Would love to finish the game ^^
I commented on Twitter already, but there it goes again: well done! I love that you worked on something about anxiety and blackouts! I had so many anxiety blackouts in the past, and it feels terrible.
@splitpainter Thanks so much! It was really hard work as you can imagine. Great work on your game man. I hope we did an ok job of the mood of anxiety.
@rhianna thanks so much for the support!! :D
@drskort Ahh thanks so much for your comment! :D I'm really happy to hear you liked the art haha - we had so much extra content we didn't get time to implement like around 4 more songs and at least 20 sounds and art pieces. We'll continue that all in a post-jam version. Really great job on Goblin Adventure.
This entry has incredible production and it shows (and yes, I did notice you have a 'jam guide' in your readme for your team members haha). I personally related to the headspace being full and the challenges of navigating daily life while trying to keep track of things (though thankfully I don't have anxiety). Amazing and memorable entry.
There are some glitches here and there but overall a lot of work was put into this. Just a heads up, the HTML5 version on Itch.io makes the game really small so it´s hard to read
This is one of the most polished games I've seen so far. Especially, the concept and the artsyle was amazing. Well done!
Wow, great game, I love the art and the concept.
@zesix Wow thank you! Haha Silas setup the readme - very organised! We were a pretty big team so it pays to be prepped like that. Really happy to hear you liked it! Looking forward to checking yours out :)
Well that's an impressive quantity of work, especially for the graphics part, you don't often see this quality of visual in gamejam. Very polished congratulation.
@rednaxelus Thanks a lot! Hmmm I'll notify the team about the HTML 5 version. Did you try zooming in your browser?
@noirdrive That's a massive compliment thank you so much! :D
I love the concept of this game 5*s :D There are some small glitches here and there but overall this is a strong game with a lot of potential :) x
This is *incredible* work for a jam! Amazing concept, amazing graphics, amazing sound. A few bits... err... hit a bit close to home though ;)
A game with much depth! The mood/style really fits with the meaning behind it. Gameplay-wise I didn't really know where I had to go in the forest.
Hi! Love the concept! It's a great way to picture workspace nowadays and how it could affect people health and mind. This game should be used in companies, to put people in the place of someone with anxiety and make workspace less hostile :)
Really liked your game. What an awesome effort from your team.
Clearly well polished and a great execution of the theme.
@max-louis I found out the problem. You should disable the option on itch.io to play in fullscreen because the Unity Web Player has a built-in fullscreen function that works well. Itch on the other hand just centers the game basically when you activate their fullscreen. At least it seems to do this for Unity Web games
Wow! Great job, what an awesome concept to explore and you guys did really, really well. Amazing work, you guys really nailed it!
Truly awesome teamwork!
Thanks @weirdybeardyman !!
@benjouille ah thank you so much that's great to hear! :D This is personally my first jam so I'm not massively familiar with what is expected - the team were really awesome though. Hope you had a good jam!
@ponypen haha 5*!! Thats amazing thank you. We'll get a post jam version out ASAP to fix those annoying glitches. They break the experience a bit.
@stolen-biscuit Thank you! We loved creating the concept, we wanted it to mirror reality well. Hopefully it does just that and is fun to play.
@hoseccan Thanks so much! Really appreciate it!
Wow what a great job creating the mood. Gave me anxiety. Well done there. I loved the art and how the sounds of work differed so much from the blackout. Collisions were a bit odd, but no biggie. Well done.
@unept Thanks so much for your kind comments! Definitely agree about the collisions - something we're fixing! We worked really hard on making the transition from office to her "mind" very different, so I'm glad you liked it! :)
OOooh very nice game !! It reminds me Don't Starve ^^ Good job !! I love the ambiance
Really good DA, nice ambiance! Got nuked by a demon about 1s after the transition at day 2 for an instant panic attack but other than that it's a good time, congratulation.
Wow! wonderful concept, as a person suffering from anxiety I can say this is an accurate visualisation of how anxiety can feel. Great work! I find the sticky-notes in the journal a bit difficult to read.
@sofy35 Haha we definitely got inspiration from Don't Starve!! Love that you noticed. Thank you!
@bdmaniak Oops! I think that's a rare bug, sorry you ran into that (literally!). Thanks for letting us know and super glad you enjoyed it :)
@puzmak wow, what a comment! Thanks a lot for being so honest, really glad it mirrors reality well and that you enjoyed it. Definitely agree about the sticky-notes, will add that as a sticky note for our team to fix! ;)
I do like this unusual theme choice. I like splitting from one world to another following a kind of quest. I just miss something in the UI that highlights clickable stuff. It was a bit hard to figure out which object I can grab or not. Anyway, it's a great LD production, congrats!!
@laveilleusegraphique Thank you for the feedback on the UI clarity for items!
We actually had a user story for showing names and a highlight around the items, but sadly, it didn't make it into the jam version. We'll see about adding that in as a post-jam fix.
I love this concept and take on the theme, the mood gives me celeste-vibes. The game is well polished and the team did a great job in all aspects of the game ! Excellent job !
@mathieu-semin Thanks so much for that awesome comment! See what you mean about Celeste, someone else has actually said that too! Really appreciate your kind words :)
Nice quality production ! The art, the music, the UI and the concept are top-notch !
However, I had trouble with the controls, I found them imprecise & slow, the sprint feature was too restrective for my taste. So I think that with a little optimization on the movement system, it would be nicer !
But apart from that, really good work, your game reminded me a lot of Don't Starve, which is a good thing for me !
@edalbung Wow, thanks so much for your thorough and great feedback! Really interesting to hear your thoughts on the controls - we will look to bear those things in mind in our post-jam version. We can definitely try to make the sprint a little less restrictive. Haha - lots have said Don't Starve too! That was definitely our inspiration. What a game! Thanks again :)
Great game, loved the idea! It was interesting to walk around the forest, sometimes scary :D The only things I had trouble with are the yellow notes in the journal. It was hard to read them, because they were small. Music is great and so is artwork (loved the cat poster :D). Keep up the good work!
The art is stunning (looks liek don'st Starve: office edition) and the topis is very nice. Sometimes I felt a little bit lsot with what to do next ( sticky notes in journal were almost unreadable), but I guess that's one of the traits of anxiety too. Well executed game!!
@drskort Thanks for playing! Had a lot of fun creating the music and our sound designer did a fantastic job as well. Really enjoyed your Goblin Adventure game too, cheers!
I really liked the atmosphere of this game as well as the narrative elements! Maybe the time in the blackout world should have been equal to the real world, so just more stuff in the real world too. Also, on the HTML version I couldn't see my mouse pointer. Overall, I enjoyed playing and I thought it was a great jam entry!
great atmosphere and the audio sets the tone well.
cool cartoon graphics! i really like the sound design as well. The ghosts are really cool. It seems that there are issues with the layering with some of the office furniture in the beginning, it looks like you're kinda walking over parts f the desk/chairs. would love to see what you do next with it!
Really lovely graphics and audio sets the scene very well. Clearly a very personal entry and has a lot of deep meaning to you and would imagine a lot can relate. Great job!!!
@syudzius Haha love that you found it scary and thanks for noticing the cat poster ;) Cats make anyone smile, right?! :D Definitely going to be updating the yellow notes in our post-jam version, thanks so much for that feedback (we ran out of time to fix!). Really glad you enjoyed :)
@ulcius Thanks so much for your great comment! We took a lot of inspiration from Don't Starve so I'm glad that comes across! Your comment about our art means a lot. We definitely will be adding more dialogue and context in our post-jam version, as well as the font size on the sticky notes, even if we just make it a tiny bit bigger! Really appreciate your feedback :)
@black-flag Glad you liked the atmosphere and dialogue so much! For sure - our intention is absolutely to balance the time spent in real world and "mind" forest - that was a "we've run out of time" thing! In our post-jam version, you'll see a lot more time spend in the office, as we agree it should be more evenly split. Thanks for letting us know about the cursor on web - didn't know that was happening so will definitely look into that. Thank you so much!
@devilqube Thank you so much - we really tried to make the audio set the mood so glad that works out!
@jamesolivermusic Thank you so much for all of your kind comments! For sure - in our post-jam version, we're 100% fixing up the office. We want Pauline to spend more time there too and for more "good" things to happen, so she's not constantly having blackouts. We ran out of time haha! Thanks again!! :D
@yeti-kid So pleased about your comments relating to graphics and audio! Means so much to us. It does - hopefully a lot of people can relate and that it helps people somewhat. It's a tricky balance to cover a sensitive topic. Thank you for leaving a great comment! :)
I can certainly relate to everything expressed in this game and I appreciate deeply that you made it. The couple places I could see this game improving were mentioned on your itch page so I'll leave you with: thank you for making this, I would be very happy to see you take this project further.
"Pills are really effective" - just like in real life I guess ;)
Jokes aside, very well done with the aesthetics. All elements have a cohesive style and feel solid.
The backgrund music is really nice and fits well.
Loved it! The overall mood and atmosphere were great, and as someone with anxiety (especially at work), it all felt more real than it had any right to! Which, in this case, is exactly what I was wanting.
I'd love to see a little more variety going forwards, rather than just exploring around and interacting with the right item. Obviously it's a jam game, and for the time we had this is a great effort; but if you keep developing it further, I'd love to have some minigames or just different encounters in the blackout sections.
Overall, great job! Would love to see more in the future.
A forest is not exactly what I would expect to be in ones mind, a more crazy thing would have worked better in my opinion. Besides that you made a great job!
great game overall. Love the journal entries! I can relate to the anxiety that the character has. would love to see more of it
I also included your game in my video. Hope you like it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93xk24_f670
@armani03k Ah nice! I'll check it out. Do you have a game too, I'll give it a play :) Thanks a lot for the support man, I'll share your vid around.
EDIT: Looks like your version was SUPER bugged out, missed out on a lot, sorry about that! I think we've fixed all those issues now haha!
Great game. I can see a lot of effort was put into making it so polished and cohesive.
Art is gorgeous, music creepy, story engaging. Solid entry.
Cheers!
This is SO WELL polished. Lot of Dont Starve vibes here. The soundtrack is SO on point. Really great work!
It is a good game, audio build a great atmosphere, graphic is lovely! Story is a good beginning but I miss something in this story, something that could engage me more. Anyway, well done!
@babyking Thanks so much for your really kind feedback, wow! Super glad you enjoyed and related to it so much, it's a difficult thing to do so we're very happy you were as satisfied as you are!
@marcusnystrand Haha yes, just like in real life ;) Thank you so much, so glad it feels solid even though it is quite buggy still! We're excited to make it even more solid in our post-jam version. Love that you enjoyed the music and think it fits - great to hear!
@tom-robson Your comment is amazing! Love how you feel like you could relate, in a good way! Oh for sure, we'd LOVE to introduce some mini games too! We want to have more of a story moving forward and see Pauline in different settings too. We have a lot of ideas up our sleeve and so happy to hear you see its potential! Thanks so much!
@taran-unraveler Totally fair enough! We wanted to keep it as real as possible and didn't want anything too crazy but can definitely see what you're saying. It's something we'll definitely bear in mind! Glad you enjoyed it, thank you!
@ryzy27 Thanks so much - "art is gorgeous" - wow!! Glad the story ws engaging too - it was something we were desperately trying to get across with such a short time so I'm glad you were engaged. We're working on making it even more engaging so that's given us a huge boost that we're headed in the right direction! Thank you!
@lairinlair Awesome, thanks a lot! Haha, we were definitely inspired by Don't Starve! Glad you love the soundtrack too :)
@kate90 Thanks very much! Agreed - we need to add more story parts in our post-jam version, we couldn't squeeze it all in before submission unfortunately! You give some great feedback, thank you! :)
This is a beautiful game! For such a large team, you can tell that you all had a common goal and worked together. It feels and runs good, and there's a good amount of detail! Thank you for making this and I can't wait to see what else you guys come up with! Thank you for playing my game on stream as well :)
Gorgeous art! Ye fit a lot in in the time ye had. It didn't seem to me that there was enough to do in the real-world environment, it was just there for a moment and then back to a blackout. In the blackout environment I was a little unsure what I was doing - just trying to find something new to interact with each time? It's an important topic anyway and the game communicated the struggle well, so kudos on that. I look forward to playing the post-jam version!
The mood, atmosphere, and visuals are really good for 3 days! It was also very effective at giving me anxiety.
Not sure if I missed something, but I was confused by the interactable items. Which ones could be picked up in the other world wasn't always obvious. But I'm also confused on how to use anything besides the pills. Like how to combine them for different interactions?
Minor issue, but some of the text went by too quick to read, though most of those seemed to appear twice.
Otherwise the game is really well developed for this jam. It would be interesting to see this concept developed into a full game. Nice job overall!
@lairinlair Thanks for playing, glad you liked the music! You can also stream/download the soundtrack for free on my Bandcamp. Your game looks rad btw, wish I could play but I'm on mac.
A very cool experience you got here. First all of the good things: Really cool, that you have a main menu, I appreciate that :) The art seems a bit rough at first, but fits like a glove in the head space part. The character designs. The visuals there area really good. I love the use of 2.5D parallaxing of the Map assets. Adds a lot the mood. The musical score also fits very well with the general theme. Really creepy and unsettling. That goes for the rest of the presentation too (and will be relatable for most people working an office job) I got some successes on day 2 with the head space but was killed by some entity on day 3 while I was reading the initial dialogue :( unfair!
That's a good transition to some criticism: - It seems like you "only" have one map that is recycled for each game play session. Would've been cool to start out with a smaller one and get bigger each day. That way, the player isn't overwhelmed with the sheer size of that labyrinth (I was, and didn't know what I had to do) and you have some natural progression in difficulty. - It wasn't clear, what I had to to in the head space. Sometimes collecting coffee did the trick, other times I couldn't get out before the panic attack. A little more transparency would be nice to prevent player frustration. - The web version was presented rather small and I wasn't able to read all of the texts. Especially the jounrnal was a problem that way. - Since the maps are always the same, the initial fascination dwindles pretty fast. I lost motivation at day 3 because I thought, that I've already seen all the game has to offer game play wise. It wasn't clear how many days there were or if it even has an end.
All in all, a very good entry! Very polished experience, great art and eerie mood! Good job
@drums Thanks so much for playing our game!! You're right - we were very grateful to have had a super solid and collaborative team working on this. Love that you really enjoyed playing! We loved playing Cloudy with a Chance of Pain too, as you know from the stream! Awesome entry. Thanks for getting us to play it (of course rated over there too).
@randomhuman Thanks for your comment about our art! Totally agree, we wanted to add more elementsin the office, and plan to in our post-jam version, just ran out of time! We are also going to be making it so the mind forest map is much smaller to begin with, so that it's less overwhelming and it's clearer what to do. The goal is to fill up your journal to beat your anxiety which we need to make clearer too! So glad we communicated the struggle of anxiety well, it was a difficult balance but so glad you appreciated that! Thanks so much!
@thecritterscove Brilliant that you loved the mood, atmosphere and visuals, woohoo! Seems like you found it intense too. We're adding a slight glow around the interactable items in our post-jam version to make it more obvious. We need to make the "recipes" a bit clearer too i.e. if you find the water bottle, it makes pills more effective. It is in the journal but could be more obvious for sure. Text we are also fixing, glad you pointed that out! Thank you for all of your feedback!
@duke Thanks so much for taking the time to give so much thought into our entry. I agree with everything you say.
This was my first jam and the scope was a little too big (we ran into a 3 hour bug wall of death for the final stretch lol). This saw us cut our smaller map from the intro, cut the office interactions out and stopped us from getting a fair bit of content we wanted in. That being said, I think now we have seen people play, we've learnt a lot about the gameplay and how we could now direct it to be more fun!
Again, thanks for your review, you are spot on! Wish we had one more day to make this really something!
I really enjoyed your game, at first I didn't know what to do, I just mindlessly wandered in the forrest, but I think this is what you were going for. You went for a though theme and you handeled it gracefully. I liked the graphics and enjoyed the music. Really a great game!
Good work team, the polish really shows. Except proofread the text -- Web server has been done {down} :spy: The gameplay became super monotonous, dont know if it was just my ignorance. I think I ate my first set of pills in the office with a fatfinger so I might have been at a disadvantage there, but like Pauline I would also hesitate to pill away my mental state so I would have played day1 the same regardless.. Move speed a little slow stamina meter invisible, no guidance in the blackout, constantly felt lost or hopeless. While this might be great commentary on mental health issues, as a player I found myself ready to put it down day 4.
Art sound and mood were fabulous of course, the concept is there and I eventually understood we are searching for coping mechanisms for pauline depending on the emotions she's struggling with. The gameplay needs small tweaks for empowerment! Perhaps item highlights in the UI when enhancers are present, halos around pickups in the world, "GPS" arrows to important items when close enough/ after a certain time spent struggling, a bit more run speed and stamina for sprint... I didn't understand the purpose of eyeglasses, icecubes, water bottles... but now reading comments and descriptions these might enhance other stress/para/humi fighting items however I didn't feel they were effective during my quest.
AMAZING! I really like your game. The aesthetics, narrative and audio are so wow!
Really nice game, I liked the storytelling, overall concept, and art style, fits very well with the mood. It felt quite polished for a game jam! I agree with the comments so not much to add. I'll just say that I did understand what items to pick, but was hard to find the ones I wanted. So yea a mini map or some arrows would have helped a lot to not feel helpless in the strategy. Also didn't understand why I won haha I didn't see the transition to a happier character. Great entry overall! Could easily be a finished game with more transitions towards an end, but the concept is quite solid, so I hope it will become one :)
Amazing game! My favorite so far. The art is really good (remembered me Don't Starve which I think it was a huge reference) and the way you guys approached the theme is very nice. Congratulations!
@hanyzpapu Thank you so much - we definitely need to make it clearer what to do at the start so will bear that in mind in our post-jam! Glad you liked the graphics and music, that's great to hear too!
@cadstor Woohoo, thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed so much that you left a comment too :)
@boboman Haha good spot on the dialog (it was written in submission hour lol), I think there might even be another typo somewhere in there. That office pills bug is a pretty awful one, ruins the game. It's since been fixed in our new version coming soon as a post-jam. I think the gameplay ended up not coming out as intended with the missed chunks of content and progression we planned for. GOod feedback about stamina, that can certainly be tweaked. I would suggest more stamina, but less speed, that way it feels better, but you don't have the benefit of more running distance to make it too easy.
There certainly needs to be tweaks for empowerment, I love that you have used that word. Great review thank you very much!
@rodrigo-denubila Haha thank you so much, that means a lot. There was certainly inspiration from Don't Starve! We took inspiration also from The Forest and old browser games.
@peterfiftyfour Ahhh hey! We played Apple Panick and received a lovely message about Angst from your artist on Insatgram which I'll get back to shortly. Thanks so much for your very kind comment! Haha, we submitted 2 mins before the deadline inthe grace period, talk about cutting it fine! So glad we did though! A mini map/arrows/more glow on items is definitely a must in our post-jam version :) Haha, yes, we ran out of time to create a happier Pauline when you win. Thank you for seeing its potential, we'll be fixing it up with all of these things in our post-jam version :)
I feel like I didn't get the theme interpretation, and I'm really not a fan of this genre, so I'll skip voting on fun + theme :P
Other than that, what you made is incredible :D - Mood setting that blends perfectly between audio, graphics + processing visuals - Proper and clear design with no obvious bugs
Great job on completing this game :)
Really great entry! I loved the theme and the whole atmosphere. Playing as a girl made it even scarier! It also remonded me of the original slender games where you had to find all notes in the woods haha! Congratulations!
Great overall atmosphere and graphics, the inner landscape was suitably ominous, and all the sound effects in both locations really maximised the effect to the point that I started to find that constant beeping and general noise in the office somewhat stress inducing myself. XD
I liked the various gameplay elements and how they were implemented, and can definitely see the potential. It would be nice to have more/equal content in the office environment, as all that constant diving in and out of the inner landscape was weirdly disorienting and enhanced the general feeling of helplessness as the player. But hey, it's a JAM entry, and none of us ever have enough time to implement all the things we'd like. Overall, it was beautifully designed, and the core idea shows great promise. I look forward to seeing further developments!
Wow- great job! This is really impressive as a whole- I am loving your art and the ambience that you created here. The stress is almost insurmountable! I also appreciated your well-developed menu and the journal as a mechanic. Thanks for the angst-y game!
Really great job! At first I didn't know if I was progressing or failing, but I got to the end :) Very very very nice!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKXYWHr9JA
@lyrcaxis Fair enough yeah - our interpretation was keeping Pauline's sanity and positivity alive. Hopefully that makes sense now - we tried to make it as clear as possible and included it on the loading screens but maybe we should have made it more obvious! Thanks so much, "incredible" is a huge compliment! We tried to create an eery mood and I'm so glad you felt that! :)
@savvu Haha my girlfriend literally screams when the different demons appear lol. Slenderman was 10000% one of our inspirations! Glad you spotted that! Thanks so much for your incredibly kind comment, glad you enjoyed!:)
@vesper Hahahaha I love this comment so much!! Sounds like you were totally immersed which is exactly what the aim was. For sure - we are in the process of creating more in office content - we did create it but didn't implement it in time! We also want to add some happier aspects to Pauline's life so that it's more realistic. Thanks so much, totally overwhelmed by your kind words! Saved and shared them to the team too. Thanks!
@joemid Haha the"angsty" game - love it and love your comment! Thanks a lot - we spent a lot of time on the menu and journal as we thought that would be a huge difference to the gameplay experience - sounds like it did! Thank you so much!
@molpe Thank you so much!Just watched your whole video, YOU WON!! Amazing! It's so rare to find how to win - so glad you got there. Thanks for taking the time to make the video, play Angst, upload it to YouTube and even leave a link to our game in the description. Really appreciate it! We'll be doing a mash up video of all the people who have played our games, and will tag you once it's done! Also, if you play Angst again, use shift to run ;) Will make things easier! Also, try looking at the demon... ;)
Great take on the theme, and really ambitious scope for a jam!
Really wonderful atmosphere in her inner world!
@eran-haas Thanks a lot! We tried to be a little different with the theme so glad you liked our interpretation! :) Glad you enjoyed!
This game felt quite frustating. I found all the differents items over 20 days, managed to avoid panics attacks, journal is full with infos, and i do what it says, but its still not over? I watched the playthrough,i did everything and i just gave up after a while. Its also weird how the items appears and don't appear, it even felt at a moment as if i had no control over the game, eyes opened and closed right away. Good idea with the journal, it helped a lot (though as i said i just got fed up after a while, items were hard to find, felt like i had no control and repetitive, ok, but 20 days of that and journal was full, and i always managed to stop panick attacks but eyes closed again immediatly after...). BUT : art and audio are amazing, you did an excellent job with the theme. Pretty good overall. Too frustating for me, i really dont get why it didnt end.
@red-ash Looks like you ran into a bug! So sorry about that. You can win the game and don't need to be many days in, which we deliberately made the case for the jam, but the bug you hit took you down a wrong path. Sorry about that - we want to upload a bug fix version but feel it would be unfair and "cheating" at this stage. Appreciate you trying it all the way up until 20 days in and persisting. Hope you enjoyed the overall experience though and that you enjoyed collecting the items and filling up your journal. Thanks for your kind comments about art, audio and theme! Means a lot :)
Wow, you have the biggest jam team I have seen.
But onto the game! The concept is really cool. I loved exploring the dark, twisted forest as a representation of dealing with inner demons. The graphics were also nice and the music was very pleasant. Together they created a very nice atmosphere. Overall a very nice jam job! And I won, defeated my demons and everything :)
I didn't like two things. The walking animation - it was very stiff, like our heroine has no knees whatsoever. And the notification sound that was constantly playing in the office. It was confusing me very much, as it felt like this notification is for me (the player) but it wasn't. For the first minute or so, I was frantically looking at the screen and everywhere to try to establish what kind of in-game event is notifying me so much :laughing:
Also, it felt to me that the description of pills is misrepresenting their effect a bit. From them being "so very effective" I figured that taking them will just take me out of my headspace imediately. But it doesn't work like that. But that may be only me ;)
I noticed quite a bit of performance problems in the forest, in the web version on full screen. In windowed mode it was much better but in fulls screen forest was "hitching" all the time. It was like the movement was going on frame by frame practically. There were also some problems with layering/colliders and I was walking on top of things I shouldn't be walking on. Like this:
Screenshot_1.png
Screenshot_2.png
@fabula-rasa Thanks so much for playing and taking the time to give a great review! I hope you enjoyed it even with the annoying bugs you encountered. Without those bugs I think our entry would have been a lot more effective as everything else we managed to get into the game how we wanted. The colliders issue we left in last minute to focus on some other things that were crucial.
So pills are the most effective item in the game at pushing back demons, however, they only work at 80% effectiveness if you don't have water. If you take them when holding water, you'll get a 20% added bonus to make it 100% effectiveness :)
There are a few elements in the game like this, that would have made for interesting gameplay. It's a shame we never managed to get the explination/tutorial into the game to help new players realise that!
Again thanks a lot man! :D
Very interesting and it touches a very serious theme. I find the game is nice but indeed a tutorial would be needed because I felt a bit lost but it is still not that difficult to understand what to do. Good Job!
@trigueiro Yes, we definitely need to include some guidance in there - we ran out of time for it! Thanks so much for your kind feedback :)
I actually played the game right after a stressful meeting, haha That was fun! Cool entry :smile:
@sleeping-panda-games Oh no! Bet you could relate to Pauline then ;) Hope you're feeling less stessed now! Thanks so much for commenting!
The game is very nice and polished to me! I really loved the graphics and the audio. I really like its topic too, really great great job on that! Though I have to admit I was a bit lost on the gameplay. I never really understood what some objects in my inventory were, and if what I was doing was good or bad ^^ Some sort of tutorial would really help to enhance the experience with your game which, to me, has a lot of potential! :smile:
Awesome idea but needs some polishing. Very nice story and monologues, art and music are very atmospheric. However, gameplay was a bit too simplistic and incomplete. I played till day 6 and stopped because dialogues were repeating every day and no office mini-games happened anymore, so I got an impression that there is no end to it. Plus there were some small annoying bugs and performance problems, for instance character's sprite displayed on top of a table and object, lagging in the forest, a bit weird character's animation.
That being said, I really liked the idea and could definitely relate. Very original and fun to play, great job!
Just WOOOOW. My favourite entry this Ludum Dare. We definitely need more games like that in our lifes. It keeps me very engage. I like how it was slowly introducing new elements and guiding player. I really like the journey (both visually, and as a gameplay elemen). Great work!
That parallel mind world is great! Good job visualizing what happens inside the character.
I must admit it wasn't exactly clear to me how to escape though. I clicked on some "normal" items and sometimes that worked but sometimes it didn't. :thinking:
Great game, I liked the concept and the art style, I just felt a little lost about what to do and I had to keep experimenting and try stuff to see what was going to happen, I read in the comments that you ran out of time for instructions, so, maybe that would help a little more for me to understand a little better the game.
This game was engaging from start to finish, I really liked the dialogue, ambience and art.
I found that collecting the items relied on RNG half the time, as it took awhile for me to find a book that finally got rid of my Humiliation bar (which was confusing because I thought MP3 player + headphones helped mainly with that, which didn't work if I recall correctly, and I thought that "good vibes" related to the motivational posters).
I think a nice little addition to the HUD in the evil realm would be a stamina bar, just so the player could tell when they depleted their sprint.
I also found it odd that drinking coffee did not affect my paranoia bar, even though it suggests it would. I'm not too sure, never saw paranoia go up when I drank coffee.
Either way, you guys did a spectacular job on this game!
I really liked the art style. It looks really good. The music and sounds fit the theme very well. I work as mental health counselor, so I really like to see games, that are trying to teach people how mental illness feels like or how to deal with it.
I have some suggestions for improvement: the font size of the post-its in the journal should be bigger. The movement was very frustrating, because of the big collision boxes.
It was repetitive after some time and it wasn't clear what you have to do. From a gaming perspective this was annoying. But I think, this also has a point, because if you suffer from a mental illness you feel like that very often. Like being stuck in a loop. I have no idea how you can solve this dilemma.
Congratulations to this game. It's brave to make a game about such a difficult topic and you did an amazing job!
To everyone below: all your feedback has been taken into account and this playtesting has really helped understand Angst a lot better. We’re working on a new version which will fix these issues and bring a whole new experience to the game.
@sticmac thanks a lot for playing! You’re totally right with everything you say! :D
@mykola thanks for the feedback! Interesting that you had performance issues, that may be related to using the web edition. Thanks a lot!
@wdebowicz haha wow thanks so much! Really glad you enjoyed it.
@winniehell thanks for playing and the feedback! We’ve since added a glow to items that you can interact with as it was confusing to tell the difference with the office environment items.
@sharbelfs this is true. Although confusing, what I find interesting is that most people get the idea after a while. This is common of course in games, however I think we need to make it feel more intention so players know they feel lost at the start, but that will change as they develop as a player.
@jontherealjon thanks so much! We actually removed the stamina bar as it seemingly took away from the minimalistic vibe of the UI. We have since decided with the feedback, that wasnt the best call and will be putting one back in. I think you’re the first to really see the issues witb the game mechanics. They are all coded in, but we had to plug in the numbers to variables so fast at the end that they arent really setup properly. The effects you talk about had since been fixed in the version we are working on.
@merlinnsound oh how interesting! It would have been great to have a clinical QA on this game like yourself to check our interpretations on mental health issues - a luxury beyond scope of a game jam. Thanks for the feedback and foe playing! I’d love to gear how we did on the mental health education front?
Working with 15 people on a jam game is insane! I like what you guys have put together, it is original and fits well with the theme. Nicely done!
Stumbled upon the post on handling a big team without it being chaos, and I was pretty curious to see what you made. Art is really nice and polished, and the music fits really well in both "worlds". Gameplay-wise, mechanics were a bit unresponsive at times. I kept facing invisible walls in the office, and it was difficult to go through the woods - sprint not working and freezing quite often (might be due to the web version). Still, an impressive piece of work.
Story-wise, you took on something very challenging, and I personnaly think it came out a bit short. Trying to tackle the subject of mental health in 72h is definitly risky, and while I applaud the attempt, I thought it was somewhat clumsy. I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks, and playing the game made me more and more unconfortable as I continued playing - to the point I even got a bit angry and anxious. While it is true that even the most minor thing can trigger one, I disliked the shortcut of the character not being able to go through a single thing and blacking-out all the time to serve the gameplay. It is just a very personal opinion, not really well explained, and maybe it just isn't a game to be played by people who do suffer from anxiety/PAs, but I thought I would share it nonetheless.
@jmad Thank you very much for the feedback and the perspectives. A couple of the issues that you mentioned (auto-skipping to Forest world and weird colliders in the office) were due to production bottlenecks on the last day. Those weren't the planned experience.
This game was the very first attempt by our lead game designer to create an emotional journey, and since he doesn't personally suffer from anxiety/PAs, it was definitely a little bit of a reach. There have been some people who it did resonate with, and some people who have experience that said this wasn't quite what their experience is like. We definitely want to learn anything we can to make a better game like this in the future. Do you have any suggestions for ways to approach the topic in a more nuanced or realistic way? Was it just the unpolished-ness of the office scenes that bothered you, or would there be some other ways to improve the game feel and representation?
@stupidpawn Thanks so much! It was pretty insane (in a good way!).
@silas-reinagel It took me quite a while to try to think about it, and the thing that bothered me were not at all related to the gameplay or weird collisions - it's a gamejam after all -, it really was chosing this subject in the context of Ludum Dare. You have a short amount of time, so if you don't already know the subject well enough already, you can't spend it on researching how to tackle it properly - and it goes for any subject, really, but some more than others. Then, most people don't take the time to properly play (it actually shows a bit in certain comments, that's a whole other story), meaning they don't try to read between the lines, and can interpret things not in the way you intended, especially if the subject was clumsily brought to them - it's very easy to draw bad conclusions. I have talked to several good friends, including game devs with a lot more experience than me, and we always come to the same conclusion : it's better not to talk about something than talk about it poorly. Benevolent but clumsy intentions don't do any good to a widely misunderstood serious theme. Again, it's nice to want to start a conversation, but it must be done well - Celeste for instance, and it took time to make -, because the fallout could actually cause more harm to the matter, even if you did not want nor expect it.
The only clear advices I could give might be : 1. Make the story more.. blurry? Leave things to the interpretation. Don't say "this is pills", "this is humiliation", "those are blackouts and panic attacks", etc. 2. Have a more balanced life "cycle", not three seconds in the office then everything in the forest - it can be interesting to have two very differently paced gamephases, would serve the story and subject at hand better too. The dark forest as headspace with darkness closing in isn't a bad metaphor, either.
Wow nice atmosphere! Music and Art!! I love the DST vibe! Is there a way out of the forest? After a couple of times being there and not finding an exit, this feeling of confinement kinda gave me stress too so imo this was well designed haha :laughing:
Also, nice interpretation of the theme. I like that you explored a concept like this in a game bcs its connected to reality.. Reminds me kinda of Molleindustria's 'Everyday the same dream'.
Collisions are a bit annoying and gameplay feels a bit repetitive after some point... :sweat_smile: but other than that I think this is an amazing entry! Great job!!
Sorry for talking so long to play your game, but I finally found the time. As already mentioned your team is just the biggest I have seen in any game jam so far and this is clearly visible in your game too. You can see all the work that was put into the game.
I played the 0.1.3 version for the sake of the jam, because the 0.1.5 post jam version might have stuff in there that would falsify my rating
Let's talk about the parts I liked about your game. The music is awesome. I really like the menu with the sliding animation. Might steal this for a future game ;) The controls in general feel good and I love that you put a sprint button in there because the normal speed gets boring after a while. The graphics are also very nice. I like the office scene a lot with all the animations going on and the sound in the background. I also enjoyed your take on the theme and the point that you focused on a very important topic. Anxiety. It is very important to show people who don't suffer from anxiety how it feels for people who does and the game medium is really awesome for that.
However. I was really confused by the mind forest part. I was just wandering around, not really knowing what to look for. The only thing that I was sure was really good was coffee, but I only found 2 during the several trips I made to the forest. I was not sure if it was good to go to the forest, why I got out of the forest at some points. The monsters/demons were also a little confusing. Some of them cause a direct panic attack, others just increase the stress. The shadow ones do nothing or basically just show the paranoia.
I was not sure what the glasses, the sugar cubes and one other thing (can't remember what it was) was doing. I was checking the journal and there was no useful information about them.
I made it to day 4 with something like 8 blackouts and 3 panic attacks. No idea if that is good or bad. But. As I found the book for the first time which is great for paranoia (if I remember correctly), the game jumped to the end screen. That was a rough and completely unexpected end :D
The forest also gave me some walking simulator vibes which in general is ok, but there was just no clear goal in which direction I have to go and the story was only progressing in the real world. So it was a little boring to wander around aimlessly.
The forest background/ground also was a little weird with the the character just running over the printer and plants and stuff, but that's ok for a game jam game.
Overall, I would say that it's a nice game, with some points that should be clarified to the played better.
You already had many comments with suggestions and criticisms, so I don't want to be repetitive or boring now, I just want to say that the art and the soundtrack are great, I loved the effects during the panic attacks. Dealing with such delicate issues in a game in a light but still serious way is difficult and also memorable, congrats on the work.
There's a lot of things to like about this game: The art style, transitions, environmental sounds and the music are really well done. I really like the "Don't starve" vibes of the angst-world. I also grok the basic premise of the game: Analyzing and fighting your panic attacks.
Unfortunately I could not progress after day 3. It told me to look for something on my desk, but there was nothing to interact with? Maybe I was just too dumb.
Anyway, what I thought was kinda strange is that sometimes you get a very clear hint on what to do, like "drink some coffee". On the other hand I was sometimes running around completely unknown to me where to go or what to pick up and interact with. But maybe that was part of the game?
However, I enjoyed most parts of it and think, that the level of detail is amazing for a jam. Good job!