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A jam submission

Ghost DanceView game page

A surreal horror adventure about David Lynch and his work
Submitted by ryan zone (@screamcatalogue), Caveware Digital (@caveware) — 3 hours, 2 minutes before the deadline
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Ghost Dance's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
SCARIEST GAME#32.9463.125
BEST GAME (General)#53.3003.500
BEST THEME (Best Use of Theme)#122.7112.875

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted

This is a delight. I'm actually in the middle of finally watching season 3 of twin peaks. I love the billboard sprites, the atmosphere, and game design. Each level has its own unique horror gameplay. I got a bit frustrated in the bob segment, so ended up watching the rest of it on youtube. It's a hefty and thorough experience for being made within the duration of the jam. I really like the dos-iness of it all. The main downside to me is the audio, tracks have very noticeable looping points, and some of the sfx & character dialogue volumes are so far from each other that it reminds you of its "game-ness." The audio during the alleyways was a nice touch, but I felt the enemy reaction was just a tad too quick when the audio left. This is a great entry though, its exactly the kind of thing I'd like to make and play myself. Also... I don't mean to be a spoiler guy... but is the player Cooper passing the time for those 25 years while Lynch does whatever the heck he wants? It almost seems glaringly obvious, but I still feel the need to ask.

Submitted(+1)

Great job guys.

Wasn't able to finish the game because I gave up after trying to beat BOB for about 30 minutes. But I did beat everything else though. I loved the duck character you guys put in every level!
If there's ever an update to this game patching in a skeleton I'll definitely come back to this :)

As for constructive criticism:
- If you died in the maze level near the supermarket you got reset back to the door. The walk back into the maze and having to go through it all again was very tedious. There are two ways to solve this issue.
Solution 1: Move the spawn point into the middle of the maze.
Solution 2: Add a sprint button

I also encountered a bug during my playtime:
I beat the maze (supermarket), then the rabbit chase, and then went to the mystery man. When talking to him the game closed itself. I don't know if this bug is reproducible, but I still wanted to mention it.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback, it's super appreciated! Yeah, there's definitely some tedium in the game we could have ideally smoothed out. When specifically did the crash happen for you? I'll get Josef to look into it. 

Submitted

The crash happened when talking to the first mystery man thar tells you how the mystery man painting works. I talked to him after completing the maze where you had to stand still and the rabbit chase. I also entered but then left the BOB stage without completing it at first.

But again. I don't know if it's reproducable. I also used ALT+Tab to switch out if the game a few times. Maybe that had an influence too.

Submitted(+1)

This game taught me how to properly make quinoa and drive with both of my feet. Exploring the locales of David Lynch's work was a real pleasure for me.

I was expecting to have some real difficulties with some of these, as I am extremely bad at video games, but none of them took more than a few tries. I think my favorite was "The Shed (Lost Highway)." It's not often that you have to manage your ability to see and be seen by other characters, especially since contextually this is me maintaining a personal connection to my own conscience. The end was a bit goofy as we all know David Lynch is not evil but Chaotic Neutral.

Very fun, I hope this is the start of some cool Caveware exploration games.

Developer

Thanks! I agree, the Shed has come to be my favorite stage too, mechanics-wise. Making Lynch evil was definitely a cop-out and the reason was to basically guarantee a quick 'twist' resolution of a plot and because this game thematically follows a game I wrote for earlier called Samsara Interactive. There's just something funny about being double-crossed to cosmic proportions. Nearly all of our games have an intentionally obtuse cosmology that is inhabited by celebrities doubling as godlike beings. Cheers for the comments, hope to do a proper run of Three Mile when I get home tonight!

(+1)

I agree, it was a fantastic and very original experience! Bob was a little frustrating, but I got through it eventually. Fantastic work!

Developer

Thanks for the comment! Hope the trial and error through some of the more difficult parts of the game were worth it; trying to find a balance between accessible and challenging is definitely tricky for a "survival" horror -type game. Cheers!

Submitted(+1)

This was absolutely excellent. I'm honestly shocked this was made in the span of this jam, given how in-depth it feels. I'm also a huge sucker for games that emulate retro 3D (heavy use of billboarded sprites to represent characters, lower rendering resolution without anti-aliasing, simpler lighting tech), so this naturally appealed to me a lot.

Developer(+1)

Thanks very much! This was our first foray into doing a 3D game, but some of the choices, like billboarded sprites, were definitely inspired by a fondness for DOS-era 3D games. A lot of tireless work went into making this, so the praise is super appreciated!