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A jam submission

Curse of the ShadowsView game page

Don't touch the shadows!
Submitted by Wafflefish — 2 hours, 55 minutes before the deadline
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Curse of the Shadows's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Playability#2584.0004.000
Cleverness#7553.0003.000
Artistic Style#9703.0003.000
Theme#13302.0002.000

Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

  • So the game itself is pretty bare-bones, but you have something going on there with the shadow mechanics. However the alchemy flask light thing is not an alchemy mechanic per se, its a light mechanic with alchemy set dressing, so I had to remove points there unfortunately, otherwise its a solid game, well done!

Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes

Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes

Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes

Tell us about your game!
Story: You've been cursed by the Shadow King and will die if you touch any shadows. You set out to his castle to kill the King and lift the curse.
But . . . that's the long-term vision for the game, for now, the goal is for the player to reach the town square.

Controls:
- WASD to move
- Mouse movement to look
- Left click to attack
- Right-click to toggle on/off your alchemical fire

Mechanics:
- If you touch a shadow you instantly die
- You can use the alchemical fire to cross shadows for a short amount of time
- You can kill or avoid enemies
- For this prototype the goal is to make it to the town square

Last notes:
- There is main menu music, so if you don't hear it mess around with the sliders in the settings. Web browser defaults the audio to 0 for some reason.
- There is no pause menu/settings menu in the game. So if you need to change the audio after loading in the game, touch the nearest shadow and go back to the main menu.

Extra Notes
Thank you to all who'll play and judge the game and any feedback you have for it. Thank you Pirate Software for hosting this. Originally I wasn't planning to lead a team, but I've met some cool people through the forums who reached out to me and said they'd like to work with me so I decided to form a team. It was really cool working with them as it was their 1st or 2nd game jam.
Thank you again for the opportunity and I can't wait to join the next one!

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

The main menu looks really impressive. Couldn't figure out how to leave the pier because of shadows killing me. Can't say I'm a fan of this mechanic. 

(1 edit) (+2)

Really good for a first game jam! Interesting concept, great setting, simple but effective 3D environment, very atmospheric music, I could definitely see this game being a great one if it was fully worked on in the future!

However, if I may provide feedback, I did experience a few bugs and issues.
The mouse sensitivity was set very high which made it hard to move the camera around comfortably, so that might need to be toned down a fair bit. The player character would start shifting slightly forward and a bit more slightly to the right most of the time they would attack, I'm not sure what's causing that. Also, when attacking while standing still, it's very responsive, but when trying to attack while moving, it takes between half a second and a full second for the input to register, which made combat more difficult. If this was intended, maybe a build-up to the moving swing might help convey timing better.

It was also difficult to know if I was dealing any damage to the enemies, or how much health they had. Maybe a health bar or some type of hit effect might help when conveying damage. But once I got to the area with the whole hoard of enemies, I couldn't kill them no matter how many times I've attacked, so I'm sure if that was intended or some type of bug that might've happened due to the slopes. Because of that, I spent the rest of the game just running through and turning on my fire whenever I was in the shadows.

Finally, the shadow mechanic and conveyance. I love the concept really well, and I'm very interested to see what might result from it. However, I was getting a bit frustrated of suddenly dying when touching a shadow and having to start entirely over because I turned off my fire too soon or turned it on too late, or from a shadow I had no clue was already there. Also, it was a bit hard to fully understand where I was meant to go without any kind of graphical or interfacing indication. I figured it out along the way and through multiple respawns, but I'm worried other players might not understand which way to go.

I think if this game is further worked on in the future, I'd recommend making it so that the shadow curse doesn't kill you immediately, but rather saps your life away fairly quickly, so that it keeps you on your toes and doesn't feel unfair during gameplay. Along with this, maybe some upgrades or new weapons along the way and enemies that can control the shadows to some extent, with attack indicators to help you strategize your attacks and win. Maybe even also a way to combine your fire with the different weapons to light up the area around you but at the cost of faster MP consumption. Also, some added effects to sell impact and motion might help incredibly in the long run, as well as possibly an item or type of collectible that can help you regain health in a special way.

But all that being said, I enjoyed playing this game! I loved the concept and atmosphere, it's like the whole town is desolate despite being populated. I hope this game continues to be worked on, there's a lot of potential in it, and I wish all the best to the people behind its production!!

~Brox