play-pause-games 2020-10-04 23:35
Very cool! i love these sort of defend the house top of games! it may not be super polished. but this game is super interesting, with some better graphics and sound you could release this as a full game!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD47 → An Hour Long Minute
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 362 | 3.32 | 31 | |
| Fun | 337 | 3.22 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 377 | 3.13 | 31 | |
| Theme | 409 | 3.36 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 514 | 2.79 | 31 | |
| Audio | 231 | 3.29 | 29 | |
| Mood | 60 | 3.83 | 30 |
Very cool! i love these sort of defend the house top of games! it may not be super polished. but this game is super interesting, with some better graphics and sound you could release this as a full game!
@play-pause-games Thanks a lot for the feedback!
Really good use the the loop concept here. At first I was annoyed at how long it took to read the notes because I thought the safe combination was randomized, but having that stuff be persistent between deaths is cool.
The sound design and mood is top notch!
@ale Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad those mechanics are panning out okay.
First of all the searching time is killing me, the rest is quite nice <3. I think I see where you wanted to go with it and it kind of has been achieved. I love the mood, the weird sounds on right channel are very creepy on my headphones at midnight :D. Solid entry, way to go.
You definitely nailed the atmosphere of this game. To be honest, I'd say you did the whole cryptic theme a whole lot better than I did. The phone message that you can cancel out of was a very clever way of handling a tutorial, as it eats a chunk out of your time on your first playthrough but can be skipped any other. I also like the cryptic messages on the loading screen.
My main complaint is that the thermite solution appears to be dead-simple compared to any other solution, and I had won the game before I really understood the rules of it or how I had accomplished it. I also think a slower enemy walking speed would make gameplay more interesting as it makes them more of a lurking threat than an instant death.
Unfortunately I had the safe bug you mentioned, only two notes came up with a digit. I assumed that I was supposed to just guess my way to opening the safe, and I think only having three digits revealed is a lot more interesting from a gameplay perspective.
I do wish you had put out a Windows executable build, as I tend to run into lots of performance problems with HTML5 games, but I understand the choice from a convenience perspective.
That's basically all I have to say on it. Good stuff!
@anchorlight Next time I'll make sure to add a Windows executable, it wouldn't have been too much trouble. I'm actually kind of glad to hear the thermite was simple, as I was worried that I was too vague about the instructions; I went with the "do a bunch of random stuff in sequence" kind of puzzle design but it was added in very last minute, as I needed to add some kind of additional gameplay mechanic to keep it interesting. Certainly simplicity is a flaw as well, but I think it's easier to fix, luckily. Another bug I never mentioned is that since the symbols that activate the stove are randomly set you can actually end up in a situation where they are all correct on the start, and so the stove will already be on when you start, I believe it's a 1/64 chance actually, quite achievable, maybe you got that, someone certainly will. That, and some collision issues.
The enemies are extremely OP, they are essentially Terminators, haha, but I agree with you, I do think they are a bit fast. Before I added the stealth mechanics I wanted them to be faster than the player, but after I added that in I kind of forgot to change the enemies any more. Overall the main design of this game came on-the-fly, and so I'm very glad to hear it all seemed to have come together fairly well.
Thanks for the feedback!
Haha, on-the-fly design things happen. I get that.
AFAIK, you are still allowed to port games over the next day or so, but I would read up on the LD rules about it just to be safe.
@anchorlight Thanks for letting me know! I took a look and it seems fine to add a windows export. There should be a download for it on the itch.io page now, thanks again for the info!
@tomeks Those noises were made by paul-stretching some auto-generated text-to-speech text, haha. I was surprised by how creepy it turned out. Thanks for the feedback!
Loved the atmosphere, I was constantly scared of the enemies breaking in and gunning me down. Well done!
Nice game! I like the concept to start a new loop with the previous knowledge a lot, but I I'm not sure, I understood how I escaped. Also when I beat the game, the end statistics mentioned I killed 3 dudes, but I only shot the lights. I guess some of the enemies killed there friends and that one counted as a kill, but it seemed weird to me.
This game was really interesting! At first I didn't get it because the first several notes I read just contained nothing so I stopped searching them for a bit. Eventually I was able to get it though and finished the game. It has a really nice atmosphere overall! Good Job!
I liked the game and eventually I was also "scared" of them breaking in, so good job setting the atmosphere ;-)
Some improvements points:
- The texts could be more readable. - The death / respawn animation seemed a bit too slow for me. - Fake fullscreen on HTML :-P
Other than that I really enjoyed the game ;-)
I have a question: can we get directly to the ending or did I find a bug? xD At first I thought that opening the right exit was possible only after I did somethings first, but then I restarted and I could simply go to the exit and open it. Is this on purpose?
@island-jam-2-group-3 Haha yes, I was wondering when someone would bring up both the fake fullscreen and that right exit issue. The fake fullscreen is an easy fix, I just was worried about texture warping last minute, since I didn't make it so that the player's view would increase in size with the increased window size the textures would stretch with weird proportions. At the same time though, it really wouldn't have mattered all that much to let it stretch, it was all just a part of the end-of-jam "rush".
I was wondering about that, slow death animations seem to be a common complaint in past jam entries of mine as well (gm48), I should add some sort of way to speed it up, or maybe next jam just do something different with it.
The text is very sloppy, 100%. I'd definitely polish it up for a proper release, in particular the giant wall of text that is the phone call.
Yes, you can just walk out the door at the end, you found a bug. I am actually working on a jam post(or I suppose pre-) mortem video right now, and this is one of the bugs I am going to address, but you beat me to it, haha. I forgot to add a check on the door to make sure you have a torch to burn it down, even though there is a check to update the text. It is mostly just because I was very sloppy with the code near the end, I was copying and pasting when I should have set up better object-oriented relationships. I suppose I could technically fix it, I think that falls in line with the rules, but I don't think it is too big of a deal if it isn't a well-known bug. Good find regardless, and thanks for the feedback!
Good and working game! Concept is great. That moving camera made me bit nauseous
@monninen Thanks! I originally intended for the camera to be much more disorienting, constantly playing "catch up" with the player. I'm glad that I ended up toning it down though.
Hi all right, congratulations on being able to execute a game within the established deadline, I saw that you made the arts, I would advise, you use as reference images of objects available on the internet, to generate yours, the loading is often covered by the character, the game for a topdown is very slow, and the camera does not give a good feeling to those who play, in more sensitive people they will stop playing, the idea is good, but I needed a polished visual to draw more attention, I hope that sequence in your project, and that in the future I can see his growth, I will accompany you on itch.io, a big hug.
@etrealjunior The art is very sloppy, I agree, haha, luckily I do think I have been improving in that regard, getting a top-down style down quickly just seems tricky. The camera is meant to add to the mood, making you feel uncomfortable. Actually with you saying that I suppose it would have been better for the camera to zoom in and out slower, that sounds more suspenseful actually and perhaps would have helped those who were nauseous from the effect. Thanks for the feedback!
The road to discovering the safe combination took 4 loops and getting access to a gun felt fun and opened the game up to new interactions. On my first loop i accidently figured out how to turn on the stove but after that i tried every switch combo i could muster and nothing worked so i felt frustrated and wanted to find out what were tje torches meant for, the shooting of the light bulbs so the enemies couldnt see you but could still run into you was a fun mechanic!
I really enjoyed the puzzle and the atmosphere you created with this game. The weird camera and the music both contributed a lot to a feeling of dread which I thought worked well. It seemed like the padlock item didn't do much, as I was able to interact with the doors even without getting it.
Overall I think the looping mechanic felt a little bit forced because you had to spend so long reading the notes. I only ever found three hints, so I just brute forced the fourth digit of the combination. I'm not sure if that was intended but it was fine with just four digits to choose from in any case. I think overall this would make a really cool game with a bit more polish and more puzzles to make the looping mechanic feel a bit more natural.
Nailed it with the audio here! Even though it was quite simple graphically the mix of foley and music kept me feeling creeped out!
I love games with random elements. It makes the much more replayable. Fun!
More people should just add spoken audio to their games. The mood is great
I agree with the previous poster - the VO in the phone call was great to set the mood! Other than that, I also liked the random aspect to it! Also encountered the bug with the safe sadly :/