Don't Run

annie-owl 2026-10-20 15:10 ♥ 2

First of all - the mood of this game is amazing! I was really intrigued all the way through to find out what's going on, and what is that mysterious letter is all about.

Really love all the little details and interaction options you have. The writing is superb. I've got stuck in the reception area for a little bit, because the layout of all the rooms got me a bit confused, but with trial and error I've managed to get to my destination 😅

The ending however feels a bit abrupt, but maybe I just didn't fully get the story 🤔

The music in this game is also great - amplifies the creepy, unnerving atmosphere of the game by a 100%.

I also remembered to record my gameplay this time, but not sure if it's going to be very interesting to watch, since there is no commentary and it took me a whopping 40 minutes to complete the game 😅

local-minimum 2026-10-20 18:00 ♥ 1

@annie-owl Glad you liked the mood, that was probably the part I worked with the most.

About the story and ending: !> I wasn't terribly inspired by the theme so I had to start writing hoping to find a way to really tie things together, but I cannot say I managed and there was no time really to rewrite it to give some explanation as to what really happens in that place. The little bits of explanation is that there are some LD related and theme selection related bits throughout the adventure, and it never got any much deeper than that. 😅 So it was a bit of running out of time and not having a proper arc before setting out. It would have been fun with a final escape sequence in the 3D world but that was never gonna happen with a 72h jam.

Thank you for recording the play-through, but yeah I don't think this type of game benefits as much for recorded play. 😄 And I had no idea it would take that long! 😟

I'll check out your game soon, but I think I need one or two more days away from the computer first!

annie-owl 2026-10-21 10:56 ♥ 1

@local-minimum The fact it took me so long is not a problem really! I had fun all the way through, except a hiccup in the U shaped corridor.

!> The layout of that place confused me a little bit, I thought it looked like this (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jtcFSzvSzQzIQVE077V_omZtKCtHLewS/view?usp=sharing) and only after trying every possible option I realized that there was a separate door in every corner of that corridor 😅 But that's probably a me problem.

frib 2026-10-21 12:16 ♥ 2

I liked the build up and suspense. Navigating the upper floor was a bit tricky at times, but I managed to reach the end. I liked the writing but at the same time I'd like to skip waiting for it to appear, especially when you accidentally go back to a room you visited before. But that's only a minor issue.

!> Halfway through my playthrough I realized S. Man was the snowman, which was pretty fun, so I was waiting for its appearance. It took me a while to find the hot chocolate dispensing machine, door 2 was really complicated to me for some reason so I missed one of the options. But eventually I got myself a hot cup of cocoa and successfully used the typewriter

Music and the sound/vocal effects were very fitting. Pretty neat entry overall and I enjoyed my playthrough!

local-minimum 2026-10-21 13:32 ♥ 1

@annie-owl oh at one point I was thinking, maybe I should have the option to find the map to the upper stairs if you look through the stand in the lobby... I see why you got confused thinking that was the layout and that it be very confusing navigating then.

@frib thanks for playing! As someone who has played through the games so many times I kind of also would have wanted a skip. Not sure why I never added it 🤦 Glad you saw through:

!> S. Man

It is quite interesting how the upper floor has only 6 locations and still can be quite hard to navigate.

trusty 2026-10-22 21:19 ♥ 0

Neat concept, I like the text adventure. As others said it would be nice for a text skip, kept hitting a lot of you cant do that. Would also be nice if there was a volume slider, the voice/sound effects were often drowned out by the music. Had fun playing this, thanks for the game!

klengh 2026-10-22 22:01 ♥ 0

Mysterious! The atmosphere works really well. I think I might have missed a bit of background information, though.

!>I only saw the reception, workers' lobby and typewriter/snowman's room on the upper floor. I'm curious whether there are other endings than the one I got.

rogual 2026-10-23 01:59 ♥ 0

I love the audio. I really enjoy a well-done ambient piece. Sometimes I try it for my own LD games, but I can never quite get the hang of making something that isn't annoying and repetitive but that also falls into the background to let you focus on the game. You nailed it. It's also nice and long, which is great. I didn't notice it looping. The vocal samples on various events were a nice touch, too.

The writing was decent. A bit purple here and there, but I enjoyed it and I could easily picture the locations in my head. Also, "it'd be way too awkward to waltz into this meeting with their own posters as loot under one arm" made me laugh.

You did a great job hooking me in from the start. Sometimes, playing LD games, I feel bad because someone has gone to all this effort to build a world and I just can't get into it. But I didn't have this problem with yours. As soon as I read the letter and stepped into the building I wanted to know how it ended.

When I used the coffee machine and an actual coffee appeared I was like, wait, what? OK, this just got even more interesting, haha.

As an LD oldtimer, I enjoyed the appearance of S. Man. When I got to the typewriter and it said I was ready to hit the L, I thought I was supposed to click on what would be the "L" key, so I was counting the keys from the left, A, S, D, F, ... and then it was just game over. Would have been a neat puzzle to make you type something that way.

Even though the end was a bit abrupt, I was super impressed how you managed to create an atmosphere and a mystery and a sense of place, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. I just wish there were a bit more!

Now, sorry, but I'm gonna nitpick, because you hit a pet peeve of mine. When the text types onto the screen, if a word is going to hit the right margin and wrap, it will start typing at the cursor position near the right margin, and only when enough letters are typed to wrap it, the whole word moves mid-type to the left margin.

Of course, this *is* how things work when you're typing into a word processor because the computer can't know what you're going to type until you type it.

But for a game, where the whole text is known ahead of time, you can start the word over at the left so it doesn't have to move when it hits the margin.

This is much less "flickery" and easier to look at, and is what games with typing text tend to do.

Sorry... it's super minor. I think it's just something I'm sensitive to for whatever reason.

Anyway, great entry. Thanks for making it!

local-minimum 2026-10-23 08:42 ♥ 3

@trusty yeah i dunno why i didn't include a fast-forward feature to the text animation. I guess it comes down to jam-fatigue tbh and the same goes for audio levels. I usually include them but I guess I thought there was so little dialogue this time that I could skip it. Glad you liked the text adventure though.

@klengh You did miss one room, but you got the one and only ending. If I'd had another day, I would have spent it expanding that ending as it was rather abrupt and try to tie the story back together better.

@rogual Thank you for the detailed feedback! You've must hit the character limit more or less there on that comment 😆. I agree that I suffer from a bit of purple prose streak in some of the text. It was a struggle to keep text relative short, evocative enough to give a sense of place and also not just be repeating the same "you open the door" and "you walk there." I'm very happy you liked that particular sentence you quoted! It was a bit of a guilty pleasure writing it - I think irony/humor comes more natural to me and it did break quite a bit from the building of suspense, but I just couldn't help myself.

The scrolling out of the text with shifting of line endings was something that annoyed me and I know how to do it properly. But somehow forgot to put it on my todo. It is a bit more involved than having the complete ready text in the cases where I have an animated cursor at the visible the end of the text, but should be very fixable. I'm not planning to do a post jam version, but I'm thinking of refining the tools so I can reuse them for a future text adventure, so I'll make sure to include that.

Also even though I perhaps didn't want a puzzle there in the end, if I had another day it would be a great addition to let the player type on the machine and whatever they write appear on a copy of the actual letter. Before the final phase begins (perhaps with a 3D escape sequence). I would want the game to still work with controller so probably I'd model an arm/hand and have you direct it to actual keys on the keyboard. Again thank you so much for the very in depth feedback. Wish I could give more than one ❤️ to it!

labicorne 2026-10-23 17:18 ♥ 1

I loved the audio!!

wanabi 2026-10-23 17:27 ♥ 1

That’s great! The music is awesome, and idk why, but it really kept me on edge!

jimbly 2026-10-23 23:09 ♥ 1

Great atmosphere! Like some others here, I got confused by the doors and corners up on floor 6, having them labeled like "go / reception" instead of "door at end of hall" would have cleared things up (I'm still not quite sure how many doors were in that hall 😆). It'd be nice if text you had already ready just instantly appeared, both to speed things up, and as a signal that you'd already been there / seen that response (even if you got to it from another route). I was slightly confused at the ending. Liked S Man and the elephant though! Music and bits of voice lines were nice.

detectivelosos 2026-10-24 14:41 ♥ 1

The game is very moody and suspenceful, especially with those 4th wall breaking moments (breathing, beverage appearing, typewriter in the end). Coincidentally I also felt cold while playing and also had a mug of coffee on my desk 😮 I felt so smart in the beginning for managing to explore and take the letter with me, but on a second playthrough I figured you can't progress without taking it 😆 I played through it twice - first time being very on edge and trying to roleplay a bit even, and the second time trying to explore everything that I might've missed and hoping to find any alternative endings (seems like there are none? And overall on the second playthrough the game seems quite linear with not that much branching). I think the amount of text was just right, it kept the good pace while still managing to convey the atmosphere. Although the speed at which the text prints never felt just right 😄 It felt way too fast for me to read as it prints, but felt way too slow on the reentry into the scene. I think I didn't quite get the meaning behind the story (if there is any, although I see you have spoiler blocks in your replies here, so I'll read them after this), but it didn't hinder my enjoyment. I still felt the tension and the relatable nature of going into a municipal building, and then the final appearance of Mr S. Man was humorously ominous. Given that it runs in a terminal with an emphasis on "don't run" I wonder if it's possible to Ctrl+C out of the process and have something weird happen 🤔 I'll give it a try when I get a chance. Special compliments to the music and to the fact that it changes as you process - it added extra goosebumps to my playthrough.

local-minimum 2026-10-25 09:22 ♥ 1

@jimbly I did think about writing out what the doors lead to on the upper floor just like you suggested, but I also didn't like the removal of mystery that you would get if you were to know where doors were leading before you ever used them. If my data-structure had been better organized, I would have made it so that if you had walked through `door 2`, then it changes from `door at end of hall` to `reception door`. That level of dynamic naming would have been hell in the mess of code I made during the jam, but something I want to have for future text-based adventures.

With regards to the end:

!> I did run out of time and energy and wasn't particularly inspired by the theme. So it's rather weak ending story-wise but it tries to say that you become the protagonist of the text-game. And ideally it wouldn't have been that quick, or even ended right there.

@detectivelosos 5th wall broken!! 😆 Thank you for the very detailed feedback! You are very right in that the game is linear and quite strictly manages what area is open to the player. The branching stuff is simply bonus areas that aren't needed to complete the game but hopefully build the world. There's only one ending and I think the minimal path through there is 20 inputs long.

I totally agree that I should have spent some more time tweaking how the text prints out. Especially repeated texts that are slow. I was annoyed myself with the speed while playing and replaying to test stuff, but somehow it, didn't click in my brain that I should do something about it.

About the ending, I guess you found the answer in the blocks, else you can peek in the one here.

The `Ctrl + C` would have been an obvious thing to add! 🤦 Such a missed opportunity for a good ending!

spilth 2026-10-25 15:13 ♥ 0

To everybody who enjoyed the music, thank you!

You can check out the soundtrack at https://polymonic.com/releases/dont-run/

randomhuman 2026-10-25 16:17 ♥ 1

Very intriguing and spooky! I appreciated the twist on classic text based adventure games of not having to guess all the things you could do, just having the options available in a tree, works very well. I think I understood the ending, and I liked it.

apoly 2026-10-25 16:21 ♥ 1

I find the pacing of the game spot on. It took me about 25 minutes to finish it and the game kept me interested for the time.

I was struggling with navigation at first until I figured out that verbs are presented with all nouns, not just a subset of nouns they can be applied to.

I really loved the music and suspense it builds, while you go through the story.

Here's my play through:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xvUAg28SUg

local-minimum 2026-10-25 17:23 ♥ 0

@randomhuman I encountered the type of options presenting in the first episodes of Stories Untold and figured I wanted to try it out myself, and I agree it works really well for these types of games!

@apoly Thank's for the video! I noticed how you hesitated upon entering the elevator because the option said buttons rather than `6-button`. It should probably have said something like that. And on upper floor, once you'd discovered a location and the edge leading to it, the name of the doors should probably be updated. I should probably write in the description a little info on how the system works to lower the friction in the initial playing of the game...

aweskybear 2026-10-26 20:59 ♥ 2

I loved the music and general mood of this. Congrats on the immersiveness! Polish is top notch.. good job! And ofcourse we all love the elephant : )))

koolruz 2026-10-27 22:05 ♥ 1

snowman.PNG

I miss text adventures, so I had fun with this! I was also quite amused by the sheer number of references to rejected theme submissions over the year 😂

In terms of gameplay, I really appreciated the way that you offered a distinct list of options rather than going for the traditional text parser approach. It kept things much more manageable for a bite-sized jam game, because I never felt like I was forgetting something that I ought to try for, or just plain using an unexpected verb. I might be showing my age with this reference, but there were no "you can't get ye flask" moments here, and I greatly appreciated it :)

In terms of constructive feedback, this is so minor (given that it took ~40 seconds total), but I thought it was a particularly mean prank to send the player *all the way* back to the car to pick up the letter before taking the elevator. This was a good teaching moment (it's the first item that you have to LOOK AROUND to find, and it's the first item you need to pick up), but sending them back to the car before letting them enter the front doors would have felt much less punishing.

As a less-minor piece of feedback, I unfortunately had a *really* hard time with the U-shaped room, to the point where I honestly don't know that I understand how or why I solved it. From the text, my understanding of the room was that it looked like this:

u-shaped-room.png

Because it seemed like there was only one door (and it led to the Snowman room when I tried it), I spent around ~15 minutes wandering the reception area USE-ing and TAKE-ing anything and everything, trying to find something that would warm my hands. I eventually happened to enter the loop from a the other side and LOOKed at the door, so I understand that it goes to different locations depending on which corner you're in. This makes me almost certain that I *must* be thinking about the geometry of the room incorrectly (as I suspect the answer isn't "it's a magic door"), but I have no idea how else to have interpreted it. :( I'm sorry!

I also wanted to mention a *super* minor nitpick with the text display which would make it a lot more enjoyable to read. Currently, it looks like you're adding text to the display character-by-character, which causes text to continually reflow and makes words jump around as they trigger a linebreak. Instead of revealing the text by continuously adding characters to whatever string is being rendered, you can have a much smoother reveal if you start with the *entire* text already in-place, but use rich text controls to render whatever hasn't been revealed yet in either the background color or a fully transparent color (I'm not sure whether or not Godot allows transparent text colors). That way, the text never re-flows as you reveal additional characters, because the whole block of text is already being pre-allocated with whatever line breaks ought to exist.

Overall though, I had a good time, so well done! Hopefully it's obvious, but the wall of text doesn't mean that I didn't like the game, it means that I spent a lot of time with it and wanted to try to share as much feedback as I possibly could 😊

local-minimum 2026-10-28 09:17 ♥ 1

@aweskybear We all love the elephant! 🐘 Thanks for the feedback!

@koolruz Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! ❤️ Much appreciated! I must admit I had to look up the flask trope, being Swedish, as a kid I don't think I ever played any pure English text adventures. Though the Sierra games must have suffered from it too right?

I agree with all your critique.

If it was possible to fast forward the text animations, moving from the elevator and back to get the letter wouldn't have been as bad, but I also think lesson is learned if putting the check before entering the building. It also makes equal story sense to think of it there as in the elevator.

Yeah I should have listened to early play-testing and reworked the layout on the upper floor. I wanted a very small maze, and I wanted it to loop. But given that the texts need to be relatively short, I totally failed to convey enough information about how the layout was in my mind.

map-6th-floor.png

It's all my fault and lesson hopefully learned. And I could have kept my design principles for the upper floor with just a small tweak to the layout having the door 2 go directly into the lounge and it having two doors (hall and reception).

I'm going to fix that text reveal animation since I'm considering trying to write a couple more text adventures in future jams. But since I also animate the actual content of the displayed text at times with a cursor, it isn't fully as simple as having the full text there from the beginning. Still very doable.