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I just finished playing the game last night and thought I'd leave a comment. It sometimes would freeze when fixing a leak, but the game itself was smooth otherwise.

While rough, I did like the choice to combine background stills from the original short with the newer drawn characters. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it made me feel something was "off". A kind of atmosphere that you recognize but can't help but shake off the feeling that something is wrong. When combined with the night time levels, this really excels at making you feel the suffocating darkness of the ship. Even the area with the 3D effect was done well enough that I could believe it was connected to its source material.

SPOILERS BELOW

The missions, while basic, helped kind of break up the monotony of searching around the ship for holes, and I do think the passengers all had their own little personalities shown in full. I enjoy that some people do comment about how unnaturally chipper Mike looks, with even the Cleaning Maid's dialogue about noticing that Mick is acting off was a nice touch.

If I did have to nitpick, I'm not really sure what the point of whatever kills Mick in the tutorial is. Is it a parasite or a monster that takes over his body? Does it have any significance to the other monsters on board? That being said, you did address it in an earlier comment before.

My understanding of the story is that the briefcase the trombone player (they're evil, just like in real life) asked Mike to smash is the cause of the monsters on board and would have to be present during the tutorial, and as the day progresses, more people are either mutated or killed off. All until it's just "Mike" trying to keep the boat afloat until he escapes.

(or maybe the lore were the repairs we made along the way)

Second, the music can get repetitive since it's a sort of static ambience that doesn't vary or alter. It helped especially during the night portion of the game, but during the earlier segments, it's a little grating when you're running to fix leaks or talk to passengers for 5 levels in and you still hear that eerie noise.

Overall, I enjoyed my time playing it and I think it's a pretty good short experience! You did an amazing job here and I think this is a better Steamboat Willie horror game than the others that we've gotten since it hit public domain. For not having a clear vision of what you wanted to do, I think it's still a fun game for what it is and would love to see the ideas expanded upon if you ever did want to return to it.

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This is an excellent comment, thank you for not only taking the time to play the game, but to also write out your input in this message!

While most of the artistic praise you give the game was either unintentional or accidental due to pure laziness on my part, I will pretend that it was all the product of my magnificent vision for the end result. Thank you a ton for the compliments 😁

I did notice the lag when viewing others as they played and I have made efforts to fix it. But I think I failed, the game just isn't very well optimized unfortunately and I take full responsibility for that. I have learned a lot from this project. 

I'm sure you wrote this comment without needing to hear any kind of justification or excuse for the less than stellar decisions made on this project, but I figured you might be curious to learn more about the scene at the ending to the tutorial. You are right, the ending where mickey gets got doesn't seem to add much to the game from the player's eyes. It does have relevance to the story, but as you noticed from a previous comment,  that part of the story doesn't really hold water. The main reasons it exists are to make the tutorial more interesting, to set a basic understanding of what the game is going to be like, and to (hopefully) spook the player a bit 😬 Other than those reasons, I completely stand with you and agree that that part of the game seems out of place and does not fit very well into the story.  It is the product of laziness for sure haha.

As far as the repetitive music goes, I think what you might be referring to is a bug that causes a stressing ambience track to play on repeat that should not be playing. I first noticed this bug while watching the playthrough by Gifeye on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk5DRIlINXM), where the stressful sounding static ambiance (as you put it) can be heard throughout the entire game. Is this the repetitive music you are referring to? I have not been able to reproduce this bug, but I will work on trying to find out what is happening. If this is not what you experienced and it was the other soundtracks in the game that were getting repetitive, then I sincerely apologize... I am still trying to learn how to make good sounding music💀

I want to thank you again for playing the game and spending the time to write out a review with your commentary on the game, it means a lot to me and I love reading input from people about my projects! I am very glad that you enjoyed it despite it's many shortcomings! 

side note- you pointed out that trombonists in real life are evil and I wanted to confirm this. I myself have witnessed their evil nature first hand as I played the trombone for several years in the past

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Thanks for the response! I appreciate the time taken to reply back to me, and I apologize for not going too in depth about the ambience bug. That is the repetitive music I was referring too, as during the day levels, it helps create a sort of unnerving air, but after three levels or so, it becomes annoying in a way. That's my opinion though, everyone's is different!

But again, thank you for the gameplay experience! I love the game still, flaws and all.