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💀 SCREAMORTALITY 💀

Hosted by Kitsch Digital · #SCREAMORTALITY

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A jam submission

Redwood HauntingView game page

Explore a haunted forest in this 5-10 minute microgame created for the Screamortality Game Jam

Submitted by Rumsey_The_Hobo — 18 hours, 46 minutes before the deadline

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Redwood Haunting's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Sound Design	#5	3.800	3.800
Horror	#5	3.933	3.933
Enjoyment (Best Game)	#8	3.467	3.467
Story	#8	3.133	3.133
Aesthetics	#11	3.467	3.467

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Retsa GamesSubmitted3 years ago

the exploration sense in this game is really cool, you never feel that the game "hold your hand", it feels like being lost in the forest alone, with a chilling atmosphere.

Really like the way the story is told, never stopping the player. The moment you lose your car elevates the sense of being lost and having no way back, all the more powerful considering the ghost design is nightmare fuel. Also, the final decision between "fame" and letting the dead sleep is a nice touch.

The game illustrations are like metal album covers, love them. However i have some grips with some things in the art aspect, like the possibility of walking over things that are in front of the player, laking a depth perception, with the better example being the trees. Also, the game is pixel art but the assets don't appear to be in the same 1 to 1 pixel ratio.

Overall a nice entry.

Submitted

Pathetic Meatsack

Jonty GuiteSubmitted3 years ago

The art was really well done and the ghost design was awesome!

A little touch I really liked was how those eyes glowed in the dark sometimes. The maniacal laughter on death got me; I thought it was really cool and loved how your character's 'light' goes off when it happens! The story was really sweet though multiple playthroughs to get both endings felt detrimental when the scares are already known. Loved how you've pulled off the infinite forest.

I should add that I loved the little detail where the guy mentions ghosts.org at the intro and the bad ending has him hyped about how readers would love this!

This was really good!

Submitted

TeddySubmitted3 years ago

I didnt understood what to do, where to go and the monsters were always dropping sanity didnt know how to get it up. Everything was confusing and Never got to pass the graveyard and the None Skipable long intro didnt gave me any useful information.

The atmosphere was nailead 100%, the ghosts did scare me, the sound effect were a good choice and well implemented. The map was terrifying.

It has alot of stuff for a one person in one week!.

Submitted

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks for your feedback, I'm glad you liked the atmosphere! Yeah, people getting lost was definitely something I saw in the limited playtesting right before submission. It was tough to find the right balance between making the player explore and giving them a direct path. I think there was a previous comment about the non-skippable intro, but I agree... it really should've been skippable or checkpoints should have been added.

JammmzSubmitted3 years ago

Great Job on the atmosphere! I got quite spooked!

The batteries are bit underpowered imo - and when i died i had no idea why, although the little laughter made me jump a little

overall good job!

Submitted

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago

Thank you! I'm glad you liked the atmosphere! I agree the batteries could be tuned a little better! LOL the laughter is pretty similar to your profile pic's laugh, that's a bummer though, I wonder if it was a bug or a mechanic that wasn't clear. Thanks for your feedback!!

GreenCloversSubmitted3 years ago

Short but you hit everything I want from this sort of game, a level of creep and the sudden "Oh no, what's happening, what should I do" panic moments where you find yourself cornered. Beautiful art in the menus helps pull things together. Think that the batteries are a bit lenient, I don't think I ever turned the flashlight off or had trouble finding them. Maybe have them be off the main path so the player has more of a reason to explore and go off the "safe" story path, if that makes sense?

Submitted

The Waiting Room

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Thanks a lot for you comment. Funny enough, I doubled the battery life (from 40s->80s) in a patch about 15 minutes before submission deadline because all of the people who had playtested it were dying multiple times and I intended for the game to be beat without dying or only dying once. Basically, I was scared of "wasting" the players time by making a game too difficult because there are a lot of games in a game jam for people to try. In hindsight, I wish I had more time to develop a better solution than doubling battery life.

nebelstern3 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

I did it! =w= I won! That being said, I'd question my sanity too, if I were in a dark forest at night and suddenly walked on top of all trees... ; p But I think that's probably because of the time restraints. I really liked the paintings ^^ and sound design.

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago

LOL, object layering was definitely not the strong suit of this game :D I'm glad you liked it!

remtaineSubmitted3 years ago

Interesting game! This really reminds me of Darkwood and Slenderman, due to the flashlight mechanic as well as the monster in the forest vibes. Super cool sounds really add to the scariness of the entire thing.

Minor gripe, I wish it was possible to skip the scrolling of the text in the intro since I could read it faster than it would scroll.

Aside from that, it’s a great game!

Submitted

Camp of the Dead

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago (1 edit)

Thanks for your feedback, it was definitely slenderman inspired, but 2D. That's a good callout on skippable text - additionally, I wish I'd made it so if you die you don't have to re-watch the intro text. There was a lot of polishing to do that I didn't have time to complete.

A related tangent: This was my first game jam, and one component I found interesting/difficult is striking the right balance between time spent adding more content to the game and time spent polishing. At some point you get very little return on investment for polishing and risk not spending enough time building a cool game. On the other side, if the game is severely lacking polish it can be immersion breaking and can make an otherwise fun game unenjoyable.

Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!

BoisterousNaturSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

The sounds and atmosphere really got to me. I actual paused and reset to put on a sweater because I got chills. Really love the use of lighting and sound to really make the ghost terrifying. after I beat the game once I went back and just stared at the ghost sprite in the chase scene and let myself die and its really cool how that sprite isnt actually all that scary but since the game hurts you for looking at it the mechanic makes you see it so breifly your mind fills in blanks and makes it SO much worse. This was super cool. I also really appreciated the ending. Wont say anything about it to avoid spoilers for others. but I think it a very cool ending. Awesome work!

Submitted

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

It feels great to read a comment that has praise for the exact features you spent a lot of time on and wanted to get right. Thank you!

BoisterousNaturSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

Glad I could provide that feeling. You deserve it. This was an awesome submission! You should be proud

cnharlanSubmitted3 years ago(+1)

Super simple, but also super effective. I had a lot of fun playing this. I think your top down perspective really lent itself to your flashlight mechanic. Knowing most of the screen is in darkness and that a ghost could be somewhere around you is always a creepy feeling. The sanity bar works great in preventing the player from looking too closely at your ghost, which keeps it scarier.

Something to maybe do later on with another game is add some more flavor text and draw out the confrontations a bit more. Why are the locket and the mirror important to this ghost? What was that building I found myself walking through in the woods? Just a crypt? Is there any significance to it?

Submitted

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago(+1)

Thanks for your comment and suggestions, glad you liked it. I agree, fleshing out the world and adding more flavor text would improve it a lot. I designed most of the game first and the story came second, and I think that shows. Next time I build a game with a story, I plan on outlining it before I begin any work.

ccmm-composer3 years ago(+1)

First off, hats off to the sound designer. The sound effects are excellently-placed, the ambience fits the tone perfectly, and the stingers are a HUGE help to developing your horror aesthetic. It's sound implementation like this that makes me particularly giddy about game audio.

Coupled with that are awesome graphics and a great, yet simple, story that helps players get immersed in your world right from the get-go. And seriously, with a game like this, I was tense all the way through, then I get a ending that just... felt good. A nice tone shift without it feeling jarring; that's nice.

The only issue I ran into was how object layering worked: the player can go on top of trees, but not behind lamp posts. But it really didn't take away much from the overall experience.

Nicely done, I'm glad I played this.

If you have the time, feel free to check out Black Blizzard: https://itch.io/jam/screamortality/rate/978095

Rumsey_The_HoboDeveloper3 years ago

Thanks so much for your comment. The thing I was the most proud of was the sound implementation so reading your comment felt awesome. And I agree with your CC, fixing the object layering was one of the things on my polish list that I never got around to. Next game jam, I plan on being more cognizant of the object layering during the scene building.

Rushiplays3 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Amazing Game tried it out its a fun short game with some a very good story in the end good job :D