Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
A jam submission

To Ash and EmberView game page

Survive in an Ever-twisting City
Submitted by Firgof — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

To Ash and Ember's itch.io page

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted(+1)

- long caveat text on the intro menu, let me click through it!
- cool UI and hazy lore, I know saying it's Souls-like is memed to death but it does feel like there's real weight and plot machinery behind it which I appreciate
- long strings of slowly fading-in text are hard to read, you might want to make it faster or do it on a word-by-word basis
- I wasn't sure what to do when the Cultist picked a fight with me in the street. The screen started flashing and I heard hit noises, so I panicked thinking it was real-time and not turn-based and mashed "punch" until the scene closed. (update from second fight: ok so you just mash Punch? that's fine)
- the art style is cool and well-done, some of the UX is odd though. Like the "hold to return to ash" button, it stayed up for a while and faded slowly and I wasn't sure when to let go of it.

Developer

Yep, all of those reports (minus the lore comment, thank you!) are things I should and will work on. Presently, the game just does almost next-to-nothing to explain itself. Clear design just isn't enough when it comes to 'and defend yourself or die!' haha. Sadly, combat's still just a placeholder. I'm in kind of the same situation as Sunless Sea was on launch where I've got a placeholder system in there for now and it's not great but it's giving me time to think of something better.

Suggestions on that front are welcome of course. When you say 'let me click through it' I assume you mean that if you click the text should stop fading in and instead instantly complete fading in?

Submitted(+1)

yep, exactly. it's not a huge issue though, I wrote that when I was still in the main menu and the in-game text is easier to read.

Developer(+1)

Aha. Well, I know now where to do some polishing then. Thanks very much, again, for taking the time to check it out and provide feedback!

Submitted(+1)

- the menu text goes outside the box, same with the statistics icons at the character select screen (using laptop screen btw)

- i accidentally banished all the gods and had to alt+f4
- a female investigator would be nice

other than that great job so far
Developer (1 edit)

Re: Bulletpoint 1: What's your desktop resolution setting? I'm currently balancing everything on 1920x1080 but intend to rebalance for smaller and larger screens.

Bullet point 2 is resolved in next patch (was targeting the god database rather than the spawned gods).

Working on said female investigator but she's not in yet and will be an unlock for completing Season of Bloom.

Thank you for the report and I hope you check out next patch and follow the game!

Submitted(+1)

>what resolution
1366x768
maybe if you could set object lengths / distances to be at proportions / percentage of screen size, instead of pixels, then it shouldn't matter what the resolution is. not sure how it works in your engine 

Developer

Yep, everything's just set to constant pixel size at the moment rather than to scale with screen resolution. Next build should have most of the canvas' converted. It's all set up in percentages presently so should work well in most resolutions.

Developer

Just letting you know that I've made the game rescale to fit most resolutions. If you decide to come back at some point and check the game out, the latest patch should help the game be a more pleasant experience for you! Would love to know if everything is easier to read and work with now that I've implemented scaling on all the UI elements.

Submitted

yeah, nice, text doesn't go outside the boxes anymore 
- don't know if it was meant to be fixed yet, but can still banish all gods, which prevents proceeding
- to me personally the text writing speed and the "investigating..." screen are a tad too slow, but i get that it's more atmospheric that way, and i assume with some kinda sounds it's gonna feel better
- some parts of the UI are kinda small, like the "rolled dice" text bottom left, the  "Non-location event" top right,  "danger level" top right, when you hover over the level (1) "0/100xp" top left is for ants
- in the inventory,  text goes outside of the box for "fresh sandwich" top left
- would also be good if the energy(?) meter topest left had some bigger bars to it
- there is also a strange kind of font, for example for "(c△se file 0)" bottom right, i think it's the same used for "current objective" top left
that's all i'm seeing

(+1)

Pretty nice. Quite basic since the card game is missing the cards at this point, but is a good base with the UI and the game itself is quite straightforward even without instructions. Nice stylistic art style. Will look forward to future updates.

(Maybe I am biased, because I enjoy RPGs with investigation, and complicated spooky lore)

Developer

If that's what you like then I'd definitely recommend following the game as it develops. Also new patch dropping by end of week in part thanks to your bug report!

(+1)

Can't progress too far in it, because you often start the game with negative stamina, and it kills you the moment any in-game events decreases or even increases it.

Developer (4 edits)

Bizarre. That didn't happen in any of my tests and I'm not getting replication from start.

Does the Choose/Name Investigator screen show the investigator as starting with negative stam?

If not, what's the listed starting stats for the investigator and when you get in-game what stats do they have at the start of the game? (The one with the single box on the right side that's been struck as not implemented and is talking about the fog)

e: Oh, and though it's not pointed out you can use the Go Home button to return to your holding and do Short Rests to gain 1d3 stam and 1d3 will at the expense of a 'terror step'.

e2: Aha, I've found it. Looks like it doesn't successfully 'draw a new Investigator' when you've already died once. Also failed to discriminate between stats when checking for last-hit death between stam and will. Though it's not a perfect remedy, closing and re-opening the game should fix it for the time being. Thank you very much for the bug report, I'll see both of these are fixed in a patch I'll be building today.