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DECRYPTOR
DECRYPTOR
By bastinus-rex and julialalart
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 265 | 3.87 | 26 | |
| Fun | 986 | 2.95 | 26 | |
| Innovation | 156 | 3.89 | 26 | |
| Theme | 870 | 3.58 | 25 | |
| Graphics | 250 | 4.18 | 26 | |
| Audio | 291 | 3.70 | 26 | |
| Mood | 3 | 4.64 | 26 | |
Comments
I'm in love with the mood of this game! It's very eerie and mysterious... I like how the story involves two characters that approach their communication with you from different angles (one being more distant, one more personal), it improves the pacing and makes the characters more human. The art/music and post-processing is also very well done to help support the eerie vibe! (Spoilers) the "pit" and the dark vibe of the last pillar even gave me some outer wilds feelings...
Some points of feedback: - I felt having to click to take every step was starting to strain my hand by the end - maybe just hold to move? - (Spoilers) I thought one of the keys shown in the final phase of the game was left arrow, not backspace (since on some keyboards this is just written "Backspace", not <-) so I spent a lot of time very confused about what to do. It'd be better if this was less ambiguous!
This game is amazing! The mysterious and cryptic mood is on point! It's quite a job you achieved here, a huge GG for both of you! Mystery and exploration linked to our friends despair messages, we want to know where this story ends! I had a lot of fun playing it, you guys rock!
[SPOILER] [SPOILER] [SPOILER]
I also have an issue with the key shown at the end, and thought it was left arrow or "tab" bar, but I figured it out and let's say that it added some mystery to this strange and moody game!
[END OF SPOILER] [END OF SPOILER] [END OF SPOILER]
Now THAT'S a mood I did not expect given the theme, but I loved it! Seriously it's cryptic done well : I felt lost and lonely but also really close to the team mates in the mean time.
Just a little ergonomic feeback, I wished the UI was either "smaller" or the scroll bar was placed on the far left side (so that you don't scroll the conversation when you want to go to your left if you are as precise as I am xD)
Again, great job <3
Thank you all for your feedbacks !! @dungeoneer64 at start I wanted to make a feature that was the "automatic walking mode", it was a "hold to move" bonus that you had each 15 steps, and that you can upgrade by resolving the Pyragon pillars, but I didn't had the time !! But thank you for feedback, so I think if I improve the game I will add it first :)
3mpty
2023-05-02 12:52
Really intriguing little game with amazing presentation. The art style is great, the mystery is thick and the puzzle elements.. Well ok the puzzles are a little half baked. But I love everything else.
The story was interesting, the characters were neat, I felt it was a little bit slow at times but overall it's super moody and really cool. I love the deep undersea drone vibes, I'm still not even sure what really happened, but it kept me thinking and I like that a lot. Great submission here!
hmrpf
2023-05-02 13:59
Wow, incredibly moody. I love the feeling of this game, design and audio was awesome. So far just 2 mechanics with the walking and the later stuff. But I really can see more of this. Made me think of some gameplay in Outer Wilds with the dark stone. I love it, great job.
augmotic
2023-05-02 23:37
Thanks for hanging out in the stream and bringing your game!
Here is a link to the VOD that starts at your section. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1809875425?t=02h59m12s
kinart
2023-05-05 01:29
This was certainly going for mood! I also really enjoyed the final pylon puzzle. The stepping mechanic was very taxing. I found it aggravated some physical issues I have in my clicking arm at the end. I did like the little stomp in each step. Overall, the vibe was creepy and I enjoyed that.
I loved this! I loved the mood and how dark everything was and the story being shone. Keep it up! :D
shrombus
2023-05-05 17:18
Very moody and atmospheric, this concept has a lot of potential :)
igdiaysu
2023-05-06 10:01
How about developing it and adding it to Steam? Nice game! <3
The game is very moody and atmospheric, but the amount of clicking required to get anywhere is a bit too much.
f1tzy
2023-05-09 00:05
Wow, I can't say the gameplay was the best but the mood, intrigue, and art was spot on. Very nice work and very engaging.
Storywise, moodwise this game is amazing ! From a gameplay point of view, maybe having a different timing for the messages, in order for us to have something to do instead of just running around waiting for the message to give us clues. Very nice entry, well done !
And congratz for your 20th vote ;)
konfekt
2023-05-09 21:02
One of the best story-heavy entries I've come across. With a few tweaks to the gameplay itself and maybe a few more puzzles I can see this one really reaching a lot of people. Great work!
If not for the amount of walking, this is very cool art-house-ish narrative. Loved the design!
Thank you everyone for playing and rating the game!! <3 Sorry for the amount of clicking that you had to do, as I said I wanted to implement some automatic walking features, but didn't had time for this!
Again, thank you for your feedbacks and kind words
@ardorugus what mean art-hous-ish? i'm curious and I'm not really good in english ^^
@konfekt thank you !! If you remember the other good story-heavy games of the jam that you played, I'm curious to play it?
@bastinus-rex has an art house vibe (like in that kind of movies) to it.
konfekt
2023-05-10 18:27
@bastinus-rex only one other one i'd like to recommend, it's this one: https://robobarbie.itch.io/lycorislastwords
aurel300
2023-05-10 22:13
Cute, I like games with unusual combinations of mechanics and story elements. The clicking didn't feel terribly interesting, but there was never too much of it. I think it would have been a bit nicer if the layout of the world was a bit more complex, so that the clicking could be spent on actually exploring the map, but as it was I quickly found the landmarks and often needed to just click through, walking in a random direction, to get the next message. On a similar topic, it would be nice to be able to start working on the next message as I am reading the current one: I don't really need to see the world while I am reading a message.
Was I supposed to be able to walk over the empty space in the middle? I couldn't cross it completely but I still got some way into it and floated…
The story/messages were nice to read, though sometimes a bit waffly: it feels a little disappointing to put effort towards decrypting a message only for it to be "Sorry"! (Nitpick: I think you were trying to avoid gendered pronouns in the writing, but "Melakio are" seems wrong since Melakio refer to themselves as "I", not "we".) More complex puzzles to progress the story would have been good—there is a lot you can do with the format if players are presented with enough information. I think the story explains that there is no actual two-way communication but some acknowledgement of the progress I was making would go a long way. Maybe there even could be an actual time limit (number of steps?) and a good ending/bad ending?
The graphics are neat, although the shaders/postprocessing are clearly doing the heavy lifting :) The music fits the mood. More sound effects would have been nice, especially for the milestones, like activating a pyragon.
Wow thank you very much @aurel300 for this big feedback!!
The little messages like "sorry" took only few clicks to be unlocked (like 5 ?), so we thought that it was ok. And we thought that putting it on a single message added a bit to the "emotion" of it! But your feedback is interesting, maybe it didn't worked as we wanted !
SPOILERS : "Was I supposed to be able to walk over the empty space in the middle?" : Yes ! There is a secret path in it that you can reveal if you turn the lights off. I wanted to keep the path walkable even when you dont see it, because it still exist physically even if you don't see it! This secret path guide you to the final cinematic of the game if you resolved the 3 pyragons puzzle before
Thank you again for taking time to put a feedback like this, this is really precious to me And sorry for my messy english !
jkyd
2023-05-16 03:49
That was fantastic! I definitely have a weak spot for narrative games, and this one really pulled me in. The audio/graphics/general mood was very cohesive, and figuring out how to activate the pillars was genuinely quite fun :)
I agree with the sentiment of some of the other comments regarding the amount of clicking required, but it did make it feel like you had to work for the messages/clues while giving you some time to try and figure it out on your own -- awesome entry!