The Lamplighter

kr4ft3r 2026-10-20 15:33 ♥ 1

Love its aesthetics and the way day-night transition works. A-holes coming out to blow the lights out was funny once I figured out what is happening. The game design is flawed due to often having to walk from one side to another without any run or instant travel mechanic. The choice to force the player to walk has artistic chill but it doesn't combine well with non-chill gameplay events where I have to get from one edge to another as soon as possible.

I appreciate honesty on AI use, I'm not a fan but I don't think that in this case it provided any unfair advantage or produced an actual slop, though smoothing and correcting already starts to feel somewhat wrongish. Congrats on submitting a game!

wakanake 2026-10-21 20:15 ♥ 0

good idea, fits the jam! also appreciate the mood - silence and snow footsteps. good choice of season, winter works well for such game

stefan-b 2026-10-22 20:04 ♥ 0

i didnt fully understand if i did it right but 2 people stayed, the others preferred the forest. i have 2 good friends now...

remink 2026-10-22 20:08 ♥ 0

The mood is really well made ! I think I'm a bit bad at the game, and the fact that the caracter is slow is a bit frustrating for me haha, but it's still well made !

evil23 2026-10-22 20:10 ♥ 0

The night is too short I think. When I lighted the last light, the night was already over. Hmm are you only supposed to light the lamps where the people are standing around?

venfola 2026-10-23 14:54 ♥ 1

The mood is really nice! The sound of footsteps in the snow could be a bit more muffled, but overall, the visuals and sound design work really well together.

It's not immediately clear that the screen can scroll sideways at first. Maybe the camera movement could start a bit earlier to make this more obvious.

It's also a bit difficult to understand everything that's going on.

Overall, an original entry with a great atmosphere. Nice job!

dracco-0n 2026-10-23 16:40 ♥ 1

love the mood and graphics, I wish those NPCs had more dialogues

helagos 2026-10-23 17:12 ♥ 1

I love your grayscale graphics, espacialy the color swap for the night. Manual street lamps are indeed old tech. Great job !

artemco 2026-10-23 18:36 ♥ 2

This game has an excellent art style. However, I can’t figure out how to stop the light from flickering; the tutorial says to turn the light off—I did that, but it didn’t help. Great game, keep going man

nickogino 2026-10-24 00:54 ♥ 0

@kr4ft3r Thanks for such detailed feedback! I’m glad you enjoyed the aesthetics and the day-night transition. And haha, those lamp-blowing troublemakers certainly make an impression! ;)

nickogino 2026-10-24 00:55 ♥ 0

@wakanake Thank you! Personally, what I love most about my game is the sound design; it’s a shame I didn’t manage to record all the sounds myself

nickogino 2026-10-24 00:56 ♥ 0

@stefan-b You’re clearly in good company :D

nickogino 2026-10-24 00:58 ♥ 0

@remink thanks! You're not bad at this game! It's making it hard for you to get on with your work as a lamplighter, it’s a shame I never managed to get over the frustration it causes.

nickogino 2026-10-24 00:59 ♥ 0

@evil23 Perhaps that’s one of the strategies... Thank you for playing my game!

nickogino 2026-10-24 01:01 ♥ 0

@venfola thank you for the thoughtful feedback! I’m really happy the visuals and sound worked together for you. Your suggestion about softer footsteps is helpful, and the camera point makes a lot of sense: it should be clearer from the start that there’s more of the town off-screen

nickogino 2026-10-24 01:01 ♥ 0

@dracco-0n thank you!

nickogino 2026-10-24 01:03 ♥ 0

@helagos Thank you! I’m especially happy you liked the day-night palette swap, it was the first idea when I was brainstorming :D

nickogino 2026-10-24 01:06 ♥ 0

@artemco oh no... My bad! If you mean the flickering caused by a dirty lamp, switching it off alone isn’t enough. You need to hold F to clean it, then hold E to light it again. The tutorial should make that distinction clearer!

And.. Thank you! I’m really glad you liked the art.

john-shen 2026-10-24 04:57 ♥ 1

Cool concept!

pros: - loved the vibe. The days are so peaceful and the nights kinda chaotic - sound design

cons: - some of the mechanics are unclear, like the 'shelter capacity restriction' you mention in the patch notes. - I'd like a tooltip on the sides of the screen to mark light status for the offscreen lights

other notes: - the first time the note about pressing F popped up, I thought my vision was just bad and it was the same E key that I had been using. Using a different font or different key could be better. - the guy complaining about the light shuts it off very quickly. I just gave up on that light. Not sure if this was intended

daniel123 2026-10-24 05:43 ♥ 1

Even though this game is pretty rough around the edges, I'm still giving it a really high score. The environment design and minimalist art style are absolutely amazing. The atmosphere is just so incredibly well done! I honestly think that even just adding some simple animations to the characters' actions and movements, like cycling through just three frames for each movement, would already be a huge improvement.

3lstmsinatrenchcoat 2026-10-24 06:53 ♥ 1

I really like the premise. It reminds me of the chapter from *The Little Prince* about the lamplighters, and the art and sound design both work really well and contribute to that charming feeling. Unfortunately I wasn't really able to figure out a good strategy to progress very far, particularly because whenever I tried to go from F to E I kept accidentally hitting R and resetting the game. I guess this is totally my fault, but I still got frustrated and gave up trying to progress further after doing this, like, 4 games in a row.

cahard 2026-10-24 09:48 ♥ 1

At first I didn't even notice there's a day timer you have to finish within. The day/night cycle looks cool. I panic a bit at night starting from day two, when all the lamps start blinking chaotically and you can't keep up wiping them and relighting them — because of that I fail to save half the residents. For example, a common situation is when you're at one end of the map and a lamp starts blinking at the other end — you physically can't make it there in time, maybe the character's speed should be increased. Overall, there's room for improvement, but it turned out to be a very cozy, short game atmosphere-wise. Great work!

nickogino 2026-10-25 11:02 ♥ 0

@john-shen Thanks for the detailed feedback! Off-screen lamp indicators are a great suggestion, and the F/E confusion is especially useful to know about.

nickogino 2026-10-25 11:03 ♥ 0

@daniel123 Thank you! I’m glad the art and atmosphere worked for you. Even a few animation frames could really bring the characters to life, agree

nickogino 2026-10-25 11:04 ♥ 0

@3lstmsinatrenchcoat I love the Little Prince connection! And don’t blame yourself for those restarts: it was my mistake, sorry for that. I've just rebuild the game without R-feature!

nickogino 2026-10-25 11:04 ♥ 1

@cahard Thank you! I’m glad the coziness came through. Your example with the distant lamp really highlights the movement-speed and pacing problem.

mohidthedev 2026-10-25 11:25 ♥ 1

I really like the cozy vibe and the simple artstyle. It is sad though that the sprites are AI modified even if only slightly :(. In my opinion, some artefacts and mistakes in the art are more welcome than AI modified art. Good entry though!

wisch 2026-10-25 12:05 ♥ 1

It's a very good fit for the theme, the only nitpick I have is that the doesn't really convey what means what. I had a night where one of the monsters went right in a group of 3 or 4 people which all had these squiggly lines around their head but at the end of the night I had 0 people frightened.

nickogino 2026-10-25 12:39 ♥ 0

@mohidthedev thank you! The reason I needed a little AI assistance to smooth out my linework is that, unfortunately, I have a severe tremor that makes it difficult to keep my art clear and readable...

Honestly, I’m not sure what to do. If people rejecting my art because of that assistance becomes a recurring issue, maybe my way forward is to try embracing my tremor as part of my art style.

I’m really sorry about this.

nickogino 2026-10-25 12:41 ♥ 0

@wisch Yeaaah... I should've made such more clearer why those 3 people didn't scare... But it could ruin the plot twist. I'll think about how to fix it.

Thanks for the feedback!

custodi 2026-10-25 13:02 ♥ 1

Love cozy atmosphere and day-night transitions! Maybe need to play more with mid-colors and b/w art style, looking a little bit poor, i think it can be worked deeper. Movement feels a bit slow at times. Overall it's a pretty good entry.

nickogino 2026-10-25 13:32 ♥ 0

@custodi thanks! Yeah, I'm totally planning to add more mid-colors ant transitions to emphasize and make objects more readable

papaver 2026-10-27 13:47 ♥ 1

I love how the game looks and sounds, but the gameplay was not my jam. It was both slow (walking, lighting lamps) and fast (the monsters walk fast, I was suposed to turn off the lights during the day, but the day was too short). At first, I found it hard to locate which of the figures was the lamplighter. It's cool how the figures are half-lit in the lamplight. :) I played again and got a different ending, but I am still confused what is going on.

nickogino 2026-10-27 13:52 ♥ 0

@papaver thank you for your feedback and especially thanks for playing game twice!

I agree, this game's balance need more polish to feel more fun.