Vatnsmyrkr by Avant-Marde 2011-12-20T01:59:00
I'm sorry, but I can't provide Windows until tomorrow. The link for Windows will be dead until then.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Avant-Marde
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | Co | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 37 | One room | Lock and reload | jam | 111 | 3.88 | 3.21 | 2.95 | 4.28 | 4.38 | 3.79 | 2.08 | 4.36 | 46 | |
| 2016 | 36 | Ancient Technology | Pucketeers of Atlantis | jam | |||||||||||
| 2016 | 35 | Shapeshift | Squiggles | jam | 99 | 3.84 | 3.32 | 3.58 | 3.74 | 4.09 | 3.77 | 2.40 | 4.14 | 36 | |
| 2015 | 34 | Two Button Controls / Growing | Untangled | jam | 138 | 3.78 | 3.54 | 3.68 | 4.27 | 4.08 | 3.58 | 3.58 | 3.54 | 26 | |
| 2015 | 33 | You are the Monster | TURN ON THE LIGHT | jam | |||||||||||
| 2015 | 32 | An Unconventional Weapon | AN UNCONVENTIONAL WEAPON | jam | 447 | 3.31 | 2.28 | 3.41 | 3.69 | 3.81 | 3.91 | 4.31 | 24 | ||
| 2014 | 31 | Entire Game on One Screen | Screencap'd | jam | 108 | 3.78 | 3.78 | 4.06 | 4.22 | 4.00 | 3.89 | 2.65 | 3.24 | 22 | |
| 2014 | 30 | Connected Worlds | Leif & Fitzberri | jam | |||||||||||
| 2013 | 28 | You Only Get One | SCUMBAG | jam | 332 | 2.94 | 2.38 | 2.76 | 2.65 | 3.00 | 2.94 | 3.31 | 28 | ||
| 2013 | 27 | 10 Seconds | Stache Of Glory 2: Shavin' Through Dimensions | jam | 14 | ||||||||||
| 2013 | 26 | Minimalism | Flipcrusher | jam | 84 | 3.65 | 3.54 | 3.54 | 3.56 | 2.76 | 3.63 | 2.70 | 3.05 | 39 | |
| 2011 | 22 | Alone | Vatnsmyrkr |
I'm sorry, but I can't provide Windows until tomorrow. The link for Windows will be dead until then.
In my defense, I jumped onboard 18 hours too late, and I will probably be able to provide the Windows version within 18 hours from now.
Windows version is up! Sorry for the delay.
Haha. Thanks! Try to get further, and there will also be mines and sharks!
Thanks! I can't rate anyone else either. It's odd. I've cleared the cache and stuff, because I was forced to do that before I could submit too. I submitted two minutes before the deadline. Hm.
It was fun. I wasn't able to beat the boss, despite making it through the entire level without dying once on the first try. Can't say I see how this fits more with the theme 'alone' than any simple platformer in general, though.
I liked it! Nice story behind it, nice gameplay and nice music. I would've wanted more time for each round, though, with increasing difficulty over time, but not bad!
Hahahaha. The idea was funny enough in itself, but the blinking confession button was what made me burst out laughing.
Amazing visuals that really set an eerie mood. The mouse was a bit too sensitive and laggy, as others have said. I got stuck after the third clue. I like it!
Haha. The personal names of enemies, such as Eugene and Steve, had me laughing. Also, "Nasty". It's fun how the intensity sort of increases as more party members join and the attack buttons have to be swapped between. It is also satisfying when all meters line up and you can press all attack keys at once.
I did run into one bug-like behaviour; if one keeps walking against a wall, thus not moving anywhere, but still holding the arrow key down, random encounters will still occur. This feels a little weird.
I wonder why you wrote "thine" in a few places where it should have been "thy". For the most part it was correct, but in a few places, especially at the beginning of the game, not. "Thy" and "thine" simply correspond to the first person forms with which they rhyme, "my" and "mine". No trickier than that. Your use of these forms, as well as the -th and -st endings, was consistent throughout, though, which is a great bonus, as many people who decide upon using such a conjugation seldom succeed in doing so, for whatever reason.
I wish I had had some music, but the retro sound effects were definitely cozy. Reminded me of my childhood. Very nice.
It seems you did put your idea of minimalism more into comparing it to other RPG games rather than thinking about the concept of minimalism in itself, though. The game was still relatively complex and the minimalism seemed to lie more within the assets rather than the game itself. However, you did impose a good sense of minimalism into the battle system. One button, and the enemies didn't even fight back. I do agree with VascoF, that in a full-fledged system, pressing at the wrong time should have been a bad thing. That would've made it lots of fun.
I liked it! Figuring out what to do and then experimenting was fun. Graphics and music fit the grim theme.
The music doesn't loop. D: Mashing lots of buttons quickly was almost more fun than following the beat, movement-wise. Nice job on synchronising the letters to the beats all the way through. But the music needs to repeat! Dancing to nothing is weird.
Pretty good, but it felt unfair that shapes spawned ON the cursor.
I love puzzle games. Some problems, though. The boxes seemed to get moved back to their start position under seemingly random circumstances, and when jumping to the bottom floor of one the levels I could neither find a way up nor a button to restart the level. Otherwise, great!
Some of the quotes really had me laughing. The target system seemed very buggy, though.
Tried to run in OS X (untested, yes, so I saw):
LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Users/Skomakarn/Downloads/LD26/Simplify.app.
Needs more levels!
Thank you all!
@finefin: There are only two levels, and if you do beat them, you'll get an outro too!
Thanks everybody!
Soundtrack is available for free on Bandcamp (just enter 0 as amount): http://royalrailway.bandcamp.com/album/flipcrusher-original-soundtrack
Wait for the ball to stop, it will automatically reset!
Thanks!
Well, each level was meant to be different, so there would be no more ball rolling coin collecting levels anyhow.
I think I saw you telling us about this on IRC before you started! What's your name there? At #ludumdare. Anyhow, this was fun. Great music, helping with a pretty nice mood. I grinded my way up to higher levels and bought everything before I went on to the boss, whose fight was fittingly minimalistic. The vendor had nice lines. Overall, one of the best so far, as for the game. As for the theme, while this was minimalism from a point of view (compared to other RPGs), I'm not 100 % sure of how well it sticks to the concept of minimalism in its own right, though, but still good. A short, solid game. One bug I found was that I was able to overload my stats from the menu (http://i.imgur.com/fQmarSi.png), but I see that was fixed in the post-compo version. The other was that when I died (post-compo), the game reloaded with me still being level 2. If that's a bug, it might have something to do with me spamming the return key as the game was reloading, to quickly pass the title screen.
Simple, solid and self-explanatory concept that undoubtedly sticks to the 10 second theme. The graphics, while not amazing art, suit the purpose of the game well. The colours are bright and clear and there is never any confusion induced by them.
I have to say that the walking sound was very annoying and could be removed. All other sounds were nice, though. The visual cues, including the exclamation mark and the screen shake, were great and really helpful.
All in all, well done. Very difficult, though! I was not good at getting far in it.
Thanks for the feedback, people! It's much appreciated!
Updated the description with notes about the wall-jumps and safe zones. Also added a link to the soundtrack on Bandcamp at the top!
@N0_Named_Guy: Thanks once again for reviewing it! Also, I've changed the typo you commented on.
@awppy: The reason why it takes you back to the beginning is because it's a very short game. Once you figured out where to go it doesn't even take 3 minutes to complete.
The agents' placements in their set course are randomized, so if an agent just turned around in front of you, you probably won't make it to the next safe zone, so be patient and wait for the next turn.
I hope this helps and that you might try again.
This was surprisingly fun. Big five on the humour. I was laughing so much. Those misspelled names. Fantastic. I'm not sure I felt it went with the theme entirely, though. Only one try to spell it correctly. But I did spell it incorrectly, and while I couldn't use backspace, I could still type it again. There seemed also to be no penalty for letting them reach the till. Awesome game, anyhow! I loved it!
I liked the gameplay. It seemed to suffer from a few bugs or overlooked ways to more easily beat the levels, though. In the last level, I didn't press any button at all, and in the work level, I just waited for the timers to run down to nearly 0, so that I didn't have to move around as much. There's nothing inherently wrong with the art style. There's just something about it, in particular the character design, that doesn't appeal to me personally. Hm. The music fitted.
I guess this followed the theme about as well as my game did, i.e. as a story element rather than a mechanic (though you did it better than me). I usually always say the theme should be in the mechanic, but I didn't stick to that myself this time either.
I'm not the greatest fan of quotes like these, but I did agree with the last one. It was a nice touch how the last quote made the game start over. However, the physics had messed up that time around, and the heart just fell straight through the ground as soon as it was dropped. that seemed to be the case of some previous levels too. I don't know if it was supposed to be that way. I managed to finish the game, anyhow, but not to rebeat the first level under these conditions.
All in all, well done!
The best part about this was how the jumps made you move back to the middle. That mechanic was really interesting to try to wrap my head around and utilise to my advantage. Nice music! The black hills were cool, making sure you had to remember the platforms in the scene for a few seconds. As for theme, I would've preferred one of one thing, and not one of several.
Great music, humour and mood, but... I'm afraid I'm not understanding at all how it follows the theme. Free movement, multiple baguettes.. Is it that you only get one life, or something? If so, that's pretty weak. Aside from that, awesome. The animations, and especially the sudden cow made me laugh. The music is fantastic and so very fitting.
I am definitely not an FPS person. I suck at aiming at running at the same time. Therefore I won't vote this down because I found it hard myself to get very far. I like the idea. Great for someone more skilled than I. While I'm getting tired of Unity's default cubes and lights, this was pretty clever usage of the primitives. The camera, primarily, was unusually good, and the ability to fine-tune the sensitivity was a great addition. The music was a little weird in the setting, though I can see where you're getting the inspiration. Nice music, though. My one problem was that "only one bullet at a time" felt like a weak interpretation of the theme. "One bullet, period" would've been more fitting, perhaps.
It's a game! Sorry to say, but I wonder how much the lack of music brings down my general score. No music gives a low audio rating, of course, but it also decreases the mood a bit, since the graphics and especially the lovely effect of nightfall approaching were really quite pretty, and in the end it also brings down the fun - a catchy track could have done so much for a game like this.
Along with graphics, on the other hand, I gave you a high score on the humour – you had me at the game's title.
I must say, you really should've made the up arrow key be the jump button instead. My brain didn't work properly when it came to jumping and chopping with the same hand, for some reason.
A game, I suppose. Music, and at least to my sloppy brain, better controls, would've boosted the score, definitely. Perhaps you could do what I did about the music this time around, if you want to work on your own but can't make music, which was to let Wolfram Alpha generate some for me: http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/
This was fun! I like games like this. Not entirely sure if your interpretation of the theme is one that I would consider okay, but it yielded a great game nonetheless. The music stopped playing for me, I'm afraid to confirm too. Graphics did what they should, but some pretty backgrounds would've been a nice touch. All in all, average, but I would definitely play this on my phone for fun!
We'll have a look at alternative builds tomorrow night – really need some sleep now. Thanks!
Challenging. Never got far enough to see whether there were any more obstacles than saws and fireballs, but at least there were a couple of variations on those saws. Music did get a little annoying, but it wasn't an atonic mess of course. ;p Just grating after a while. Sound effects and graphics were nice (I only disliked the look of those lines for the saws' paths).
More obstacles would've been neat, but maybe I just missed out on 'em by sucking!
Neat concept. Games like these can be fun. But moving so fast and retarding so slowly really broke the game, I'm afraid. It's too bad. It was polished otherwise. Great audio.
Veeery annoying ticking going on throughout the game, but other than that, really nice! Happy to see you finished it (I'm Prinsessa from TIGS)! Very short, of course, but I can definitely see this being extended to something cool.
Nice concept. I have a game of my own to implement a sonar for, so I might be able to take some inspiration from this!
Unfortunately some inspiration on what not to do, too. This was, as some have pointed out, a bit difficult to control. I never found any of the things the prompt asked me to collect, either.
Graphics and audio were fantastic. And I have to admit I'm a little biased towards anything sonar.
A little bit of a low score on the theme, tho. In practice, it really is a normal game where you're moving around with a "camera" following you, even tho the scene is centered on a non-moving sonar. You're still moving the actual sub around in an open world, constantly finding new obstacles and seeking out items.
Wonderfully clad, wonderful concept. But not entirely what I had hoped for from the screenshots, I suppose. Listening to some of the criticisms posed here, tho, I could definitely see this turn into something rather interesting.
Thank you! ♥
Thank you all!
I was aware that you could get stuck sometimes, but I was running out of time and you could always get out again by flipping the level, so it wasn't entirely game-breaking and I had to leave it aside to finish the game up. I would've fixed it if it were a full, proper game, of course! c:
Too bad I never tried it out with the 360 controller – I do have one. Maybe I can check that out and post an update if I fix it. That's not actually adding to or modifying the game, after all.
A lot of you found the character slow, eh? That's worth thinking about.
Doesn't the entire character feel literally sluggish, tho, what with the walking animation + sounds? c; But yes, this seems to be the universal criticism among few others – thank you too!
It's really interesting how many feel the character is so slow, since the levels are all really small and moving anywhere should be quick anyhow. But a tip is to let the character fall by tilting the level when that's possible – faster than walking and I always do it on the third level! dem speedrun prostrats
Haven't played SPM, but I did realise that people would compare it to Fez in retrospect, altho I didn't really think of that while making the game either. :p True. But it doesn't have to be original. Just fun. I'm sad there won't be a Fez 2!
Well, can't really say the game had an established nature from just three concepts (flipping, flashing blocks, cage). The idea was to keep introducing new concepts, and I had I had the time to make more levels, there would have been even more mixed concepts for sure.
More consistent criticism about the speed. I'm sorry. c';
Nice to hear such great feedback other than that, tho! And I can't wait until Marte comes here tomorrow and I can show her the immensely positive comment about her music! The cage mechanic was her idea too, as were the shifting blocks, altho actually putting the character in a cage to represent the immobility without saying a word was of my design~
I did absolutely consider rotating the screen the other way too, but it felt like it would look really weird and require a much slower animation, so I don't know. I do get better ideas now just because of that. But it's too late now!
They're mandarins, actually! c; Well, clementines, probably.
Thank you all for the great feedback and constructive criticism! <3
Thank you! <3
The texts get cut off some times, including the smaller label on the loss screen, so I couldn't actually read what I presume was a notification of the game being over, but that was easy enough to understand, as each time I was caught, the game started over, so not a problem!
Once I realised what the goal of the game was, I laughed, so that's a bunch of humour stars for you!
Neat music and the graphics did what they were supposed to, besides text rendering. c; Dynamic shadows was a nice touch and the limited range of sight made for a nice challenge without breaking the game – I always felt like I had time to react when new NPC's appeared even tho 'twas a fast-paced game.
I liked this entry a lot!
Fantastic graphics, animations and atmosphere. The sound design was pretty cool too. Running animation and sound together made me think of Makar from Wind Waker.
I did however get stuck within minutes of playing, I'm afraid. Tried everything, but there wasn't much to try really. It was a pretty empty place and I really couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do. Oh, well.
Besides that, my only complaint would be the controllers. They were downright awful, TBH. The seem to be assuming three hands. Not sure how I'm supposed to access mouse, space, backspace and arrows/WASD all at once.
Not sure how it fits the theme, even by abstract or stretched definitions of the word 'weapon' applied to anything I saw in the game.
Nonetheless, ignoring all of that, a fantastic concept. Really beautiful. Could be amazing if turned into a full game. Maybe you can steal some of it for Planeter!
(Also, pet peeve: why do no Swedes know to use OE instead of O in place of Ö? Germans, Danes and Norwegians all do!)
Great job!
Too bad you didn't get far enough to actually implement what was supposed to be the interpretation of the theme, but as a game, disregarding the theme, it honestly just makes it better to me.
Unfortunately it bugged out where I needed multiple bubbles. Suddenly bubbles stopped appearing when I pressed space, but I could still walk.
The graphics are really nice, so it's too bad you didn't have time to add some fitting music (except you did, haha; you've got 7 hours left of the jam at my time of writing this!).
Amazingly polished for an LD game. I never understand how people manage to do something like this in so little time. What did you use to make it? Did you have an editor?
Great music and sound effects. Great graphics.
Puzzle design is neat, but when climbing up to and interacting with the pig to get to the door in order to get the double jump, well... I have enormous patience (I'm a programmer, after all), so I pushed through it for the 40 or so tries it took, but most of my friends would definitely have given up at that point. It was a down in the design. Overall it was really good, tho.
Eventually I got stuck, tho. I absolutely couldn't figure out what to do. But I got pretty far and I liked it!
As always, I love seeing games without combat, and it's especially admirable with a theme like this. I got pretty worried about the pig when I first got the crayons, but I was soon happily surprised and kept playing with joy.
The only thing I really can't see is how to stretch any of this to any definition of 'weapon'. Neither the crayons nor the pig. So I'm not sure about that, but disregarding that, it's a great game and an absolutely jaw-dropping one given the time constraints. Can't stress enough how polished this is for a jam game.
Good job!
This was nice! I too live in Sweden (except not as an immigrant), so it was an interesting perspective.
Music was good (I picked German), tho it was a little distracting to read when there were lyrics in the songs.
Short but to the point. Good job. Only complaint I really have is that eventually you might pick a choice that will take you back to a day you already experienced. Would've been good if the game kept track of your options and didn't present links to parts of the story you'd already been through.
It said straight out that working out was the weapon, but I guess the greater picture is that staying focused and fighting for your goals in general are your weapon against all these forces working against you (not getting a job; incompetence from services). That's a great take on the theme.
I've played few entries so far, but his was a good one!
As for Xgor's suggestion on Swedish music, I feel like Kent would've been a fitting option in that case. c;
Played a few times and got pretty far once. I think I'll be coming back to this! Lots of fun.
Hilarious dialogue, helped by the voice synthesiser. Kept me laughing throughout. It was fun to try and figure things out.
Neat take on the theme as well. Words are a much preferred weapon to me in any game!
Great entry!
Ava here. Thanks for all the comments so far! Surprised to see so many so soon. That's not a pace I'm used to when it comes to LD.
Feelings seem mixed, but the general consensus seems positive, so that makes me happy.
It is indeed not much of a game, and not meant to be fun, but a specific experience, so I'm glad to see that it worked out for most of you so far.
Thanks for the detailed interpretation, Ditto! I'd love to hear from more of you about how you interpreted what you saw, since there is a thought behind what happens every day. As for talking to people despite being mean, that's based on personal experiences as well as some of the kids I saw in the documentary I watched at the beginning of this to get inspiration; some kids keep hanging out - or trying to hang out - with people like that because they would rather be with them than nobody at all. And they get used to it. That's all they have.
Glad to hear the music worked out. I'm not a musician and messed around the best I could to convey an atmosphere. Had to learn how to do a pitch bend for the last track!
@Jan Marcano: It can still apply to other walks of life, of course. I just find it so sad that it starts so early in life for a lot of people, and that's why I wanted to try to focus on this school environment.
Again, great thanks to all of you!
@Jan Marcano: I'm on a 1440p monitor btw!
Another batch of thanks to y'all!
Thanks to everyone again, and especially thanks to VDZ for such a detailed comment.
You're quite right in that there should've been more control given to the player to make it a proper game. More of an option to choose how to tackle the bullying.
Due to the limited time I ended up making this more of a half-interactive story about a specific child, based on personal experiences and experiences reported from others, of repeatedly seeking out company even when those from which it is sought keep mistreating you.
So I'll have to point out that it is more accurate for some, but obviously that's not everyone's bully story and had I had more time I absolutely would've done it more along the ways you suggest, letting the player choose how to deal with it and have characters react in different ways and take their own initiatives rather than just standing around (altho there is the automated shouting at you in the very beginning of the game at least).
Great points for perhaps making this into a proper game in the future, so thanks a lot!
Does indeed seem like we scored high on the mood in the end. Great thanks to everybody who played and rated.
I agree with your tweet that it absolutely shouldn't have to be a weapon that kills, and I'm very happy to see takes on that. However, I can't seem to stretch the definition of weapon in any way to possibly cover what I am seeing here, so I'm quite confused TBH!
I hope I didn't miss something. I played for quite a while and noticed more and more things were appearing. Yellow rocks, green trees, blue buildings(?) and white clouds. Was anything else supposed to come after that?
So while I can't say I understand how this fits the theme, it was fun in a weird way! I kept laughing because I didn't understand what was going on.
The sound design is so simple, yet great. It's very pleasant how different notes are played with every click and all seem to work out together, and fitting the slow beat. It reminded me a lot of Animal Crossing's sound design.
Very interesting!
This seemed really interesting and I really wanted to figure out the rest, but unfortunately I got stuck. I got the notes I needed from the first room, and I found the piece of paper talking about books being out of order in the backroom of the second room.
My puzzly mind pondered two solutions: either the books in the bookshelf were to be moved around to move the bookshelf and open a pathway behind it (and it sure looked on the wall around it like something was hidden there), or the second best solution, to examine the books in the room in the correct order (read the book on deciphering before reading the book with the previously undecipherable contents.
Of course neither worked, and I couldn't find anything else, so a hint would be nice!
Art is very nice and the general mood, but the clock ticking gets a bit annoying and would probably have been better off as a 3D sound, getting less loud farther away from the clock(s). Bell tolling when moving past the clocks was a nice touch. There was a bug with the footstep sounds tho and they weren't playing most of the time.
Clicking fullscreen only brought me to a black screen so that was not an option. I'm on Mac, so I had to use the web player (it's weirdly off-center on the web player page, BTW; why is that?) in non-fullscreen, but the cursor still seemed to be assuming fullscreen, which meant I had to keep clicking outside the window and reärrange the cursor before moving focus back to the window in order to be able to move around. :c
The text above Thomas's book was placed in a way that I didn't even see it the first time (one-sided mesh near the floor and I was on the wrong side so it was invisible and it seemed like interacting with that book wasn't working at all until I tried again later from the correct (left) side).
It seems cool in general, so I'd like to not be stuck and move on, so please give me a hint. c':
Agh, was going to give you specs at the end of the post, but forgot! Used Firefox 37.0.1 on OS X Yosemite.
Same problem in Safari, I'm afraid. Player is off-center, game seems to assume fullscreen and fullscreen doesn't work (screen just turns black). :c
Thanks for all the nice comments so far!
@derr: if you mean the very first monster, then your hint is "crate"!
Yeah, those bugs cropped up near the end and I didn't have time to fix them. Luckily it seemed to happen rarely enough when I was playing, but of course I probably didn't explore every possible player scenario as I knew the solution to every section, so maybe it happens more in reality.
Worked surprisingly well for such a hackish solution without true pathfinding made in such a short amount of time due to the time limit, tho. :p
Thanks!
Saw your post mortem blog post and decided to give it a go - glad I did! It's very relaxing, even if I think the background colour is a bit too bright. The graphics are really good, and they fit the zen theme you were going for perfectly. I also liked the random root parts that would spawn from the main root, and it was weirdly satisfying to manage to lump a lot of them together. Well done!
Incredibly hard i-need-to-stop-okay-just-one-more type of game. Played it for ten minutes and I still don't know what the heck is going on. Works just good enough to not be too frustrating :) Good job!
The controls feel intuitive, and the animation of the vine is superb - but the first thing I did was to get stuck on the rules screen. The highscores are a nice addition, adds to the replay value. Might fire this up later and play with someone. Good job :)
I like the overall feel of the game, with the music and the graphics (reminds me of home, it was nice). I would like to say the rotation was a nice touch, but it made me kind of dizzy - maybe a rotating sun would have been better? You seem to be aware of the shortcomings so I won't mention them, other than that the spawning rate was a bit too slow. Love the inclusion of the two-button-theme, that was a nice surprise. Overall good work :)
Played the first two levels, and they were super cool (ehehehe). I like the seasonalish music, and the graphics are very nice. One of the things I had an issue with though was that the snowball was super slow when it was small - but maybe the speed is the same regardless of size and it just feels faster when you're bigger? A slightly faster mini snowball would have been nice. The fireplace mechanic was seamless with the screen going red so it was clear what was happening. I really liked the parts that I played overall, good job :)
The first time I've thought "this game is better if you shut your eyes" and not meant it in a negative way. The sound design is superb, and the visuals (before I closed my eyes) are simple and fantastic; I especially liked the small touch that the lines seemed to get more uh, static-y the more interference there was on the screen. I found all four sounds, but there was no reward? Slightly disappointed in that, but the experience itself was so rewarding that I don't care as much as I could about that. Well done, if this doesn't win there is no justice. (seriously, a game you can play and enjoy with your eyes closed!)
Wow! Thank you all so far!
Some positive stuff, some negative. Seems fair! We had a lot of fun but we know we didn't have time to fix everything and some stuff ended up remaining a bit weird or buggy or subpar, but the main mechanics were interesting to explore.
I actually didn't forget the texture, gogo, but I simply didn't have the time to add one. :p I haven't stumbled across that bug! I'll try to reproduce it and see if I can fix it later. Thanks for the feedback!
Maybe I'll have to update the untextured elevator to the purple colour of the ground or something as a hotfix to make it seem less like a bug to people. :p
First of all, the level select was marvellous. But on my first playthrough I got stuck on level 2 where I couldn't progress (kept getting frozen a centimeter from the glowy thing), because I didn't bother to read the how-to-play first... woops. The art style is nice, but the character was a little hard to spot at first. The ambience and music is really good, feels so cold and unwelcoming when it's winter, and so nice and cozy when it's summer. Well done!
This was hilarious!
Didn't read the description before jumping in, so at first I just put in the shapes and then I thought that was it... AND SUDDENLY! And then it became difficult as heck, especially since I decided to start on medium.
Had to roll back to easy after that and finally won after way too much ticking of the clock.
Basically everything was great, so I don't even really need to go into the details. Even telling me I didn't need to hold the mouse button. You thought of everything, didn't you?!
Amazing entry.
Unfortunately my keyboard/OS/browser/whatever couldn't register more than two keys at once, so I couldn't play it properly, but I get the idea!
I like it, tho I dunno how much this concept could evolve difficulty-wise and so on. Does the game speed up after a while? Again, I couldn't determine, since I was unable to play the game properly. :c
Anyway, nice graphics! Very polished. And good input selection screen tho it's a bit confusing to know what to do with before you actually know how the game works, but you've got the tutorial as well, so it's fine, I guess.
No music, but sound effects at least. I see you unchecked audio ratings, tho, so no point in me dwelling on that. c:
Good concept in general. Nicely scoped and packaged.
Switching between characters with different abilities, just like in our game. Neat. c:
I'll try and offer some constructive criticism along with my praise, so I hope you will find this helpful rather than destructive! But I'm well aware that LD time is restricted and that mistakes are easily made — that goes for our entry too. c;
The main mechanics were a good use of the theme and fun to play with. It was a little bit confusing that the transformation previews would show in the right area no matter which character you were playing as tho.
The stereotyping was a bit annoying, I do have to say that. The female character's JUMP is higher pitched? And pink and blue? And the colours of their respective icons? Come on, it's not 1993. The "man of success" quote also felt like you were assuming a male player, something which seems quite common among dudes making games still.
That's the major nitpick, tho. The game itself was nice, so it was just a pity there was stuff like that in there to take away a bit from the overall experience.
I assume you mostly playtested on gamepad so I guess it was easily overlooked, but the keyboard controllers were probably a little dangerous at times (both space and W/up commonly being associated with jumping making me accidentally press the wrong one and dying sometimes, and shapeshift key being perhaps too close to the jump key). I do have a 360 controller, but I never tried playing using that.
Required a bit of old school patience and problem solving, like figuring out that not both characters can pick up the artifacts, or why the shapeshifting didn't work the first time I saw the message (I hadn't gotten the artifact yet). This was actually a bit refreshing in a way, allowing the player to feel a bit clever, but you probably shouldn't have shown the shapeshifting message before it was actually possible to do it. :p
Unfortunately I stumbled into a bug after finally getting across the second bridge and climbing on the L-shaped character after having died many times. I jumped, hit the ceiling, and then I started flying uncontrollably upwards, straight into something which killed me. :c
Can't say much about the audio. The music was nice. I do think jumping sounds, at least if they're this prominent, can get annoying in games with this much jumping, tho. ;p
TL;DR: good mechanics, neat game, a bit unclear at times, and please drop the stereotyping next time, but mostly I liked it for the gameplay itself! C:
Wow! I drew a device like the Omni in my teens and now apparently it's real? I had no idea. Thanks for that!
I don't just lack that or VR goggles — I don't even run Windows — so I can't play this in any shape or form at all, but I felt I needed to drop a comment anyway. Cool!
Nice simplistic graphics with an extra touch of lighting and CRT effect that really did a lot for it!
Music was neat IMO but the other half of Avant-Marde asked me to turn it off, so I'm not sure where we stand there in effect. ;p It's possible all the shooting sounds were the problem, tho. I guess I agree on that.
Personally horribly tired of basically every game ever being about killing, but since the style was so abstract I felt like I wouldn't have really thought of it that way unless you actually used that wording in the game, so that was a bit disappointing IMO, but I know I hold a minority view here...
I'm just bad at this sort of stuff in general. When there were only one thing shooting at me at a time I tried to stand in some corner where I could hit them but they couldn't hit me, being all strategic about it, but at the end of the level I basically just had to try and run through it while shooting wildly around me. It... didn't work. I'm just not good enough at this! :p
A little bit unsure about the use of the theme. While you do of course shift shapes, I don't really feel it's a mechanic that does much for me in this game, because it shifts every time I eliminate another target so I can't control the mechanic and use it to my advantage. Unless that comes up in later levels, of course, but I just couldn't make it through the first one. :c
Cool idea!
I've seen your animations before, and this was a cool use of them.
The voices are scary!
You did say you ran out of time, and yeah, it feels a bit short on difficulty, but it was a nice experiment and definitely something that could be developed further.
Like many others, my biggest gripe is with the controls. I really think you should've assigned the shapes to keys and made it more like StepMania for example. Mouse worked for now since the game was so easy, but for higher difficulties it just wouldn't have worked (touch screen controls might have worked, tho).
Would've been fun to dance to a long and speedy song using the keys. c:
I don't reeeeally see how it fits the theme tho TBH. There's a vague implication since you're clicking different shapes, but the shifting part isn't really there IMO.
Anyhow, I like the concept!
Really good game! Quick question: after the "ending" where I'm told not to do that any more, am I supposed to be able to progress or does it end there for now?
Change of music is nice there too. And the music in general is good. How come you've turned off audio ratings? I'd've given you a good one!
Very nice to look at. Interesting style. Looks a bit like a painting. I kind of think the characters could've fit more into that style, I guess, but contrast can be good too. Very nice overall.
Primary thing to comment on is the mechanics and gameplay, of course. While the game was short, it wasn't a breeze to get through. Good difficulty and nice amount of thinking to do as well as dependency on reflexes. Good puzzles!
I guess mechanically this game would've worked even without dressing it up as shapeshifting. All of the mechanics would've worked inside of one character as well. Nonetheless, good use of the theme.
So many good entries so far. Yours is another! c:
Good game overall, tho the setup is weird. You're not making me want to actually help the character, considering their plan or personality or previous deeds, so I basically just played the game for the game mechanics themselves. I think that's probably worth considering.
Disregarding the character, however, the game was good! c: The pacing was interesting when I played, tho it might've been different for someone else; basically it took me a while to get anything done at all at first but when I finally got somewhere things almost started solving themselves.
Audio was just enough, really. Can't say much more. The music fit the creepy atmosphere. Good!
My biggest criticism is moving between the two sides of the room. I did it by mistake the first time and I had no idea how I did it. Then it took a while before I managed to get back and fully realised that it worked by clicking at the bottom of the screen. You should probably have had an icon for that.
All in all, a good game about a horrible person. :p
Nice game! Second favourite so far, I think.
Horribly difficult! I commented on the last game I rated, Chrysalide (play it!), that it felt a bit like Flem (a game one of our team participants worked on, but which I didn't have anything to do with, so I'm OK with mentioning it!). Required some terrifying precision sometimes, and not least a lot of patience after failing so many times.
I was thinking I had to get to the shapeshifting before feeling entitled to rate the game, since I couldn't give it a fair theme voting otherwise. So I kept marching on, failing countless times, in search of the upgrade that would finally let me shapeshift. But I suddenly reached the end of the game.
Didn't realise until I read the comment that your take on the theme was having the world, rather than the character, shapeshift! I can't believe it! How did I not think consciously about that even tho I was well aware of it, since it was what allowed me to progress? Really shows how biased I've gotten so far, expecting it to always be the character shapeshifting.
So that was just a cognitive mistake on my behalf, and of course you followed the theme well. Good thing I saw this before rating. c':
While the fog of war / filter effect on the game is technically interesting and a great feat to have pulled off, I cannot honestly say that I actually enjoyed it artistically nor mechanically. It was kind of annoying. Minor nitpick.
Was there supposed to be any audio? I didn't hear a thing. I see you recommended FF, so maybe that was it, tho the pixels appeared crisp in Chrome for me. However, since I see now that you have disabled the audio category, I guess you really did have no sound. Too bad, but I can see how it allowed you to focus more on the rest. It amazes me how much content you managed to cram in there in so little time.
Great game! Made you feel happy about yourself once you finally cleared that hellishly difficult section. I just hope it didn't make too many players give up too early.
I'm also personally not physically very good at button mashing fast, which is why I always lose in some minigames in Pokémon Stadium (N64) and can't win the races in Banjo-Tooie, so the flappy birding was a bit difficult for me at first, but obviously I finished the game, so yay!
Thanks to everyone so far. c:
@sadenly: what chihuahua said — you need to press alt and change to playing as the octopus here.
Thanks again so far! c: I was actually really worried that the octopus physics would be too buggy to enjoy for some people, but it seems really positive so far.
@axoona & silkwork: you can push the boulder up with the octopus, but only from the left side; the little pathway is only there in case you accidentally went to the other side first without the tadpole (or if the rock fell back down again)
Thanks!
@DSSiege11: That makes you two so far! Someone on YT played the game and the same thing happened. :c Never found that bug ourselves. I might fix that later! Here's the video, in case you can confirm that you got stuck in the same place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1kga3bqhR4
Thanks, grayhaze!
You're supposed to do, well, what it says — try moving things around. :p There's a big vertical boulder there. Push it with the octopus to get it out of the way. A few earlier commenters apparently got stuck there too.
While it's unlikely that we'll keep working on this game itself, I will eventually need an octopus for my project Vatnsmyrkr (https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=44264.0), and I may well base some of its implementation on my experimentation in this game, so you can keep an eye on that if you're interested. e:
@DSSiege11: Thanks for the info. This morning we tried to bugfix the frog and froglet somehow, so I hope it should be better now.
@Pavel: Thanks!
Thanks again, everyone!
@Freank: Yeah, sure, I'll try to sort that out! Thanks!
Wow! Definite favourite entry so far. Might not mean much since it's also like the third game I rate, but knowing me I'm fairly sure it will stay in the top.
Gorgeous graphics. Simple but stylised in a very clean way. The noise did a lot for it. The changing sky colour towards the end of each level was a lovely touch as well.
The music and sound effects fit in too, and were well done. Perhaps there should've been a flying sound and even some rain, but that's just nitpicking.
The increasing difficulty was nicely balanced for such a short game, which made it take a while to complete anyway. This was sort of the intention behind our entry this year as well, but due to not feeling well we never really had the time to polish it or even finish all our puzzles.
Reminded me a lot of the game Flem — yes, one of its devs was on our LD team, but I'm not personally part of the team that made that game, so I'm allowed to say so. c;
it was difficult towards the end, but in a good way. It made me stubbornly want to finish it. And I did!
And of course the fact that you only had to restart the current level and not the entire game upon failure might be worthy of a little extra praise when it comes to LD games. ;p
Loved it! <3
I like the idea! There were a few problems with the execution tho, so I actually got stuck, I'm afraid. :c I'd love to keep playing if I could have some clues, tho.
I got stuck after getting the fourth colour (which I assumed to be brown, since that one was mentioned on a note, but maybe that was orange?). There was a room asking for three colours and a note saying "green, blue, brown", but I tried those and nothing happened, so I couldn't figure it out after that.
Like many before me have said, there needs to be a better indication of which colours are active. Green and blue are easy to see in game, but yellow does almost nothing and brown/orange(?) not much either. It would be good if they were also marked with a white border or something in the inventory to indicate on or off.
The mood is neat in general. I like the lighting, and of course the colour effects add up too. Too bad there was no audio. There's a feeling of mystery that makes me want to keep investigating to figure out where I am.
Basically a good game but unfortunately a bit difficult to play! c:
Very nice! Played a few times since the description mentioned multiple endings.
I don't know if there was some bug, because I was a bit confused as to when and why the resting icon would appear, because the first time I played I obviously didn't know where the resting places were or what they would look like at all, so I tried randomly pressing it sometimes.
Apparently it worked inside a wall, and the quote that appeared had something to do with death, so I actually wondered if it were some sort of game over.
The second time the icon appeared once inside a wall and I moved a little and it disappeared and I was never able to get it to appear again. Then I finally found, for the first time, what I suppose to have been the only intended resting place: graphics that actually looked like a door and where the icon would consistently appear.
Did I stumble across bugs the first time, or did I misunderstand something?
Anyway: moving on!
The graphics were very nice, as were the animations. Nice touch with the camera zoom near the green orbs, too. Music and sounds were neat too, so how come you've turned off ratings for the audio category?
I guess a ghost might be considered a weird choice, since I would've expected those to be able to move through walls anyway without transforming, and also it's a bit strange to be able to die again by taking damage considering ghosts are generally dead already, but that's a minor nitpick. :p
The level of floatiness to the controls might've been considered bad in a different game, but I think it worked here, especially since the game was pretty simple and it would've been too easy to avoid the spikes and die otherwise. The level of risk it added made it feel really good once I finally reached an orb, because I'd usually taken some damage before getting there.
Simple but compact and polished. Liked it! c:
What a great game! <3 One of the best entries I've played so far. I even had to have another one of us come play it all over again when I was done with it. We both enjoyed it thoroughly!
The graphics were very nice, of course but I really have to slap myself not to be too biased towards the positive feeling of recognition, since the style obviously is not really your own. c; It was a nice touch to be able to look at the TV like in Pokémon, so you definitely stayed true to this style, tho.
You're getting my highest humour score so far. You gave me several good chuckles throughout the game. It was also a welcome surprise to see what happened after approaching the mouse, since obviously I didn't want to eat it. And more chuckles.
It's hard to say much about the mood. Music and audio would've helped a lot. Thanks to the graphics I still sort of heard Pokémon in my head tho.
Very solid entry. Short but polished (besides audio, of course) and engaging. The mystery-solving was good fun. I don't play enough games like that any more.
This really spoke to me. Fantastic job!
The basic idea is good but it was a bit hard to play. :c
I can't imagine the graphics weren't deliberately chosen to offer this psychedelic experience, so I hope it's safe to complain a bit about that.
The main problem, I think, was that the sky was both not moving with the level while also being animated on its own. I actually got a pretty intense headache after a while and felt a bit nauseous, and I've never actually experienced that with a game before.
So sorry, but I had to stop playing, because it made me feel physically unwell. I think that's a pity, because it would've been so easy to avoid (considering I've never had this with any game before) by deciding against this trippy art style.
So I would *not* recommend full screen to other players, actually (the cursor actually kept getting out of sync anyway). :p
Nonetheless, you did get your first jam done and I hope you will come back next time. Take everything I've said as constructive criticism. I'll be happy to play your next game if you take it easier on the graphics next time. c;
Haha, it's fine. That was actually interesting in itself. You did, after all, manage to make a game that gave me an experience that I have never had with one before. If that's not innovation, then I don't know what! ;p
I'm glad to hear I managed to inspire someone to get into this. I hope my last comment didn't uninspire you again!
Interesting...
Unfortunately I didn't really get anywhere. I was asked for flowers of various sizes, but I feel like there wasn't really any way to tell them apart, and I can't say I ever saw any that appeared particularly bigger. Maybe I didn't get any? :C
I suspect that perhaps I was supposed to do something with the portal to fix a larger flower, but unfortunately there seems to be a game-breaking bug on the other side, because once I'd gone through the portal to the little corridor, I couldn't get back. The character simply wouldn't walk forward any further at a particular distance from the portal, as if there were an invisible wall in the way. Restarted a few times but it was the same every time. I played the OS X version in case that matters!
I feel like you overcomplicated the controllers with the Q/E/space concept, when a simple mouse look would've solved the problem in a much more natural way, and actually is what most people would expect from a first person game, since it's a common controller scheme. How come you ended up solving it this way? p:
Music and graphics are interesting and definitely set a peculiar mood.
Theme is slightly stretched, I suppose, as the portal technically takes one to a different room, but eh. c;
Would be interesting to know more about what you had in mind, as I got stuck and couldn't really get anywhere so I didn't really understand the game. :'c
Nice! Everything comes together to set a very heavy mood. A few things were a little unclear but not frustratingly so, and perhaps that made me feel just that bit more accomplished once I figured something out! c: Would have been good to spell out what the buttons actually do tho.
Bumped into two game-breaking bugs (character got stuck between two rooms once, and one time the block with people in it fell through the hole and disappeared and made progress impossible even tho I'd activated the switch) but that's LD for you~
The mechanic of having to redo everything after getting "wasted" is a bit frustrating considering how slow the character is, but the chapter was short enough that it didn't bother me too much after all. Just something to bear in mind if you keep adding chapters with longer levels, in which case you might want to add some checkpoints along the way.
My only big complaint is that I don't see at all how this follows the theme of "one room", which unfortunately brings down my overall score, which would have been higher otherwise. :c
Good job!
Very cool! I enjoyed it.
I suppose technically the end of each section could count as a door and every new section a different room, but eh. c;
The animation between sections is really slick! Good job! Nice audio too.
Maybe I'm just not used to isometric games, but do they usually control like this with the arrow keys? I could never really get used to it and kept falling down. Wasn't really a problem at first since I could take it easy but then came the timed segments where I needed to go faster. Probably just my inexperience tho!
I guess it was a bit awkward that the keys I had to press were all over my QWERTY keyboard, but maybe this is adapted to DVORAK or something? Wasn't too much of a hassle anyway, but I felt like I had to locate the keys sometimes before I could move on. That may or may not be what you intended. p:
Overall very nice!
P.S. I played the web version and experienced none of the issues you mentioned in the description, so yay for that. c: Chrome on OS X, if that matters.
Wow! Everything is so polished. I played the web version, but even without the extra bling it looked so incredibly stylised and coherent and good. The particles are gorgeous.
The music fits nicely too. Only complaint with regards to audio is that the overall volume was very low, so even at the highest settings it was a bit quiet on my speakers.
I got a little confused on the level after the tutorial level about pulling things, because I hadn't realised that the little arrow on the floor on the tutorial level was just to explain the mechanic, and thought that all things that could be pulled would have arrows under them, and didn't realise I could pull everything on the next level, which had me stuck for a little while.
I suppose the interpretation of the theme is more like "one room at a time" rather than "one room only", but that's perfectly fine, and a good way to ensure we're not flooded with hundreds of identical entries! c:
Levels are nicely designed. I'd definitely play this as an extended mobile gamer with lots and lots of rooms with even more difficult puzzles!
All in all, fantastic work, the most polished entry I've seen, which is incredibly impressive, and a sure favourite from LD37. Many gold stars!
Nice! Very much like The Room, down to the music and the mood. Precisely my kind of game.
I suppose it really fits the theme too, as it presented what could have been "one room" from a larger game of puzzles, with one in each room.
The puzzle was a lot of fun and made me feel a bit clever once I solved it, tho of course coming in as an avid player of games like The Room, one quickly gets an idea of what to do, since the concept is so similar, haha.
Wonderful entry. One of my favourites so far. High scores from me!
P.S. I didn't break any collisions. c;
Unfortunately froze a lot for me. Can't try Windows version right now.
But I get the idea! After a few plays, that is. p: Had no idea what I was doing the first time. The second time I think I got it, but it seemed like people were getting in even tho I hadn't pressed space. So then I concluded that I have to either accept or refuse individual guests or they'll enter anyway. Is that right?
Bit sad, I guess! Such prejudiced creatures! :c
I guess management games aren't really for me tho. The kind where you buy and upgrade stuff. Never really enjoyed that. But that doesn't make it inherently bad of course—just not my cup of tea—so obviously it shan't bring my score down! I'm trying to be as objective as possible.
Charmingly stylised graphics and nice music. The little dance at the start is cute. The sound effects are, well, expected, like the cash-in sound. Very nice.
The only thing I can objectively criticise, and I don't know if that's a web-only issue, was that the shop UI had stuff overlapping itself a lot, with buttons on top of buttons, so it was difficult to get an overview or even to click some of the buttons.
Good job! c:
That's so cute! Very nice little sound effects when peeking behind things (tho perhaps just a tad sharp against the background music, some of them, but eh, details!).
Graphics and music are very nice. The room is a work of art, of course. Has a lot of character to it. And it was fun that I got to select a pixie!
I guess the only real piece of criticism that I can offer is that it was a bit, well, easy? p: I basically just clicked everything until I found all of the pixies. But it sets a nice mood and it was a slightly "zen" experience while it lasted!
Fantastic! Another big favourite right here.
The only thing that really concerns me is, well, the theme. I guess technically all the houses are in the same room since they're inside of each other, but mechanically it really does turn out to be a lot of rooms for the player to visit. I'm a bit conflicted there.
The main mechanic of course is really cool! I only wish the player would've snapped automatically to land into the room after jumping close enough, kind of like how one enters Big Boo's Haunt in Super Mario 64?
Would love to hear something about the technical details! Did you really just put models of increasingly smaller scale into each other, or is there some clever unloading mechanism going on?
The music was nice, but I have to say the main instrument was a bit... shouty. Kind of harsh. So I had to turn the volume down. But the composition was good! Nice sound effects too.
Got a little bit tedious in the third segment where I felt I was mostly just following a linear thread through the houses, but the first two segments were a lot of fun. Did the last segment perhaps suffer a bit from the deadline?
You introduced new mechanics/concepts in a very good way by having the player simply do the thing to have something happen immediately, without having to think at all, just to be able to understand how it works, before you moved on to actually doing something interesting with each new mechanic.
Loved the idea of having to read the numbers off of the keys after shrinking down! And a nice touch, of course, that the number cannot actually be read before the key scales up, with only some blurry glyphs to be seen on the small model.
Scanning quickly through the comments, I take it you're already aware of the game-breaking bug with the interface to entering codes. Fortunately I only just about got it, but managed to pass since the buttons I needed were just slightly in frame, and after that I knew to be careful before I entered each new code.
Excellent work!
Not my type of humour, I'm afraid, so I won't pretend I don't find it rather distasteful, but...
Technically and mechanically complete game with simple but solid controllers (tho I must admit I had to play more than once until I actually understood what I was doing because I thought the arrows were going to control the movements of the character and I didn't realise immediately what I was actually doing by pressing them, so I was just confused as to why the character wasn't going where I was pressing, heh...) and everything in place, like audio and graphics.
Didn't find any bugs either, which is actually almost a first for this LD so far, heh. Well done on that!
The web version won't load for me and it freezes up my entire browser. :C Is it just me?
Wow! That's an interesting twist on what I first thought was going to be a super simple, super classic bubble popper! And then I discovered combos soon after—even better!
I guess I'm not very good at it. Difficulty ramps up rather quickly. My first run was over almost immediately, and I didn't find out about combos until the second run, but the second one went better and I scored 7991 points, heh!
I guess the only missing thing is some exciting music! c:
Hey! Played on Mac and can confirm again that it works just fine. c:
While I'd consider it a stretch, since technically there are lots of rooms in this game, this was a funny and creative interpretation. Definitely adds to the humour score!
As you already know a few things were a bit unclear, and I actually thought I'd broken the game and gotten stuck once I got the teleporter, but luckily I went back here to read the description again before I restarted the game.
Bullet hell was unexpected! I'm kind of lousy at that. So the fact that you had checkpoints before the bosses and didn't restart the entire game was a great bonus. Both of them defeated me once or twice before I won.
And hey, some precision platforming too. Didn't expect that from what seemed like a full-fledged puzzler at first for some reason. That was a nice segment. c:
I guess it was a bit weird that there was no music in the room, especially since that's where the game start, but then music suddenly outside. You could probably just have played the same track in both places.
Found it a bit humorous how you'd animated the character's bow when walking, but not the legs. p:
Nice little game!
Some of the totally bonkers things going on in this game are actually quite hilarious! p:
The glitchy effects mostly add to the humour, but there is once place where it gets in the way of the game, and that's when holding the mouse button down and the character is at the center of the pointer, and starts glitching around. Should've had a tolerance value there. Ended up with me either having to be on the move constantly or just not using the hold feature, which was a bit sad since I preferred it.
Audio is fun too, and the music is nice. The graphics fit nicely with the weirdness. Might have not worked out as well with a different style. Simple, but no problem seeing what anything is, except perhaps for one thing—I wasn't sure whether the pillow on the armchair was a present that I was supposed to pick up, which got a bit scary since it was on a piece of furniture!
Good ramping up of difficulty tho eventually I got stuck and just couldn't clear the "prayer" level even after several replays. Sorry to disappoint you in case there's some fancy ending I'm missing. p: I hope I'm still eligible to rate and comment!
Funny entry. c:
Very nice!
I tried a lot of times, but I'm afraid to say I didn't finish the game. ;_; Might come back to it later, because I did feel like I was getting closer!
I agree with the above poster that "death seemed to be kind of random" at the beginning, but after playing a few times I realised what was going on and was able to avoid the monster during the first two segments (segment being one set of lights to turn on), but after the third one I just couldn't manage to do it without dying.
Turning on the other two lights first, the monster just about caught up with me as I was approaching the first reactor for the third light. Remembering the layout and running straight for the third light's reactor without even turning the other two lights on, the monster still managed to catch up with me as I was on my way back from the reactor.
Even ignoring that reactor and just running straight for section four the monster eventually caught up with me. p:
It's difficult, but in a rather good way! I just need a break before I try again. I hope I'm not being too hasty with my ratings and comment in case there is something fundamental at the end of the game that I'm missing by failing to play the whole thing!
The idea with the graphics works great. The initial frustrations are quickly overcome by remembering the layout and more importantly by turning on more guiding lights.
The only thing I'm really missing is some background track to increase the mood. Not necessarily music, but just some tense ambience. Perhaps some audio feedback from the monster to make it a little less difficult to keep track of? c:
I liked it! Just not good enough to pass, heh. Sorry about that. Very nice minimalist approach to the graphics too. Good work!
I suppose the interpretation of the theme might be considered a slight stretch. Technically it is indeed one room, but if it gets this big, isn't it more like an open outdoors environment, or a set of different rooms that happen to have no doors between them? p; I don't know. OTOH you do make the player feel confined to a small space anyway due to the monster and the limited degree of vision.
Hah, sure had some similarities to the story of our game!
I think it was completely broken on the first run tho. Got stuck at some point, and when I restarted to try again I got a very different series of events, so something must've gone wrong the first time... But second time went fine and I reached the end!
One thing that happened the first time was that when the raft had escaped the screen the game just got stuck and didn't move on to the ship and I couldn't click it either, so the second time I panicked a bit about clicking it at the right times to have that not happen again. Is that a recurring bug?
Not sure how liberal to consider this interpretation of the theme... There is only one actual room being the tavern, but multiple "game rooms" as in different places to be, tho OTOH the player is really only in one place the whole time, and OTOH your whole deal may just be your pun? :p
Music was nice! Too bad I can't rate it, but I understand it has something to do with the fact that it was made post compo?
The transition from the jug back to the ship is really nice!
Good job!
Really cool concept! c: And one that works really well with the text-based format. Text based games where there are many directions to go can make me a tad confused, but this one-dimensional approach worked great for me after the initial threshold of getting used to the game.
Were the elevator controllers supposed to be clickable? Nothing happened when I pressed them (and the cursor didn't change like it usually does over links) nor the big versions that popped up. On Chrome, if that matters.
Nothing that really bothers me, but I suppose I should point out there's a fair amount of typos in case you want to correct those. p:
Not sure I fully understood the story, or why the young person at the end who seemed to be doing well would be going to the floor with the supplies. Could you clarify? o:
I guess the only thing I'm missing is a bit of audio feedback. Some elevator pings would've been cool!
It's a bit short, of course, but that's LD for you. Great concept and would be really cool to see an expanded version!
Ah! Never heard about that. Thanks for the information. c:
Funny little game! I actually played through the whole second loop just to make sure I wasn't missing anything on that run, haha. I've seen enough LD games this time that have had some sort of mechanic like that, so had to make sure~
Gets a bit too easy once one has figured out what to do the first time, I suppose, but it was a nice little puzzle! The note that changed with each thing was funny.
The walking animation was rather humorous! Felt like the character was bobbing along to the music (good music, for that matter!), and of course the idle animation did too. Was also quite wonky how no matter what I melted it turned into the same kind of thing, hah!
Nice! c:
Thanks for all the nice comments so far! Just to clear up some confusion in case anybody feels they got stuck: the game is only "incomplete" so far as not having very much content (i.e. the game is much shorter than it was supposed to be), but there is a distinct end to the game, and the game can indeed be "finished"! c:
Don't know if there's a particular name that can be applied to the effect, but we basically messed with the palette by multiplying the normalised (0-1) colour values by some value, rounding the decimals off, and dividing the numbers back down again. And then of course there's the checkerboard effect on the entire thing. And a vignette in the corners! c:
As for the hint:
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*** SPOILER WARNING ISH ***
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The notes all describe something (plural, hence 'they') that can be found in the room!
Aw. Seems quite a few people are having trouble. :c I really wish we'd had the time to make the game as intended. The riddles on the notes were a last-minute solution, unfortunately.
There's a hint below the spoiler warning in our last post. I can add to that hint, and if that doesn't help either, feel free to hit one of us (@avaskoog) up with a PM on Twitter and I can give you the full solution if you really want it—just don't want to spoil it in the comments here. :p
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*** SPOILER WARNING ISH ***
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There are four numbered notes scattered around the room. The notes all describe something (plural, hence 'they') that can be found in the room. Count how many there are of each of these things.
Thanks yet again to all new people who have played! Working my way through your entries as well. Falling a bit behind, but we do have two weeks. Getting there! c:
It's a pity that a lot of people get stuck. The riddles with the notes wouldn't have actually been in there at all had there been more time to finish the game as intended, and so the riddles were an unfortunate last minute solution. Maybe we'll spend some time on a post jam version that better represents the original idea.
@zenmumbler:
Yay! Glad you finally beat it! And feeling quite honoured that you stuck around and stubbornly pushed through. c': Thanks for telling us about the broken links, too. A copy-paste mistake. Fixed 'em up!
@Broxxar:
Thanks! Been decent at shaders for quite some time, but this is the first LD where any of that really came to pass, and even then perhaps not to the most exciting extent, but hopefully there'll be even more fun with that sort of stuff in the future! As for whose puzzle takes the cake, well, we'll be getting around to your entry soon enough too, so we'll have to see about that. c;
Heyyy, how come you turned of ratings for the humour category? This entry is full of it!
The reload mechanic was really cool! I suppose it could've been made clearer, but since I read the description here before I played, I don't know how confused I would've actually gotten if I didn't.
The graphics and the palette do a relatively good job of setting the mood, but I really would've liked some music and perhaps even sounds. Would've added a lot. c:
Funny little game! Good job!
Wow! Fantastic entry. So much gameplay! Took quite a long time. Great use of mechanics to extend that one confined room.
The story was quite well written. The thing about the aliens and the surrounding humour was weird, tho. I felt like it didn't fit in, kind of like you had a more light-hearted idea first but as you went along it got more and more serious, and you forgot to update those initial dialogues? But other than that, great authorship! c:
I guess I'll have to echo some of the concerns throughout this comment section. Skipping would've been a very nice feature since there was always the possibility of misclicking and accidentally having to spend a long time listening to the same dialogue again. It was also a bit scary that it was possible to accidentally end the current cycle early before finishing exploring.
I guess my biggest gripe in terms of pacing was the "not now" message. The pacing would've been much nicer if you'd simply disabled the useless things so that they couldn't be clicked at all, because it really only added more waiting and slowdown for no particular reason. /:
The music is good and it's really nice that you have different tracks for each section. I do wonder what the voices in the background are supposed to represent in the second track. Are there other kids in the house? Or is it supposed to be coming from outside?
The graphics are also neat and the animations are cool. I did read your blog post—it's actually how I found this game—and there you did express yourselves what your post mortem thoughts were, so won't say much about that. c:
I understand why you did it, to keep the tension and add something new to each cycle, but it was a bit weird that some things could only be found during later cycles. But I can't think of a better way to do it either. It worked, but maybe you should've had fewer cycles in total. p:
The "sometimes life doesn't give you second chances" at the end was rather powerful. IMO you should've just left the game there instead of restarting. I do wonder if there was a problem with the font on web (I did notice our own web build of our game had a different font than the standalone builds), tho, because the label didn't fit onto the screen and some of the letters were outside the edges of the screen, heh.
All in all, quite possibly my absolute favourite entry so far, so I hope you're not taking my (supposed to be constructive) little criticisms too seriously! There's a lot to praise here, so I feel like I should raise the few concerns I had in case you want to build on this and make a post-jam game out of it later! c:
Excellent work!
Really cool! Very stylised and nice. It's a very nice detail how the arm comes not only to pick up the character, but also the hearts and the lanterns! Very clever. c:
Like so many entries, I suppose the interpretation of the theme is rather liberal and stretched, but in a good way, and one that ensure that not too many entries are alike. Appreciated!
I guess I feel like the game was a bit too difficult not to have at least one extra heart to pick up somewhere, but I also get how the brevity of the game might have necessitated a bit of extra difficulty to make it last longer—and I sometimes do this too when it comes to LD games—but I just hope you're not losing any impatient players because of it. p:
The whole core mechanic and the animations that come with it are very polished and nice. Too bad you didn't have the time to add some music as well, but at least there are those nice and fitting sound effects.
Also good how the collision on the spikes and enemies is relatively forgiving. The only issue really comes about in the rooms where you are stuck between spikes and can't really move but have to shoot a lot of enemies coming at you all at once. That's where I died most of the times. Should probably be a bit more balanced in a post jam version, if you ever make one, heh.
Really neat game! Liked it a lot!
Interesting, but confusing! o:
I'll try to be as constructive as I can below, so I hope I don't come off as rude or anything! c: I think this it's a good game, so I just want to point out what I had a bit of trouble with.
The reaction system was really interesting. I've probably just been living under a rock, not playing enough games, but I hadn't really seen anything like it before. The whole combination of selecting a way to react and then somewhere in particular to direct that reaction. An extended version of this mechanic would probably work great in a longer game!
Almost failed to understand how the game worked, heh. x: Good thing I decided to give it another shot after reading the description again, because I didn't realise it mattered where I clicked after selecting a reaction at first.
Even after understanding this, however, that feeling kind of remained. It would've helped a lot if there was some cursor above things I could interact with differently, and if I couldn't click at all anywhere else besides those things, because it ended up with me trying to be clever and picking different things around the room, but most of them didn't actually work differently... /:
A cursor would've also helped me understand to play the game much more quickly, even without reading the description, I think! c:
Was a bit difficult knowing what options to pick, and felt like some of them gave unexpected outcomes (the less angry option results in the gunfire, but the more angry one does not), so it was a bit of guesswork, but I suppose that might've been the point, so that I had to see a few different endings.
After failing a lot of times and rereading the description I saw the note about it being unfinished, so I was almost about to rate it anyway and as whether that meant that there was no good ending since you didn't have time to finish it, but I stubbornly decided to try two more times, and hey, I made it! Yay!
Mood is of course scary. I guess I felt like the good ending wasn't really good after all, and I would've preferred the timeout note (and an eventual breakup) to be the good ending, considering that if he has these tendencies to actually murder his partner, I can see those coming back later even if things remain good for now, and that's a really unpleasant feeling. /:
Lack of audio I guess is a pity, tho if it meant I didn't have to hear graphic gunshots and screams and whatnot, that's actually kind of nice to be relieved of, heh...
The graphics are very nice! Gorgeous lighting. And a very nice contrast between the lit and unlit versions of the room. Good, clear animation on the phone ringing too. And the thought bubbles were very easy to understand.
I know I might sound a bit negative, but I really think this is overall very good work, and I'm only trying to be as constructive and helpful as I can! c:
The only really big issue (besides lack of cursor) that I feel like I might have is the inability to skip text, since there's a lot of repetition involved after failing a few times.
Nice work!
Neat. c:
Dunno if the issue is web only, but I had a very consistent bug where at the final segment (K) the ball would often get stuck and neither fall down / enter the door or jump up to finish the level. Another ball would roll in at the beginning of the level, but once I got that one to the stuck one, the stuck one was in the way and the new ball just fell down and couldn't get up, so it basically broke the game until the next reset. :c
Was a little scared that I'd have to keep track of some wonky figuration at first, but once I saw the level and found out that DFJK matched up with the things on the screen, I was relieved. c: