Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → EX SOMNIUM
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 195 | 3.89 | 31 | |
| Fun | 505 | 3.46 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 340 | 3.60 | 31 | |
| Theme | 26 | 4.43 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 123 | 4.32 | 31 | |
| Audio | 50 | 4.19 | 30 | |
| Humor | 975 | 1.84 | 27 | |
| Mood | 39 | 4.32 | 31 |
Great atmosphere. Good theme execution. I noticed one small thing where I could lock myself back in the starting corridor if I returned my lamp checkpoint to the one at the end of said corridor. The bricks come up behind you and you have to go back to the beginning lamp to reset. Not game breaking and maybe even intentional. Overall cool. Great work! Puzzles are hard to design.
@casualnothing Thank you! We did notice that during playtesting, but unfortunately ran out of time to make a more elegant solution than using the original lamp to reset. Figured it worked well enough and wasn't game breaking, so we left it.
(Also thanks for the being our first play :wink:)
@casualnothing Yeah, that's originally an oversight that was embraced. It saved time developing a fix, but it also creates an extra little puzzle you could create for yourself. I'm glad you enjoyed the game! Also, yeah puzzles were difficult, especially because you have to create something that will be solved by someone who doesn't know your intent from the start like the devs do.
I like the atmosphere and the gameplay is intuitive! I'm stuck after the fountain but Puzzles game are so difficult for me :) Good work !
@zankanotachi Oh, you're so close to the end! Thanks for giving it a try regardless.
My favorite atmosphere, Good JOB !
good theme yet its a bit dizzy inside
@alexol Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
@destiny2028 Thank you, hope it wasn't too bad. We tried to tone it down a bit but 10 seconds is pretty short. :pensive:
This game was incredibly interesting and atmospheric.
I was expecting something bad to happen, like a jumpscare or something, when you couldn't reach for a bright spot whenever the time was over. But yeah, really solid puzzle game, loved it!!
@phantom49 Haha yeah, it is quite spooky. We decided against it though. :wink: Glad you liked it!
Very nice visuals and sound. i kinda got stuck in the 3rd lamp, this 10sec rule kills the exploration a bit. Solid try overall
This game is freakin COOL. Completely nailed the presentation with the dark but upbeat music and the fast movement speed and high fov. Really feels like a semi-lucid dream. The plain brutalist art made it easy to focus on your destination and not get distracted, which helped a lot. I got lost a few times but the fact that you only had 10 seconds, and so you had to see the yellow glow within about 5 seconds, made for a really tight exploration loop that wasn't frustrating at all. The sound build up to the reset every 10 seconds never got old. I wish it was more synchronized with the bg music actually.
@kostas-nik Thanks, and yeah, honestly wish the theme was "every minute" or something a bit longer lol.
I enjoyed it! Nice music, great atmosphere. I am pretty sure I was able to skip a couple of puzzles...it seemed like I made it to a light I wasn't supposed to reach yet every once in a while.
@foolmoron Yo thanks for the kind words. Syncing the music to the reset would have been a really cool idea, great suggestion.
@1minatur Thanks and those lamps are by design. Wanted to make multiple ways you could go so that it's harder to feel stuck. Just about every lamp you see has an intended route to it from where you are. :wink:
Really cool brutalist architecture! The level/puzzle design was clever though the timings were maybe a tad too tight for my taste. I think I was able to soft-lock myself on my first attempt, but managed to finish it on my second attempt. Music and visuals were on point to create the the mood, great work!
@bqq Thanks, it shouldn't be a soft-lock though the way to get out is a bit less obvious (assuming you're referring to the initial lamp hallway). Regardless, thanks for playing!
@guitarbro Ah yes now I tried it again and got unstuck, it was due to not understanding the interactable objects, maybe they could have been taught to the player in an unavoidable way beforehand? Anyways sorry for the bogus report :D
Very fun spin on the theme and extremely moody. I'm gonna have to play around with it a bit more as I think I might have missed some routes, but super happy to spend some more time with this game :smile:
@bqq hey no problem, glad you gave it another shot. We were attempting to explain that with the wall disappearing on interact, but alas, it's not the most obvious.
@edgeboyo Thanks! Happy to hear you liked it enough to spend more time with it. :smile:
The level design in this was madness! The length felt just about right for a game jam. The switch mechanic was a little daunting at first, but once I figured it out, it was really clever! Having to anchor yourself before running back to a switch was smart. The way you had the level change, just like dreams, was immersive.
The overall atmoshphere (brutalist architecture and music) was fantastic. And as I ran toward the light, I felt like I wouldn't make it ... but did at the last moment. I don't know how much you timed the space between objects, but it felt just rightly balanced.
Nice job!
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@hawkin wow, really appreciate the kind words! :smiley: Yeah, we timed everything very carefully, so glad you noticed it. While we were a bit haphazard with our initial level design (just trying to get the atmosphere down lol), we were super careful placing the puzzle elements as we started turning the level into individual puzzles. It's honestly a miracle how well it worked given the time restrictions. We may have just gotten a bit lucky. :sweat_smile:
@hawkin There was a ton of playtesting to get timings right. Luckily, with only 10 seconds, it wasn't too hard to get things right. There's only so much that can be done in 10 seconds. It'd be interesting to know how many times we ran through different sections. I still wish we had more time to work on things though. I'm glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the response!
Very cooooooooooool! I really love it!
@sinalize Thanks! :smiley:
I love the brutalist aesthetic, wish I had time to explore it. Also, quite possibly the best VA in a LD game that I've heard. With some play-testing and level design tweaks, it could be absolutely incredible.
Also, you can soft lock yourself if you fall down the pit with the lamp in it without activating the stairs first, just FYI.
@infinitycore yes! I did that on my first playthrough... Forced me to reload and look around more, which is how I finally discovered the switch mechanic.
@infinitycore Thank you! Would you believe the voice is actually generated? It turned out really well with some tweaking to it.
If the spot you're talking about is near the beginning, there's actually a spiral staircase you can use to get out still.
@hawkin Good job! We didn't want to explain much and wanted it to be learned through experience. I'm glad you were able to figure it out.
I see brutalist architecture, I click. Reminded me quite a bit of NaissanceE. I liked the gameplay, very clever idea. Took me a while to figure out I could interact with the stairs/fences. It really wasn't obvious at first, so I got a bit frustrated, thinking I got stuck at the third lamp. Overall great entry.
@burst Thanks for playing! We tried to make it obvious by putting it directly in front of you when you spawn, but teaching puzzle mechanics without explicit instructions is a bit difficult. :disappointed: Glad you were able to figure it out though. :smile:
Nice moody and visually stunning entry. cant say I managed to finish it, but it was a lot of fun trying. I think I somehow managed to get stuck, but I dont know how.
Wow, I really liked the clever puzzles and never really had to wait, also the smooth transition was genius in not distracting the player.
Only thing I would add is to include a glowing object at the beginning so players understand that they can interact with them. There is a very small glitch where the door is visible under the first staircase and I thought I could interact with the door instead of understanding that I could interact with the staircase.
But I ultimately figured it out and finished this wonderful piece of art. Brutalism ftw.
Great atmosphere. Wonderful architecture. The intro with the backstory is totally awesome. And the music is love to my ears.
The gameplay fits the theme really well, but if you're like me and have no idea where to go and what to do, it can get tiresome. I think I got stuck on the second lamp and then on the second play I figured out, that I can interact with the building. I got farther this time which felt great! But at some point I completely lost myself, got back to the starting area and had no idea, if I was making progress or if I was just running around in circles.
@xparker Thanks for the kind words and for giving it a try! I don't think there's anywhere to actually get stuck, but there are a few places where it can feel like it. I'm pretty sure we always included a way back out of everything, but I can't be certain.
@leorid Thank you. That transition took several iterations to get to feel right. For a while it was more disorienting than just a straight teleport, but it eventually got to where it is now.
We tried to teach the interaction mechanic with the first lamp you can't get past until you touch it and also the first set of staircases, but maybe we shouldn't have had a way to progress until you touch the stairs. Hopefully the next puzzle game (if we ever do one again) will be even better about that!
@zubspace I'm sorry to hear you got stuck. The beginning area has two paths that can potentially loop back on each other, so that may be what you experienced. Perhaps we should have made sure you couldn't loop back, but we wanted a second path to make sure if you got stuck you could maybe find a puzzle that was easier for you. I'm glad you liked most of it though!
What a great game for this theme! Was a bit confused by the whole stairs and fences thing at the beginning but enjoyed the playthrough a lot!
https://youtu.be/q1LNFwBNKcU
This was an interesting game and difficult. I didn't make it incredibly far but I did try to go back and forth. I think if there was a bit of some hints or something to better give some direction it would be easier to make progress. I found myself getting stuck in areas that I think I had softlocked myself possibly or I just couldn't find the way forward
The graphics were interesting, but the area felt very empty. The gameplay loop was interesting, but I feel like there needs to be a lot more feedback and direction. It was very hard to know what I could possibly interact with as it looked like everything else in the world. Was pretty cool though, good job.
It was fun to run into it. Just such a Minit, but much tougher because of the timer of 10 seconds. Although it seems to me that you swung too much that you decided to stick such a tough mechanic in 10 seconds, limiting yourself very much in riddles and forcing the player to actually click on the lamp in the last milliseconds). But in general it was fun, considering that the music warmed up the dynamics and this made me want to finish off the riddle right away).
That was a great maze, with a clever core mechanic! I didn't immediately understood what was supposed to be interactive, and what it did, so the first puzzled where challenging. I managed to soft-lock me two times. But once I got it figured out, they were really nice to resolve! Each use the checkpoint in ingenious ways, I never felt that the same idea was used twice. And of course I must say, what a neat brutalism environment! I'm not used to see fast-paced games in such settings, it was a great surprise. Congrats for making this cool entry!
As other people have said, the beginning of the game is hard, and it is quite easy to soft lock yourself. You naile the mood and the controls are simple and flawless.
The only weird thing is that this games makes my PC too run super hot. Maybe you should try to cap the fps at 60?
Good job!
Sorry for taking so long to respond, everyone. I was away all weekend and then some, but I'm back now. :smile:
@icxon Thanks! Awesome playthrough vid. Really cool to see your thought process in real time.
@tanner-shelton Ah yeah, it _is_ a puzzle game so it's a bit hard to tune the difficulty just right, especially during a jam. There are no actual softlocks (that we're aware of), but some of the solutions can be a little hard to spot. Thanks for giving it a try regardless!
@link270 Appreciate the feedback. The emptiness was intentional since we felt that too much noise detracted from the puzzles and made it too difficult to play. The idea was to keep things interesting, but minimal so that players could focus on the few key elements that stood out more. Thanks for playing though!
@paulsams Oh yeah, I didn't even draw the parallels to Minit but it totally is similar. It definitely was more limiting trying to fit puzzles in, but hey, we wanted to try something different and I think we managed to do a pretty decent job. :wink: Glad you liked the music!
@itooh Really appreciate your feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed the core mechanic. We definitely went out of our comfort zone compared to our previous entries so I'm happy to see some people think it paid off!
@chocolat-endive Regarding the controls: thank you! I'll mention again just in case, but there's no softlocks as far as we know, just some less-obvious routes. Also I'm glad you mentioned the framerate, we didn't get around to adding an options menu so I didn't even think to add an option to vsync the game anywhere else. (Vsync was left off by default for people with low-end PCs, so the FPS doesn't get even worse for them.) Might do another build with an option to toggle vsync on a keypress or something.
And finally @ everyone so far, thanks for playing and rating! :smiley:
@guitarbro Oh, I may be mistaken about the lock. Anyway, that was not really an issue, it was quite easy to reload and try another route. Again, congratulatioins for making this game, you've done a great job with it.
@chocolat-endive Glad you were able to work around it at least :sweat_smile:
@guitarbro: Hi, I cannot walk on stairs (up/down). So, I tried to find some video on YouTube and people are walking on stairs (up and down). I just watched first 36 seconds of this video (YouTube ID: q1LNFwBNKcU) to not see any spoilers. Do I need to press some key in front of stairs? Moving forward (w key) is not working with stairs... - EDIT: Playing on Windows...
@paveldlouhy huh that's very weird, that sounds like a bug. We haven't run into this before. Is your framerate very high/low? Not quite sure what would be causing that.
@guitarbro Thank you for reply. It will probably be by low framerate. Playing it on Acer Aspire E1-532G, Intel Pentium 3556 Processor (1.7GHz, 2MB L3 cache), AMD Radeon R5 M240 with 1GB Dedicated VRAM, 4GB DDR3 Memory.
@guitarbro After a few attempts to make it work on MacBook Pro 2015 (same issue with stairs) I decided to spend some time to prepare best computer I have here and it is working now! Finally! :-) And I have to say it was worth it! I finished the game. It is not the one of the best games I played and rated so far. It IS the BEST GAME I played and rated so far! Everything is perfect (graphics, audio, game design, level design and voice-over) and it was fun to play! I was watching you since you were posting blog posts during Ludum Dare and I was looking forward to play it. This is the kind of game (with this kind of atmosphere) I would like to make some day. Feedback: For this kind of 3D games could be good idea to mention minimal configuration. Also, I would love to play this kind of game in mode where countdown is running only when you are moving but this (how you decided to do it) is perfectly alright. Also, possibility to enable V-sync with 60 FPS (and avoid 180 FPS with PC burning 250-300W) would be nice but it is acceptable for this kind of short game. I can imagine this game winning this Ludum Dare. Guys, good job! :-)
@paveldlouhy Great! Really glad to hear you were able to play it. :smiley: To be honest we didn't realize there would be a minimum configuration, we just kinda assumed the movement would "just work" since we never had FPS that low, but this just goes to show why you gotta test on a wide variety of hardware. :wink: Appreciate the kind words as well, and thanks for going to all the effort to give it a try!