very challenging and thought provoking. Seeking umbrella or poncho badly.
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The Castle of Death's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #1 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Spookyness | #1 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Graphics | #3 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Overall Enjoyment (Used to determine Winner) | #3 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Puzzles | #5 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Stability | #5 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
Ranked from 9 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
4 years ago (+1)
:-) Thanks for the feedback. I have trimmed a few of the rooms down. They didn't used to be empty, but another reviewer told me to take out all the extraneous stuff that wasn't pertinent.
I'll perhaps trim a few more rooms then.. I can think of three or four that serve no purpose.
The game is actually randomly generated each time. There is an overarching story, think of it like "An inspector calls", where there are many suspects. The game will choose to show you one 'facet' of the story each time you play through. You can see if you can work out the whole story from that facet (there's all the information!), but you found a different murder weapon, and it might be in a different place because each time the murderer is different, and how they did it might be different too... All the suspects want him dead, including you! But which one got to him first, and how they did it, that's unique to you to figure out... But once you put it all together, you should get a good idea of why ;-)
I'll take a look at the room list, and trim some stuff down further......
Thanks for the feedback! The game's huge by the jam standards, but it's about average for a full-sized text adventure. Maybe Chris should have given a size hint as well as a theme ;-)
Hehe, that's what I was going for. The randomness won't create anything that's illogical, everything is strongly bounded to be internally consistent and each potential solution fits into the overarching story. So if you found a thing in a place, there's a good reason why it was in THAT place which you need to figure out. It's a murder investigation, after all :) Let's just say that, each time you play, a different person got to him first, and that includes you..... It's only random insofar as you find out who was pushed over the edge first... But there's a darker story underpinning it too, if you want to try to work that out, there are clues.... :)
I'm in the middle of stripping out some of the less-useful 'connector' rooms, and I'm adding some descriptive text for some of the scenery objects to trim it down. I'll upload an update in about 10 minutes (you'll need to restart your game if you want to play on the reduced map). There are about 5 or 6 rooms which I added for a particular reason, which seem a bit empty at the moment..... ;-)
try using "HELP" or if you're really stuck "HELP STUCK" .... :-)
You're not allowed to go downstairs until you've washed your hands, which forces you to explore a little, and you can't escape the castle until you've hunted about for an item (or preferably you're doing some investigating). It's a murder investigation! What would Sherlock do? (and no, the answer is not 'Opium' ;^)
Generally a nice effort. There is plenty to explore and you definitely need to draw a map to not get lost in this one. I played Garry's game before which had a certain maze-feeling when wandering in the house, now that I played this game I kinda felt I had a Deja Vue. It generally is part of the anachronism of text adventures so there is generally nothing wrong with it when you're into that kind of game design. I enjoyed the look and I especially felt story and spookyness are great in this one, the level of gore might be a bit too mature though. Anyway, great adventure you crafted here.
One thing I'd like to mention is that when you turn off the graphics at the beginning of the game by pressin 2, you don't really turn off the graphics. The graphics appear, but they do so below the object list. I've added a screenshot so you can see the issue. My guess is that this is a bug and not intended by you. I can't see why anyone would want to play it without graphics, if you do so, it should work :)
Hehe, aye, Well, funnily enough, the house is a straight East-West main corridor upper and lower, with rooms on the "H" arms, I made it so you could actually test all the exits by just moving like a gearshift from the central location :) It's a feature of games that houses are always East-West with the entrance in the middle on the south side. It just always seems to be this way. I've even played games where they were modelled on real life, yet when I asked the author about the 90o rotation, he just said "it felt more natural to enter by going North". So, despite the strangeness of having the patio on the north side of the house, which would suggest a southern-hemisphere location, I just went with the flow :)
Chris is working on the auto-map feature. I plotted out all the locations to work with the automap, nothing should clash square-wise. But that feeling of being adrift in a big house, not know where you're going, and the clock ticking, it what I was going for. You really do have only a certain amount of time before... things.. happen... So you need to just push through your fears and get searching :) hehe
Cheers for the feedback :-)
4 years ago(+1)
Thanks for the feedback. I'll have a look at trimming some of the less useful locations... There's certainly a few locations that were added with more options in mind, and more places to run to if you needed to get away from.. things.. I'll have a look and trim a few out! Thanks :)
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