FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD56 → Emberlight

Emberlight

By frostbeak, Sutt00 and Aatman Dhangar

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall6513.4446
Fun7773.1246
Innovation6223.2046
Theme5823.6346
Mood2073.9446

Comments

miles-michell 2024-10-07 23:22

I love being a little bug

kaviasko 2024-10-07 23:48

Love the atmosphere!! Nice game!

kattraii 2024-10-08 01:37

I like being a bug in a puddle with a light

emmagsmith 2024-10-08 01:53

Love the ambience, moving around and lighting up the braziers was fun!

nevercade 2024-10-08 03:01

This is vibesss - a little spooky!

coopizcool 2024-10-08 05:52

I loved the ambience.

coopizcool 2024-10-08 05:52

I loved the decor.

merdeboi 2024-10-08 10:01

Great mood, very mysterious symbols. It was unfortunate to go back to the start after fully lighting up 2 braziers. Sounds and mood were top notch. Well done.

little-crow-heart 2024-10-08 11:46

really like the mood with this one!

memz 2024-10-08 16:56

Love the vibe, great job!

jrevel 2024-10-08 17:16

Pretty cool atmosphere, I like a lot the reflection on the water, even though it's a bit too bright compared to the rest of the game, I was wondering at first wether it was a gameplay element or not. I think everything was a little too dark, but I know it's hard to do right when the light is a gameplay mechanic. The game is simple but interesting, I didn't read the description before playing but found out easily what to do. It's a bit ruthless though, having a few lives before having to restart would make the game a bit less frustrating.

xandergoodwin 2024-10-08 17:20

I really enjoyed the dialogue and lighting reflections. Trying to shine lights on the braziers while the water bugs tried to get you was pretty engaging. Good stuff guys :))

skleembof 2024-10-08 17:45

That was really cool experience but there wasn't much to do which made it feel very short. The basic mechanics and the atmosphere are great but there was only one bindstone and one enemy. I was expecting something cool to happen when I lit the stone, but nothing ever did. I swam around the entire pond and found nothing else so I let the enemy kill me.

Obviously 72 hours is not a lot of time to fill a game with content but I think a simple "Mission accomplished" screen would have been good to have so that players aren't left wandering confused after lighting the stone

kirass 2024-10-08 17:45

I really liked this game! It's awesome!

frostbeak 2024-10-08 18:17

@skleembof Thank you for the feedback. We didn't have a lot of time for level design and therefore didn't direct players well enough. There is actually an area to the North-east with more bindstones. We'll be adding a separate file on itch to address the core issues, separate from the jam submission.

meylish 2024-10-08 20:12

atmosphere is good, but it seemed too dark for me, i could barely see anything. Also controls is very weird, at some point i pressed the up button to swim forward, but i started swimming backwards instead...

sutt00 2024-10-08 20:23

@meylish Thanks for the feedback! We opted for tank controls for this game. W moves the character in the direction it's facing. A and D let you rotate your character. This can be a little strange to get used to but we felt it worked better for our game.

juanrod707 2024-10-09 02:36

Amazing atmosphere, really digging the entire vibe of the game and the use of light mechanics. Congrats!

faust-mi 2024-10-09 19:42

Cool atmosphere, mood and vibe! Thank you very much for the opportunity to feel it!!

karamelika22 2024-10-09 21:09

An interesting game, I liked the environment in the game and the mechanics itself, it was fun to play it)

stormburpee 2024-10-10 05:00

The atmosphere in the game is amazing, you guys really did well here with that. keep it up!!

nasturra 2024-10-10 07:54

Wish I had windows so that I could play this game, but visual is so gorgeous!

frostbeak 2024-10-10 14:14

Hi @nasturra if you're on linux we have a build on our itch page, sorry about that!

cam-moore 2024-10-11 21:52

The mood was really well executed. I felt a bit of despair in the the darkness and moonlight. Music set the scene. Good job!

wind1e 2024-10-12 01:36

Honestly the scariest part for me was that the enemy guys come at you butt first! But actually, I really enjoyed the vibes and concept. I'm glad you added the checkpoints, I definitely died a few more times than I should have which would have been fairly frustrating, if not for the checkpoints.

bassilij 2024-10-12 07:18

A very atmospheric and nice game!)

bacalear 2024-10-12 10:04

vibe is cool

sutt00 2024-10-12 10:10

@wind1e Haha ya the butt first thing was unintentional. They turn away from you when they're in the light. Glad you enjoyed it. Checkpoints and fixing the level design were a priority for us but we just barely missed adding it to the LD build.

zoglu 2024-10-12 10:26

A really moody game with a nice emphasis on lightning ! Good job !

captaindreamcast 2024-10-12 15:41

Like others pointed out, the atmosphere in this game is excellent! The shadows of leaves together with the music and the sound effects can really pull you in, I was completely on edge all the way through while playing this. I managed to light all the beacons in the end, but it was tense all the way through, at the end I felt striders could jump out at me from any direction. Very well crafted! The look of everything was beautiful as well, especially the lighting effect on the water, the light reflections looked amazing. Great game, very well done!

cloudya 2024-10-12 20:24

very good!

coleslaughter 2024-10-13 03:18

[Thanks for submitting your game to stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2274205446?t=01h09m50s)

This was a very atmospheric entry! Very ambitious to make a lighting-based game, well done!

icxon 2024-10-13 08:57

I see what you were trying to achieve with this one. Really great work with the level composition, enemies behavior, mystery, ambient effects and music. This game would extremely benefit from some additional sounds for enemy encounters.

Sound design is everything for horrors! I would 'play' with the player with some subtle 'red-eyes' blinking when enemy is engaging, may be some random chirp sounds, water effects in the dark (especially since you have such a glorious reflections), and certainly -- sound effects for different levels of proximity with the enemy. Overall a pretty solid entry. Never assumed I would worry about a water bug so much. :sweat_smile:

Here is my playthrough:

https://youtu.be/-P0rB416ciQ

frostbeak 2024-10-13 13:58

@icxon Thank you for the detailed feedback. The video is especially helpful since we can try and adjust the level accordingly. I will also try and get that game over + game win at the same time condition sorted :sweat_smile:

chusmimax 2024-10-15 17:32

I really liked the atmosphere. I would have loved for latest beacons to have some twist or new mechanics, but it is good as it stands.

daria-toni 2024-10-15 20:09

I found the game very beautiful and atmospheric. This is largely due to the excellent work with the sounds! Excellent ambient soundtrack. I don't agree with others that it is too dark, I think that it should be like this, but I would like that when a light turned on, there was a little more of it and, for example, the nearest bugs would disappear. Minuses - every time I lost, the game started from the very beginning and showed me the entire slow flight of the camera. I understand that this is just a jam game, but watching the same thing every time was a little boring.

frostbeak 2024-10-15 20:21

@daria-toni Thank you for the feedback! We spent a lot of time trying to optimize for webgl which didn't work out, and then the checkpoints were not functional by the submission :sweat: . Thank you for playing despite that issue :)

@chusmimax Thank you for saying so, the plan was to provide players with a wider beam, or higher movespeed each time they lit up a beacon, but we were worried about the game getting too easy and losing that tension of managing the striders. If we had more time we woulda tried stuff out to see what worked.

daria-toni 2024-10-16 09:21

@frostbeak don't worry about it that much, I still like your game a lot :)

kirill228 2024-10-16 15:04

Interesting concept. Complete full game and want more. I think with some more mechanics it will be good game