Well, the game was hard as nail but overall the atmosphere you've set up was top notch. With very few elements you've managed to build some interesting gameplay tension and I found that the main mechanic while being simple as a bar to fill up was geniously used and served well the purpose. I loved the SCP like vibes that you've created, and the classified document writing was well made.
Unfortunately i couldn't finish the game even after few try, it seemed impossible to get to the ending without getting killed too early.
I see a lot of potential in this game because it evoques fear with simple and soft elements, well done Grim !
Thanks for the kind words XENA_SN! Are you playing the latest version (1.0.0.5)? The last stage is definitely doable (although still quite difficult!) but in previous versions the final stage was impossible so I'm wondering if you have one of those (definitely recommend going with the latest if so, lots of QoL fixes that make the game a lot more playable).
Thanks again though, It's super awesome to hear that you enjoyed yourself! :)
Yes it might be an old version that I played because some weeks ago I've downloaded a huge batch of jam games including yours. I will try the latest version tonight !
I really enjoyed the atmosphere in this! It was tense and spooky, and the light from the TV is evocative. The new version does make redacting documents a bit easier, and in general I liked juggling this with closing the doors. I'm not sure if it's possible to complete the last phase though; given that you only have 30 seconds to do 7 documents, and the doors are pretty much constant, it feels impossible. The fact that you get a Game Over screen seems to imply that it's not the canonical ending though!
If you don't mind a bit of critique, it feels like there needs to be a little more consistency in the difficulty as the stages progress. There are several elements that contribute to the difficulty of a stage: Time, number of documents, frequency of door openings, speed of door opening (I think this gets faster? I might be wrong about this), and number of redactions in each document. All of these except the number of redactions ramp up, but the door openings and number of redactions are randomised, in a way that means that sometimes when you do a stage is can be really difficult, and other times it's a bit of a breeze.
The main thing causing this is the randomness in the doors; sometimes they won't open for a good 30 seconds, and other times on the same stage you can spend 15-20 seconds moving back and forth between them as they repeatedly open up. A cooldown timer would probably be the most elegant way of handling this; when you've closed a door, it won't open again for another 15 seconds or so (this time could decrease as you progress). You would still have some randomness on when they trigger, but it would reduce the likelihood of you going back and forth repeatedly.
Sorry, I've gone on a bit! One last point is that it seems like a bug that when you finish redacting one document, the scroll leave is retained, so if you were at the bottom of it, you might then need to scroll up to the top.
Congrats on making your first game; in spite of my criticisms, I was impressed by it, and it did a number of things really well!
Thanks for the super useful feedback and kind compliments, a lot of the points you mentioned are actually the things I am most annoyed about my game now, and are being worked on!
The super super difficult last stage was my cheap and nasty way of hiding the fact that my current ending (which definitely exists) is really sub-par, but luckily I have made changing most of the balancing elements fairly easy, so should just be a case of tweaking the data a bit!
Thanks for the feedback and kind words, I'll be adding a crosshair dot to give visual aid of where you are looking and whether the thing you are looking at is interactable in my hilariously late 'Day One' patch!
Comments
Well, the game was hard as nail but overall the atmosphere you've set up was top notch. With very few elements you've managed to build some interesting gameplay tension and I found that the main mechanic while being simple as a bar to fill up was geniously used and served well the purpose. I loved the SCP like vibes that you've created, and the classified document writing was well made.
Unfortunately i couldn't finish the game even after few try, it seemed impossible to get to the ending without getting killed too early.
I see a lot of potential in this game because it evoques fear with simple and soft elements, well done Grim !
Thanks for the kind words XENA_SN! Are you playing the latest version (1.0.0.5)? The last stage is definitely doable (although still quite difficult!) but in previous versions the final stage was impossible so I'm wondering if you have one of those (definitely recommend going with the latest if so, lots of QoL fixes that make the game a lot more playable).
Thanks again though, It's super awesome to hear that you enjoyed yourself! :)
Yes it might be an old version that I played because some weeks ago I've downloaded a huge batch of jam games including yours. I will try the latest version tonight !
What amazing atmosphere! My favorite part was the lighting, great job. I like to think this tv and the one from my game TV night would be friends :3
Thank you so much! Maybe the universes will collide some day... 👀👀👀👀👀👀
I really enjoyed the atmosphere in this! It was tense and spooky, and the light from the TV is evocative. The new version does make redacting documents a bit easier, and in general I liked juggling this with closing the doors. I'm not sure if it's possible to complete the last phase though; given that you only have 30 seconds to do 7 documents, and the doors are pretty much constant, it feels impossible. The fact that you get a Game Over screen seems to imply that it's not the canonical ending though!
If you don't mind a bit of critique, it feels like there needs to be a little more consistency in the difficulty as the stages progress. There are several elements that contribute to the difficulty of a stage: Time, number of documents, frequency of door openings, speed of door opening (I think this gets faster? I might be wrong about this), and number of redactions in each document. All of these except the number of redactions ramp up, but the door openings and number of redactions are randomised, in a way that means that sometimes when you do a stage is can be really difficult, and other times it's a bit of a breeze.
The main thing causing this is the randomness in the doors; sometimes they won't open for a good 30 seconds, and other times on the same stage you can spend 15-20 seconds moving back and forth between them as they repeatedly open up. A cooldown timer would probably be the most elegant way of handling this; when you've closed a door, it won't open again for another 15 seconds or so (this time could decrease as you progress). You would still have some randomness on when they trigger, but it would reduce the likelihood of you going back and forth repeatedly.
Sorry, I've gone on a bit! One last point is that it seems like a bug that when you finish redacting one document, the scroll leave is retained, so if you were at the bottom of it, you might then need to scroll up to the top.
Congrats on making your first game; in spite of my criticisms, I was impressed by it, and it did a number of things really well!
Thanks for the super useful feedback and kind compliments, a lot of the points you mentioned are actually the things I am most annoyed about my game now, and are being worked on!
The super super difficult last stage was my cheap and nasty way of hiding the fact that my current ending (which definitely exists) is really sub-par, but luckily I have made changing most of the balancing elements fairly easy, so should just be a case of tweaking the data a bit!
I really liked the visuals of this game. The light from the tv felt just right. Starting menu being attached to tv was great way to do it.
I did have some issues interacting with stuff. Like finding the correct place to look to interact with them was really hard to find.
Overall great job still!
Thanks for the feedback and kind words, I'll be adding a crosshair dot to give visual aid of where you are looking and whether the thing you are looking at is interactable in my hilariously late 'Day One' patch!