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A jam submission

Tales of Zeph'raView game page

Explore the old Temple of Zeph'ra
Submitted by aroldan — 1 hour, 50 minutes before the deadline
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Tales of Zeph'ra's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#393.2693.269

Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
This game uses three themes:

- Cosmic Horror: general atmosphere, playing with sanity/madness during all game.
- Ancient Ruines: scenery where the game takes action.
- Solitude: you are a lone adventurer (no parties, no group).

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Comments

Viewing comments 22 to 3 of 22 · Next page · Last page
Submitted

Great art and vibe, love the UI as well and the theme. But I couldn't really figure out what I'm doing wrong. The first run with Luna I was doing 1 damage per hit and taking 1 damage per hit, so killing skellies took a while. On the second and third runs with the other chars, I would deal and take 8-9 damage so combat would be over in three rounds. The third run I died at the first skellie with no chance to pass it. 

So, if you sort out that lil' problem with combat, it'd be a really good experience!

Submitted

Love the old school art style of the game. The art in the cutscenes, textures, UI everything looks wonderful. Movement is also very smooth. Combat is straightforward and tough. I lost most of my HP to a single skeleton. There are no spells or abilites , you just bash it with your sword by spamming lmb. Sanity goes down too fast and i haven't seen anything in the game which restores sanity which makes the game a race against  time. Not sure it's a good idea in a dungeon crawler game.

Overall it's a pretty solid game. Nice job!

Host

Great game! The dungeon textures and lighting is really good. Coherent graphic style with nice UI and the Alagard font which I love :) Really nice music and ambiance in the dungeon. The game is only let down by the slow controls. It needs to be faster and more responsive, especially with realtime combat. The perspective view is spot on. Well done :)

Submitted

I really liked the visual style, effects, setting, and music!

I did feel like there was a lot of balance needed to make the combat interesting, that first enemy, like others are saying, is way too hard, and the subsequent ones end up being too easy.

I also didn't like the way the sanity mechanic is implemented at all. The visual effect that was associated with it was really cool, but it essentially served as a timer that never stopped (even when opening my inventory or map). That made things especially annoying considering the result of the time sanity timer running out was just a game over. Maybe next time, consider implementing this in some way that it doesn't result directly in a game over, maybe a temporary difficulty spike or damage penalty, something like that. Not sure if you are familiar with Darkest Dungeon, but the first one does a good job of handling this kind of mechanic without making it necessarily fatal.

Good jam submission though, also, extra points for the CRT shader option! :)

Submitted

Damn this Skeleton doesn't joke around! A real player killer ! I managed to beat the first level but then I got cut short at the second skeleton. Music and atmosphere were on point. I loved the torch effect on the wall sprite also.  I feel like there is more to it, but the skeletons won't let me ; n ;

Submitted (1 edit)

Not sure what I did wrong, but the main screen never showed any dungeon. Had to navigate with the mini map. and couldn't make it that far. This was with the WebGL version. Tried the pc download and it worked.

Graphics looks great and music is a very good fit. The movement is a bit slow and unresponsive.

Combat was hard. Died several times, cause I couldn't figure it out how it worked. Had low health after all fights I survived. Enemy hits hard and fast and are hard to dodge.

In All, a good submission and nice game to play!

Submitted

"After a grueling journey [...] by the experience of having defiled honor."

Wow! That was intense, this one is not easy.

During my successful run I think I barely beat the boss with 2 DEX spells and 2 healing spells, a long sword and a short sword, a plate mail and a cap plus the chicken I got in the last level. My sanity was quite low too, only half a bar when entering the last level.

It took me a while, including once when I needed to find 0 Ankh and the door would then never open and another time where I could swear a fire blocked the only path I had not visited. That's only 2 levels among plenty though' so that's fine, and maybe that's not even true and I only lost my sanity in the same time my character did, generation is good anyway.

Movement is not perfect, walking straight is perfectly fine but turning around is "unresponsive" for lack of a better word. Combat and inventory UI are good. I love the death image, including when it appears while you're still playing and your sanity is getting low. The game is atmospheric. Granted the game is hard, and I love that it's hard, it's why I enjoyed the game so much, but that won't be to everyone's taste, I think the game is overall well balanced in the sense that it's how you want it to be in such a game or a traditional roguelike. Sanity losses and gains are right on point. Skeletons you can deal with almost anything, any piece of armor will do but any other combination of one or two other items should do it too, and in general you'll be able to get these possibly after avoiding some skeletons and then get back, then other enemies is when you start to want a little more, but you can avoid them if you can't fight them (even if in practice it's often more of a death spiral as you want the sanity for killing enemies), and items are not that sparse, you'll get to find things. Only the boss requires something resembling a full set of equipment, which is a good thing, he's not unbeatable but he's stronger enough than anything else that it's very satisfying to finally defeat him.

I loved the challenge there, thanks for sharing.

Submitted

The setting and background and lore and theme were all quite amazing.  The gameplay was not as good and the sanity bar made it too difficult to play.  I'm not very good at navigating and so doubling back and such made me lose too much sanity and I couldn't get past the first level.  Overall the game would be amazing if it weren't for the difficulty level of it.

Submitted

I liked the setting and the background music was quiet fitting but I am not a big fan of fake "retro look" shaders.

Movement could be snappier and I ended up  looking at the mini map most of the time,  so the diminishing sight at lower sanity levels did not really had much of an impact. Its a nice touch tho. The mini map can be off by an tile but you already noted that in the description. I found another bug that could be related to that. I ended up being on the same tile as a skeleton which then shred me to peaces but I could not harm it.

Nitpicking aside in overall a solid entry.

Submitted

Very difficult combat! The movement and turning are a bit on the slow side. The art, graphics and Egyptian theme are fantastic. I couldn't finish due to the difficulty. If there was a bit more to do in the dungeon and combat was fine tuned, this one could be very solid.

Submitted

Loved the aesthetic! I wish the controls had a little more snap to them. And the combat was TOUGH!

Clearly, a lot of love went into this one.

You can watch my playthrough here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2108733841?t=01h46m53s

Thanks for sharing!

Submitted

Really cool style and atmosphere.
The combat is the main issue I guess, it's kinda hard and inputs are a bit tricky.
I took "Alden" as a character but the first encounter just killed me with 3 attacks.
The map is a bit too big without really any reasons, with just collecting keys as the goal.
Getting a more reasonable combat and implementing more encounters on the level could be a good improvement.
Overall a nice game, good job!

Submitted (1 edit)

Great aesthetics and theme, really liked UI and CRT shader.

But combat is where thing feels not very polished, first encounter already can ruin your playthrough as Kai (i lost to the first skeleton three times in a row and can't do anything about it). It feels like every entity should move as in turn based game (when you move, other entities also move), but they move in real time and don't have attack startup, which causes situation when you one or two turns behind from enemy, can't kite them and losing because of it.

I guess this game is more about stats and positioning, but begining is pretty rough.

Aside from that, overall it's pretty fun game 

Submitted

Great graphics - especially the title and portraits.

I felt that the grid space was too large, and also the movement was a touch too slow. it sort of felt treacly.

I wasn't sure about the keys - very odd. the space to pull things from the next tile was very counter intuitive. z and x for attack also didn't quite make sense - but I got it. A suggestion would be to highlight the keys when you first need to use them :)

On Safari the web build kept crashing. I thing that's more unity that you - lol

But great atmosphere and music all round :)

Developer

Thank you for your feedback! I'll keep it in mind

Submitted

Nice music, aesthetics and theme. Combat felt a bit too random at start, but as you get more equip it gets less random. Movement was a bit slow/unresponsive to my taste, but it was pretty fitting for the theme. Sanity bar was driving me to complete each level faster, so I ended up navigating the map on a minimap mostly to save time on turning which were slowing me down.

I haven’t finished the game though, but overall it’s a pretty solid entry.

Developer

Thank you for your words!

Old Temple of Zeph'ra shall wait you ;)

Submitted

The game feel is really good. Finding the 2 Ankhs in the first area felt like it had just the right amount of exploration and discovery. Not too long, not trivial either. I really like how your level design showed things the player wants first (like a locked door) and then the natural progression was to look for a way to open in, as opposed to just random placement. I found the combat harder that I was expecting but after I got used to the dance I really enjoyed it. A very solid and fun entry.

Developer

Thank you for your feedback!

That's the intention, because of that the first and last level aren't random.

Yep, the combat is very hard initially and too easy with some equipment... I ran out of time to balance it better.

Submitted

man I must just be terrible at this or something, cause I keep dying to the very first skeleton. I love the art style (is it a post-effect to make 3D graphics look like pixel art, or is it 2D graphics?)

Developer

Thank you for your feedback!

Probably you had very very bad luck since damages have a random parameter.

It is a mix 3D/2D. I am using 3D for the world with 2D sprites (3D planes with billboard actually).

Submitted

Cool game, nicely done. Suprisingly, I liked that the minimap shows all the items: you know where to go. The movement are slightly slow for my taste.

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted

Nice job! great presentation and atmosphere! the egyptian theme was very cool

Submitted

Nice graphics with a nice light effect. The music is very fitting and the themes are well integrated. For nitpicking, there is no movement buffering, which is a shame. Oh, there is a minimap, always a plus.

Developer

Thank you! The music theme was integrated in the last hour before deadline :D

Yes... The movement buffering... I had this issue on TODO list but it was impossible to fix in time

Viewing comments 22 to 3 of 22 · Next page · Last page