Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD60 → Across The Meridian
By frib
| Percentile | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | LD60 | Ever | |
| Overall | 19 | |||||
| Fun | 18 | |||||
| Innovation | 19 | |||||
| Theme | 19 | |||||
| Graphics | 18 | |||||
| Audio | 17 | |||||
| Humor | 15 | |||||
| Mood | 19 | |||||
never heard of a merkhet before, telling time by the stars with it is a cool thing to learn from a game. the first-person scene was very dark on my screen and i didnt know where to go first, a brighter start or one prompt would get people to the star reading faster
That was well.. interesting. I enjoyed it and saw it out until the end. I do think the game needs more engagement quicker as I think people might be turned of before the game gets into 'it'. Making it easier to use the merkhet would help with that. Other than that it was a great way to spend 10 minutes, and the mood was spot on. Good stuff 🎱
Cool! I had a hard time grasping what I was supposed to do even with the instructions, but I think I understood in the end 😄 Nice theme usage!
@oddballdave it's tricky to find a good balance with time. If someone takes a few minutes to read the instructions and task list in-game, then starting the story any faster would drop them into it while it's already halfway done. But if someone quits after a minute because they want to speedrun reviews, then I can't fix that either :D
I hoped that announcing that a playthrough lasts 10 minutes and adding some small subtle weird things in first few minutes would help to keep people engaged while they try to figure out how to use the merkhet. But it's true that there's not much to do right now, so someone that figures it out quickly might miss out on the story.
Anyway, glad to see you made it to the end! :D
idk, my cord is covering star of the north, not much is happening... Am i supposed to put a thing in the tube when stuff passes the cord, but the stars are moving, so will lose position of the coord if I look away to put a thing in the tube. I think you need a cheat explanation for dumb ppl like myself.
@nnnnneeeedddd you're on the right track! Stars move over time and you have to notify the scribes below when time has advanced enough. Think of it like ringing a church bell hourly, except you have no clock so you use the stars as your clock. Just keep playing, even if you mess up :D
@frib I was just saying on another game page. Maybe I'm the perfect idiot test, idk if it's because the theme contains the word 'tech', but games seem quite complicated this time around...
Cool concept, and a merkhet is definitely old tech! A couple of minutes in, there was a sound effect (or part of the music?) that made me realize this game might be going in a different direction than just trying out an ancient tool. I really enjoyed the ending!
I also watched the inspiration video, which I found really intriguing. The idea of playing as an astronomer in ancient Egypt, going about your tasks and making observations while events unfold around you, is great and could easily carry a much bigger game.
Woah, that was trippy. Does following the instructions have any effect on the game? I assume it's just for flavor but I don't know enough about constellations to manage doing it correctly (even though I tried to look up some stuff). Still, nice and moody experimental game.
@liquid yeah it's a sound effect in the music that triggers after roughly 2 minutes, glad you liked the ending! Regarding that video, I didn't really have much inspiration for this theme and then I figured I'd just create something based on that :D
@silkworm-sweatshop it's purely flavor, giving you the illusion that you're doing important work :D I couldn't really tie the gameplay mechanic into the story sequence, since the stars just keep turning, and I didn't want to add a win or lose condition since you can't stop the inevitable and I didn't want the player to not focus on the stars. There were some other flavorful things I wanted to add but I didn't have time for that lol. Thanks for playing!
Learning to tell time at night with a merkhet is a really cool and unusual idea, and it fits the old tech theme nicely. A brighter start or one clear first prompt could get people to the stars faster. Great concept!
Such a cool idea, fits the theme!! And nice atmosphere in the game :)
I liked the idea, some better feedback to how close/accurate I was timewise would have been nice.
Hi, atmosphere was very thick. It was weird but pleasant!
Nearly bounced off this game at the beginning. I was like, damn I don't really recall the names of the stars, I gotta get some sort of a helper page to aid me with that. Then I noticed that ok, I only need the north star, and then to pay attention to marked/larger stars.
So I did that, waited to use each token at a proper time, and just took in the atmosphere. It's night time here irl right now, so I got pretty immersed.
!> When the line started moving off-center, I assumed that it's for some added challenge, due to wind picking up or something. Well, it wasn't the wind, and since I was drawn in - it was a very effective, foreboding moment.
So in the end, I found the game to be quite unique, and likely experienced it in the best possible conditions.
@khananaphone2 that's the neat part, it's all eyeballing. Apparently they split the night into 10 parts, regardless of the actual duration of the night (summer/winter diff), and they used whatever stars made sense. So if you say it's time to drop a marker, then that's the correct time to drop the marker :D the stars aren't perfect. They may even be erratic, if you haven't noticed.
@hexstart that does sound like the best way to play this game :D I'm glad that you didn't bounce lol
Love the music and vibe. I am really glad the itch had a "WTF did I just play" section as well. :D
My first thought was, good use of the papyrus font! I liked the stay in the game even though I was quite confused throughout it all. The lighting and visual effects did a whole lot for the mood. I don't want to give away too much here so I'll leave it at that.
Play-through with more feedback: https://youtu.be/8TPhfijf404
@local-minimum thanks for the video! Your feedback at the end has some good points. My intention was to let the story play out regardless of what you do, since you have absolutely no influence on a cosmic entity of that scale. But because of that, there's no in-game feedback that tells you if you're doing it the right way, which is something almost all games have. I didn't realize that the lack of this feedback could distract you from the experience, while my intention was to surprise players while they're figuring things out. If I ever create something like this again, I'll keep that in mind :D
Very spooky, I did NOT see that coming! It started messing with me just as I was getting the hang of how to use the merkhet too, so my unease felt very authentic. That said, by the time the plumb is pointing straight up I started to wonder why my feet remained planted on the ground...
Your game taught me something new as well, so thanks!
Not that it matters now, but I wish I knew how well I was letting the scribes know the passage of time... I actually refreshed shortly after the start of my first playthrough because it seems like the first few events all occurred before I figured out how to pick up the merkhet. Second playthrough started better, but, well, ended as you'd expect. Timing on when things changed was good, I was just trying to figure out where Draco's first bend was... Audio was great!
Also, just a game learning how to use a merkhet would have totally sold me 😆.
I played through the game twice, as I didn't get the idea after the first play through, that I'm just a mortal.
Merketh is such a simple and nice instrument and the ending is both confusing at first (hence I played the second time) and super cool.
Audio is very atmospheric, as well as the whole experience.
Here's my play through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fiyZO5y-EA
@henk so there's this unexplainable celestial thing eating all the stars in the sky, and you're worried about why your feet remain on the ground? :D but yeah, good point. Maybe the magnetic pull is stronger than the gravitational pull? Yeah, that's it! And the metal bit at the end of the merkhet's plumbline is definitely not lead, because lead is not magnetic, and the word plumbline is made up and not related to lead!
@jimbly when I was trying to figure out how to gamify measuring the stars, I learned that they roughly divided the night into 10 parts based on whatever stars were available (and they may not even be based on the north star). So back then they weren't very precise either, and I'm sure the scribes were happy with your contributions even if they didn't let you know personally :D and yeah, the game starts immediately but I didn't really consider waiting until the player interacts with the merkhet for the first time, that would probably give a little more time to read everything before the fun stuff happens.
@apoly Thanks for the video! It was fun seeing you realize that something weird was going on. And you're right, there's no different ending and it will happen regardless of what you do. Draco is the snake-like constellation partially inbetween ursa major and ursa minor, its tail ends between them. It's not as noticeable in-game as the other two but you can use the in-game poster as a reference, where it's also drawn but with less emphasis. And I think you were right about spotting vega too :D