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A jam submission

Novel DreamsView game page

A short puzzle adventure.
Submitted by Daverinoe
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Novel Dreams's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#63.7443.867
Audio#73.8083.933
Accessibility#113.0983.200
Overall#153.3933.505
Fun#153.2923.400
Originality#183.6793.800
Graphics#213.3573.467
Controls#332.7762.867

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
4.0.3

Wildcards Used
Map

Game Description
A short puzzle game about rediscovering lost knowledge.

How does your game tie into the theme?
There is a locked booked that contains our lost knowledge, that we unlock.

Source(s)
N/A

Discord Username(s)
Daverinoe

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
8?

My game has an export for Linux, Windows, & Mac and/or is playable through HTML5

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Beautiful game. The intro was very nice! Also cool to see you had 4k options for it. Just the UI don’t scaled properly. I was only able to solve one of those puzzles. Not sure what to do with the numbers from the columns. The graphics and audio were pretty nice!

Good Job on this!

Some improvements I found:

  • UI Theme
  • textures not wrapped correctly
  • lose sound and music when going into menu
  • cant use menu (guess some bug)
  • maybe a help popup if after 5 minutes or so for the people like me who cannot solve it
Developer

Thanks so much!

The UI scale is driving me insane. The documentation says it should be simple, but alas.

I’ve already tracked down and fixed the bugs for losing sound and the mouse not interacting with the menu (Control node mouse passthrough, curse you!). Would you mind letting me know where the textures weren’t wrapped correctly?

A help system is a great idea, I’ll definitely include that in my next puzzle game! A better UI theme would also be great, but my 2D skills are terrible XD

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

The game glitched out on first try but i completed the game on second try. And some numbers disappeared on the keypad thing, but that's probably the web export being weird.

I'm a fan of room escape games so this was a joy to play. Narration is top-notch, especially the ending.

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much! I really tried to make the ending a bit unexpected, I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, I think it’s something to do with the automatic LOD for web builds. I’ll be trying different methods to try and solve that issue once the jam is over.

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

A nice puzzle game, voice acted cutscene was a nice introduction that set the tone well, the puzzles themselves had enough clues to figure them out and the atmosphere was fitting. I’ve managed to finish it (and again, voice acted cutscene there was well done), but as people mentioned, some of the numbers were difficult to see. I think, making some of them black (on lighter pillars) instead of white could help.

When I started to play the Windows version, I felt the sensitivity was too high and decided to lower it in the settings, this led to a discovery, that the mouse doesn’t work in the in-game pause menu. Also when I opened the menu, the audio disappeared.

Developer(+1)

Yeah, the numbers on the pillars do seem to be upsetting people, and I can definitely understand why. You mentioning the lighter pillars suddenly makes it make a lot more sense - it’s the lighting! Of course, so silly of me not to take that into account.

Thanks for pointing out those bugs, I have no idea when they crept in, but it’s certainly annoying I didn’t catch them!

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Love the atmospheric music and narration. I couldn't figure out the puzzle but still had fun trying to work through it. Agreed with comments that some pillar numbers were difficult to read.

Developer

Thanks!

Sarah again did such a great job with the music.

I was having difficulty getting the numbers to show clearly without them being too obvious at first glance. Wish I had more time to spend on it, or that decals worked in compatibility mode.

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

good stuff! hard to read some numbers sometimes on the pillars but i got it in the end

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

ah, that dear grandmother. :D

my only issue (which might be related to my system) was that i had very poor framerate with the linux build, which made things feel a little less.. immersive? but even with that, this was really fun.

very nice entry, well done! 

Developer(+1)

She always made the best stuff.

Huh, that’s interesting. It ran fine on my laptop running linux, but I guess this is the cost of not having many people playtest your game!

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

I wasn't able to finish this (extremely bad at puzzles syndrome) but the vibes are impeccable! Really reminds me of myst.

Developer

Thanks for giving it a go!

I should do up a quick walkthrough, thanks for the idea :)

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Very nice, the game looks beautiful and the puzzles were fun! Reminds me of Myst quite a bit and definitely succeeds at creating that kind of mysterious environment where you have to explore every little thing around you to solve the puzzles.

I really enjoyed the particle animations when solving some of the locks as well as just looking around at the different pieces of decoration in the room. Fun ending too, haha!

I did occasionally have a bit of trouble figuring out which controls I should be using - clicking the mouse and using WASDQE on the keyboard sometimes seemed at odds with one another. Maybe I should have just stuck with one or the other, but it might have also been helpful just to have an option at the start for a preferred control scheme and disable the others. You still provided control remapping options though, so it’s a pretty small complaint.

Overall very nice work, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely love to play a full-blown version of this game!

Developer

Thanks so much! I took a lot of inspiration from Myst and The Room, and I’m glad I got that feeling down :)

Yeah, I almost nailed the controls. Almost. Just close enough that it’s annoying it doesn’t work properly, hahaha. That’s a good idea about including a preferred control scheme, I’ll keep that in mind for next time!

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

I love these types of games. Reminds me of The Room.  Enjoyed the puzzles you had, and the excellent voice over. Glad I read the itch page! I was able to complete the game. :) Great job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much! I definitely took a giant heaping shovel full of inspiration from The Room, especially with the zoom-in, zoom-out mechanic.

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Hey Daverinoe,

I loved this game!

The intro sequence was beautiful. The animations were smooth and exciting, the voiceover fit the theme and the game perfectly. I was instantly drawn into this little world.

Managed to crack the puzzles as well.

Great job, I think it's an amazing entry! :)

P. S. I had no issues with the mouse + keyboard controls in the HTML5 version.

Developer

Thanks so much!

I’m so glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing!