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A jam submission

Shadows Of SerenityView game page

Cyberpunk noir thriller
Submitted by Midlife Studios (@midlifestudios) — 3 hours, 5 minutes before the deadline
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Shadows Of Serenity's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Atmosphere#194.2194.219
Overall#293.6043.604
Overall#303.6883.688
Mental Engagement#313.5633.563
Characterization#353.5943.594
Lasting Impression#393.4063.406
Emotional Engagement#393.1563.156

Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Viewing comments 24 to 5 of 24 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

This is an amazing game, the story telling is deep and captivating from the get go.  The sounds, music and art all combine well to delivery a perfect atmosphere for the world.  Nice touches with the references to PCD and the time constraints of the AdvJam.  Voice acting was on point.  Well done on making this in only two weeks.

Submitted(+1)

Sturdy... Really atmospheric game with a thrilling story to follow. The visuals and voice acting are phenomenal. I think the ambiance sounds were a bit too loud though. The game feels really polished apart from a few bugs others have already mentioned. Fantastic work!

Submitted(+1)

Great work for such a small time frame (and cheekily self aware about it, too). The visual aesthetic is really well realized, every scene looks great. The writing feels a bit overlong to me, but that might just be personal taste. I hope you can continue the story sometime, it leaves a good first impression!

Developer

Thanks!

Im working on a fully fleshed out version and will be reworking the dialogue a bit to shorten some encounters.

Submitted(+1)

Excellent narrative game, amazing art and music, Very enjoy  to play it. Cyberpunk atmosphere is compelling, one of the best games I've played during the whole jam:)

Developer(+1)

Wow. thank you that is very high praise!

Submitted(+1)

That's true,nice work!

Submitted

I almost forgot that I wanted to post my concluding review here ...


I finally managed to finish the game without encountering any bugs. Since all my issues and nitpicks like the audio mix and the sometimes over-detailed texts have already been addressed by other players (and acknowledged by you as well), I'll just skip them. I'm sure most, if not all, will be tackled in the extended version.

I'm totally into cyberpunk and I absolutely love noir / hardboiled detective stuff. Which means this is right up my alley. Although I can clearly see the influences, it really feels like its own thing. The graphics convey the noir atmosphere effortlessly. They look stunning, one of the best parts of the game. Music is great as well. And I'm really surprised by the quality of the voice acting. It's much better than I imagined it would be.

This is such a delight! And quite impressive for an one man show. Really looking forward to the extended version. And I genuinely hope that this won't be your last foray into this genre(s). Keep up the good work! :)

Developer

Thank you so much for your feedback and kind words! I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoyed the game!
I'm truly grateful for your appreciation.

The extended version is definitely in the works!
Rest assured, this won't be my last venture into these genres.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts

Submitted(+1)

The art and audio combine to make an incredible atmosphere. I really like the backgrounds and the way the mouse scrolls the perspective. There are some really nice small graphical touches, like the rain landing on the top of the car. The voice acting is over the top impressive, though the audio levels are a little off between some of the characters. It almost feels a little out of place for the narrator to speak, just my personal opinion.

As some others have stated, the writing does feel very heavy-handed at times, both a good and bad thing lol The writing bleeds over between characters a bit, for example the street dweller and Ethan's letter feel like they are written in the same tone as the narrator, an almost indistinct style compared to each other.  Certain longer dialogs might feel a little less daunting if they were maybe broken up into smaller segments rather than delivered in paragraphs.

One small bug I noticed in the inside of the theater, the hotspot on the left legitimately says 'Hotspot2d' on mouse hover lol Some tooltips/descriptions in the inventory would be welcome. At times it almost seemed like the 'dual click' system was unnecessary, like you could have accomplished everything with just one mouse input.

Nice touch with the puzzle rambling at the car though, that was very funny ^_^ Some very funny moments throughout, I legitimately got scared and laughed when Alex yelled 'Ah shit' after discovering a hole in the pipes. All in all this has some incredible style and vibes, and very impressive amount of content for the duration of the jam. Best of luck continuing the project!

Developer

Thank you for your detailed and constructive feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the atmosphere!
Super happy that you noticed I put some time into fiddling with the smaller details too lol. <3

I appreciate your observations about the writing.  Breaking up longer dialogs into smaller segments is a great suggestion to make them more approachable and engaging. I will also try and differentiate the characters better. I 100% agree that some characters (even unreleased/cut ones) are almost copies of each other.

Thank you again!

Submitted(+1)

Very atmospheric. I loved the beautiful graphics and the soundscape you created. The writing was extremely noir-detective-like.^^ For my liking you went a tiny bit overboard with it, but I still had fun.
Cool game.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

haha yes, I might have gone a bit overboard, but its a first attempt and there are a lot to tune for the upcoming itterations :)

Submitted(+1)

When I was a kid, I loved Rise of the Dragon. The cyberpunk vibe, the detailed art, the color schemes, the beautiful professional voice acting. This game recalls a lot of the things I loved when playing that game, but honestly Shadows of Serenity is probably more immersive.

The world building is great. The backgrounds are incredibly detailed, and the developer employs a ton of onscreen text and voiced dialogue, sometimes intentionally exaggerating the language to give it that pulp feel. This is for people who love hardboiled fiction, like me!

There are solid puzzles breaking things up, and they have some pretty classic adventure game logic. My favorite was setting up a bunch of pipes to generate steam on a mirror, some very cool 90s point and click thinking.

Excited to play whatever expanded version of this comes in the future!

Developer

Thank you for the kind words, Rise of the Dragon was a big game for me in my youth as well!

Im hard at work on the expanded version! thanks again for playing!

Submitted(+1)

The art and music and writing is top notch! I def want to play more.

Developer

Thank you! More is coming! <3

Submitted

Loved the atmosphere in this one, it had great graphics, music and voice acting. The story is intriguing for sure, although by then end of it I still wasn't sure exactly what was happening. Hope you continue working on it because I'd love to find out. The writing is great, a bit long but still great and I like the funny moments when the game is self-aware of the fact. I enjoyed the puzzles although I wasn't sure why I was doing those puzzles in the bathroom until the reveal (maybe I missed something in the letter).

My only suggestion would be to add item descriptions in the inventory.

Overall, a really good entry. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the kind words!

I'm working on a proper update as I type this that addresses many of the "polish-issues" such as descriptions and lack of "fun" interactions.

Also looking into reworking how the story is presented to the player. right now its a bit of an information overflow. I need to practice pacing a bit!


Again. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

A mighty impressive first person adventure with stylistic chunky 2D art, audio design, and voice acting. I overlooked a few hotspots due to the overall lack of contrast but that can easily be tweaked on the back end. Really reminded me of Norco in how slick and stylish it is, I would play this as a full game! 

Developer(+1)

thank you! dang. I sould really get around to playiung Norco. everyone keeps praising it
But alas! no time now. must review all game sin the Jam!!!

And thaks for the feedback. I agree 100%. I had plans for highlights and stuff but sadly ran out of time.

Submitted(+1)

A high quality game

Submitted (1 edit)

What a great game! I love it. The story is amazing and it really captures the reader's attention. You always want to know more. The dialogues were very good and felt real. I also really like that the game is voiced, which combined with the music, really adds to the atmosphere.

The art is incredible! How did you manage to draw this number of drawings and still maintain the quality?!

You created so much content during only two weeks and all of it was high quality. The game was pretty difficult, but I managed to solve the problems in the end. The puzzles were very fun though!

I discovered some bugs and I hope that informing of them will be helpful:

  • "Takahasi" is sometimes written instead of "Takahashi" in the computer entries for Serial Number and Olivia. (The voice is also incorrect)
  • The icons for the pipes are really small.
  • If I turn off full screen in the theater (with the code machine), then I will see a character with long brown hair on the right side. I cannot attach a picture unfortunately.
  • Inside the theater, after that happened, hovering the mouse over the exit to the left displays "Hotspot2D". 

The ending screams that there will be a continuation, so I truly hope that you will continue working with it. As I have written above, the game is really good. Good job!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! You are making me blush. And big thanks for the input. 

Many have asked for my art process so I will post a post mortem vid about how its achieved later.
It's a lot post processing behind it to make the art maintain a similar level of quality. Basically downscaling and upscaling while limiting the colors to a specific Pallette. You would laugh if you saw some of the "art" before effects are applied haha! 

Its also a hefty use of Unitys 2D-light system, particels, shaders and PostFX. I created 2 templates. one for indoor and one for outdoor that Is applied to all Unity scenes.


Thanks for the bug report!

good catch with the change in last name. stressed for time and just churning out voice lines in the last day of the Jam made pronounciations differ between takes.

the rest is more or less attributed to lack of time and Ive added all your feedback to my "to fix list"

Again. Thank you!

I will def keep working on this. I do have a proper ending mapped out that I want to finish!

Submitted

Looking forward to it!

Submitted

Great game, but eventually I got stuck figuring out who the Shadow was, in the comments you said there were footprints, but I didn't look until after I quit :(. Besides that I am unsure if the strange woman always on screen was a bug or not, and I think when I investigated the photo it gave the wrong audio. Besides that I really enjoyed this. As a question, were the voice lines AI generated? Not to be offensive, I just thought the stranger outsides voice sounded like it could be sometimes.

Developer(+1)

Hey! I saw your stream (not Live though, sorry) And I could really feel your frustration thru the screen haha. sorry!
I will be updating my hotspots to be visible. I'm also considering adding a "show hotspots" button as a hint system.
That would be the quick fix I guess...
As for the voices. Its a mix.  I have friends that are professional voice actors that did some lines and were also super nice to let me use those already recorded lines to generate new dialogue, (mostly due to time contraints and the time difference between Europe and the US)

Submitted(+1)

Unfortunately, I ran into a bug. After I inserted the pipes, they reappeared in my inventory. And whenever I click on the already used pipes in the cabinet, the game tells me that I have to insert them all first. Which I have already done.


Apart from that, I liked it very much. Fantastic atmosphere and it looks great. I'll definitely try the game again in the next few days.

Developer (1 edit)

thanks for the kind words. Ill patch that out tomorrow.

But this bug, it  shouldnt lock the game though. right?

you can still open the "valve" on the connected pipe (cross pipe).. I think...

Submitted

Unfortunately no. All the hotspots in the cabinet (including the valve one) tell me that I have to connect all the pipes first.

Developer

dang it! Will fix this asap. Phew making games is tricky lol. Thanks for your patience!

Developer

Fixed the pipe issue!

Submitted

Awesome. I'll make sure to give it another try the next days. :)

Submitted(+1)

I think you've achieved something extraordinary. The writing and aesthetic demonstrate a real love and understanding of cyberpunk and noir genres. I loved some of the Chandler-esque pulpy descriptions. The guy sitting outside the office is an incredible character too, and the techno disease is an excellent sci-fi concept. Not sure if that's an established thing within Gibson or Shadowrun or something, or if that's your own concept, but I've never seen it before and I loved it. 

Unfortunately however, I did get stuck. I'm fairly certain it wasn't me, but I guess you'd have to let me know. I'll put a warning to anyone else reading, if they don't want to see answers to puzzles. 

////////////// PUZZLE DETAILS FOLLOW ////////////// 

I went to the construction site, got the cement, crowbar and the lockpick. I created the footprint mold. I asked the guy on the street about the mold, and then looked up the info on the computer. Then I lockpicked the car (very funny by the way!) but the car didn't allow me to interact with it anymore after that. I couldn't seem to figure out anything else to do from there. No new areas of the city opened up, I couldn't ask the guy anything, and there seemingly wasn't anything else to find. Let me know if this was a bug, or if I am just missing something right in front of my face. Because I'd really love to continue the game. I was enjoying it a lot. 

////////////// PUZZLE DETAILS END ////////////// 

As far as suggestions, it's a small thing but there isn't really any indication to players that they can use both right and left click (assuming they're letting the game speak for itself without reading the instructions). Maybe an eye icon to indicate where there are examine options, which would grey out when they've been examined already? You've written so much nice flavor text, it would be a shame if players missed it because they didn't know it was there. 

I actually recorded my playthrough. If you want to see my impressions as I played (or see if I really did run into a glitch), you can see it below (timestamp for your game in the description). Hope that can be useful! 

Developer (2 edits) (+2)

(posted this on your youtube link as well. but making a copy here for people that might also have gotten stuck or have any questions)

Lets start with a Disclaimer.

Almost all of the issues encountered are more or less due to the time contraints of the Jam. As im watching this im saving all input into a big ole "todo list". you have founs a lot of bugs I never saw, especially stuff tied to resolution which I forgot to consider. like the computer screen in the start. just because it works on my PC resolution doesnt mean everyone has the same lol. Anyways. Ive tried to answer as many questions as I could below. this is gonna be a wall of text so if youtube diesnt allow it I'll post this reply to the itch page instead. 

1:14

this is a limitation in the UI I used to design the terminal. I prototyped it in Adventure creator and never got time to convert it to proper Unity UI canvas.

Adventure creator UI is super limited and not really intended to be used in any released version.

1:15

Crap! I seem to have misslableed the voice file!

note: the voice files mentions another way of accessing the terminal that was scrapped due to the 2 week time contrains.

The original idea was to work from a notebook where data (the entries in the terminal) were treated as inventory objects thaty you could drag and drop. basically replacing the dialogue system. But it was a mess so I threw it out.

1:16

Its a one man band more or less.

Nice friends at work (PR people with a proper studio eq) helped create the voices. They provided me with a bunch of sound files and was kind enough to let me use that to "train" an AI to emulate them. 

So in short. all voices in this game are computer generated (but based of friends of mine). I thought it fitting in a cyberpunk game.

The art is as you noticed heavily filtered and is actually quite basic. It's a lot of hand drawn stuff (sketches) with real world objects copy pasted ontop of it. then run thru a series of filters (PixageFX, available on Steam) to normalize pallette and style. 

1:23: 

Correct! Neuromancer and shadowrun are big influences!

1:24 

I dont speak Japanese so I used google translate. apparently Its supposed to say "no samurai". Its just a nod to Gibson

1:32

 the PCD (Point and click devlog) is more or less where my journey started. I owe that community a lot. you never asked but I wanted to mention it anyways :D

1:33 

Again. one of my most frustrating things with this reelase is that I ran out of time to create the inventory interactions. there are only a few that actually work (enough to complete the game) but not enough to keep you trying. So without having gotten this far into your video yet. I do believe this is a reason you get stuck. 

1:35 

correct! it should stop that sound. Camera also bugs out. strange... Will need to look into that.

1:36 

you are absolutely right! Playtesting is so valuable! 

1:38 

this whole scene is thrown together to just give you what you need to go forward. ran out of time etc...

1:39

 sound was supposed to fade out as he rambles on!

(note to self, add check if its already unlocked)

1:42 

THE GAME BROKE! NOOO!

I have had 2 reports of this so far... Im very sorry.

Its my fault for trying a new technological solution to dialogue and sharing data between scenes. 

the entire "memory" of alex reset somewhere between the construction yard and the office. all your conversation topics should also be reflected on the terminal. 

this is probably related to the broken camera.

I will try and post a fix to this today if I can find the error. 

Im super sorry you spent all that time trying to find a way around it. 

2:00 

I'll get on that right away! <3

PS: you are making me very emotional here dammit. thank you for your kind words! it means more to me than you can ever imagine!

Submitted(+1)

I love how detailed you were in addressing my questions, thank you for taking the time! Your production process is fascinating. I am especially taken with the idea that you trained AI on friends’ voices. You’re right, it does fit the world concept perfectly. And on top of that it’s actually good voice acting. Especially since I myself am an audiobook narrator outside of making games and livestreams, I am very surprised by how well AI was able to choose inspired line readings in the game. I used AI as well in my own project, as there are some non-gameplay-critical art elements throughout that I treated and then lightly photobashed after generating in Midjourney. It’s truly a different world we live in, and it’s very exciting for one-person bands like us because it lets us focus on what’s important for our projects! 

Ah!  always trips me up. In that case, your sign said exactly what it was supposed to. 侍禁止, “Samurai are forbidden,” or in short “no samurai.” I always confuse  with  because they look very similar 😅

Haha I’m relieved to hear that it wasn’t me just missing something right in front of my face, and I’m glad I was able to help further identify the bug. Please keep me updated about the fix, because I’d really like to jump back in and continue! 

Developer(+1)

I believe Ive fixed it now. It was way trickier than I thought and took a bit of doing.

If you wanna go at it again here is a little secret button.

"Q" will skip entire dialogues. it should speed things ahead a bit. but beware. it skips the entire dialogue/cutscene until the next interactive gameplay section. so you might accidently skip things you dont want to. use with care :)

And thanks again for the kind words!

Submitted

Thank you, I'm excited to jump back in!

Developer (1 edit) (+2)

please dont break it. please dont break it. please dont break it! :D :D


also updated the game page as you suggested :)

Submitted(+1)

The page looks great!! 😀

Submitted

I played the rest of the game today, it's amazing! I'm very excited to see more of this world you've created. Here's what my playthrough looked like this second time around: 

Submitted

It all looks great. You might want to balance the audio a bit more as there are huge volume level differences between the various phrases of dialogue.

Developer

Thank you! 

Yes you are absolutely right. sadly I noticed this myself in the final stretch of the Jam and just didnt have time to fix it.

on the upside. Its easy to fix afterwards with Audacity Macros :)

Submitted(+1)

This was a nice little teaser. The artwork looks fantastic and the story about looptime etc. is intriguing, looking forward to learning more about that. I got up to the keypad, but couldn’t figure out where to find the code.

The camera moving with the mouse is cool, but I found it a bit frustrating at times, when it moves up every time you open the inventory. Some of the hotspots are hard to find too, you could use more contrast to make them easier to see, or maybe have a hotspot highlighter.

Looking forward to seeing more!

Developer(+1)

All great and valid points! Thanks for playing!

code is somewhere in The bathroom :)

Submitted(+1)

Wow, simply, wow. This game looks amazing

Developer

thank you! ❤️

Submitted(+1)

Great gaming I've been waiting to play this since seeing your progress in the Discord's I did find that in the scenes the lighting was quite dark which made it super difficult to solve some puzzles i.e. the office it took a while to spot the safe.  Other than it plays well, looks great too 

Developer

thanks! In Next version i should and a Gamma-slider! 

Viewing comments 24 to 5 of 24 · Next page · Last page