Who's Cameron? I can get the Dagon pearl (and smash the heart of the creature) but can't find the way to open the door behind the creature.
The game is ambitious and fun.
Play game
BleakHarbor's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #64 | 3.040 | 3.040 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
all four themes were used. endless is used for the setting and ending. You discover and search both the under temple ruin and the water ruins, Solitude - you are completely alone - there is a mystery of what happened to the people. Cosmic horror is with the god Dagon and the oncomming madness you encounter
Comments
Oh, thanks.
There's a small bug here and there and a thing could work slightly better here and there but up to this point the game is fairly playable in my opinion.
The game is super fun. It looks and sounds great and the environments and sequences are very detailed and distinguishable.
The three exits to the second map are super great especially as one of them (the first one you'll reach by chance, probably) leads to a totally different part than the two other ones and you technically don't mandatorily have to access it (the opposite is true, if starting there you don't really have to explore a big part of the golem part), although you'll want the potions there. Both available maps are really very good with quite some non-linearity, the right amount and placement of lever and plates (levers and plates should not force a linear progression and here they don't) and plenty of real, distinguishable sequences and fun encounters. I really enjoy the combat in this game even if I have not really understood how the behaviour of enemies works (it does not seem to be completely real-time and independent from your actions yet your weapons have cooldown, it's weird) in a big part because it offers the right amount of challenge.
Overall the game seems to be well balanced, I really like that because it means it's rewarding to gain levels and to get new pieces of equipment, or the strength potions, which are rightly placed either in a corner, behind a door or a hidden door or in-between big combat phases. You want them because they change everything, you get from actually weak to strong as you progress, it would not matter if the game was super easy no matter what. It's super satisfying to get back and smash these tentacles from the beginning for some XP after you explored the entire first level, these tentacles are super cool and very frightening and you don't want to come close to them in the beginning, I love them. You're not flooded with potions yet get enough if you push your luck at least a bit, you don't want to use a potion when your life bar is only halfway through and it's fine this way.
The reason I'm saying 'seems to be' is that the game gets easy if you want it to be once you realise there's a crate with infinite potions in the first map, and I abused this one because abusing this exact sort of bug is fun.
Burning something with oil eventually crashes the game with a memory access violation. I think acolytes don't get to attack.
Sometimes enemies attack several times in a row instead of one while they shouldn't, right? It's hard to exactly understand what's happening but I think that's what happens.
I don't know if the very first snail crossing the wall to the apple is intentional or not, what makes it unfair compared with similar games is that you can't punch with your fists when you've got no weapon and I don't personally mind unfair things but if it was not intentional then it's worth fixing.
I'd say the combination between tiles you can reach or not being often hard to distinguish and taking damage for walking onto a wall was alright and I got used to it but it made me look at the minimap and/or the control arrows instead of the first person view a bit more than I'd like to, at least until I knew the maps by heart.
I did not understand how and why but sometimes clicking on tiles in the inventory works perfectly and sometimes you struggle, have to precisely click in the middle of tiles or something.
I think when you swap an item with a piece of equipment which is already there then you can put any item or any slot except for hands.
These are really no big deal honestly, the door which won't open is to some extent as I would have liked to complete the game during the jam ;) .
This is a super cool, fun and ambitious entry, thanks for sharing.
I love the graphic style and amazing environments and atmosphere! I appreciate the "zooperdan controls" :D
I feel the game has too many bugs to be fully enjoyable right now. I glitched through geometry. I more often than not moved two tiles instead of one resulting in a head injury. I fell through the pier and into the water, which meant I had to restart. Combat seems glitchy too because sometimes I'm almost instakilled while other times I take very little damage. Sometimes items disappeared from inventory for unknown reasons. A couple times when I tried to drink a potion the potion disappeared but I didn't get any health added.
I feel the user-interaction should be revised a little too. I think items you pick up should directly go into the inventory without having to open it. Perhaps even better; items get automatically picked up when moving over them. It's a nice touch with crouching but that also could be automatic when you move toward a narrow entrance, since crouching has no practical use in other situations. Items given to you by a quest NPC should also go directly into the inventory. I didn't know it was dropped to the ground so I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get past the slug without any weapon.
That being said. It was great to finally see this in action and I know it'll only get better. While maybe a little bit early it shows amazing potential and my mind is already thinking about all the cool things we can do in it.
I look forward to using the thingy :)
Really like this look of this!
Received "Wonkey Runtime Error: SIGNAL: Memory access violation GC state=IDLE" while viewing the controls. I had pressed the arrow keys and alt-enter a few times before going into the controls (none of them seemed to do anything, although on a second reproduction I noticed "old coins" showing up on the main menu when using the arrow keys, I guess I'm moving around? crash happened again after similar steps when trying alt-enter or enter on the controls screen).
I seem to almost always move at least two spaces when I press a key to move, usually resulting in damage when hitting a wall :(
F4 seems to instantly exit :(. Oh, possibly it thought I had "alt" held due to an earlier alt-tab and it didn't reset the keydown states upon focus/activate or something.
Way too difficult (maybe due to controls?) for me, I died 3 times before managing to get the three fish -_-. Finally did that a few times, and not sure what keeps killing me, I seem to walk in front of a snail and instantly go from full Hp to 0 :(.
Looking forward to playing more in a post-bugfix version =).
Submitted
Snake EyesI switched PC's and it fixed the graphical issues I was experiencing from my other post. What an awesome entry! I'm very fond of the graphics, it reminds me of Kings Field/psx era games, so there's a lot of nostalgia on that alone. The movement and turning was great, the combat was good with ranged options as well and the atmosphere was spot on, especially with the giant looming tentacle in the background. Crouching was a great addition to just walking around normally, so this was a clever touch.
As others have mentioned, the wall bump which seems like a call back to old DC's that did it in the past, ended up being more of a nuisance than anything. I often did it accidentally, when I couldn't actually tell if there was a spot to go into or not. Attacking enemies too quickly made them insta-kill me, like their attacks were queuing up with every attack, there was a spot by the cave I could walk through from the town side. Not sure if the difficulty is due to that or because it's actually really hard so it may not even need to be tuned, just fixed.
Some shoring up on some of these issues here and there and I would buy this one on the market! Awesome job.
Submitted
Escaping the Cosmic AbyssThis looked and sounded really good. Great take on the Lovecraftian town invasion.
It was a bit tough for me though. To not repeat what others have said, I think the wall bump HP bump wouldn't be so bad if it was clearer what was and wasn't a space. There're a few places that look obstructed but are actually fine. Though maybe that adds to the feeling of helplessness.
I found a hole in the map that leads from the left tunnel to the pier after the gate opens. And I think there's a glitch where if you click attack too quickly, the enemy will pop off at you in quick succession without your attacks landing. I dies a few times to that.
Impressive entry none the less.
I'll post my playthrough when it's up.
EDIT: Bleak HarbourPt1 by AdamStrange
Submitted
The Cursed CavernsI really dig the setting, sound and art-style. And it’s mad impressive building your own editor. I think in one attempt, that I got curious and clicked on the arrow thing and started editing or something.
I also had issues with the walls, but once I learnt the trick of navigating with the on screen buttons, then there was no real risk of wall damage.
I also found that not every click on the navigations seems to have registered. Sometimes I had to press the same button more than once before anything happened.
In the inventory I was also at times a bit confused about what things could go where. There seemed to be 3 different colors or at least and the only thing that seemed consistent was that the red one meant “No”. But for example I could not equip the apple in the hand even though it didn’t show as red.
It might have been by design, but when I dropped one of the stones in front of me, hoping it might do something to the pentagram in the cave area, it felt like the ston disappeared. If dropping means destroying, it’s probably good to warn the player about that.
At one point I think I could clip through the walls at which point my ui disappeared entirely.
So I’m a bit sad I feel like I just scraped the surface of your entry, but these slugs are just too murderous for me to stand a chance.
It looks like a really interesting entry otherwise, and I hope you get some points from my experience.
A clip of the short playthrough without commentary (for reference as I sent you on discord too): https://youtu.be/izyJPqrtWWs
Submitted
The MassFirst of it's quiet an amazing job to build your own engine/editor. Exceptional to say the least.
The content that is in Bleak Harbor is stunning and there is lots of content!
Having this of my chest lets get to the feedback, because I take it that is what you really looking for.
Movement is very delicate, I also unintentionaly bumped into things losing hp. I don't mind losing hp by bumping into stuff (DM style) but it felt very unfair as I barely touched the keys and already started zooming around.
The first snake (after the rock) also attacked me inside the first cave (with the 6G and the apple) I don't think that was suppossed to happen, as I only had 1 rock to defend myself and died of course. In some places I also noticed various clipping problems (I could see behind a wall but did not take a screenshot of it).
After providing the 3 dead fish, I got two clubs, is that right? I then got the healing potion and unintentionly zoomed into the snail which killed me instanly. In another run I got to the guards but some how could not move forward anymore (the movement buttons showed the tile in front as moveable) but instead an attack animation was displayed. I had to turn and strafe in order to get to that tile.
Sometimes the windows mouse cursor was displayed as a loading cursor, not sure if that helps.
It is also possible to loose an quest item (dead fish) unintentionaly , here is how: Collect a fish (or any other item) dont put it into the inventory but move (inventory closes but keeps loot), loot another item and the first item is lost (even when its a quest item). As a hint to others: Always place stuff you loot into the inventory!
I think there are some serious timing issues which make the game unintionally very difficult/unplayable which is a shame. If I had to make a guess I would say it has something to do how you calculate the deltatime between frames.
Used a mid range Ryzen 5700g + RTX 3060, and a throw away Win11 installation.
Submitted
Twins vs. AncientsImpressive entry. I like the snappy and fast movements. The burger menu is a trap, it's not a menu but a quit button. Also, after a few runs I was one-shot by a snail after the stone guards (I was almost full life). Dunno if it was intended, but I shocked :)
Anyway great entry.
Submitted
Near InfinityVisually and atmospherically this game is quite impressive, but I can't play this game for some reason. The game feels like it's 10x as fast as it should be. The moment I step with my pinky toe onto the tile next to the first enemy just after the three fish boulder, I get oneshot. Not sure if that's intentional, but it feels wrong. I did manage to whack it once at some point, seemingly killing it, but I had a sliver of health left afterwards. Then I couldn't figure out how to heal with the potion, and it disappeared when I wielded it and probably chucked it away. I died shortly after :D
So yeah, probably a skill issue and I need to git gud, but this game is beyond my capability to play and enjoy...
I don't mind the health loss on wallbumping that much, but at first I thought it was the crabs attacking me so I tried to speedrun the fish quest which only led to me losing more health due to the rapid speed at which you accidentally bump into things :D but after I learned that that was not the case, and that the on-screen movement controls grey out if you can't move there, that turned out to be less of a problem. So I'm not fully opposed to that mechanic specifically, but I don't mind seeing it gone either.
Atmosphere is great, though. But the small area that I did see felt very cluttered and visually not very tile-like, which made it a bit hard to navigate sometimes.
I'm a bit torn on how to rate this game, because it's not really fun or playable for me, but that may not be the game's fault. I'd love to give it another try if you (or someone else that reads this) can tell me what the proper way is to get past the first enemy. Is it intentional that they practically instakill you and that there are other ways past it? Is it a bug? Am I just bad? Please let me know :D
No problem. What system are you running it on, so I can gauge the speed issue?
OK/ meet binro. get the quest for the dead fish. find the fish, pick them up and go speak to binro he should drop a club.
Behind you is a small beach spur - go to the end where you will find some boots, rock - dont go next to the tentacles they will kill you.
now go through the open rock arch - you should put any clothes you have found on. I for inventory, clci an item and click when to put it.
put the club in 1 of your hands. You should now be able to attack the 1st snail. Use Keys 1/2 to swing the club (attack)
Speak to the next binro - he will give you a health potion. drink this potion by dropping it on the lips...
And off we go :)
Yeah I was already doing what you said, so that at least confirms I wasn't playing the game "wrong".
I learned that the problems only occur when using keyboard controls. If I use mouse clicks on the HUD, the game seems to work as intended and it is in fact turnbased. With keyboard input, it seems like turns are handled immediately while I hold the key down without any grace period, which results in adjacent enemies attacking repeatedly every few frames. I thought the game was real-time because of this, but now that I know it's turn-based, it's playable :D I just can't use any keyboard controls. For reference, my specs are win10, AMD R7 3700x and an Nvidia 2070S.
I'll give it a proper go tonight and will update my comments!
Alright, I've given the game a few more attempts and managed to get a lot farther this time. My furthest attempts were via the water path of the 3 choices (water exit, field, cannery). At least, that's what I assume, because I did cross a foresty area but I don't know if that's the "field". The first time I reached the exit sign, I didn't go in but instead continued on into a spider lair. It didn't end well :') but after another attempt I did go into the exit and reached the second area with the boulders, fireballs, and later on the poison zombies, where I died after I didn't see one and mistakenly picked up a bottle while getting pounded from the side by him. I don't really feel like playing through everything again, because it's very delicate and janky, so I'd rather wait for a more polished version (with checkpoints? pretty please! :D )
I also have a reproducible hard crash. Just past the first guards, you've got the T-junction where you can go left or right, with the steam vents. When you go left, then up the stairs to the right, then move towards the tile with the lever, if you then turn left you'll notice the second blobthing a few tiles ahead on the lower level. Throw the oil pot to put the blob ablaze, then activate the lever, then step left, and a hard crash occurs with the text: "Wonkey Runtime Error: SIGNAL: Memory access violation GC state=IDLE". Pulling the lever might be optional, it's the throwing oil and then moving left (meaning away from the lever which is to your right) that triggered this crash twice for me. So I decided to abandon that route.
Other minor things:
- I have to restart the game after each death, or else items duplicate and quests bug out during the next playthrough (like the intro fish quest). I think status effects might also persist.
- Some camera angles cause the world to be very up close and cover the screen and the UI buttons, as the UI is not rendered over the world
- Sometimes clicking the UI movement buttons doesn't register properly, it takes a few clicks in different positions before it registers
- Attacking the ghost when walking into it for dialogue
- I wish there was a "wait in place and do nothing for one turn" action
- Some interactables (like the lever and the steam valve) activate on other inputs, not just space
- The game continues after death; I still had my inventory open and I could drink a health pot and keep moving etc, but I could hardly see anything as there's a fullscreen game over overlay covering the game
- I had to crouch in the forest area in level 1 because I couldn't see anything while standing up
- Enemies (and you as well, I guess) ignore height level differences. Enemies standing on a platform twice as high as me could still hit me. Same with throwing rocks at a snail on top of the stairs while you're at the bottom. Could be intentional, but doesn't feel intuitive for melee combat
- I wish the game would clear and briefly block any inputs after taking damage, so you don't get killed within a fraction of a second when you don't notice an enemy and are already performing the actions
All in all it feels like a diamond in the rough. The game feels very ambitious, but falls flat due to the jank, movement system, and unforgiving gameplay without saves/checkpoints. I'll wait for the updated version :D
Visually this is probably my favorite game of the jam that I've seen. All the props and textures, the crunchy skybox and ominous water it just looks phenomenal. It also sounds phenomenal and the vibe is on point with that innsmouth lovercraftian 20s/30s fishing hamlet feel, the spooky droney background music and nautical bells ringing in the distance. I cannot stress enough how cool I find this world and how much I would want to play a full game set here. It's a very impressive environment for a 9 day jam.
Gameplay wise I enjoyed it, I would echo other peoples issues with the bump damage but honestly after a while I was just more careful so it didn't bother me too much that being said there seemed to be a few hidden areas (Like where the chain gauntlets are) and I might not search for them as much with the bump damage mechanic. Combat felt nice and juicy, and I love throwing stuff at enemies. Movement was responsive and felt good.
I did encounter a few bugs. I was able to clip through the rocks in the small cave at the beginning and bypass the 3 fish quest, I was also able to pick up the library notes infinitely. After fighting the spider, I seemed to teleport directly to the under temple, after getting hit by the trap and then standing on the spinner, a few quest trigger things (Like the boulder being gone but the fish quest coming back), after one of my deaths the sea seemed to clip through the terrain (or maybe it didn't generate) so there was a sea block in the middle of the path to the cave, and lastly I was able to move around the under temple when I was dead in the main menu. I could even access the inventory and pick up items.
Really impressive that this is all running on your custom engine and just a really visually striking and immersive space. This is probably one of the few cases where I 100% would play a post-jam version for my own entertainment that's had some of the bugs fixed, I'd love to finish it.
Great entry!!
Submitted
Gloamingholdfirst off - I'm really glad that you got off level 1 into the under temple. Yep I also agree with everything you have sad about the bugs and health bump. You are also the first person to mention throwing things - so that is good for me too. But I do take all the issues with the quest bugs and menu errors. I'm onto fixing everything I can :)
I have to stress that this is really impressive! The graphics are great, the atmosphere is great, there's a shocking amount of little details strewn throughout that are really neat. And it is a goddammned shame I didn't see much more beyond the starting area because the game is also BRUTAL.
As others have mentioned the damage when walking into walls is a bit of an obstacle. I know it was in a lot of the classics, I remember discovering it when I accidentally killed myself the first time I tried Dungeon Master. But I honestly think it should be a toggleable setting for the more hardcore players rather than the default. And personally I found it was especially annoying combined with the fact the movement is very quick and sensitive. I would press a move key for what felt like less than half a second and it would move me multiple tiles.
I also experienced getting trapped by the snails, who I think were clipping through the wall behind Binro's second position in the starting area.
I like the little surprise enemy when you kill a crab, but it became annoying when I unintentionally killed a crab by simply walking forward while I had a weapon in hand.
And I don't think I ever got a handle on the combat, because sometimes it felt like enemies attacked and moved in turns. But other times it was like I'd be killed instantly by a snail even at over half health and attacking it with two clubs. Actually that's another bug, I was able to turn in Binro's initial quest multiple times, once I got 3 clubs.
There's clearly a lot of love and attention to detail poured into this game. I mean it looks and sounds great, it captures the lovecraftian feel almost perfectly, and I think it does the PS1 look better than my game!
But after about 20 minutes and a dozen deaths I just had to call it quits. If the game is refined post-jam though I'd love to try it again!
Submitted
Neptune's ChildrenUnfortunately I encountered some sort of rendering issue where a bunch of flashing polygons appeared everywhere and it's unplayable. If somebody knows a work around I would love to try this one as it looks rad. I'll hold off rating for now in hopes I can actually play it. FWIW Using a windows laptop - AMD Ryzen 5 4600H with Radeon Graphics 3.00 GHz
Submitted
Escaping the Cosmic AbyssThe atmosphere really is great and the DOS era 3d graphics are nice. But I had major issues with the controls, I often stepped to steps and bumped into walls or rocks and took damage. I think that this is a very bad mechanic. But there is so much stuff here, such an unique entry!
Submitted
The Nexus GraveQuite technically impressive knowing that you built your own engine. And the atmosphere is probably one of the best I've seen so far. Didn't manage to get to the end just yet because the game feels quite brutal, with a lot of trial'n'error on where the limits of the map are so you don't die to obstacles and enemies, but I'd like to finish it.
The most obvious bug I had is that some states and variables don't reset when you die. So I couldn't get the starting quests after restarting. I had to exit and enter the entire application for those things to reset.
This engine is going in the right direction, definitely!
For now, I am only certain that my quests did not reset. That is, the ability to pick them up again. The ghost at the start and the ferryman just assumed that I already had them, even though I didn't and I couldn't progress in them. If I confirm and am certain of other things not resetting, I'll inform you.
Visually good looking game. You totally nailed the Lovecraftian atmosphere. I think the level design of the game is not very compatible with the grid based dungeon crawler genre. There are some problems with the overall level design. You can go through objects. There are also some bugs. Like when you walk into an obstacle you take damage. I don't understand what are those ash colored characters at the docks. They're not attacking nor you can speak with them. Inventory system looks good and works well.
Good game but lacks polish, a little rough in it's current state.
Submitted
Goblin HunterVisuals are nicely unsettling and a way they rendered are quite nice. But game runs quite poorly on macOS, I’ve had a lot of troubles with inventory and placing items in inventory, for instance. Another thing I didn’t like is how key repeat works and an easy way to make a lot of mistakes because of it.
Will definitely like to revisit it if these technical issues will get fixed in the future.
Submitted
Tomb of AeonI’m on M1 mbpro, so an ARM mac. I had issues with placing items in an inventory slot, felt like there’s a very narrow space where I should click to place item in a slot, like inventory slots being only 3-5 pixels big, or something like that. But I’ve just tried it again and it seems like I should hold a button for a bit longer than a single quick click for it to register.
And another thing to note, which I just noticed is that audio is distorted when I’m on my BT headphones, while it’s absolutely fine when I’m using corded headphones or built-in speakers.
Sleep… I’ve had none Boy, do I feel that!
I’ve been following your progress on this engine since you started a few years ago, and I’m very impressed.
You nailed the aesthetic, and I loved some of the little details, like the mouse-based parallax on the title screen. I spent some time in the game but never got far due to those snails. I couldn’t find more than two rocks, and they kept killing me. My first death was because I got cornered by a snail in the path near the teleporter, and I had no way of fighting back.
Since you’ve been working on this engine, I figured I’d give you as much of a bug report as possible. Hopefully, it’s helpful.
- My portrait randomly changed to an image of 4 pieces of medieval armor. I think it was after I took damage.
- Sometimes Binro’s quest would never trigger, or trigger much later. To that end, I only found two fish, but I didn’t need him to move the rock anyway since I could walk through a wall near the teleporter trap.
- I could not figure out how to use the potions. I tried equipping them with my hands, but that lobbed them at the snails!
- I encountered an inventory bug that seemed to remove items from my inventory. The setup was like:
- Press space to get an item
- When the inventory screen shows up, take a step in some direction without depositing the item in your inventory.
- If you bring up the inventory, you can see the item is still on your mouse cursor.
- Again, close the inventor without depositing the item.
- Find another item and do the same thing
- Bring up inventory; the item you were “holding” on your mouse is gone.
- Sometimes I’d get hit and the rock I’d be holding would disappear.
- When you crouch with a rock in hand, it floats above you.
I’d love to play more of this game if I can get past those snails, lol. It’s clear a lot of love was put into this and I can’t wait to see more!
Submitted
Void ProtocolIt's a nice demonstration of your engine and an interesting scenario.
But one glaring issue that spoils the entire game is getting hurt by hitting obstacles where it's not always obvious if you're facing one, especially in a game with limited resources and quite fast movement speed.
I'll play it again if it gets sorted out.
Submitted
Dragon Ruins [Jam Version]
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