Hello there @pdotjpg @dirkinz @hpa97 @threeli ! Once again I'll answer you all in one message to avoid flooding the feed.
First of all, thanks a lot for playing and giving feedback. This is extremely appreciated, and I'll go play your game during the day (I already played your @pdotjpg , and fun fact, it was the first game I played from this LD !).
So about the atmosphere :
- Again I'm really happy you liked the music. First attempt at it and I was really not sure if it was going to work. In insight, I realize I should have put a cooldown to interaction so that the player can listen a bit more to the musics, because from your feedbacks, it seems to be a huge part of why you guys liked the experience.
- The surreal part is admittedly something I had already grown since long. The idea of a place changing because of the state of a character is in my head since a long time, and seeing the theme I tought to myself "oh now is the time to try this". So I got a bit lucky because some ideas were already existing in my head, altough I never really experimented it in a game. I tried to put this idea in the soundtrack too with the instrument changing through the game.
- The collision could have been way better and I was indeed aware of the problem. I had two solutions : try to implement a collision checking with the tiles used for the room, but at the risk of losing time because I never made anything of this kind on Game Maker, or make something faster to do but less precise. Took the latter. The idea of how it works is that there are invisible blocks of "permanent walls", that are active from the beginning to the end of the game, and a serie of blocks that only works after the first change of walls. Not having much time I could not do the same for the secondth change of wall and there disappearance, but that did the essential (tho it seems a bit bugged after retesting). This is a solution made with scoth tape and sticks but as I was missing time, I believed it was the best solution.
- @hpa97 It was intentional for the bed indeed. For other objects, like the furnitures in the living room, there is a cap, but I let the bed be usable multiple times to avoid softlocks. I did not wanted to lose time on doing a precise tree of possible interaction paths, and since it was late at night when I programmed this part I was too tired to make a solid logic check in my head ahah. So my sleep deprived brain said "just let the bed be usable again, it'll be like Yume Nikki ; and go to your while you are at it".
- @threeli I take note of this bug, if I'm understanding correctly, I think it's because of how I handled the apparition of the text window. It takes the character as reference and not the screen, so if the character is too far below, it probably disappear. I'll fix this if I do a polished version.
- About continuing this kind of work, I'm actually sort of considering it. Problem is that I don't know if I'll have the time to do it right now, nor if it will be as good (here I think the surprise of finding a weird game in a jam plays a lot in how you liked the game, on a bigger scale I don't know if it would be as good). I want to work a bit my programming skills before attempting something, because I really lack a lot of knowledge there, and then maybe I'll try. Since I have some ideas I could not put in the game because of a lack of time, like small puzzles and other environment (I wanted the player to go in the basement of the apartment too, and to use the elevator in the corridor of his building at first), it could be interesting. I also have a longer project I want to do that is set in a surreal environment, I have already started it but dropped it because it was too badly programmed. So, maybe in some months !
Again, thanks a lot for playing, critics and support. I'll play your game during the day, and give a feedback !