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A jam submission

The Dryden CavesView game page

Short horror game exploring The Dryden Caves
Submitted by Mars On Fire — 5 days, 1 hour before the deadline
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The Dryden Caves's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#912.7913.222
Controls#992.7913.222
Audio#1002.8873.333
Theme#1093.0793.556
Overall#1212.6813.095
Originality#1302.5983.000
Graphics#1312.6943.111
Accessibility#1581.9252.222

Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot Version
4.2.2

Wildcards Used
Turtles all the way down

Game Description
Detective Robert Osborne is exploring the caves underneath the small town of Dryden. Many have gone into the cave system to never come out. Locals believe spirits and ghosts inhabit the cave, but Robert thinks there is a simple explanation for the disappearances - a killer must be on the loose!

How does your game tie into the theme?
Haunted caves are often features of folklore stories. Sometimes ghosts of those who've died in caves haunt them or monsters guard treasure and secrets.

Source(s)
No

Discord Username(s)
marsonfire

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
First time

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Comments

Submitted

I enjoyed getting lost in the caves with the recursion! I tabbed out to respond to a DM and when I tabbed back the game didn't capture the mouse again, so I had to restart, would be good to just have an on click event to recapture the mouse!

Submitted

I think I realized how the recursion on the map worked a bit of a way through andi have to say it was really brilliant!. Love a good horror game and you really sold a good horror experience. 

Submitted

I almost wish it ended with a simple fade to black or something instead of the typical jump scare monster attack, the buildup was really effective up to that point. Its still the most spooky one so far :)

Submitted(+1)

LOL the ending got me as well, great work.

I love the sound design, felt very ominous the whole way. That combined with the progression of the notes feels very suspenseful. I would say more story in the notes would be the best way to build on this game.

How did you model the caves? Did you sculpt the whole thing as one piece in blender? I really liked the low poly cave geometry and would love to know the technique you used to make it

Developer

Blender tutorial following this awesome video here

It's a lot easier than you'd think actually. That's for 2.8, so some things are slightly different but it mostly works out the same. 

Make sure to export the model with a -col at the end of the name so the collider gets automatically applied. Also, I screwed something up with the normals, or maybe the video does - I'm not sure. I spent like an hour trying to figure out why I couldn't move in the cave until I flipped the normals and reimported, so make sure to get that right.

Submitted

Oh yeah that does seem pretty simple, nice. I'll definitely be using this at some point for a future jam. Thanks a bunch!

Submitted (1 edit)

Amazing aesthetic and build-up. The ending got me good!

One minor control feedback (for the browser version, at least): Make it so that clicking the screen re-locks the mouse if it's unlocked. A few times I had to restart because I tabbed out and I couldn't play first person with unlocked mouse.