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Temple of The Ancient One's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Music & Sounds | #39 | 4.172 | 4.172 |
| Mechanics | #39 | 4.138 | 4.138 |
| Is it Fun to play? | #85 | 3.931 | 3.931 |
| Theme Relevance | #470 | 2.690 | 2.690 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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dissectyourself
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Comments
I was surprised by this game because I wasn't expecting a full-blown RPG. The Lovecraftian atmosphere is well-rendered thanks to the dark setting and the intense battle music.
While there is a clear setting the player is moving through, the immersion is broken when I come across scenes that could have been better represented graphically. For example, when you reach the river bank, you can see the river and the stone floor you are walking on. I would like to see this scene better represented. Also, in the scene where you come across a mural dotted with symbols, it would be nice to have a graphic representation of it, which does not have to be detailed. Even scenes where the scene is described only through text could very well have an image to help the immersion.
I will refrain from commenting on the game mechanics, as they are beyond my current experience. However, I noticed that there are really a lot of fights with hostile entities, but no interactions with characters of different types. Including a mechanic like that could give the game a sense of greater spaciousness and expand the game lore. Unless I haven't played enough to encounter these types of characters that are actually already present in the game. In that case, I take it all back.
It is definitely a game that needs to be played to the end to give a definitive final judgment and more experience than I have.
So cool!! Nice game :D
Wow, a full-fledged RPG for a jam, awesome! Very nice work, guys. So much text written!
Got to level 72 on three tries, but the curse got to 100% ^^'
I loved how the game gets darker and more atmospheric as you go down. The feedback in the game is fantastic, from the menus to the combat. The only thing is that maybe the pauses in combat should have been a little shorter, as sometimes it felt like the combat was dragging on a bit.
Very fun to play I love the D&D inspired gameplay with the dice rolls!
Very interesting dungeon crawler with a lot of possibility. The music is so well suited to it. I got to depth 63 and ended up dying, but it would have been nice to see some more variation the deeper you go in the dungeon. I really enjoyed the battle sequences even though I tried to avoid them, and the enemy designs and art were really cool.
It seemed like some of the numbers could maybe use some tweaking, battles felt a little too long, like maybe half the enemy HP would keep the pacing up. Overall, I really enjoyed the presentation, systems, and atmosphere, but would welcome a touch more variety to the text and events. Nice work!
Thanks for playing! It was kinda hard to balance it, certain builds made stuff way too easy while other builds made it a grind. And yeah, I would've loved to do more text and events, but unfortunately I had to devote time to fixing edge cases, debugging, and general polishing while also balancing my time between making art for backgrounds and enemies. It was just a case of what takes priorities first and how much is just enough for things to work. But I am glad to see such a detailed feedback, thanks!
Great game! I especially liked the art and music, they created a cool atmosphere
To be honest, with my poor English level, I may not fully understand your work, sorry. But in terms of visuals and gameplay, this game is stunning and amazing. Rated it !
Oh I'm sorry to hear, but thank you so much for trying and playing! And please, there's no need to apologize.
Was it all... a dream? I don't know, but I do know this was a really cool game. I was hoping to find a D&D-inspired dungeon crawler in this jam, and here it was. The pixel art was beautiful and very well crafted, the music was amazing, and the cult vibes were spot on. The only thing I would have liked to see was critical hits on a nat20, but I understand that might have made the game too unpredictable/unbalanced. Overall, a great dungeon crawler with well-made Lovecraftian ambiance. Great game, good job!
Yeah, I wanted to do much more with the combat. Including more attacks the AI can do, such as casting hexes, in which you would need saving throws and such which the MND stat would help with your saves. But thanks so much for playing!
I love the pixel art and the music fits so well!!
I beat it and I must say that it is really good especially since it was made in such a short time frame. I love the art a lot. I must say that dexterity seemed a bit op compared to the rest of the stats bc if I used most of my points on it nothing ended up hitting me in the end.
Yeah, it was kinda hard to find a way to balance DEX since of how RNG dependent it is. So I was just like, you know what? Since you invested so much into dex and basically have super low health and damage, might as well make it worthwhile. But other builds are just as OP if you go for a STR build with a bit of CON and just spam All In. That build is probably the easiest and least RNG dependent build.
Ya I just spammed the guard move towards the end because the chance of them hitting me was very slim lol. It’s very fun though.
Very good art! It's a very good dungeon game!
I love an old school dungeon crawler
with sanity being an important stat to watch makes me think of darkest dungeon
impressive complex project to be executed so quickly
Music is really good and what hits me is the art! Nice work!
really cool style, it's like old games and the game play is good and the music too, had fun:)
realy cool game, the pixel art are realy good to, well done :D
Really cool idea and the graphics reminded me heavily of old dungeon crawlers in a good way. The D&D-esque combat framework was cool too although the numbers felt a bit rough. I spent my 3 points by putting 1 into Str, Dex, and Int but I missed just as many to possibly twice as many times as I hit. Combine that with only doing 1 damage and the enemy having 15 health and it made the fights take a little too long for me. But the story, atmosphere and overall concept is so great that I think all it really needs is a little tweaking of the numbers and it would be fantastic. Using sanity as a resource was a great take on the classic mana usage too.
Oof, yeah, RNG can be a real pain. One easy way to avoid it is to use the All In ability where you are guaranteed to take a hit first but you are also guaranteed a hit yourself with 1.5x damage. You can build for this by focusing on STR and CON for damage resist and with a bit of luck, getting the Cultist Cloak item for more damage resist. A tiny bit of INT also goes a long way with allowing you to heal yourself more. Hope this helps!
I might give that a try. Regardless, it was a lot of fun and it might be on me too for spreading my points across three skills instead of focusing on anything. Just overall got the feel that enemies had a tad too much health and that both them and I were missing a lot. That may be an early game problem more so though
Very nice game!!! The music hits hard
You can thank toffeemilky for the music, I called for his help with the sound and music in an emergency because I realized I wasn't going to finish in time by myself and he came through with it.
Nice RPG Dungeon Crawler with Lovecraftian vibes.
This takes an interesting take with the mechanics but i like them a lot, it kinda remembers me to the old games, also, amazing pixel art it looks excellent!
Thank you! I'm actually not very good at doing actual pixel art, it's my second time trying it. I come from a character lineart background, so I have trouble wrapping my head around doing 16x16, 32x32 pixel art and stuff. So for this one I just did pixel art like I would a regular drawing.
But it looks pretty nice so good job!
This really reminded me of the old MUDS from back in the day. Loved the Lovecraftian horror theme, and the art was outstanding!
I feel like I might have neutered my character in the beginning by investing mostly in MND and INT though. I made it through one enemy, but I couldn't get through a second after taking some damage on my way down.
Thanks for playing! I was hoping to capture those old school dungeon-crawling experience. I was even thinking of implementing an old school descending AC styled system but I felt like that would be too much of a hassle to understand for most players.
And yeah, MND right now is mostly a dump stat. I had originally planned on making much more advanced enemy AI and have them able to use hexes against you, and you would need MND for saving throws against them. But right now, MND really only mainly affects how well you can see if there is an enemy in the three paths you can take and a small part of increasing your sanity and memory.
INT is really good if paired with a secondary stat like DEX imo. It makes enemy with a high Damage Resist much more easier.
I'm definitely gonna give this another try with that in mind, thanks! I guess I built my character thinking about how this setting usually leads to insanity. It would be cool if there was some kind of way to MND your way through enemy encounters if it passes a check of some sort, or maybe nerfs enemies to make them easier?
I honestly had no idea that it affected the three arrows at the bottom. I think they were the same after the first two rooms so I thought it was something that I maybe unlocked down the line. Now I know how to not smash into enemies!
It definitely captures those old school dungeon crawling vibes. You nailed that.
Really glad I went back and tried it again with that INT/DEX build! The first time I made it to floor 77 while avoiding as many enemies as I could, but eventually I was overwhelmed because I couldn't kill anything above the cultist/water monster level. Then I learned to equip the knife you start with. Also that the rest button exists. Then I defeated the Ancient One!
I think what really turned it around for me was the rest button, it completely changed how I played. Instead of avoiding danger as often as possible, it was actually the best idea to fight as many enemies as possible. You get more XP, sometimes items, and you can (to an extent) control how much sanity and HP you lose. It's also the only way to lower your curse level, so getting into fights is really the only way to win.
I really genuinely appreciate you going back and beating the game! Congrats! I wanted to design it so combat is worth it, and it looks like it works. And I should've probably included some short tutorial on all the buttons and mechanics.