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A jam submission

BriteView game page

The Darkness is closing in, but there is still hope so long as a spark remains.​
Submitted by Rubescen — 5 days, 16 hours before the deadline
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Brite's itch.io page

Results

Ranked 114th with 1 vote

CriteriaRankVotes
People's Choice Vote#1141

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

  • This was a great little game but it is hard as nails. I love the premise and the simplicity of the maps and gameplay. It’s all very tightly put together and fun. However, I’d recommend more save points, especially close to bosses. That mushroom boss was the hardest (due to the limited amount of space to work with) and every time I died, I had to do the whole swamp section over again. Still nice work, well done.

    Score: 65/80

  • 45/80

    Simple gameplay, you pick up wood, attempt to avoid enemies except for when you have to dive them in order to reduce the damage you’d take, upgrade yourself. Early on, it is best to upgrade your brightness until your range increases an extra space, which can take a bit of farming, but allows you to kill certain enemies without taking damage. Add a few brightness levels and you can make up for the time drain and any incidental hits. After that, you want to upgrade your heat until it is very high.

    You are a fire trying to light a bigger fire. Enough said. The sound didn’t really get me into the mood much, the graphics were… I suppose useful enough in terms of simplicity, but still frustrating enough due to lack of vision.

    The game is acceptable I suppose. If nothing else, it is a simple game and a time waster. Once you’ve maxed yourself out, the game is pretty easy.

    I normally don’t like to compare games, but this feels like it was heavily inspired by the souls series from the bonfires, to the lighting the embers, to even the game over screen. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing would depend on the player, but the combat and navigation portions of the gameplay are very different.

Team Members
Caleb M. (Rubescen)

Engine
RPGMaker MV

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Comments

Submitted

I really liked this. I just didn't realized my light could lighten around more by getting more HP until the last tower when I started to raise my HP and bought a lot. I was just buying heat until that point.

Developer(+1)

Glad you enjoyed it! Maybe I should make it more clear that raising HP at a certain point increases radius. I liked the idea of it being a surprise, but maybe that makes the brightness investment seem less worthwhile than heat, and it's hard to be surprised if  you never see it. Thanks for playing!

Submitted (2 edits)

For as much as I enjoyed the gameplay and world I had to just call it quits on the second/third floor of "tower". I had even grinded/farmed/upgraded on the ice world and it was still wasn't enough to feel confident in beating those floors (150bright 3heat). Really neat game though. I enjoyed the ice boss the most. And probably ice world was the best too. Fun gameplay mechanics, just a little rough around the edges. One of my favorite entries so far.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the review. I am definitely going to adjust the difficulty down, since it seems that unless you understand enemy behavior perfectly (because you designed it haha) it is a bit too challenging/frustrating. But glad you enjoyed the mechanics in general. Thanks for playing!

Submitted

Usually I try to finish a game before reviewing it, that's one of the reasons my review took so long, but  I'm completely unable to finish the game (Not by glitch, the final boss is really hard) so I will not talk about the story since I didn't finished it
l I'll start with the bad stuff and finish with the good stuff

Bad stuff:
The game is punishing. When I got to the first boss I was completely destroyed and won after many tries by pure luck, most bosses lack a proper pattern I can follow, most enemies and bosses are life sponges also when you are in low heal you can't attack anything, you're basically death. This is really the worst part of the game, the player will become frustrated after a while, but it could be easily fixed by making the enemies do less damage and having less life, maybe even giving way more ash since in one part I had to grind for being able to defeat the second boss, 

Good stuff:
It does give a sense of wonder, the mechanics itself are really well made, when I started on the first map I was having fun burning stuff and exploring the map, I don't remember any glitch (With companies like Bethesda this has become a good point), also that ost is lit, in the description of the game it says "Original Soundtrack" I don't own RPGMaker MV to know if all was original but if it is, you have talent

Overall, it still needs works, I suggest changing the game status as "Early Access" instead of "Released" (I also did that with mine) since at the current state it's way to hard, I think you could use this a game as a "Hard Mode" and make a much less punishing "Normal Mode". since this game  can be pretty entertaining from the base mechanics

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and for the review! It's clear that the difficulty needs some tweaking (I'm not sure anyone has beat it yet -- besides me haha). And yes, all the music is original by me. Glad you liked it.
I'm planning on making some balance adjustment based on reviews after the competition is over -- better telegraphing boss attacks, lowering damage output and hp a bit, and reviews like yours help me get a sense of what to adjust. Thanks!

Submitted

Glad it helps! And yeah I think with just enough tweaking this game will be very entertaining, count me in for the second round once is tweaked

Submitted

Unique!  this's my first time, I'm playing game with the battle system like this. I like how fast the response of the system movement and enjoying crawl the dungeon and beat the enemy. But, about the balance of enemies, I bit shocked when we face the new one. The pattern and pace is too different, especially for the boss,  and maybe, the map when you face the boss need to be larger,maybe? (I tried it again  and again, but still failed), btw it's a great game!

Developer

Glad you're enjoying the mechanics! I appreciate the feedback on balance, it'll help me tweak it. There is an intentional learning curve with new enemies, and especially bosses, and I designed it with some expected amount of deaths in mind. But if an enemy is feeling annoyingly hard or confusing, that's something that needs changed.

Which boss are you struggling with? Maybe I can offer some tips on how to beat them. Also, if you don't mind grinding for ash, buying some upgrades can help make a fight much easier (using the save points will reset monsters on the maps in case that isn't clear). Thanks for playing and the feedback!

Submitted

Well, I dunno if it's still early boss or not, But I can't beat the mushroom boss? cz, the area of walkin' is too small for me. well, tonight I want to play it again. (Just thinking a new way to beat it). and yeah, I tried fight each monster in new area, and back to the save point (so I just only beat the boss later) BUT... when I go back. the monsters back too! (Hahahaaaaaah...)

Developer

Ah yes. The mushroom mini boss is a definite  difficulty spike. I'd suggest moving in the small opening space of the fight kinda slowly, and trying to take out the greenie on the left as quickly as possible, to open up more movement space. The good news is, you'll only have to beat him once. Thanks again for the feedback!

Submitted

Interesting entry. Reminds me of games like Journey. Simplistic, yet unique. I think I'd like it more if there were a way to replace the few words with mini cutscenes or something of that nature. 

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I had hoped to implement more world & story building material/visuals, but didn't end up having the time to work on it.