kirkami 2020-10-05 10:34
Awesome game for Compo rules restrictions! Well done!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → Hall of Infinity
By skyvastern
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 593 | 2.65 | 24 | |
| Fun | 593 | 2.28 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 576 | 2.52 | 23 | |
| Theme | 517 | 2.97 | 24 | |
| Graphics | 508 | 2.81 | 23 | |
| Audio | 413 | 2.66 | 23 | |
| Humor | 441 | 1.92 | 21 | |
| Mood | 405 | 2.95 | 23 |
Awesome game for Compo rules restrictions! Well done!
Thank You! :)
Nice game, love to see another person of culture using Godot!
when I get into the first door it just keep looping and screen become dark until I die. Should it be this way?
@amin-jk000 Look closely at the ground, there is a small elevation. That says that if we walk past the elevation, the next door will simply loop us back to the same room.
To overcome this you have to wallrun and avoid the floor. To wallrun, you have to be next to a wall and in mid-air while pressing shift. You just have to make sure that during your journey you don't touch the floor except for the elevated areas near the door.
@indiequest Haha Thanks! :)
That's challenging. I like the wallrun mechanic, but sometimes it's hard to understand what to do. I'm stuck in a room with a lot of doors. The art looks nice, I like that "foggy" style.
@skyvastern oh, so I have to play it again !
@bereg In the room with lots of doors, you have to go through either of the doors 47 times, after which the player will be taken to the next room. You don't have to go to each one of them, you can do it with only one door, but overall it needs to be 47 times.
I know not a very good design, but I had very limited time remaining to finish the game at that moment 😅
At first I thought the modeling and sound effects are just simple, but later I found that they create a rather good atmosphere. Good job. However, it is too difficult for me to proceed without seeing your hints.
@chaosinism Yeah I agree, it is hard to figure out what to do. I kinda messed up the level composition and design during the jam. I think the first room where we had to wallrun could have been made a little easier if I had some sort of tutorial explaining wallrunning controls. But for that I didn't had enough time. While the second one, was totally messed up.
Btw thanks for the feedback, and I'm glad that you liked the atmosphere :)
I was just walking around when the game started, but I figured out what to do pretty quick. Im impressed, very nice game
@hishighness I'm glad that you enjoyed it :)
I have no idea what to do, but I liked the games atmosphere.
Got through the puzzle! I did however have to read the walkthroughs here. Perhaps there could be an easier way to introduce the wall jump? Also, perhaps an indicator on the final looping door, or maybe less entries? It has a good feel to the game, and it reminds me a lot of portal. Great start!
@jk5000 haha yeah I know I didn't made many things obvious on how to do it. But I'm glad that you liked the atmosphere. Also you can check my earlier comments if you are stuck somewhere.
@twistedhawk Thanks for the feedback! And yes I totally agree, I could have made the wall jump introduction a lot more clearer. I earlier thought of putting a text on wall or somewhere in the world to tell the controls. But then I wasn't able to make it look good, so I put off that thought. And also due to few hours remaining, I wasn't able to show controls anywhere in the game ( so instead I wrote it on the game page ). But I'm glad that you liked the feel of the game. Thank You! :)
I like the greyscale aesthetic. This game should focus on a smaller set of features and explain those better. The wallrunning in the second level is really not obvious that it's necessary or why it would further progress. That "go through 47 doors with no visible progress" part is bullshit.
@domnomnom Yeah as others have already said wallrunning was the most confusing part of the game. Also that 47 doors too. I think the biggest cons was that I wasn't able to properly tell the players what to do, or maybe I should say how to do. There was no clear indication of the controls as well. I will try to think for these things ahead of time the next time I am making a game. Thanks for the feedback :)
I agree with some of the above comments that it isn't obvious what to do. I actually had to look at the comments to get an idea of what to do, but even then I didn't get far into the game. If some floor areas have to be avoided at all cost, why not add a lava texture to them and then you literally have "the floor is lava" and most players will know to avoid the floor.
@likirus Thing is that adding lava will make it super obvious. And for the purpose of avoiding ground in certain areas, I actually had small elevation near the door, which acted as a hint that the floor ahead if stepped on, will trigger a loop. Now for the second room, I think in my personal opinion I did it fairly fine. What I did do wrong though was that I didn't already explained that we can wallrun. So if I would have explained it earlier, then the player would have figured it out after a few tries that we don't have to step on the floor. So figuring out that we don't have to walk over the floor is the main thing here, and putting lava or any obvious thing was not what I wanted.
But then I do agree, that on the third room, the implementation wasn't very good. Though I guess that if the player was able to get past the second room, then he/she would have already gotten the idea that what actually triggers a loop. But then I do agree that in the third room, the implementation wasn't good as I had a super long unwalkable area which triggered loop unnecessarily. And unfortunately, I wasn't able to think much about that due to the lack of time remaining for the compo to end. And don't ask me for the fourth room ( as I totally messed that one up :P )
Though thanks for the feedback, that helps a lot! :)
Great atmosphere. Not great puzzles. I struggled a bit even with reading the walkthroughs here. I think part of the problem is the slow fade and die even if you do nothing. Its not present on the first level so it felt like a bug to me, like a fail condition was triggering but not being reset. It does not give you any time to look around and think about how to solve the puzzles. Another bug I found is your health is not reset when going back to the menu and starting a new game. The wall run is nice but I found it a bit awkward to initiate. I also didn't realise you can jump higher when on a wall. The many doors level was just a bad puzzle. I also see a gun in your screenshot. I never found a gun. The enemies seemed a bit superfluous you can just ignore them.
Its a solid start but definitely suffers from a lack of time on the level design.
Don't be afraid of being too obvious in puzzle games. Its a great way to introduce mechanics. A common trap is thinking something is too obvious without realising its only obvious because as the developer you already know how it works.
I had a very hard time with this game. I was only able to figure out one of the levels without referring to the walkthrough. So I guess the most helpful thing I can do is just describe my experience, so it's clear where the game might not have worked as intended.
So the first room with the looping right turn hallway--I figured out pretty quickly, based on the line next to the exit door, that I was probably supposed to walk on the wall. However, I still kept failing the level over and over and thought I must be missing something, especially because I was apparently getting game overs somehow. But no, it turns out I was right, I do have to walk on the wall--but I actually have to start walking on the wall at the entrance to the room. I never saw the change in elevation at the entrance because there was simply no reason for me to look at the floor there, and it wasn't very obvious. So I don't think it's really possible for a person to figure out that the entrance and the exit are both elevated without simply being told.
I should say that making the floor lava here would definitely help. Or just making the elevation change actually noticeable.
The second room took me a long time too, but I was able to figure it out. However, it was really hard to tell if there was a wall or a ceiling or a floor in any particular part of the room, because it was so dark. To add on to that, the room quickly got even darker over time, so I really couldn't tell where to go. It was mostly by luck that I eventually found the side hallway that led to the exit door.
The third room I had no idea what to do. I tried running on walls, on the floor, I tried walking vs. running, I tried many many things, but I could never win--and so I had to refer back here. I don't think having "walk through a door a bunch of times" really works as a solution to any of the puzzles here, because the very nature of the game design makes you believe that that will never be a solution.
So all that said, I hope you can tell what the game is like to play for somebody who didn't design it. Namely, it doesn't really feel like it's actually feasible to solve any of the puzzles except for maybe the one in the dark room. And I should stress that this is just my experience--it is possible other people would be able to solve these puzzles. But I am writing this comment as though almost nobody would be able to, as that was my experience, so take that as you will.
Now what you do with this information is totally up to you. I should say that I, as an art nerd, think a puzzle game with arbitrarily difficult puzzles that most players would never solve, is a very legitimate kind of game. In fact, a game with essentially unsolvable puzzles, especially that third one, has a very very menacing atmosphere, which I think is what you were going for. (And yeah, having a player repeat something 47 times goes against practically all conventions and expectations--which makes it a very powerful narrative tool). But most people will probably not have a very fun time with such a game--so it really just depends what you want from your own project.
So yeah, I think this game has great atmosphere. The aesthetics of the game contribute a lot to it as well. All grayscale with ambient noise rather than music, it's a powerful aesthetic.
That's really all I have to say, I think. I hope this feedback is useful. :smile:
interesting concept, but I think there should be some clues in game as to what the player should do. I got through reading other people comments. Keep up the good work!
@someone Yeah there were a lot of things I wasn't able to convey properly in the game. About the gun, you can equip it if you press 2 ( I wasn't able to put the description in the game due to lack of time, so instead I put it on the game page ). As for health reset, yeah I just realised that myself. Thanks for letting me know.
And that last piece of advise is really helpful. That I was indeed worrying too much about making things too obvious. I will take care of this thing from next time. Because it's not just this game, but in many previous games too I used to think like this. Thank you for the feedback, it was really helpful :D
@honey-pony Yeah the level design was really messed up. About the first room, I think you are right about the entrance door. That most player won't generally look down towards it. Though dunno but having lava doesn't feel like a right choice to me imo. What I think could have been better was that if I would have introduced some sort of tutorial of how some of the common game mechanics work as well as rooms where we were introduced with elevated floor in a much more cleaner and better way. About the second and third room, I agree that they weren't very good. During that time I was doing things without much thinking because of the lack of time. And that 47 doors puzzle... well that was basically a way for me to finish the game as soon as possible. As during that time not much time was remaining for the compo to end.
In a nutshell, my original idea for the game was quite different. So yeah during the end of the game making process, which was level designing for me, I wasn't really thinking much. I had this thought of somehow finishing this game with whatever puzzle I can come up with lol.
Btw thanks, for your feedback. That was really helpful. And I'm glad that you and many other people enjoyed the atmosphere of the game. That alone made me really happy. But at the same time, I will also be taking notes of the criticism and try to improve my future projects :)
@aeveis Yes indeed, having not enough clues and proper introduction to the basic game mechanics was one of the main reasons why this game was so hard. I will try to do better next time. Thank you for the feedback :)
@skyvastern I do agree that lava is probably not the best solution, given the general aesthetic of the game--and it would probably make the level too easy. I think an elevation drop that the player could visibly see would be a good solution (so when you walk off the entrance platform you notice that your camera changes in elevation).