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A jam submission

PolterbustView game page

Escape-room style Puzzle game about following a spirit's orders.
Submitted by SaltyIsaac, Arkatein (@arkatein) — 1 minute, 38 seconds before the deadline
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Polterbust's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Originality#154.0044.182
Graphics#224.0914.273
Fun#393.3953.545
Overall#463.4323.584
Accessibility#563.0463.182
Controls#623.1333.273
Audio#753.1333.273
Theme#923.2203.364

Ranked from 11 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
None

Game Description
It's an escape room style puzzle game about deciphering a spirit's messages. By exploring the room, inspecting the various objects inside, and communicating with the spirit, you must figure out whre each object needs to go for the spirit to calm down, and hopefully force it to go away once and for all!

How does your game tie into the theme?
This game is based on occultism and various folkloric elements and symbols.

Source(s)
https://github.com/Isaac-SOL/OccultRoom

Discord Username(s)
saltyisaac, arkatein

Participation Level (GWJ Only)
This is our first time in GWJ

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

cool game. I wasn't able to finish it. great atmosphere and art but the audio was lacking. I want to return to it and beat it after the jam.

how did you get that crunchy 3D look?

Developer

Hey, thanks for the kind comment! 

To get that look we render the game at 640x360 and then upscale the image with nearest neighbor. You can do that simply by setting the window size in the project settings and setting the resize behavior to "viewport". After that, it's mostly a matter of artstyle, we chose a simple artstyle because Arkatein is new to blender and it lens itself well to the pixelated look.

Submitted

Wow this game is so cool. This is my favorite type of game to find when I'm trying to kill time on this site lol. The graphics are really nice, very consistent visuals. Very ominous vibes.

The puzzles are definitely challenging, and there were some parts where I made progress without really realizing what I had done right, but that's probably just mistakes on my end.

Really cool and super fun, one of my favorites!

Developer

Thanks a lot for the feedback ! It’s really good to hear that you enjoyed playing our game and solving the various puzzles 🙂

We tried to make the game as nonlinear as possible, so it seems normal that sometimes you end up solving a puzzle without really paying attention 😅

Submitted(+2)

I am totally blown away, and completely ashamed of my inability to finish this game.  This feels like something I would have spent hours chipping away at in the 90s, and that's a huge compliment from me.  Polished, thoughtful, completely functional, I love everything about this game and I don't like puzzle games most times.  The only thing I think lacking that would make this feel like completely not a game jam game would be music or ambient audio, something to keep my idle brain busy while I sort through the puzzle.  I'm almost definitely coming back to this game on my own after the jam to finish playing it, thanks so much for making this for us!

Developer

Wow, thanks a lot for your comment!

As you have noted, sound effects and ambience have been a bit of an afterthought compared to the rest, we did spend some time on it but it was late in the jam.

Regarding difficulty, it is very heartening to hear that you want to stick with it despite being stuck! We have struggled a lot with tuning the hints and explanations on how to progress, there was one playtesting session where I had almost given up hope that this would work at all.

Thanks again, your comment means a lot to us!

Submitted(+1)

got decently far but my brain isnt big enough to finish. still had a great time playing and I love this 3D caera control and the visual of finding each clue. 

Developer(+1)

It's good to hear that you liked our game ! Thank you for trying it out and leaving a comment :)

Submitted(+2)

Wow this game was great. I was first stuck in the web export for a while before I read your comment about it not having proper textures. Luckily the exe version worked well. It took me a while to realize how to play the game but eventually, I managed to beat it. I was stuck for a long time in the part where you had to get 3 candles because I for some reason thought that one would suffice and I tried to light it in a million different ways. The crystal ball giving hints as to what items to pay attention to was great design. I think you could even have some more hints or guidance as well though, cause I feel many will drop the game quite early not knowing how to proceed. Great stuff, probs my favorite game I've played so far.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for your comment!

I really wanted to have a web version, but it seems to just universally not work, so after reading your comment I have decided to remove it. Thanks for sticking with the game despite this issue.

We did not want to give too many hints, but it's hard to balance. I would have liked to implement a history for the monologue because it contains a lot of hints. But considering the very difficults playtests we had throughout the week, I'm very happy that now a complete stranger was able to finish it without any help!