Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Caladrius
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Skypiercer | jam | 593 | 3.54 | 3.18 | 2.82 | 2.83 | 3.88 | 3.40 | 3.61 | 3.54 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | DecaDare | jam | 125 | 4.00 | 4.09 | 3.47 | 4.03 | 4.05 | 3.95 | 4.22 | 3.86 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Stone Sabbath | jam | 365 | 3.77 | 3.43 | 3.25 | 3.51 | 4.08 | 4.31 | 2.67 | 4.09 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | MIFFED | jam | 222 | 3.93 | 4.05 | 3.30 | 3.34 | 3.88 | 3.81 | 4.55 | 4.05 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Burst Vein | jam | 489 | 3.78 | 3.44 | 3.26 | 4.01 | 3.46 | 3.95 | 2.76 | 4.08 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Last Train Home | jam | 274 | 3.91 | 3.82 | 3.78 | 3.67 | 3.78 | 3.93 | 4.44 | 4.11 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Bubbles Saves Grandma | jam | 865 | 3.63 | 3.60 | 3.46 | 3.86 | 3.70 | 3.67 | 4.34 |
Took me a while to work out what was actually happening, could use some additional onboarding
However, once I got the hang of it, I was immediately hooked and didn't stop playing until I had the 20/20. Really fun game
Really impressive for such a short amount of time, feels pretty fully featured and looks great
Really liked the art, unfortunately not much to it however. Would be great to see where things could be taken with such an art style, very promising
Very interesting concept, can really see and respect the ambition in the idea, however I definitely agree that this needed a tutorial or some more reading material in the game description. Took me a little while to get to grips with what I was doing, but I see a whole lot of potential in this idea with a little bit more onboarding and signposting
Very zen game. Reminded me a lot of the simplicity of all the .io games out there. The music flowed nicely with the gameplay, and I found the whole experience overall very satisfying. I've gotta say, I really liked the stat min/maxing element as well
Really impressed by how smooth this all feels. Would love to see this taken out of the parody and used for a standalone RPG, especially with the "Keep the damage dealer alive" mechanic
One downside is the music doesn't seem to work, but that could be a problem on my end
Deceptively addictive. Got really stuck in and played for way longer than I expected to. Props!
I REALLY liked this. Reverse Hitman with a time travel element, really cool way of doing a puzzle game. I found it extremely satisfying to work out things, and little moments like seeing what I assume is a shooter in the distance and closing curtains in advance felt like I was able to use clues given to me for problem solving.
I'd say the only exception to this was the shooter in the toilets, which made me feel like there was no hint to it happening, but the speed increase mechanic meant I never felt overly punished for missing something.
Allowing the player to do what they want was a fantastic touch as well, as I really wanted to see what would happen if I just went around shooting people, and it was as silly as I expected.
You guys are onto something here and should definitely consider taking this forward into a multi-level full experience!
Easily my favourite game of the last Ludum Dare, still love it after all this time. Great job guys!
The sound effects terrified my pet bird and now she won't stop screaming and pooping
10/10
Inventive game, didn't quite know where to go or what to do, but it was quite peaceful going through a world with such wonderful artwork and music, even if chased by barbarians. Would love to see this expanded upon
Super stylish and really well signposted. Went in without reading any of the tutorial stuff, and I managed to catch on to what I was doing really quickly. Feels like it went on a bit too long, but the changing music and increasing visual effects helped keep me engaged
Couldn't get to grips with the controls, but the sound effects sold me on the whole thing
Brilliant game, the escalation factor had me laughing throughout, and it was genuinely challenging. Made it to about 10 minutes and would play again
The UI is quite intimidating at first, and it's quite a slow burner, but I think you stuck to the theme really well here, and I quite enjoyed the concept of the animal rockets.
I think it could do with a bit of a rebalance, as it felt like my oxygen was never replenishing, and I'd have to stock up every single rocket with about 3 oxygen
Good job overall!
Genuinely love this! Me and my flatmate were laughing throughout
Enjoyed the concept. Traditionally you'd expect the light to repel enemies or drain your meter while on, so this was a nice subversion of that
I had some troubles with the enemies still chasing after me when the light was off, but when it was working it was an interesting experience
@demkimos It was happening to me on the second group of enemies, and if I had to guess, I think it has something to do with rapidly turning my light on and off as I'd done that a little bit on the way there each time it happened
Hope that helps!
Hey @amkingtrp, thanks for the feedback! Once you pass grandma, you need to climb into the sink to blast open the door to downstairs
I've received this piece of feedback a lot, and I definitely could have signposted it better!
Blown away by the presentation here, beautiful artstyle, engrossing story, and an incredible atmosphere. The moment it clicked with me exactly how this fit into the theme, I was immediately ready to give it a 5/5 there. If you've put out any full-length games like this I would absolutely love to see them!
Immediately thought of Ultima when I saw the art, super happy to see that was actually your inspiration!
I really like how open-ended the solutions to the puzzles were. It really felt like if I had an idea of how I could get it to work, it would work 9 times out of 10. Really inventive game, would love to see it taken further with some graphical polish and more levels!
Really clean and a nice mindbender, huge Antichamber vibes! The lighting effect looked really cool, and I think some music would really have improved the overall mood, but I really enjoyed what I played already. It might be also worth considering what kind of cool things you could do with sound on top of the existing mechanics to play with the player's mind even more, but that's definitely something to only think about if you plan to take this forward. Great game, really enjoyed it!
Wanted to see what @kasperhangard worked on after how much I loved "Time Agent: Protect the VIP" and wasn't disappointed! Fantastic visuals, haunting atmosphere, and the non-euclidian level design was INSANELY ambitious for a game jam project. This is a project I'd absolutely adore to see cleaned up and polished, would be something I'd regularly come back to.
The rotating level is a pretty great idea - when I realised what was happening I was pretty impressed with it - however as I played for longer it mainly felt like it was just restricting which door I could go into and I didn't notice any major differences between door destinations with the only exception being when I needed to go to the shop. Overall it's a great foundational idea and I'd love to see something like this expanded upon outside of the bounds of a game jam, definitely had fun playing this.
The pixel art was charming and had a nice consistent style across the board and I enjoyed the music, though I feel the loop may have been a bit too short as it did start to get a bit old after a few minutes of playing.
Amazing job guys, you did great!
@kingdwarf I'd love to see a Roguelite item system that can also tie in with the shop, and perhaps other rooms on the inside or outside (Secret boss rooms?) that move erratically so you need to time entering them. Combine this with some form of risk/reward gameplay (Maybe a combo/chaining system) that gives you a reason to move outside a room quickly so waiting around isn't the optimal way to play, and I think that would be a pretty solid set of additions to your base gameplay loop.
Again, great job guys!
A tried and tested idea made your own with a cute aesthetic and heaps of polish. The level transitions were absolutely fantastic, and the whole flow of the gameplay was great
If I had any feedback, it'd be that it feels almost backwards putting the instructions in the top corner and the time controls in the bottom. Swap those around, and I think it'd be golden! Also, I think changing an instruction should reset the time setting, as on my first play it took me a while to work out I had to pause and press play again to get it to go.
Phenomenal job guys, really impressive for a team of 2!
@valkija Definitely wish I had an extra half a day or so to tweak those physics a bit. Transitioning from a ragdoll back into an animation is way harder than I expected! That mismatched shoe idea was on Polite Stories, amazing call by her
@samshine @boaz @jagsyfox Thank you everybody!
A blind game is an extremely unique idea, I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I think the only real issue I can see is that I'm not sure if it entirely lends itself well to a platformer, a genre known for its precision, but I still enjoyed myself thoroughly! Very cool idea!
The whole aesthetic and feel of the game felt like a HUGE throwback to early Shockwave games, and damn did that hit my nostalgia right at the core!
From the moment I saw "Stuck in a loop" on the list of potential themes, I was hoping with all my heart to see something like this. The concept of retaining limited things between time loops is absolutely fantastic and I applaud you for your efforts here.
The art style and atmosphere really ties everything together, and I think you have a really good idea to take forward here. I'd love to see this played out in stages, carrying things over between cycles to solve puzzles with more complexity than memorisation in the future, perhaps even holding one item (like the key) between loops.
Phenomenal job, really hope you guys go on to make this into a full game.
Always looking out for another goblin-themed game - let me know when you get the download link sorted!
Always charming to see a family project, and I'm always a sucker for other games also made with goblins. Good job!
Wow. Oh my god, wow. I can't remember the last time a game jam project of all things managed to evoke a significant emotional response in me, I'm genuinely blown away. In the first few minutes I found myself thinking "The distance between the narrative is far too long", only to then realise EXACTLY what you were doing. Using gameplay mechanics to train the player for the final narrative element was an absolutely PHENOMENAL idea and I'm so so happy I found this. The final stretch of the game was a chilling realisation for me, and it recontextualised the entire project.
This may actually be the greatest Ludum Dare project I have ever experience, and if it doesn't get top marks for mood then I'll be extremely shocked. Amazing job, consider me to be giving you the text equivalent of a standing ovation right now!
This game made me feel like I'm really forklift certified!
Fun mechanics - not sure if you intended it or not, but I had a great time working out strafe jump tech to move as quick as I could through the levels!
I desperately wanted to make a grappling hook game this Ludum Dare and didn't have the creativity necessary to come up with one for this theme, but by god you did what I couldn't do. Incredible. Had a great little time with this but unfortunately I couldn't finish it because even at the lowest DPI the camera just swung around way too fast for me. Get some mouse sensitivity options in there and this would be a whole lot of fun, great job!
Got round to playing it again after your controls update and wow, what a difference! Managed to finish this time and I enjoyed it a lot. Really cool mechanics you've got there, found myself getting inventive with them to cross tricky platforms, and had a whole lot of fun playing around with the unrestricted grapple in the final room. Props!
Punched a dude so hard he turned into a liquid. 10/10
This is pretty great. Really like the style of it, music and visuals both mesh together well, particularly the art style which I'm genuinely a huge fan of. Thought I broke the game when I picked up coins and it ticked down endlessly before realising I was at the end which was disappointing because I was actually really enjoying myself! I think this could work amazingly as a fully fleshed out roguelite with procedural generation and a whole lot more content.
Screenshot 2021-04-28 163232.png
Had a great time - like a clicker game that requires proper engagement to keep up with your fuel supply and keeping an eye on your turrets! Absolutely love the idea of having to be really paying attention while the numbers rocketed up. Could stand to be a bit harder, but your core gameplay loop was fantastic. Loved the Warcraft 3 style voice acting as well!
Glad you sorted your WebGL woes!
Charming art style, engrossing atmosphere, and I really liked your approach at "top-down soulslike" mechanics with the stamina and dodging. You have a fantastic start to something here and the potential to go much further with it.
My only real gripe with what you have here at the moment is that the stamina recharges far too slow which ends up leaving enemies feeling quite damage-spongey. I think the sun shards seem to be recovering a small amount of stamina, but it could be good to have them restore quite a lot more alongside changing the base recovery rate.
Great job!
A Ludum Dare project about a mine filled with anti-union propaganda? SAME
Really enjoy the idea of going through and piecing things together, atmosphere was fantastic, and I feel the player moves at JUST the right speed to keep it atmospheric without being slow. Solid job
@dylan-morrow Glad you enjoyed it! Apologies for the jumpscare audio being a little too loud, may go back and turn it down!
@id-sketch Thank you! I'd estimate around 70% of my work was getting the atmosphere, lighting, and sound triggers as perfect as possible, so I'm really happy to hear that
@goggleskitty So happy you picked up on my little trick there - I figured the mechanic would be a little bit too obscure otherwise. I'm also hearing back from a few others that they couldn't find the extra password, so I might end up going back and making that a little bit more signposted
Thanks so much!
@ditam Is that the point where your lantern shatters? What's happening there is there's a red light at the end giving off a very small amount of red light (Which would scatter around the normal map, thus the "noise" you're seeing) and you're supposed to continue forward, providing everything is working as expected. Interesting that your performance was bad until you hit the elevator, that means something in the top must be causing some issues. Was this in the WebGL build or Windows? Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
@ilyas-aqil I've been having some trouble with torches placed in close proximity to eachother so I'm unfortunately not surprised that's been causing some issues for people. I'm really glad you enjoyed the game, and I'm so happy you picked up on the aspect of the goblin's size - Flek's out of her depth, so to speak!
@oc1d I recommend downloading the Windows build, the WebGL version can be really weird with mouse capturing depending on browser!
Sorry @miej, completely unable to replicate the non-responsive button issue and this is the first I've heard of it from anybody - do you have any other information you can give me? A video recording would be super handy as well. Thanks!
Boomer shooter kino, cracked up at the death explosions. You should definitely flesh this out into a full game, I love it! Movement mechanics could use some work, but I love the aesthetics
I really love the inventive mechanism you came up with for selecting single-player or co-op, caught me off guard. I am AWFUL at this game, but I enjoyed it nonetheless!
Had a lot of fun with the puzzle element, but wasn't super keen on the part that relied entirely on memory to avoid spikes. Charming game, and a sombre ending. Great job for 48 hours!
Very novel concept and a whole lot of fun! One thing that I would say is that I felt like there weren't too many strategies to change up and use between levels as the only thing to change seemed to be height. Maybe randomised boxes with different weights could be a way things to keep more dynamic and tense if you took this game further, but I had a great time!
Had a great time with this. The exponential feeling of things getting rapidly more out of control while also making money quicker was fantastic! One suggestion in future would be to have more descriptive UI, as I was unsure which towers did what at first but I eventually worked it out.
Great job!
I sincerely adore everything about the art and character design - Absolute props to your artists! Always a pleasure to play a goblin game during LD
This was such a beautifully authentic love letter to "LSD Dream Emulator" that I'm simply blown away. One of my favourite experiences of all time represented in a Ludum Dare, absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for this <3
@colbymakesgames This happened to my buddy Erik
@jakobthequizguy We really wanted to get a hit indicator in but ran out of time, though I'm wondering if a small QOL feature is acceptable to add in after the fact alongside bugfixes?
@100th-coin The cutscenes were incredibly fun to make! I've been looking for an excuse to make an FMV since I started doing the Ludum Dare and I'm so happy a chance finally came up
@chris1919 There is an end! The keycards eventually unlock the final blue door at the start which takes you to a final boss fight. Glad you enjoyed it!
Got hooked on it. Became an expert. Very satisfying game when you work out the trick to it!
TheTrick.png
The game crashed when I visited Australia and I think that fit the tone PERFECTLY. Didn't even question it!
Really loved watching your post-mortem. The idea of delaying the inevitable being offsetting something as it becomes stronger was something I'd really not even considered during ideation, super inventive implementation. Funny story, loved how everything controlled as well. Only disappointment was that the "End" screen wasn't an explosion sandbox cos that pop sound is SUPER satisfying
Thank you @juulh! We're aware of some key bugs that flagged up during post-jam QA today, and we intend to have a patch for them tomorrow evening, thank you so much for your feedback!
Hey @juulh! We just completed our first major bugfix pass. Lots of things were broken or just completely not hooked up properly, and it should all be there and cleaned up now! Some minor remaining bugs, but nothing that so totally ruins the game like there was before
Thank you for the feedback @chris-pugliese. There's an entire second half of the game past the church, down onto a beach, and a boss fight at the end. I suppose the path down behind the church just plain isn't signposted well enough and we'll need to work on that
@linnet5 Our lead musician is uploading the soundtrack to YouTube as we speak!
Thanks so much for the detailed feedback @juulh, this is incredibly useful and I've forwarded this over to my team - can't tell you how much I appreciate this!
Thank you everybody for your incredible feedback! We dropped it all on a Trello where we could to ensure we'd cover all ground, and we've just published an update with bugfixes, balance adjustments, and a slight change to the town layout so people end up far less lost. There's likely some more annoying bugs we're not aware of, but I think the game is in the best possible place it could be right now. Thank you once again for taking the time to let us know where the pain points were!
This has been my favourite entry into this current jam so far, so I feel I owe it to you to give some detailed feedback from a a place of love: - Adored the soundtrack, wouldn't change a thing about it. Nothing better than comfy music during space exploration - The atmosphere was phenomenal, caught myself flying around for way longer than I thought I would just because it was so lovely to do so - Controls were actually pretty intuitive once I got the hang of them. I feel that "Jetpack" may have been a bit unclear in the instructions as it took me a while to realise how it was impacting my movement. Felt great to fly around once I had that down. Maybe an auto-reorient button would've been awesome as I did find myself holding it down for the most part - Your low poly planets looked great, but I think this really caused a noticeable mismatch in the skybox style. I reckon if you hand-drew a cartoony space skybox and fixed the UVs on the model it'd look fantastic - I think the logs were fairly contrived, I feel I was reading books but giant books placed along planets. Something a bit more techy to match the tone and atmosphere would probably have fit better here. The writing was great though, it's a shame there's no score for writing in Ludum Dare because I would've absolutely handed you a 5 for that - I really had no idea what I was trying to do, but I'm assuming there's a log I missed somewhere that provided a username and password for the log-in screen? If there's more to the game, I'm truly sorry I didn't get to see it. Let me know if I was missing something and I'll definitely go back and check; though I didn't account my own shortcomings into the score I gave you, so don't worry about that
This is an incredibly ambitious project for two people, and I think you really nailed the core of what you were trying to do. Props to you!
My pet parrot absolutely loved the music, it set her off singing and dancing like you wouldn't believe so big points for that
Incredible gameplay loop. As soon as I realised exactly how things were working, I was hooked
Both tense AND relaxing, found myself being very quickly overwhelmed! Cute idea adding in local multiplayer, appreciated seeing that. Maximum points for mood, you got the atmosphere down perfectly
This is an unbelievably inventive combat system. Would be incredible to see this taken forward into a full JRPG style game. Really enjoyed experimenting with all the positional values, and combined with a character progression system this could really go places
If video games are supposed to be about escapism, how come you represented the remote work experience so perfectly? Cracked up at the underwear + shirt and tie combo. Spot on. Top points for comedy
Really ambitious to see such mechanics put into a 48 hour project, huge fan of wallrunning and sliding games. Though with that being said, after jumping from a few hundred hours of Titanfall 2 directly into this I did feel a bit like I was starting to go insane with the mechanics not being *quite* there, but that's absolutely nothing I'd dock points for in a Ludum Dare. Amazing work!
Loved the atmosphere of this game, charmed the hell out of me. Having to help your kid with homework was a REALLY cute touch, and while it took me a while to figure out how to actually play (ended up checking out the gif on this page, thanks for putting that there!), I ended up getting really into the flow
This was an absolutely outstanding game. Played all the way til I maxed everything out and REALLY got into the flow state of it. Would love to see a fleshed out full version of this with lots of different way to build your character, kinda plays like Vampire Survivors with with a real original hook that kept me going
Took me a while to truly understand the game, and mouse movement for sure made it a lot more difficult. Very interesting mechanic though, made navigation very tense as I rushed to find the nearest shuffled number in time!
Incredibly ambitious for a one (and a half?) person team. Got really swept up in the atmosphere and ended up just wondering around for a long time. Very Daggerfall kind of vibes. Hope you end up taking this engine somewhere great!
Truly a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed reading all the fun little item descriptions you wrote, and you managed to keep the minigame just involved enough to engage me without spoiling the peaceful and sombre atmosphere you created. Amazing work considering you didn't have the full three days, one of my favourite games of this jam
Love to see a mazing TD - quite rare to see these days! Think the theme made this one a harder sell since I was pining for a fast-forward button the whole time!
@100th-coin Thanks so much for the feedback, it was great seeing somebody actually play it on video, had a great time watching it! You're actually the second person to have trouble with the bard minigame so I think we'll publish a change to the instructions when we put out the important bugfixes. It's basically supposed to be simon says (or more accurately Clefairy Says), so you watch them dance before repeating the actions, but I think the "out-dance" wording makes that unclear.
Thank you again! Glad you enjoyed it!
@ch33sybacon Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
@clockmaker Thanks very much for the feedback there. There is a chance you're a statistical anomaly and you just happened to generate those two games constantly, but I'll be sure to investigate what's happening there. The system at the moment picks a random game from the full set, but ensures it'll never play the same game twice. I may have to think about setting a "queue" of sorts where it won't play the same game for another 3 or so ticks
@house-trap-jay thanks so much, that genuinely means a lot to hear considering your game is my favourite of this jam as well!
@peachtreeoath Surprised to see people having trouble with the grandma one since it actually gives more progression feedback than The Beast or the seagull haha; the idea is to give her CPR, so you just press space as soon as you land. The heartbeat monitor shows you how much closer to life she is!
Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback everybody, our team is finding it extremely heartwarming and we truly feel like this is our best jam project yet
Always a pleasure to see some tricks never go out of style; the old right click trick that got me through countless Flash mazes back in the day works great here too! Great to see one of these in 2022, great entry
This was great. I'm a huge fan of games where the only resource you really need for a playthrough is information and I was really pleased to see that absolutely nothing was retained between the loops. Very clever using time as a narrative device rather than explicitly real life 10 seconds as well, that never really occurred to me during ideation and I appreciate that you took that route - the game was for sure more fun for it!
@legolula Outer Wilds is EXACTLY what I thought of while I was playing it, so you hit the nail on the head. Great job all around!
God this is so fucking cool; In love with the aesthetics, the music, the sound design, everything! Absolutely chomping at the bit to play a full game with this aesthetic approach. You really outdid yourselves for sure, props
Fantastic game, hooked me all the way through til I bought all the upgrades. If it had stuff like randomised upgrades and roguelite progression, this could be a serious contender for a full release if you wanted to take it in that direction.
Got an immediate genuine laugh out of me. Opening the game felt like a David Firth bit ala "Washing Machine Emulator". Actually controlled really nicely too, great enry!
@qaolin Not nearly as long as I hoped for them to be!
Hey @spider-the-second! There's a music toggle in main menu options, apologies there's no way to lower it once you're in-game. Glad you enjoyed it!
@flancon It should be re-capturing your mouse every time you click, I'll investigate that, thanks for letting us know. In the meantime, the native Windows version should be just fine if you're struggling to finish the WebGL!
We've removed the WebGL version until further notice. It's been a problem in the past with some of our other Ludum Dare projects where due to browser security standards it's tough to capture the mouse, so until we figure out a better approach to mouse capture we'll keep it to Windows only
Thanks for playing @o-sim! There's actually a little hint in the dialogue about the order of objects, but I think I might have gone a bit too obscure with it
Really appreciate you engaging from a place of good faith and offering such valuable and immediately actionable feedback @geronimo, that's the kind of thing that really helps make the Ludum Dare feel like such a strong community and over time can progress the medium as a whole! Making a purely narrative piece of satirical interactive fiction in such a broad community event like this is always a risk, so pieces of feedback like yours make it all worth it regardless of the score we end up with from those with a less open mind towards art that strays from the path of second-to-second mechanical complexity. God bless and good luck with your own entry!
@ayxs Thanks so much for the feedback! The world is something that we mad overscoped on; there was supposed to be a whole lot more content and characters on each floor and in trying to fill that space in any way towards the final stretch some scaling issues slipped through the cracks. Really appreciate your kind words on the narrative as well!
As for the donation thing, I fully empathise with it as a nitpick and that's something we've definitely grappled with as a sizeable dev collective every jam. We landed on just leaving the default Itch settings on as a point of being hands-off with it, especially since we have a decent non-Ludum Dare following on the platform playing our games. More of an "it's available if you like what we're doing as a dev collective" thing than a "please donate". Just a means of supporting a group making games in and out of jams with no official financial channels.
I think the better question is, why don't YOU have tips open for me to pay you for the three hours I spent on Blockies?
@fizzbark Thanks very much for the detailed feedback! You are genuinely correct that we flubbed leaning in harder on that aspect of the AAA stuff. The core of the joke WAS not trusting the player to do simple things - we had some grander ideas in the early planning stages to really emphasise that (I'd intended floor 3 to have a quest marker every few steps) but a lot of that didn't pan out due to time constraints (and some day 3 issues). Left us with a quest tracker without a joke, an inventory used for the first floor only, and a quest tracker that just got in the way. It basically left us putting in WAY too much time to achieve a po-faced implementation of exactly what we tried to mock. Funny in a way but not in the way we intended!
Again, thanks so much for the detailed feedback. A lot to take in and learn from all this! Being compared to Paradise Killer and Frog Detective is a huge W in my book as well
(also, the bell sound was recorded on a phone, hitting a towel rack with an axe haha)
Fantastic use of the theme, loved the idea of the limited space being caused by me and eventually becoming my own undoing. Really fun game, got incredibly chaotic more and more by the second.
Also, huge props for the incredibly effective tutorial in a game jam entry. Short, to the point, and easily understandable.
Always a pleasure to see narrative-first adventure games during the Ludum Dare. Really liked what you were going for here, the atmosphere was fantastic and I enjoyed how subtle the increase of the eerie elements was. Disappearing knives, repeated dead bodies. It felt very Lynchian and Eternal Darkness-adjacent in a way only a video game (and maybe even only a short-turnover game jam game) can, letting the player second guess if something was a bug or a creative decision to instill discomfort in the player. The slight changes in music really helped with the vibe as well!
As a point of feedback, I think your art assets could've used some consistency in style and better integration into your development pipeline, as I noticed some issues with inconsistent quality settings and resolutions that seems to be an issue with a disconnect in communication with your level designers and artists. It might be worth on-boarding your artists into your dev pipeline to have them handle importing assets themselves! Also I think I softlocked myself in the room with the bookshelf, as all the interactive elements ceased to work so unfortunately I didn't get to see the ending!
That aside, I think there's a lot of invisible effort that goes into making something like an adventure game from scratch in a 3 day game jam, so you should all be very proud of what you've made here
That's an odd one @m0rph1y, I absolutely mashed E on the bookshelf and couldn't get anything to happen - is there a rhythm to it?
Incredibly inventive, don't think I've ever seen a mechanic quite like this in a game before. Was constantly anticipating a huge difficulty spike as there was much to think about with it!
Absolute mind-bender. An interesting combination of finding myself relying on guesswork but then quickly realising brute-forcing wasn't really working out
Definitely impossible to get 40/40, but incredibly addictive. I could see myself playing something like this on my phone regularly, it works great as a nice quick-session pick-up-and-play puzzle game
Let me start by saying that you very obviously know what you're doing, and there's not a lot positive that can be said that hasn't already rightfully been said by many others, this is a fantastic LDJam piece and I love the "A Short Hike" and "Night In The Woods" artistic DNA at play here - amazing work!
As you're looking to take this game further than the Ludum Dare, here's some feedback I hope might help you: - The camera sway is a bit too aggressive. I very rarely feel travel sick in games, but this immediately made me feel some discomfort - When working in monochrome it's important to develop your own visual language to separate interactive entities from the environment. I'd work on developing this language, as some objects for sure blended in. - Jump felt too floaty, I recommend increasing gravity past the peak - Acceleration on turn feels a little too long without much animation feedback to justify it, could probably be snappier? - As mentioned before, the boat can be a bit nightmarish - Dialogue is too segmented. Too many short sentences in a row that could feasibly be joint together to make the sentence flow feel cleaner and snappier. - You can definitely feel the pressure of the game jam in the writing, a lot of the dialogue feels rushed for the sake of content without much care for the grander narrative or individual character personalities. I think what you have as a base is absolutely perfect for a game jam, though you should consider rewriting chunks of it for a full release
**Please consider this to be full release feedback**, as this feedback on a game jam entry this would all be very nitpicky and you did amazing!
Really cute mix of spellcrafting and roguelite mechanics. Kinda game I'd love to get stuck into a full version of with a whole bunch more options and enemies - great work!