FoonLudum Dare ExplorerLD57 → Depths of Darkness

Depths of Darkness

By StupidHobbit, sayurinyooko and DEDCANNIBAL

View on ldjam.com

CategoryRankScoreCount
Overall7173.1025
Fun6573.0425
Innovation6752.8624
Theme7722.7924
Graphics5223.4725
Humor3593.0022
Mood6033.3025

Comments

hoichael 2025-04-08 10:09

Feels like a time capsule from an age that never was, a dreamt up chimera of early 3D style and late 2D design, and I mean that in the best way possible. Genuinely had a blast with this :D

zedgame 2025-04-08 11:02

It's very trial-and-error-y, not that it's a bad thing, I think it works for this kind of game! Great visuals and atmosphere. Would really appreciate dedicated aiming controls and perhaps a health bar?

willby 2025-04-08 11:04

The visual style of this game is so unique, its quite nice. I the level is also fun to explore and the single shot at a time insta death scenarios you are put in give space for problem solving. Nice game!

sbeif 2025-04-08 12:04

Very interesting art style, very unforgiving so maybe it could use a checkpoint or two

hernandack 2025-04-08 14:58

Man I really the graphic and it's implementation. You gotta create youtube for the behind the scene / devlog with how you intrepet the ideas. Anyway, less HUD means the game rocks.

stupidhobbit 2025-04-08 17:22

@zedgame Thanks for the feedback! The level was intentionally designed without aiming, but I agree that it could be a good feature for a full game with multiple levels. And by the way, we actually implemented a health mechanic, but since we opted for instakills, it wasn't used. Both the enemies and the main character have just one point of health each

martin183 2025-04-08 20:57

Cool game, interesting grapics, need a lot of retries to progress!

whole-garbage-sale 2025-04-08 21:04

In love with this art-style, but it's way too hard honestly. Most of my deaths feel unfair.

athospap 2025-04-08 21:35

Ruin has come to our family

Interesting concept, once you get the hang of it, shooting zombies is very fun. Nice entry

gamesplusjames 2025-04-08 22:21

Very cool idea and I love the whole atmosphere you got going on. I restarted a lot! :D Great job!

floppynub 2025-04-11 15:38

Cool game, I liked the tension of the one-hit kills. I really had to focus and be careful with my movements to not die, and it was satisfying to do so! I think lowering the player movement speed a bit and increasing the light around the player a little bit would help the experience be more accessible, but I did enjoy having to use my ears and wits to shoot enemies in the darkness from time to time.

One big tip I could give is to look into camera damping - right now, the camera is glued really rightly to the character, so as you move left and right the camera jerks around with you. This can be a hit hard on the eyes, and makes it tricky to see sometimes. Camera damping would allow the player to move their character around wildly without the camera also freaking out at the same time.

drsmey 2025-04-11 16:24

Very hard and I got stuck, but it has some cool ideas and great atmosphere.

stupidhobbit 2025-04-11 16:35

@drsmey Hey, thank you for the feedback. What was the place, that got you stuck?

tsaot 2025-04-11 16:47

I think I need to play in a dark room for this one. I could barely see anything. Maybe some brightness controls?

drsmey 2025-04-11 16:48

@stupidhobbit I think i fell in a pit with 6 zombies and after killing them, there didn't seem to be a way out.

stupidhobbit 2025-04-11 16:49

@tsaot Yes, it would be nice. But unfortunately, we didn't have time to implement settings menu

stupidhobbit 2025-04-11 16:52

@DrSmey Oh, I see. Actually, it's a trap, and you were supposed to jump over that pit. But it's cool, that you've managed to kill them. I personally couldn't do it

prunus-padis 2025-04-11 16:59

Running back and forth really hurt my eyes.

Otherways this was really enjoyable. The darkness nicely made the map seem scary with suprise enemies possible killing you. Remind me of old nes games etc with the punishing mechanic and sidescrolling simpleness. I have mixed feeling about the visual clearness of platforms etc. On the other hand it really ups the exploraty getting lost and in the other hand they are just hard to see sometimes.

Since, the way I atleast played, there was a lot of small running back and forth quickly when kiting the enemies and my eyes suffering anytime i did it somewhat lessened the fun of redoing the "solved parts" again, even though it was in my option good lenght.

The style of game is positively distinct with the mix of 3d 2d.

alvaroromeral 2025-04-11 20:27

It was interesting but I think maintaining the character in the centre would be better, also checkpoint would be great to no need to restart the entire game when you die, nevertheless, I like the idea of mansion full zombies (as a classic resident evil fan hehe) and the 2d being 3d also cool idea!

oadt 2025-04-12 09:32

For me the darkness effect was overdone, because the game was impossible to solve before seeing a section in a previous run. And even with light some assets like wall and stairs are hard to differentiate. But it was a good idea to add an sound effects for every zombie to mitigate these issues.

crozzy 2025-04-12 13:26

I had a great time playing this game! The mechanics are smooth, the style is charming, and the sound design adds a lot to the atmosphere. It’s clear that a lot of effort went into making it. I’d gladly recommend it to friends.

pretendcoding 2025-04-12 22:03

Moving from left to right is disorienting, and not being able to shoot up or down made this really hard. Other than that, good game.