FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD51 → Bad Thoughts

Bad Thoughts

By house-trap-jay and House Trap Charlie

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall3113.7729
Fun5213.4429
Innovation7673.1129
Theme10662.9828
Graphics514.5030
Audio694.1129
Humor7222.5723
Mood694.1928

Comments

01edward01 2022-10-04 12:40

Love the graphs. but cant see enemies that well. Very good game!

balduin 2022-10-04 12:45

The game looks cool, but unfortunately it doesnt work for me. I cant move or shoot

house-trap-jay 2022-10-04 12:54

We ran into this in testing too - looking into a fix.

Have you tried relaunching? We managed to fix it by closing & relaunching the exe.

**UPDATE:** Try adjusting the Sensitivity - this has fixed the issue for a few people.

fedir 2022-10-04 14:41

The graphics are cool. But the game doesn't work. I tried to reboot but unfortunately it didn't work.

triangletriangle 2022-10-04 14:49

Whoah! Awesome world and visuals and music and an original, trippy experience all around. For my taste it could have been a bit easier and more satisfying to kill stuff, I wasn't very engaged by the gameplay. I would have preferred to have a smoother ride just enjoying and exploring the world and maybe getting a bit of story.

caladrius 2022-10-04 14:54

God this is so fucking cool; In love with the aesthetics, the music, the sound design, everything! Absolutely chomping at the bit to play a full game with this aesthetic approach. You really outdid yourselves for sure, props

jonrei 2022-10-04 15:21

Very cool environment and music. I got to a point where no more enemies spawned so im not sure if i was supposed to do something or if it bugged out

nilolo 2022-10-04 15:25

Fantastic entry! I love the whole mood this builds, very interesting idea and well directed art-wise.

Only minor nitpick I have is that the game doesn't feel buttery smooth when moving the camera (maybe frame-pacing issues or camera movement in fixed step?), that's all I can think of.

The soundtrack is absolutely banging and fits so well! Would listen to it outside of the game. The sound design works very well.

Honestly as a VFX nerd I would love if you could share some implementation details on how you achieved this grainy/VCR type post-processing, would love to try something similar.

Great experience and it's obvious you worked hard on this, kudos :)

annie-owl 2022-10-04 15:44

Nice looking game. Really loved the visuals and the sound work you've done. The gameplay is also nice, but I think faster base movement speed would have made game even more fun! Also it's hard to tell some times if you hit an enemy or not. Besides that, It was a fun experience, good job!

mralcoro 2022-10-04 16:01

I spent 10 minutes trying to stop my intrusive thoughts but a sausage from Stephen's Sausage Roll killed me from behind while saying that my friends despise me 10/10. Very cool game, I really dig the graphics. Nice job!

kr4ft3r 2022-10-04 19:29

Amazing scenery and atmosphere in general. Though to me it seemed like all enemies are indestructible, they can only be temporarily blown back, even the ball things for which the bio claims to "go down easy". My main problem is, please when making a FPS game do implement invert mouse Y axis, those who are used to playing with it on can barely manage playing any other way (to get the idea, turn the invert Y on in some FPS game and try aiming, that's how I felt). Congrats on managing to achieve so much in your first jam game!

house-trap-jay 2022-10-04 19:52

@triangletriangle Thanks for playing! The game was actually a lot easier last night but like the novice I am, I added more enemies right before the deadline lol

Thanks for the great feedback there! We have quite a few ideas so we'll possibly expand into a bigger story-focused release in the coming weeks.

velvetlobster 2022-10-04 20:04

I absolutely love this creepy ps1 vibe. I imagine this being streamed in Alpha Beta Gamer for sure. Remembers me of that game where the gun speaks, a very creepy one too. This is now one of my favorites of the jam, best in mood.

furano 2022-10-04 20:06

This game mood is just awesome !!! Congrats !

house-trap-jay 2022-10-04 20:16

Thank you so much @caladrius ! 🙏 That honestly made my day! I've been making games for a few years and have been too scared to show most. We'll definitely consider making this into a full release 😁

house-trap-jay 2022-10-04 20:24

@jonrei Thanks for the feedback. I've not seen or heard of that bug so we'll look into it and potentially update with a fix.

house-trap-jay 2022-10-04 20:48

@nilolo That Smooth Camera comment might well be the best feedback I've had so far! Not only did you point out an issue, but you directed me to the solution as well haha. I'm using Fixed Update to move the Camera, when it should only inform the Camera movement. **Shining Gold Star** for you my friend haha!

I'm actually a Music Composer & Audio Engineer by trade, so I'm really happy to hear that the Music holds up!

A magician never reveals his secrets 😜 however, I'll say that in my tests, using a variety of visual noise samples goes a long way! I just wish I got to sample some actual CRTs, but my Nan sold mine years ago 💔

Thank you so much for your kind words 🤘🙌 So glad you had a good time!

nilolo 2022-10-04 22:00

Glad to be of help, haha! Reminded me of a camera issue I've had as well.

Fair enough! I'll embark on a magical shader journey myself then, equipped with a bunch of noise textures :P

selkieharbour 2022-10-05 11:48

Very nice entry! I've found the best strategy is running rather than engaging combat, I felt the enemies needed too many bullets to die, specially as I couldn't move fast while aiming. The retro art was very cool and the music works really well. Loved that DEATH screen!

wheffle 2022-10-05 16:43

The art, music, and style effectively evoke that feeling of playing a creepy, weird, claustrophobic 2000s mindf*ck game. It's honestly incredible, really sucked me in. The difficulty is a bit random between playthroughs, sometimes you'd just get stomped. I always have a hard time tuning difficulty for a game jam. Extremely well done, though, I really enjoyed this!

jmad 2022-10-05 21:24

Thanks for sharing your music. This is so very trippy! The artistic direction is right up my alley ahah. Loving the sounds and graphics dearly.

...I managed to get a jumpscare from a ball sneaking up behind me, and killing me.

austin-sierra 2022-10-05 22:12

Good game, Really loved visual effect work. I think the movement speed was a little slow. I got the glitch at first where i couldnt move but it was because i booted from the zipped folder once i extracted it was fine

projectcolorball 2022-10-06 06:48

such a creepy game!it is such a good one!(rate back plz!)

digital-bacon 2022-10-06 08:39

I found it a bit difficult to see the enemies coming towards me (too dark), but otherwise a competent shooter. Liked the psychedelic graphics though :-) Good work.

james-joubert 2022-10-06 15:37

Love the concept of this game!

The audio is amazing, and the visuals are great.

I wish the aiming was a bit more snappy, and not so wobbly.

But well done on the game!

studiocherno 2022-10-06 19:56

Really enjoyed the game! My two suggestions would be to make the aiming a bit less wobbly, as well as making the insults a bit more audible, I really wanted to hear what they were actually saying :smile: It did feel a bit too easy though, I was able to survive for 6 minutes pretty easily, so maybe making the difficulty scale over time would've been good, although the All-Seeing Eye boss insta-killed me because I was low on health, so I didn't really get to experience the difficulty of that boss.

I did like the audio, although I wasn't a fan of the slow transition between menus or the static effect on the main menu.

But in general a very well made game! -Peter

tranzit 2022-10-06 22:51

The mood in this game its awesome guys! Great audio too!! Was too hard for me too locate the enemies because of the dark :( But overall its a great game!

brainloaf-studio 2022-10-06 23:27

Love the visual style! It gets pretty intense kiting enemies throughout the level, and the all-seeing eye's attack patterns are super awesome. I also like how hectic it can get, especially when one boss appears after another, and you're avoiding enemies and the shadow man/men all at once. My only nitpick is that it'd be nice to see an indicator where an enemy is going to spawn, as an enemy spawned on top of me a couple times. Overall though I really enjoyed this, well done!

rafale25 2022-10-06 23:42

Great environment! The gameplay is no very good, it feels like i'm shooting butter and that it does close to nothing. But well polished graphics and menu. Great job!

house-trap-jay 2022-10-07 12:06

Thanks for all of the great feedback guys! There are a bit too many to respond to individually, so I'll just comment on a few important & recurring things we've seen come up.

**The Difficulty** seems to be quite contentious, and that's 100% my fault for leaving the waves random instead of creating a purposeful difficulty curve. Some people have had three All-Seeing Eye bosses at once within 30 seconds, and some haven't had him spawn at all in nearly 10 minutes of gameplay. Both are very unlucky but we'll absolutely be fixing this after the Jam has ended!

**The Gunplay** is intended as a healthy mix of classic DOOM and Resident Evil, with personal airsoft experience informing the aiming. If you stand completely still, the iron sights perfectly align with the raycast destination. If you walk, it will sway around it, and if you run there will be no aiming indicator (though it always aims directly at the centre of the screen). We've watched a lot of gameplay, and about an equal number of people have said they love how it feels versus saying it's too floaty. Ultimately, it's *very close* to being exactly where I want it, and I'm sure it'll be easier to get used to once there are more Weapons available to play around with!

**Darkness** is a real issue, so I apologise to everyone getting attacked by blobs roasting you in the dark! We'll certainly remember to add a Brightness slider in the next Jam 😁

**Audio** is one of my favourite things, so I'll readily admit that the balance isn't where I'd like it to be. The music definitely overpowers Enemy sounds, and that also contributes to the gun not feeling as satisfying as it should, as the hit detection sound is practically inaudible. I know exactly what needs to be done to fix this, although it will have to wait until post-jam unfortunately!

**Story** is something we're *very* excited about! We have a lot of ideas and I can confirm that we will absolutely be expanding this into a full Steam release over the coming weeks/months! The full release will have very purposeful combat design and multiple difficulties to select.

If you're interested, you can follow development here: https://twitter.com/HouseTrapDev

Once again, thank you all for playing! This has been a truly amazing experience for us! Having this forum to express our love for games and game development is genuinely awe-inspiring, and we can't wait to continue working on BAD THOUGHTS!

kitkii 2022-10-14 20:08

Really cool game, I loved the tone of it and think gameplay wise it was ok. My main concerns was with audio control as it was sometimes too loud and with no volume slider it became a problem at the endscreen. The graphics though looked amazing. The trippy vibes from it are like no other and think that if you changed perhaps the smaller enemies to something else to suit the style of the surroundings then it would pop even more.

unprecedented 2022-10-17 19:52

The game looks really cool and I was excited to play, but unfortunately I'm getting a bug where I can't control the character.