piratehearts 2021-04-26 04:51
I'm not sure whether there's an end or if it keeps generating new levels, but either ways, it's spooky as heck.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → So Below
By metadept
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 740 | 3.01 | 31 | |
| Fun | 885 | 2.12 | 30 | |
| Innovation | 820 | 2.40 | 29 | |
| Theme | 190 | 3.96 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 209 | 3.82 | 30 | |
| Humor | 604 | 1.89 | 25 | |
| Mood | 134 | 3.82 | 30 |
I'm not sure whether there's an end or if it keeps generating new levels, but either ways, it's spooky as heck.
I played without reading the description. Kept wandering for 15 mins observing the weird statues, the silence make me feel super scared that something would jump at me. 10/10 would play again :)
it somehow doesnt get boring
I fear that I missed something cuz it just seems like a walking sim without any story. At first I thought it was a horror game but there was nothing scary. You move way too fast and are too floaty for a walking sim or a horror game it just feels like an arena shooter with no enemies.
This one's got some neat stuff going for it! I liked the models and the sparse lighting, and especially I'm grateful there weren't any jump scares lol. Great work!
So... is this just walking around in a sparsely decorated dungeon forever, or does something happen if I get far enough? Because so far I'm not seeing any actual gameplay, and I don't want to give you an unfair rating if I just haven't gotten to it yet.
Great atmosphere - I was tense the whole time even though nothing actually happened. I was hoping to run into some kind of goal/end, but wandering endlessly fits the theme well!
The art quality is top notch, the darkness and lighting looked great and could have been great with some music or sounds to set the mood and atmosphere.
Mouse movement is a little fast for me. And I wish there was more to do than walk around.
TODO: review game
Super spooky vibe, I was on the edge of my seat waiting for a jumpscare the whole time haha, looks great too! Did you make the whole rooms in Blender or did you make parts that you pieced together in Unity?
@feralpoodles I modeled some fairly large sections of walls, floors, etc. then assembled them in different ways as Unity prefabs. My first time making a level "palette" like that and I uhhh... learned a lot of lessons!
@tengusheath Thanks for the feedback; I also definitely would have liked to add more gameplay and some atmospheric audio. Maybe in a post-compo version! In the meantime, I did reduced the mouse sensitivity as you suggested.
This was spooky. Nice atmosphere, I felt hopeless :) Good Job!
I really expected a jump scare at some point, but I kept going deeper and deeper :D Good job !!
There's a definite atmosphere here. Could make a good horror game. The controls were super fast and a little floaty and even with the change I found the mouse very sensitive still. Overall, lovely visual style. I'd love to see a post-jam version with some more gameplay added.
I'm going to start with two criticisms: I felt that the player controller was a little floaty due to a lack of air control, and on a certain type of staircase that ends with a small drop off to the floor, the collision can get the player stuck without a little speed to pass the invisible bump.
The one thing I simply can't get over are these art assets-- seeing painted objects that hold up on close inspection with fine-grain detail is really incredible. I feel like all the atmosphere needs for improvement is a little lighting contrast, and even then, the sort of displaced look on the bricks more or less takes care of that.
Save for a single hole in the ceiling I saw, I couldn't even tell it was Procedural until I restarted the game and saw it was a different layout.
I do wish the atmosphere had a bit of audio or that the gameplay were a little more involved, but for a compo entry I really like what you were able to put together here. Great work!
Wandered a few minutes was expecting scary jumpscare. Nice spooky atmosphere.
The atmosphere was quite tense even though there was no audio. A nice edless creepy catacomb generator.
It's a good endless catacomb and I appreciate the effort on modeling with blender! But I would be really nice to have sounds that could really improve your experience and maybe add a new layer of gameplay on this walk sim. Also some tweaking on jump would be nice to make navigation better, keep going!
okay that was creepy for sure. Expected jump scare sooner or later. Was this recursive or reloading levels over and over again? i feel it could go on forever. Maybe if something was chasing you would be a good add. or scary sounds coming from behind you. But yah i went really far down. Fun to play.
At first the lack of audio disturb me but then I was starting to be scared. Waiting to have a jumpscare. The mood is really great and I played like 5min before wondering if there was an end xD
I really like this. At first, the exploration seemed pretty normal. Then, the scale of the catacombs started becoming more apparent, as I kept dropping down staircases and through those brick cylinders. But then, at some point, the scale just become incomprehensible--it no longer seemed like the catacombs could seem any bigger. Perhaps this is just because I knew that this environment would literally go on forever, but I still think it's an effective game.
I do think that the part I enjoyed most was when I really could feel the raw enormity of the environment. I'm not sure if it's possible to capture that feeling for longer, somehow--I think one thing that could help is more variety in the component parts of the dungeon. The suspension of disbelief becomes harder once the same parts have been seen twenty times rather than three.
I especially liked the walled-off tunnel sections that had light coming down. I think having a couple more sections that indicate that *there is something else here* just out of reach could really add to the feeling of scale.
I'm honestly not sure whether this game actually feels like it needs sound. I think it might be possible to make it better with sound, but right now it feels pretty good nonetheless. I might even give it four stars or so in the audio category simply because the sounds in the game are pretty appropriate...
I think I would disagree with other commenters in that I don't think this game really needs anything else in terms of gameplay or story, etc... the pure atmosphere of "exploring a huge place" is hard to beat with extra gameplay, I would say.
So yeah. Great entry!
@honey-pony I'm glad you enjoyed it so much, and thanks for the awesome and detailed feedback! Totally agree about need for more overall content volume/variety and especially the pieces that imply unreachable spaces. I think that the biggest missing feature to support the current exploration-focused experience would be adding content that only appears beyond a certain "depth" of exploration, providing a bit of interesting progression. I might revisit this project in the future and expand it to improve in those areas.
Please continue working on this, I think this would be an amazing horror game as even without sound or a threat, the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia as you get deeper and deeper into the never ending maze is incredible and it had me on edge the whole time. Great job!