leon-regula 2021-04-27 06:33
I really like this artstyle!
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD48 → Into the Dark
By branton-lansdale, LRL64 and Phanatik
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 522 | 3.76 | 27 | |
| Fun | 895 | 3.36 | 27 | |
| Innovation | 428 | 3.64 | 26 | |
| Theme | 1131 | 3.47 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 414 | 4.10 | 26 | |
| Audio | 677 | 3.47 | 26 | |
| Humor | 1291 | 2.16 | 17 | |
| Mood | 297 | 4.00 | 26 |
I really like this artstyle!
I really liked it but it's way too dark. How do the lights work? some won't turn on.
The lights have to be in range of a generator or in range of another light has power. You can pick them up and place them closer to another light. You make a chain of lights leading INTO THE DARK. Generators have a limited number of lights they can power. They also recharge your flashlight.
@whysguy52 Our goal was to make the player feel isolated and lost, and make them value resources they gather. We wanted to have a big focus on the lightsources that the player was able to control. To accomplish that we took away all other lights so that the player has more of an impact on the environment.
The light systems are a bit in depth, and if we had more time, we definitely would have presented it in a more clear manner.
@lrl64 That's what i figured about the generator proximity except not the chaining lights but I couldn't even find resources. How about a really weak glow stick that was temporary to help you venture into the dark before setting up more permanent lights?
@whysguy52 I guess it may be a little too dark right from the get go. It may have been better to not make it so dark right away and give a chance to ease into it. That glow stick idea is something that could be considered, especially at the earlier stages when you are low on resources for crafting. If we presented the fact that you can chain lights together in game as well as picking them up and replacing them maybe the frustration players feel would be lessened a bit. We do want the player to be on edge though. Getting lost and then seeing an enemy in the distance and stumbling upon a generator to recharge your flash light and a point to chain a few lights from can be a cool feeling if the player sticks around long enough to experience it. This was mostly due to time constraints and oversight on our part but can be addressed going forward. I would love for the game to gain some interest. We would be happy to go further with it.
@whysguy52 We also perhaps should have given away more resources in the tutorial map before moving over to the big one. All good lessons learned. Appreciate the feedback also. It means a lot.
Nice game! A lot of stuff in there, I really like the weapon reload animation. It's a bit dark all in all.
I see a lot of promise in this project. Solid idea and execution for such a short amount of time.
A couple of technical notes, if the lights at the base aren't to be used I don't think I should be able to pick them up? Might just be a simple bug. The other issue I experienced (which might some quirk of Unreal?) is when I crafted something it was fired out of the machine at top speed, sometimes they would just not be on the ground. I'm not sure if the items just clipped through the universe or something. that was rare, but the fact that they fired out and didn't land in the bin was odd.
I think you're very close to getting the isolation thing down. I'm excited to play it as you develop it further!
@threeli That you very much for the feedback.
About picking up the lights it is a bug that allows you to pickup pre-placed lights you are only supposed to be allowed to pickup the lights you placed and place them somewhere else. The pre-placed lights that you are able to be picked up actually don't allow you to place them again. It's a known issue.
As for the crafting station shooting out the items, it's not a quirk of unreal or anything like that it was just us. It is that when the crafting station mesh got brought in it had a default collision around the entire thing so the items were getting spawned inside the collision and getting shot out even though it look like they are spawned above the tray. We actually did change the collision and made the items spawn in the tray but decided to revert it to this because we thought it was funny that they just got yeeted out like that. Them getting lost through walls or something after being shot out isn't surprising that it could happen which is probably again due to the collision on the rock assets not being properly adjusted. There are some rocks that you can actually walk inside of on one side but not the other. It is something that just never got cleared up in the frantic push to the end even though it is known.
Both issues were down to time really (though we probably should have kept them actually spawning in the tray. would have avoided the rocks collision issue in this case). There are so many things that were planned but never got done. An example of one such feature is that when a light gets powered there would be a chain of electricity going to what it is receiving it's power from. It would have shown clearly that lights can power other lights in range so you can chain lights together which is a pretty crucial mechanic but yeah.
Really glad to hear that you see the potential in it and we definitely will make improvements to it later on for sure. I would be really excited if people were interested enough for this to become a successful full release and not only a jam game.
Impressive work for such a short timeframe! Really nice art and sound. A lot going on here. An excellent first entry!
Really nice artwork, and cool idea for a game. Unfortunately, as others have said, it is way too dark to see anything. It makes sense that you want the player to be isolated, but I literally couldn't see a thing at times, and I was just walking around aimlessly without knowing where I was going. Good job though!
The game is awesome, i dont know if it's me but i had difficulty with the torch, hard to orient myself with. i stop the game when i was lost ^^, dont have the patience to continue more. Graphic is really really good like sound and fx great job i'm just a little mad to don't saw more of this game =)
@kelvination Thanks for giving it a go and leaving your feedback. And yeah, no shortage of "Too Dark" comments unfortunately. It really is very dark and we should have had more areas with light scattered around to guide players in a particular direction and we also should have probably had more mining resources right at the start to allow players to more freely be able to craft more lights and generators and mess around with them more freely without much punishment so early on.
Were you able to figure out the generator and placing lights mechanics and that you have a flashlight that also gets recharged in range of generators at least? We had messages popup explaining that in game but I feel like most people didn't read them or understand them. Do you have any suggestions about how we could have conveyed that information more clearly to the player?
Also, did you ever get to any enemy encounters? I wish we had put one right at the starting area as well so that players knew and understood that the game also has combat. It would also help with the feeling of dread wondering off into the dark without generators and lights.
interesting concept! i liked the idea of darkness being a potential source of risk, but found it a little challenging to plan around / strategize about since there wasnt a super clear idea of how long the light would last at first. and then the resource scarcity made it hard to expand my operations. some ideas for alleviating these issues could be: have a real-time countdown on flashlight battery life, have some sort of warning to the player when they are coming close to a "point of no return" (ie battery will run out unless they return to the nearest generator asap, etc
really liked the atmosphere and styling too. nice work!
Really nice game! I spent a time playing it, try to figure out how things work, and i have to say that it's really too dark! That and the lack of music were the major problems in my opinion.
But the concept and the game in general is pretty good, congrats on this and keep up the great work, would love to play an update soon.
It looks great and feels great to play. I really like the concept as well. I wish there was a fitting background track to it but given this was a short game jam I can't really fault you guys for that 😄. Really cool game overall. That being said, though I could just be terrible at this game, I do think there were some balance issues.
The flashlight ran out really quickly so I didn't want to use it unless completely necessary and I ended up with 300+ of the second material and kept running out of the first. It ended up being better to skip the lights and just get a bunch of generators since they also gave off light as well as recharging my flashlight in addition to being barely more expensive since I didn't have to worry about the second material at all.
I got to a point with 2 giant robots once and ran out of ammo before I could kill them and then they killed me when I was trying to run away. The next 6 or 7 times I got close to there (or at least where I thought it was) I fell into an inescapable pit of green death fog. I even eventually noticed zip lines that I thought would bring me over it but I still got dropped in there. I'm sure there was a way out (if there wasn't I would assume it would just kill you immediately) but with the light on all I could see was green and without it all I could see was black so I was just wondering around aimlessly until I died.
@miej Thanks for the feedback. There actually is a flashlight health indicator on screen. It's the bar at the bottom centre of the screen. It is perhaps maybe too small? We will make it bigger and change the colour probably.
@lrvstudios Thanks for your feedback and I am really glad you at least like the concept. Improvements will be made for sure. And yes, we will do something to make the darkness not as frustrating without destroying the sense of dread you are supposed to have when venturing out into the dark without adequate numbers of generators and lights.
@jogy34 Oh my god you are the real MVP. You played a game jam game at least 8 times and actually took time to learn and understand the game, this particular game no less that is not exactly the simplest game you are likely to play in this jam, and even figure out the generator only meta? Hats off. And you actually made it to your ship by the way (the two giant robots were guarding it), probably the only person who has done so at least so far.
There are so many thing we could have done better no doubt and all your criticisms are completely on point. Balance is obviously one of the things that get the short end of the stick when rushing to finish such an ambitious game like this. But as of right now, we plan on sticking with it and take it as far as we can get it.
We should have given players more of everything (ammo and unmissable mining materials) right off the bat. Made the flashlight drain more slowly. Not made it absolutely pitch dark but allow you to at least see one or two steps in front of you (probably one). But we didn't want to make the game too easy which was in hindsight not the best decision. Difficulty can always come later on in the game in other levels. It is a tight balancing act because we do want players to be on edge and not feel as if they can just run around freely with no consequences. Lots of balancing and quality of life stuff to do.
Cool game! At the risk of echoing every other comment about it being 'too dark', I wanted to be a little more specific with my critique in that: what made me stop playing the game was that when you run out of your flashlight you literally can't see anything, and if there's no lights in sight you can't orient yourself at all and just get stuck. I get the idea that you want the player to value light as a resource, but I think you can do that without making running out have such harsh consequences. Overall though, the graphics and sound and general feel were fantastic, really great job!
@mark-a-pressler we appreciate the specificity! The issue is being adressed as we move forward with the game. currently the player has been given a very small personal light that extends about a foot away from your body so you are able to see the ground under you and see if youve run into or near a wall. its very dim so that you cant use it to completely navigate without the lights, but helps the players orientate themselves. Thank you for taking the time to play and give your feedback!!!
I really liked the concept and the combat felt very satisfying! I wish you could see how many lights/generators you have in your inventory though, and that you could see what the exact range is that a light can be placed from another light/generator. In addition to the resources flying away when they spawn, I also had generators be knocked into undesirable positions multiple times because I was moving when I tried to place it. Also, I found that the enemies could be exploited by simply attacking them from far away, so maybe you should make them be agroed when shot. I didn't find lights to be very useful, as I never had enough of them, and generators could be used as marker points to be seen from far away. I think it would be cool if you gave the player a lot more lights but also had much stronger enemies that can't enter light, forcing the player to use long chains of lights to get around.
@dans17 first off, thank you for taking the time to try it out! Due to time constraints there were lots of UI stuff we wanted to add but never got the chance to. Like lights and generator inventory, Cables linking the lights together from the generator, something showing where you're going to be placing an item, and a whole slew of other things. The idea of enemies avoiding light is actually kind of neat, I like that! Currently the game has been worked on a little more after the jam was over. It now has UI showing how many you have of each placeable item in your inventory, along with some other important quality of life things. We've talked it over and were discussing ways to get around the 'place generators only at distances to see far away' and it comes down to a level design issue. we will need to make more enclosed or winding levels mixed in with the open areas. Theres plenty more to do and we hope you come back to see our progress when we release updates in the future!
Forgot to link it earlier, but here's the vod where I played it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003206672?t=56m50s
I liked visual style of the game.
Very cool game, I ended up falling into a ravine and dying which was sad:(
@alexjdg Rip
Nice gameplay! I'd change it so that the way the player gets smore light is by having to upgrade his flashlight instead of having to arduously place individual lights on the ground.