FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD55 → Nose Deep In A Book

Nose Deep In A Book

By yorsh

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall1103.7043
Fun1753.4043
Innovation523.9643
Theme454.1443
Graphics384.1743
Audio933.5443
Mood573.8543

Comments

andreas-decker 2024-04-15 08:56

What an awesome game. No notes. Except maybe that the noises eventually led me to pity my amnesiac summoner a bit too much :D

dasilvacontin 2024-04-15 08:57

Fantastic game, likely will be one of the best of the compo.

It took me a while to learn how to incantate. I didn't get that I had to HOLD the keys. I was pressing them. I discovered it by chance. I could have stayed stuck there for a long time (I imagine some people will). I really love the system of how to "draw" the runes, bravo.

I wish I hadn't read the second hint (I stopped reading at that one). But I do get that some people may need them. I'm unsure if I would have figured it out without help, but wish I had attempted to solve it without having that hint.

I think mystery / escape room enthusiasts will love this game, and I can see myself recommending it to them already in this state.

Great everything. Thank you for sharing <3

mdotedot 2024-04-15 09:30

Wow .. too bad that there is way too many things to remember and goig on. But overall I pretty much liked everything : the art style, the wide-spreaded incantor the moaning the telephone, the books with confusing scribbles the effect on the summoning-wheel. Excellent mate! Well done!

yorsh 2024-04-15 15:51

@andreas-decker I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing !

@dasilvacontin The hold thing is not explained at all indeed, I forgot about it. Tbf, I kinda rushed the game design as I changed my mind a few times, so if most of the game is understandable it's already a miracle :) I'll add a little additional spoiler warning for hints too. Thanks for the feedback !

@mdotedot Yeah I had planned to have a little bit of progression. Like some part of the library would be locked at first to be less overwhelming, but I ran out of time. I'm glad you liked the rest, ty for playing !

locksmitharmy 2024-04-15 19:46

hey thats pretty cool. great game mechanic. itd be a fun mini game in a larger adventure. and the graphics are great ;)

pimeko 2024-04-15 19:50

Amazing graphics, cool music and love the mood. The sound fx for the summoning parts are hilarious and overall had fun playing the game! Good job :D

dams333 2024-04-15 19:51

Very good game, a little bit hard to understand what to do but it becomes really cool to play. Special point for the sound design

yorsh 2024-04-15 20:04

@locksmitharmy Yes that's actually a good idea, keeping it in mind for the day I make one. Thanks for the feedback!

@pimeko @dams333 Thanks for playing! I'm apparently good at moaning like an old man, that's going on my resume for sure.

sariiger 2024-04-15 20:21

Very fun game! At first I was a little lost on what I should be doing, but after trying to understand the books a bit more and learned how the drawing works, this game quickly became an amazing puzzle game! Great job!

cogcomp 2024-04-15 20:56

Incanting took some time to get a grip on but other than that, wow! what a polished game and the graphics where really great. Well done!

two1san 2024-04-16 01:25

Concept is quite original, reminds me of invoker from dota 2 in a weird way great work!

jonathan-vinesar 2024-04-16 02:02

Well made but frustrated the hell out of me.

yorsh 2024-04-16 02:24

@sariiger @cogcomp The start can be rough yes. It's kind of intended (so it's satisfying when you figure it out), tho it was hard to balance how much the player is going to struggle at first given that I finished last minute and ran 0 playtest ahah. Thanks for the feedback!

@two1san I checked what the character does quickly, it does have something in common yeah. Thanks for playing!

@jonathan-vinesar Sorry to hear that, this concept was way too hard to balance correctly alone so it's unfortunately going to be frustrating for some players yeah.

civ92 2024-04-16 06:51

Fun game and nice animations ! your concept works well and is nicely executed !

sver 2024-04-16 06:52

Great entry, had a lot of fun playing so far (and will come back finishing it after work). Still early in the game, as I only got the vase by phone, strolled through the shelves reading the books and dabbled a bit in my summoning excercise

hendrik-schnutgen 2024-04-16 15:24

Good game, but a bit confusing at the start about what to do

atomicptr 2024-04-16 17:06

Great take on the theme, it was a bit confusing initially but overall liked it

jean-francois 2024-04-16 17:07

Very nice game, well polished, one person ho wow. A bit confusing at first. The gameplay is really original and fits well with the theme, well done!!

yorsh 2024-04-16 22:40

@civ92 @sver Thanks for playing, glad you liked it!

@jean-francois @atomicptr @hendrik-schnutgen Yeah the start can be confusing. I lacked time to polish the game design enough. Thanks for the feedback!

kirass 2024-04-16 23:01

I like this game! You guys are great!

k-toll 2024-04-16 23:18

Oh Yeah! It's a pity it's so short, despite having spent some time. Once you understand how to make the runes and their meanings, it becomes really fun! For the broken pot no problem, but for the cat and the plant I couldn't finalize the invocation by doing it in the order requested. "SPOILER" I had to do it like this: action + location + subject. Since the action is an opposite for these two subjects, I can only start with that, not finish. But it still works! I like the idea of this game mechanic and the design! The character's style and those stretching efforts when he incites... really original!

Well done!

denvil 2024-04-17 02:44

At least the summoner gets his yoga practice in. Nice mechanism for summoning and really innovative and fitting for the theme.

Adding little bit of glow on those instructions books would guide player more quickly to check those out.

yorsh 2024-04-17 02:50

@kirass Well, other than the voices in my head, I worked alone ahah. I'm glad you liked it!

@k-toll You should be to make a rune opposite even in the middle of a "sentence". If you input a "down", it'll indeed draw it as a dot in the current rune, but it should move at the top of the next rune if you follow it up by a "up". I don't know if it makes sense. Tho I did allow to reverse the action and subject for these two as you noticed, so it's fine either way. I had a few other things planned, I even made a full dog model, but ran out of time to add them in the end sadly. Thanks for playing!

yorsh 2024-04-17 02:56

@denvil I should have thought about it! I actually didn't think people would not check the books, but now that you say it I realise that it's very possible that some (most?) players assume it's only for scenery. Thanks for the feedback!

andrewkennedy 2024-04-17 03:00

I liked the "figure it out" nature of this game - it's pretty risky and tough to get right, but you pulled it off well.

The big exaggerated animations worked well for the theme, and it's one of the better character animations I've seen in the jam so far.

Good job!

xeltide 2024-04-17 17:52

Everything about this game is great! Was originally going to say the symbols felt random, but then realized there was more than one book per row of shelves and then it made sense. Good job!

vivid-hallucination 2024-04-17 18:53

Fun take on the theme! I figured out which runes to use to fix the bottle and how to enter them pretty quickly, but just had to guess which order they went in, I guessed wrong and thought I needed to use more runes. Tried a few, then I wound up looking at the spoiler section and realized I just used them in the wrong order.

It would have been nice to have some sort of indication on the order of operations, or feedback mechanisms to let me know if I was on the right track. Like drawing the right rune correctly makes it glow a different colour or something.

yorsh 2024-04-17 19:58

@andrewkennedy Yeah it's always stressful to make those indeed, it's very hard to tell without playtests what will make sense or not. And of course, I cannot free some time to send it to friends, as I majorly overscoped like most of us. Thanks for playing!

@xeltide Ah yes with only the first book it's tough ahah. I'm glad you liked it!

@vivid-hallucination You are right, the order was something I was worried about. It was hard to explain it in the books with just drawings, and at the same time it could be very frustrating and confusion for those that don't get it. In the end I decided to let it in, but that's something I would have focused on improving with more time indeed. Thanks for the feedback!

ollie-d 2024-04-18 02:39

Solid entry, very clean graphics. Fairly unique too out of the rune-drawing entries

ismael-rodriguez 2024-04-18 03:55

Visuals, overall presentation, Opening books and saving their contents, it all feels really good.. The weird movements and poses the summoner does offer a lot of audio and visual feedback, learning how to make the glyphs/incantations was pretty fun, although maybe it's more complicated/complex than it needs to be? I caved-in and used your tips to solve all the puzzles, and even being handed the answers, it was hard for me to execute.

Still, I love the approach and overall presentation. Great job!

woona 2024-04-18 06:21

I really liked the vibe of a library, so many old books and cryptic drawings. Great job with presentation: the game looks and sounds look amazing!

I tried to figure out the solution myself, but had to look up a few hints because I just couldn't get that you can invert runes... Still, it was very enjoyable to figure the game out and thank you for including the solution, too! Good luck with your future projects!

sheepolution 2024-04-18 14:50

Unfortunately I was not able to figure out the solutions, and ended up using the spoilers. I like the idea, but I think everything is just a bit too cryptic to figure out. It also doesn't help that the order of the symbols is important. Creating the symbols also was something that took a while to understand. I do like the idea of combining the knowledge of the different books to figure out the solution, but often I'm just not sure what the book is telling me.

I like the graphics, and the character design is nice. It's funny how we walk around like that, and the poor man either needs to retire or do some more exercising. I think with a bit more handholding in the books, there is definitely potential here. Either way a job well done on this game!

ategon 2024-04-18 23:09

Thanks for submitting your game to the stream! If you wanted to watch it again in the future heres the vod of the stream (with a chapter for your game)

https://youtu.be/Foe4js2jhJ0

And I'm the host for the ludum dare score chasers tournament this Ludum Dare. Wanted to ask if youre fine if I put some gameplay of the game in an intermission video. Last year for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM_eIvjBmIQ

yorsh 2024-04-19 01:07

@ollie-d @woona I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing!

@sheepolution Yes it's lacking a few things, like an introduction task that would be very easy, so the player could figure things one at a time. So it ends up being rough at the start. Hope it was fine nonetheless, thanks for the feedback!

@ismael-rodriguez Yes I agree, I ran low on time at the end and got a bit confused with the level design. Next jam I have to focus on reducing the scope slightly so I can playtest at least a bit. Thanks for the feedback!

@ategon Thanks for playing! Yes no problem. I joined the server during your stream, it looks fun. I have actually been doing something similar with friends a few times.

dishwand 2024-04-21 21:59

this is extremely cool. probably don't have much useful feedback other than i wish the third puzzle was a little different from the third. by far this is the coolest sigil-drawing implementation i've seen this jam. not to mention the adorable graphics and soundtrack. great work!!

digitaliliad 2024-04-21 22:09

I'm really glad I pushed through and beat this! I didn't start to understand until the final spell. The character design is both disturbing and delightful, same for the sound effects. A super impressive compo submission, thanks for sharing <3

yorsh 2024-04-21 22:40

@dishwand Yes, plus the game really lacks a very easy (one word) first quest to introduce the mechanic gently. For some reasons I went with the 2 last quests being nearly the same anyway ahah. I'm glad you liked it, thanks for the feedback!

@digitaliliad It's really tough, so good job again! Thanks for playing!

andriybyelikov 2024-04-23 17:20

Great game! I went in having seen some of @digitaliliad's stream. It is true that the rune phrasing structure is unintuitive, and some more common pattern must be introduced. For example, I tried inputting "fix vase" instead of "vase fix", but it didn't work. It would make the game more bearable if both versions of the same phrase were accepted independently of the order of the runes. The rune drawing part is really fun. The graphics and the music give me that old Animal Crossing vibe. I think if you continued working on this game it would make for a really fun party/co-op game.

yorsh 2024-04-24 00:42

@andriybyelikov I wasn't sure if I should keep the rune order or remove it. I ended up keeping it, which in the end just made things even harder than they are. The idea behind it is that in the "fix" book, you can see the broken object symbol before the fix symbol. Tho, as everyone is a deep state of confusion at this point, its the kind of details that shouldn't matter

I would love to improve it and make it a full-short indie! I'm already working on a fairly ambitious game tho, so that's not happening before a few years ahah. Thanks for the feedback!