voidmist 2022-10-03 23:04
The game looks super cool and I loved the way it played. If there was audio, I couldn't hear it :/
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD51 → Forest of the Lost
By martenscedric, winter2277, William Wells and adrien-tremblay
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 654 | 3.45 | 25 | |
| Fun | 995 | 2.89 | 25 | |
| Innovation | 422 | 3.50 | 25 | |
| Theme | 367 | 3.87 | 26 | |
| Graphics | 531 | 3.69 | 25 | |
| Audio | 296 | 3.63 | 25 | |
| Mood | 125 | 4.04 | 25 |
The game looks super cool and I loved the way it played. If there was audio, I couldn't hear it :/
@voidmist Hey we just tested on both Linux and Windows and it seems to work for us. What platform are you playing on?
@william-wells About the audio issue, it was totally a problem on my side, sorry. I can hear the music now and it sounds awesome
Great entry! Love the idea of having to keep track of where the monsters are. I died a lot in the beginning but I got more patient and that helped. I found Lily but I could only see her mom, couldn't find a way to interact with her sadly. Did I miss something?
@krasimir-balchev The mom will follow you back to Lily once you found her! Sorry we knew this was unclear but didn't have the time to fix this
@voidmist Awesome, glad you like it! We actually went into a forest at night to get inspiration for the music and to get sound effects.
@winter2277 Thank you for the hint! I went back and actually reached the credits this time, I can't believe I missed the best part the first time I played haha
Major PogChamp
Great art and mechanics.
After dying for 45 minutes straight, I have decided that rescuing one teddy bear is as good as rescuing all the lost girls in the world. Which is to say I gave up. Can you shed some more tips pls, as it seems the forest is either very big or procedurally generated or looping, or I'm just stupid. I'd rather postpone rating until I manage to get somewhere (all I manage to do so far is talk to Lily). Update: enemies are not that much of a problem, I manage to walk distances without running into them, I'm just failing to actually find anything, so I was wondering if that is randomized or can you point me in some direction.
@kr4ft3r Tip: enemies only move every 10 seconds and only hide in specific hiding spots (trees, bush) make sure to avoid walking next to those and make sure you are in a safe spot whenever the 10 seconds hit.
balls
@kr4ft3r Hi! We're getting a lot of feedback about the Lily's mom part being hard to understand. It's true, it's a bit unclear. So how it works is you have to talk to Lily. And then walk around a bit until you see Lily's mom (she looks like a ghostly medusa in a white dress). Once you've seen her, she will follow you. So just walk back to Lily without dying and talk to her to reunite her with her mother! Hope this helps :)
Ah right, I thought that she may be the mother the girl was talking about, but whenever I'd approach her I'd get killed by a ghoul (by coincidence I guess) so I misjudged her to be a common monster. Yea quite nice touch with environment progression. The ending is interesting as well, without giving spoilers away, though I'm not sure if it's the only one. I would say, despite some flaws, one must appreciate the story of what is going on and text descriptions.
A neat concept, but the slow movement speed conmbined with the (seemingly) random movements of the nighttime enemies really slows the pace as you path around any potential crossings between bushes and trees. Perhaps a health system rather than an instakill might have been good.
Hey @hexyvexy we did implement a full health system at first but we decided to remove it. We didn't want people being able to tank damage and progress through the game that way. This is why instead we implemented an extensive checkpoint system. Anytime you die you should respawn basically at the point you were at in the game.
Thanks for the comment @hexyvexy! To add on to @winter2277 's comment. We received feedback that the movement felt janky/slow so you're not a alone. The monsters go to random hiding spots every 10 seconds, but they aren't able to kill you while traveling between hiding spots
Nice concept! I thought the movement was a tad slow and I maybe would have picked a bit smaller map. After some time of walking around and not finding the next clue it became a bit repetitive and I found myself getting impatient. I thought it was very smart how you introduced the player to the mechanics in daylight with harmless animals, so that when it became dangerous at night you already knew what to do without having to die a lot figuring it out.
Hey! Fun game, fun concept, and great job doing a story game in a jam! That's tough. I felt sometimes that the hitboxes for the monsters was generous to the monsters, when I feel they should be generous to the player (allow for a slim margin of error). Aside from that, I thought it was really nice!
Thanks for the feedback @justabread! Yeah the clues/items are randomly generated so you might have been unlucky there. They should spawn in every chunk of 20x20 blocks but they might not if there is water or something else! Our random generation could definitely be improved to be more fair
Thanks for the feedback as well @jonmerrin ! The monsters only attack you when you walk next to a tile they are hidden at, there is no actual hitbox, everything is 100% grid based. Either a tile is dangerous (adjacent to a monster) or it isn't. We definitely could have made this more clear with some visual indications though
I love mood and graphics of the game, story is simplistic but solid. I think the only thing that is bringing the game down is that the 10 second aspect of the game is working against it, as I got killed on Lily a few times trying to read what she said.
Quite moody, but the audio is a but lacking imho (not the sfx). A mood-matching tune would go a long way.
Nonetheless, good entry.
I liked the horror aesthetic of the game and the concept. However, it felt a bit brutal in terms of monster placement. I'm grateful that the game was forgiving with checkpoints because after a while it was more trial and error, especially once I found out that monsters can randomly cross and kill you during the transition phase between plants, even while the player is standing in an open area.
I think there's potential in this idea as a one-off in a horror game, but it needs some polish and balance.
Very nice entry, The bit with the mother was not really clear (I thought she wanted me to follow her), and some placement were kind of odd (I counldn't interact with one of the kid because he spawned inside a bush). Appart from that, it was a nice game that I enjoyed playing. Good job.
Dodging the monsters was a bit annoying, but you really nailed the atmosphere. Good job.
The mood in this game is well executed. The monsters can be unforgiving at times, but I did like how the animals during the day teach you how the enemies will end up attacking during the night. Good entry!
I enjoyed the spookiness of the game, and the different camera effects were really neat. The enemy location swapping mechanic was pretty innovative, although it would be cool if there were some harmless enemies mixed in as well, so you could keep track of where they went as safe locations. I think the items and ghosts/monster children you have to interact with were sometimes hard to tell apart from generic monsters/obstacles, it might be nice to give them a bright outline or something to visually distinguish them. Overall I really liked this entry, great work!
Mood and concept are great, though I also had the same problem of not realising how to deal with Lily's mom, but the other comments helped. Glad there's checkpoints, otherwise I'd have probably ended up dropping it. I think I beat it though. Got to the point where I was stuck in the red dimension.