Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Containment55.bin
By fionnabhair
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 852 | 3.32 | 22 | |
| Fun | 941 | 3.07 | 22 | |
| Innovation | 404 | 3.55 | 22 | |
| Theme | 999 | 3.07 | 22 | |
| Humor | 1028 | 2.02 | 20 | |
| Mood | 454 | 3.70 | 22 |
cool idea. I could not figure it out on several attempts. i found supremeaten.exe, eerie.exe, and soul.exe, but it still did not work. I like the idea and it kept me itnerested enough to try it a few times because i do like puzzles. Nice idea, good job.
Interesting concept! One problem with creating a terminal based games for a game jam is that your audience is a bunch of developers who expect a terminal to behave a certain way - I felt hamstrung, as a lot of common functionality was missing (reverse search, up arrow, etc...). I also hit a bug after opening rome.txt where ls thought I was in / even though I was actually in /locations.
That being said, I really like the concept of a horror terminal game! I couldn't figure out how to advance after pushing three files to contain.bin, but would love to see more.
@milano23 thanks for letting me know! Turns out a bug "fix" was hiding important files, which wasn't evident in the test environment 😅. Thanks for your comment, I wouldn't have caught it otherwise.
@dxk2294 yeeeep, I was really missing some of those things myself, especially that up arrow key as I was testing. There were commands that I really wanted to add, but ultimately I ran out of time. Also, there was a bug that would prevent you from finishing that I didn't know about until getting these comments, whoops! I've never made a terminal game before, and it ended up being a lot more difficult than I expected. (Day 1 me was so naive.) I want to come back to this project add do those things, hopefully in time to make the LD EXTRA deadline, but we'll see. Thanks for the feedback, though, now I'm feeling EXTRA motivated!
I tried to Tab for autocomplete many times out of muscle memory. Good job on the aesthetic
I attempted to play with Chrome on a Mac. My eyesight is a bit bad and unfortunately the page wouldn't let me zoom in. Unfortunately, I can't read the text.
A full screen option would be awesome or something with higher contrast!
Really cool framework for a horror game and I was very curious right from the start
This game is really cool! You really inspired me. I want to do a game just like this now... Good job!
Very cool! My game dev partner and I were working on something similar for a previous jam, but ran out of time to submit -- so congrats on the submission especially as a solo dev :D As others have mentioned, it'd be great to have more expected terminal behaviour work in game -- for me, specifically tab to auto-complete and honestly just the root directory listed so it's clearer to see where you are and where your last command occurred.
I'm not an audio person, but I believe there's a way to splice an audio clip, swap 'em, then cross-fade so the transition is at least less jarring if not pretty difficult to notice that it isn't just a continuous audio clip. But I really like the sounds you chose, they fit really well into the mood of the whole experience.
The image in the location files also looked super cool in the terminal aesthetic, would love to see more images in the different files. Also had the same issue as the other commenters: I couldn't figure out anything past pushing the three files, but I would love to play any future updates. Great job!
@zliebowitz that is super helpful feedback, thank you!
Really cool idea! An interactive fiction game using linux terminal/commands as UI! While I managed to find the first few (easy to find) codes the rest elude me ... for now MOUXAXA ;-). That's one seriously unique idea of a game! Congrats! Excellent job! Is there a way to run the local version without setting up a local webserver?
Interesting premise -- as a programmer I'm fond of terminals and love the monochrome green esthetic. I agree with what others have said above about a programmer's expectations from a linux terminal. I suspect one way to get around this is to make the terminal less linux-like, which would probably curb some of those expectations.
I also got stuck after pushing the 3 exes I found in /locations and /history (soul/eerie/supremeaten) – I was unable to open other directories and ussr.txt (even sudo and su didn’t help). Did I miss something?
Attaching the lore to real history was very cool and compelling, and made me feel like I was exploring an old computer with evidence of a supernatural creature. I’d love to play a post-jam version of this.
@suvi @jkyd @negator2vc Because of your comments, I went and gave my game another run, and it has taken me literally *days* to figure out what was going wrong and how to fix it, because the game wasn't allowing access to certain files and directories even if the prerequisites were met. The problem was that it wasn't happening every time I ran the game on itch, and it wasn't an issue at all in the Gamemaker test environments. Re-wrote the code that handles file/directory access, and I really, really hope that's the last of the bugs. Thank you again. I'd heart those comments a hundred times if I could.
At the moment, I don't have plans to add local builds. I stick to HTML5 builds because I can't make Windows builds (I work on a Mac), and Mac builds seem to require paying for an Apple developer account, and making games is just a hobby for me.
As an old terminal kiddy I like the idea, beautiful game, I enjoyed it!
As a developer who's built terminal based games before, I must say hats-off to u sir, It's not easy to finish this in a jam setting - So fantatic job. The terminal style mixed with the spooky-pasta theme matched perfectly! I was able to get to the end and summon something I believe...
@merrow Thank you!
@ha-kuro This was my first time building a terminal-based game, and when I was describing my idea to my husband, I made the mistake of speaking the words, "it'll be easy!" out loud. Nope, turns out it's the most challenging project I've ever attempted. Whoops! Glad you liked the game!
Cool game, it took me a little bit to understand but I thought it was a neat concept!
Very cool! I had to go through the files a second time cuz I missed hubris.exe but it was an interesting story and felt very immersive, good job!
I was a little confused by the ending, wasn't sure if I had succeeded or failed XD The hidden elements were fun, took me a few pokes around to figure out what I was missing and where to find them.
Good job, i managed to complete the game. I always wanted to do some terminal game so was curious about it when i saw the portrait. The experience was good, i think some improvements could be: - Sound effects, maybe when pushing codes or opening files. Could add more ambience to it. - More files / commands / actions the user has to make - Improve terminal navigation (remove files extension to make it easier to type, or include tab autocomplete function)
At least some things i think could improve the game.
Great concept. I like the green text on black screen. At start I felt oh no again i have to dabble with Linux. But when I open the first file my perspective changed. How did you manage to show the images like that. Brilliant man. Keeping it for future play as well.
@elorabrynn @just-a-cat thank you!
@kjscott whoops, maybe I buried the twist a bit too deeply after all! I did try to leave hints throughout that you, dear player, might be being played, but I also had to cut out some content because I ran out of time to write it (and film it; the original concept had video files). IMO, the best twist is unexpected the first time, but the second time, you can see how the foundation was laid.
@ilbini that's some really solid feedback. Adding a tab autocomplete function is something others have mentioned, and would have been really useful as a player, but also for me; I kept mistyping those file extensions myself! Behind the scenes, they're useful, because it tells my code if something is a file or a directory, and which function(s) to run. Sound effects were definitely on my to-do list- those old computer sounds were originally going to play when opening/pushing, before I ended up just having them play on a timer (and that code was only added maybe 15 minutes before the deadline). Had to sacrifice stuff to the jam gods, unfortunately.
@human The images were pretty easy, actually! I used GIMP for those. Convert to grayscale, invert the colours (unless it looks weird, I was inconsistent about it) then adjust the brightness, contrast, and levels to eliminate some of the greys and get it closer to a true black-and-white without losing detail. GIMP also has a video degradation filer, which I used to apply the scanlines. Finally, add a layer of green overtop of it all, blend mode set to multiply. I *could* have saved myself some steps by using a shader instead, but ain't got time to code that for just a handful of images.
The final image was the most fun. That's my kitchen. Alfred Hitchcock used chocolate syrup to make fake blood; I used strawberry. The original image is very pink.