Play game
The Dark World's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #11 | 4.382 | 4.382 |
| Overall | #14 | 3.912 | 3.912 |
| Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #16 | 4.118 | 4.118 |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #17 | 3.824 | 3.824 |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #28 | 3.765 | 3.765 |
| Theme - How well does it incorporate the theme? | #44 | 3.471 | 3.471 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Wow, this was really good.
The game looks great and is super atmospheric, it's big with plenty of content including story bits and such, I love that you chose instant movement, having to choose between a shield and a torch up to the last sequence was pretty cool.
I guess there could have been a bit more of a twist to the dark world (that was still better than not tackling on the theme at all and besides 8 arms one and 8 legged one were pretty cool anyway), also as a super fan of real turn-based games which play as fast as you click I did not like that mashing the button prevents the enemies from attacking, but the game plays super fast anyway so it's just a grip minor. Don't get me wrong, I only mentioned these two things because the game is really good otherwise.
Very strong entry, thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the kind words! Yeah I agree the Dark World was too similar to the light one. It could use a bit more work. As for the mashing the attack button to prevent enemies from attacking that's 100% a bug that I didn't notice until the game shipped. Too bad, it's a 1 minute fix.
I appreciate a fellow turn-based game lover! I've always preferred turn-based, lets me be strategic and think about what my next attack will be.
This game gave me a very old-school feel. Graphics looked to easily be something I’d see on the back of a classic Goldbox game of the early to mid 90s! I felt the description of the mechanics were organically folded into the UI of the game… very nice! The story (for what little I probably got through) was solid and well done!
I think the Dark World needed something a little more to make it pop as a different place than the regular world. The monsters help, to be sure, but the environment textures should have been a little different, or maybe everything should have been in a slightly different hue! Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t confused about being in the Dark World per say, but it didn’t totally pop as a unique place versus were I had been.
Additionally, I think the monsters in the Dark World seems way stronger then maybe they should be? Not entirely sure, though. It may simply have been I missed better armor or weapons I should have had before entering the Dark World… or perhaps I missing some healing items I should have picked up, but it did feel like I was under powered while in the Dark World, though.
Beyond that, there’s not much negative I could really say about this game! Very solid game and entry! Excellent work!!
Here’s a link to me playing your game on my stream if you’re interested :D
I really enjoyed your stream, thank you for featuring my game. I agree 100% on the dark world should feel different. So cool that you spent the effort to link directly to my game's play through, that's awesome!
I think I finished the game; beat the two cave spiders, got the Relic items and beat the Necromancer, but none of the dialogue changed. Not sure if it glitched out on me or just wasn't implemented.
Anyways, great fun for the most part. I especially love the custom sprite work you did for the cave entrance and monsters. Very atmospheric. And the sound effect when you slashed something down was very satisfying.
Only annoying thing was the checkpoints in the save rooms making me dash down long hallways every time I died.
Combat-wise, I liked the way groups could gang up on you sequentially if you weren't careful. I almost exclusively used Cautious and Heavy depending on the enemy; never quite got the utility of Defending.
And resting whenever to regain health was a cool concept. Maybe it was a little easy to find a safe spot, but it's an interesting idea to play with.
Thank you for the detailed review! I also really like the kill sound effect, it was a big hit.
The dialog doesn't change when you kill the spiders or the Necromancer, that's just content that wasn't written. It would be better if the game had a game over screen but honestly I didn't realize I forgot to create it until the jam was over. The changing of the Oracle text after killing the spider was the same deal. Oh well.
Combat-wise the combats weren't hard enough to really need to defend but the utility is that if your momentum is very negative this is a good way to get it back up. As for Cautious and Heavy, those are what I use most of the time unless I'm really on a the back foot and I usually die when that happens anyway.
Resting is a mechanic I'm surprised I didn't see more often. It's a staple of the old-school crawlers but much less common these days.
Looked nice, had fun. Got a little lost but that's my own fault because I don't like to read :P
Thank you. Very common problem. It's a lot more work to teach the user what's going on without text dumps, and it's a skill I'm still working on developing for game jams.
Really cool and dark atmosphere. Battle system with momentum is quite interesting, but it only started to make sense to use different attacks by the time you reach the necromancer, but they were essential in that fight.
Unfortunately I've encountered a bug by the end, that after killing the necromancer nothing happens, nobody reacts to it. Or maybe I'm missing something?
Thank you for the review! You're not missing anything. The play balance needed more time, the game was too easy until the Necromancer, and the "Gameover: You Win!" screen didn't make it in. Honestly I didn't actually cut it, I just failed to write it down on my final "TODO" list and kind of forgot. Like, I checked off the "Game over" screen and failed to realize there are 2 forms of it and I actually only implemented one of them. Oh well!
So yeah, you killed the Necromancer, you won!
Great, nice to hear :) I tried to find second necromancer or any NPC who will progress game further for like 15 minutes, but after I realized that maybe it was it :)
Amazing pixel-work! I wonder if the walls/floors should have been a slightly higher resolution to match the sprites, but that's a tiny quibble. Combat is satisfying due partly to the lovely sound when you win :D The outside area reminded me of Captive to a degree, which is always nice. A very, very strong entry to the jam!
Thank you! I 100% agree about the resolution of the environment textures, I even upsampled them in preparation for creating higher resolution ones but never got around to it. Oh well.
Very nice entry, loved it. Movement is fast and smooth, combat system is solid.
Thank you!
This was a pretty amazing entry. The art is top-notch, and the game looks and plays how the old-style dungeon crawlers did… through the eyes of nostalgia. What I mean is it looks and plays better than the old games, but this is what I remember the games looking and playing like, if that makes any sense. In other words, you nailed it.
I couldn’t figure out the momentum system, and before I found the Protector sword, I never dared to use a shield because it was too dark otherwise. I understand you can’t have a sword, a torch, and a shield simultaneously :D
For the combat, I think I encountered an exploit. Spamming Careful Strike as fast as possible kills enemies with 1000 paper cuts, and never landed a blow on me. The necromancer didn’t stand a chance.
I never managed to find the spider in the normal world, just the one in the dark world. I figured it would have been in the same cave, but I only found the Protector Sword there. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong place?
I figured that as an old-school experience, we’re expected to bust out the graph paper, but it was pretty easy to get lost; a few more landmarks would have made it a little easier. Actually, the purple glow from nega-town’s fake door worked really well to help me navigate the area :)
Anyway, this was a great entry!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the lengthly review. Right now I'm playing an actual old-school game "Yendorian Tales 3" and the UX is horrifying! So I'm glad I captured the feel of and old-school dungeon crawler without capturing the weaker parts.
The momentum system wasn't well explained. Basically if you hit the enemy and they miss you, you gain 1 momentum. If the enemy hits and you miss, you lose 1 momentum. If you both miss the momentum moves 1 point towards 0. The higher the number the bigger the attack bonuses you have. I couldn't figure out where to put this explanation so it didn't get communicated very clearly.
You are 100% correct about the exploit, spamming attack wasn't intentional. The Necromancer is very easy to kill this way! :) It's a really tough fight otherwise.
The Relic Sword and Relic Shield both glow as much as a torch so that helps. The game does a terrible job telling you this of course!
As for the caves there is a hidden object in each cave, Relic Sword and Relic Shield. The caves are massive though so it's easy to miss.
Was this really made in 7 days? This is actually pretty incredible...
I would probably buy this on steam if it were longer and a bit more polished honestly.
The graphics are beautifully done, and feels very consistent and well put together. The other Dark World feels very immersive, and I love the design of the monsters over there. It really does feel like a CRPG adventure, I'm impressed at how many plot events there were (even if most of them are just dialogue, it's very impressive for a jam time frame.)
Admittedly I don't understand the momentum in the combat system very much, but I like the strategic element of picking between different types of attacks.
The music and sound effect fit the atmosphere perfectly and it was very immersive to play through.
There are a few flaws but they're really minor and I'm sure you would've fixed them with probably even a day.
- Most of the overworld is really dark, it's basically pitch-black without a torch so I didn't find a point to using any of the shields.
- The world is a bit disorienting because the world is still visually simple (that's still good though), would've probably liked a minimap.
- There is a bug in the combat system, it seems that a "turn" is finished when the animation is finished. It was really easy to cheese everything by just spamming the attack buttons to force a never-ending turn. Victory at any cost, even RSI I suppose.
I would very much love to see if you would ever expand on this!
Thank you for the kind words! I'm pretty happy with it. As for the flaws you are 100% correct. The light side of the world is near pitch black which makes no sense, it should be lighter to further differentiate between the light and dark side. Also there is glowing gear, a sword and a shield each glows as much as a torch. The game does a terrible job telling you about it. As for spamming the attack button, that's a very unfortunate bug. Took 1 minute to fix after I learned about it. Oh well.
For the text I highly recommend learning Ink by Inkle Studios (open-source interactive dialog system). It's absolutely amazing and makes large complex changing dialog trivially simple. Really a great time-saver.
As for the map, my next crawler will either have one or I'll put a lot more effort into making sure it doesn't need one. I still get lost in the forest and the Beasts Who Walk lands all the time!
Dave!
Finally had a chance to check this out. Such a FANTASTIC entry! I loved how much content there is here for a 7 day jam. And, to learn you created all of the art yourself… WOW!
I absolutely love this entry. Thank you for transporting me back to my childhood.
Aww, thanks! I hope your childhood was a good one you enjoyed being transported to and wasn't, you know, full of three headed monsters!
That was fun! I loved the sound effect when you defeat an enemy. The monster art was great too!
Thank you!
Hey David, I checked your game :)
Overall, this looks and feel like a legit and commercial cRPG crawler, you need to build around it :) It's so good!
Thank you for the review! You're very kind.
I really, really shouldn't have put a "not implemented" dialog popup into the game because it tricked me into thinking the "quit to menu" was in. Honestly I thought it was until I read this review lol.
You're very right about showing the body with the event. I designed the dialog to fit underneath NPCs but then of course the first dialog-creating entity happened to be lying on the floor. Never even occurred to me that it was covered but yes, it would be much better to see the body.
I am tempted to make a commercial crawler but this won't be it. I did like working on it a lot, especially considering how fun the art was to make. I recently finished my fourth month in a professional illustration course where I was learning to do everything the "right" way and for this game jam it was dirty tricks all the way for the character art.
The title screen was not so hard, just a screenshot with some Photoshop text in the game font on it. But I agree with you it helps a lot. Having said that your game, by far, has the best title screen of them all. How did you create that, was it AI?
No worries at all, your game is pretty good :)
Thanks for your very kind words about my title screen! Yes it is AI, I generated it through Midjourney and filtered it a bit though the same processes that I do on The Darkness Below. Truth is, sometimes the generated image is so good, you rarely need to do things, but I did anyway as I crave for consistency :) Having said that, I wish that I had a little more time to be consistent content-wise but oh well, there's always a second version :p
I am not sure if I completed the game 100%, but I found the sacred robe, relic shield and relic sword, killed both spiders and defeated the necromancer, there didn't seem to be any resolution to the story?
The monster artwork is profoundly hideous, I mean that in the best way possible, bravo!
The dimensional mirroring is fitting for the duality theme I think.
I found the combat to be a bit too easy overall, I didn't die at all, but maybe I was just lucky in finding all the items straight away.
Wow you played that far through? Awesome! Thank you for the kind words. You are absolutely right the combat is too easy. That's the one thing I'm the most unhappy about, lack of play balance. As for winning the game, yes, you won by killing the Necromancer but sadly the "win game" title screen didn't make it in.
Well done on finding the Sacred Robe, I wasn't sure if anybody was going to find that :)
Your game is visually superb! It's very cohesive and well polished. I wanted to play more, but the low depth of vision and absence of map made orientation really tricky for me. I couldn't even find the shaman and had to force quit the game.
I absolutely loved what little I saw though, awesome job!
Thank you! I'm very proud of the visuals. Yeah it would have benefited from a map but sadly that was cut. Honestly a "quit the game" button just totally slipped my mind.
Thank you for the kind words and thorough write-up. I'm not sure about the cave being a clear transition to the Dark World. The idea was cool, go into a mystical cave for a long way and come out in what you thought was the same spot but actually in another world but a lot of people were confused by it.
I 100% agree about the map and mouse cursor. This is a painful one to play without a map but these things were cut.
I'm glad the "torch shield" is a hit, it's something that I figured would feel very rewarding considering the tradeoff between shield and torch. But I'm not surprised people are switching before every fight - I originally figured it would be outside vs inside but then I made the outside darker and ... you know how it goes!
I was hoping the momentum system would give you fights like the Necromancer fight through the whole game but I think the balance is out of whack. Heavy attacks are very OP for sure.
The "you beat the game" transition got cut, it was supposed to happen as soon as you kill the Necromancer.
I dunno if the beast sword is buggy or not, but I suspect the monsters are mostly just bad at dodging.
Great character art. I saw you talk about how you did it in the discord and it was a clever idea that paid off. It's the most traditional dungeon crawler of the ones I've played so far, which was a nice change of pace. The UI looked great, although I think the text box would have benefitted from being narrower on the screen.
I did encounter a few bugs:
The combat felt a bit on the easy side, except for the necromancer which I felt like I got lucky to beat, although looking at the preview screenshots I clearly didn't explore well enough, so maybe that was on me. I would've liked to see the damage/chance to hit impact of choosing the heavy attack/careful strike, as that might have changed how I fought in some battles.
All in all I had a fun time with it. I could see myself coming back around to it once I rate some of the other jam games.
Your feedback is absolutely heroic, thank you so much for taking the time to write all of this! Good find with the gear bug and the load game issues, I didn't know about either of those. As for the soft lock with the Oracle, that's really more a "game developer ran out of content so the Oracle always says that" kind of situation :)
You're right on the combat. I did a last minute playtest before submitting, saw it was way too hard, and then scrambled to drop all the monster stats. I never got to play the final version (big fail I know!) and I'm sad about how easy it is. One thing - did you find the spider caves on both the light and dark side? Dark spider is a bit tougher.
Ah, yeah, time constraints are definitely understandable. Just wanted to make sure that I didn't manage to find some weird bug.
As for the spider caves, I didn't find both of them! That's something to check out when I roam around again.
The character sprites are fantastic! Reminded me of Daggerfall.
I made it as far the village. Couldn't locate the Shaman. What I did see was pretty incredible though. Nice entry.
Thank you for playing! Yeah the shaman is west of the village center. There is an opening in the rock wall that leads to a path to the shaman.
Don't make me use taskmanager to quit your game.
The artwork is great, especially the UI. The dungeon tiles are feel a bit flat in comparison, some bump mapping would go a long way.
Oh yes, you are right, I have no quit. Alt+F4 or Cmd+Q isn't a good UI. Thank you for playing and the compliment about the art!
Check out my live review at https://www.twitch.tv/scalphamission
It was a great review and a great stream. Thank you for taking the time to showcase it.