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A jam submission

SirenView game page

Submitted by cyps (@Cyp81_), Tifaroo — 20 minutes, 25 seconds before the deadline
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Siren's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#792.8523.143

Ranked from 14 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
Solitude - The player is alone in an abandoned facility.
Cosmic horror - Set on a different planet, there is an entity causing people in the darkness to go insane.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

You Escaped! Yes!

Had to restart though, cause I was running around in the darkness due to lack of batteries.

Nice take on a crawler. Liked the graphics and soundscape, interactions were good. Maybe some more content and objectives and it would be even better!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Cool game!

The art is nice and consistent, and everything feels very thematically correct in and place. I really liked your implementation of the sanity mechanic, and but I think the tuning is a little off, so much so that I abandoned my first run when I got locked in half-a-dozen fights in a row and just assumed it was a bug and restarted.

The combat mechanic is excellent, really cool concept and it's such a great design that it's immediately clear what needs to be done without instruction.

I agree with some of  the other comments regarding the flashlight.  It is an excellent way to create friction and adversity, however it's mostly just an annoyance, I would prefer a lit environment with the 'scary' elements coming from elsewhere, but that's just my own preference.

The music was nice, but it possibly felt too nice and relaxing? The movement felt excellent, nice and snappy and I had no issues zipping around.

All in all it's a great entry, thank you.

Submitted(+1)

Well I managed to escape, took me a couple tries but I thoguht this was pretty neat!

The atmosphere was pretty creepy, and the shadow guys looked appropriately spooky in the distance. I do think the environments were a bit too dark though, because I completely missed the two entry ways next to the game exit. I think if there was some little signs or flickering lights over them that would help dummies like me.

Visually the game was nice with its sort of moodily lit pixel art environment. Running around and finding a lockers to loot was always a nice feeling. The UI also worked quite well, everything was readable and clear.

The mechanic of fending the shadow creatures off with the flashlight was a neat concept, though admittedly when they did catch up with me the minigame to fight wasn't very hard. That being said, I do like the concept of the combat minigame where you fight off the tendrils. I do think the charge on the flashlight batteries could be increased a little bit though, because it makes navigation harder than I really think it needs to be.

The movement felt great, thank you for allowing continuous movement! It made navigating the long hallways much easier.

Among the other little things I liked was the cutscene playing in the background of the main menu, and the little hover sounds and effects on the buttons.

Overall I quite enjoyed this one, good work!

Developer(+1)

Ouuu the flickering lights would have been a good idea, wish we thought of that.  Thanks for the feedback and for trying out the game!

Submitted(+2)

I escaped ...

This was pretty fun. Movement feels pretty good, the game looks good with detailed environment.  The combat works perfectly for such a context. I like both the dungeon and quest structure. The placement of the items is not random and it's satisfying to find the storage where are stocked the things, batteries especially, for example. As for the quest structure, an overall open dungeon with exactly one keycard and you need to find two things among many other things then you can go is the right middleground to my taste between just needing to find the exit or the opposite the game requiring to visit every room (when not even in a defined order).

The only thing I did not like is that sometimes you kind of get stuck with 4 or 5 fights triggering in a row before you eventually manage to escape, I did not like that part, I feel like just dying due to sanity loss would actually have been less annoying to me sometimes.

Overall this is a very solid entry, thanks for sharing.

Submitted(+2)

First time that shadow thing jumped on me it crashed the game o,O That was a damn good jumpscare hahaha

Felt that flashlight was a bit too fast to die out. And since there is light by itself from you - the only thing it actually does is killing those shadows... but its more annoying than anything else. 

At one point, even though I had light working and my sanity was in mediums - they kept spawning right in front of me, not letting me into the room. Part of them would die from light, part from minigame. But they kept going. They really need some cooldown for spawning.

I only managed to turn on the light and got stuck in, what I think was storage, with infinite spawn shadows :(

Submitted(+1)

The solitude theme was very well incorporated as was the sanity mechanic. I think, that more shadows spawned, when the sanity got lower? The minigame was a nice touch, defending you from a heart attack, because of you fear. But I did not care for the flashlight stuff, there were to few batteries and navigating in darkness is just not fun. I think I know, what you were going for there, but this part just did not work for me, it was more frustration than fear, when I ran out of juice. But the basics are well done and most of the time, the atmosphere really was spot on.

Developer

Thanks for trying the game out! Will take your critique into consideration for future jams :)
Also yes more creatures did spawn as the sanity got lower!

Submitted(+1)

Movement and the environment felt good - the level design was just confusing enough to be a stressor without actually being a problem. The flashlight battery timer was neat, as is the combined combat mechanics of light dissipating the shadow men and the floating knife minigame (although it took me one death to figure out what was going on). Almost reminds me of Spectrobes, in a weird way. Not too long, either.

Here's my playthrough, so you can witness my trial-and-error:

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing the game and thanks for recording a video! It's kind of hard to do a blind run of the game when you helped make the game haha so it's cool to see someone else try it out. 

Submitted (2 edits) (+2)

Grid movement and turning felt nice and snappy. I liked the minigame with the heart when encountering a creature, while a bit basic it's a nice change of pace combined with the flashlight doubling as your weapon and helping you see. The flashlight on the bad guys reminded me a bit of Alan Wake (good thing). The atmosphere is creepy with the eyes in the darkness, I got a couple jumps coming around a corner not expecting something to be there. Cool entry!

Submitted(+2)

I liked the premise here and loved the combat mechanic a lot, but, uh, I'm going to need some hints on how to progress. Found the keycard, turned the power on but that didn't do much (or anything) and then I usually run out of flashlight batteries before I can find what I'm supposed to do next:(

Atmosphere is really good as well.

Developer

Need to find the fuel as well! It's in the storage section.