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A jam submission

LOOP PROTOCOLView game page

A SHORT ANOMALY HORROR GAME
Submitted by WinstonLabs — 1 hour, 49 minutes before the deadline
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LOOP PROTOCOL's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Horror#43.5933.593
Enjoyment (Best Game)#73.6303.630
Sound Design#103.4813.481
Creativity#183.4443.444
Story#193.0373.037
Aesthetics#313.3703.370

Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Do you allow SCREAM ZONE to promote your game via social media?

Yes

What game engine did you make this project in?
Unity

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Loved the loop implementation, especially the different anomalies that spawn. My fav was the chad walk you do when killing anomalies xd

Developer(+1)

LMAO, the walk animation was a little crazy, I noticed it late into project, "why is he walking like that? I chose that animation?" Decided that I had more pressing matters to attend to and the "chad walk" ended up in the game 😂

Submitted(+1)

The horror/sci-fi atmosphere is amazing and creepy, also the interface is pretty great! Congratulations, this is a really good entry!

Developer

Thank you so much! We are glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+1)

Very impressive game! Amazing what you achieved in just a week :) I really like the concept and think it’s an awesome interpretation of the Jam’s theme. The combat feels satisfying, only the camera shake while shooting was a bit to intense for my taste. The idea to mix this kind of gameplay with spotting anomalies is really clever - I just played Exit 8 recently and it remembered me of that game in a very positive kinda of way :)

Developer

Yeah, lol after playing it again and seeing other playthrough, I have to agree. The recoil/camera shake was a bit overboard! Thank you for commenting and playing!

Submitted(+1)

I love how you mixed anomoly type games with combat! I felt kinda like an action hero a bit because of the sliding while playing lol. The monsters definitely kept me a bit on edge though. Whenever I heard its scream, I would panic a bit looking back and forth to see where they are coming from.


I also think the red light from the character's back is a pretty clever way to ground and keep track of the player, almost like in Dead Space.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for that comment! I'm glad someone mentioned that, Dead Space was a huge inspiration for me when we were conceptualizing the game, so I'm happy it was recognized.

Thanks for playing!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgxU6Tyns-Y&t=305s

Overall, cool game, and thanks a lot for reviewing everyone’s games, including mine

Developer(+1)

Amazing video! Thank you for going so in depth! First off, with Loop Protocol- I 100 percent agree with your thoughts on third person, I definitely lived through all of the pain you described lol from camera collision to animations, and controlling, it was a source of a lot of my work in the game. I think the controller feels that way because I went with a velocity based root motion controller (hindsight 20/20) and I tried to balance the way the animations looked vs. player feel, but honestly after watching your video, I should've prioritized the player feel more and sacrificed the "look" of the movement animations. You did run into bugs (we were face palming watching your playthrough) the dino was indeed an anomaly, it SHOULD'VE scanned, and scanned during our play testing, so idk what happened there. I think we could've been clearer on the loop punishment system. If you miss an anomaly, you don't actually get reset to 0, you are just attacked by the crawler (Loop Entity). It was 11 loops, you were right there about to beat it! Anomalies were random, I think it was coincidence that you got blood rain and the body bag in the same order, weirdly. Another source of pain was making sure anomalies did not repeat, something you mentioned in your hotel game section of the video. This worked mostly, but we did notice a small anomaly you didn't catch (a sign said 666 on it) did get chosen twice. So overall, very grateful to see your playthrough, shows all the cracks which hurts when you put a lot of time into it, but necessary to see to improve!

Secondly, you showing the transition and behind-the-scenes of Hotel Game was absolutely amazing! I tried a few times to implement the teleport system with the player, but I think since I was using Unity's measurements and not blender, that was the reason it didn't work out! Also generating the hallway with the anomaly was extremely smart. We only generated the anomalies themselves in the same hallway, but your method really helped create that seamless look. Overall, THANK YOU again for that video, very informative and educational for us!


Also, yes the renders were done by my wife lol all of the framed pictures were hers. We died laughing when you noticed the blender guru donut tutorial render 🤣

Submitted(+1)

No problem, and also one thing I forgot to mention was the reflections bleeding through from the cat place into the outside hallway, to fix that you’d set all your level geometry to static and bake a reflection probe (and a lightmap). This might make the game darker as well, but to fix that you’d increase the exposure via post processing (maybe need to tweak the contrast as well if it doesn’t look so good). Also, turn on ambient occlusion in your lightmap settings, and turn on cast shadows for the spotlight flashlight the player has, this will make it so things look more “correct” / make things look less “flat” (if that makes sense)

Developer(+1)

Yeah it definitely makes sense, that was something that we didn't know how to fix as well. We just approached baking the lighting to save performance, but it makes sense to change the settings of the surfaces that it affects as well. Great tips! The whole point of this jam was for us to grow as devs and you are helping in that process for sure

Submitted(+1)

Loved this. Very atmospheric - especially with the sound design!

Developer

Appreciate that! I really did enjoy your submission too. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

The animations looked great, good job on your submission!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing! I went with a root motion controller, which in hindsight, was a headache. But I was pleased with the way it ended up looking.

Submitted(+1)

Really good horror game, the reduced light actually made it quite scary! Also one of that crawling monsters jumpscared me for good :D I do wonder what all the anomaly's were, since I only got about a third of them. Great game in total!

Submitted(+1)

Oh forgot to mention, but the sound design was also really well done!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing! And I really appreciate the sound design comment as that is an area that we were pretty unsure about, we just tried to mix with feeling instead of knowledge lol. Loved your game!

Submitted(+1)

The 3d artist did a great job on the modelling! Loved how it turned out, the gameplay was fun as well. For horror, though, the environment/design is creepy. But in my opinion. Once you give the player a weapon, nothing is scary (But it might as well be me being too used to horror to feel scared so i'm not gonna vote too harshly on the horror category)

Developer

Very valid critique! It was tough finding that balance of having the weapon, making it dangerous still, but not frustrating.

My wife is the 3d artist ☺️ thank you for complimenting that, she was hoping someone would see all of her work she put in. All of the framed photos were her renders too! 

Submitted(+1)

Good work! And, this animations of character made good.

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Can't take a whole lot of credit, it's Mixamo with some IK rigging/avatar masks for aiming. Thanks for playing!

Deleted post
Developer (1 edit)

Lol that's alright, the monster not being able to get into the cat shrine was the epitome of "it's not a bug, it's a feature" Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Managed to get past the final loop! The enemies were genuinely scary between having to use a short range flashlight and the fact that the reload takes a couple seconds. Had an issue reporting the rain the first few times on the entry ceiling but it worked near the exit.

Developer(+1)

Nice job making it through the game! And thanks for the feedback, I was worried about players being able to report the rain, so I tried to make the collider quite large, but obviously some polishing would do it good. Time and all those good excuses lol. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

I'm so bad at spotting the anomalies, but I'm super glad I found my way into the satanic cat shrine, that was fun. Definitely had a better experience with the downloaded version vs the webgl one -- definitely hard to get all the effects ported.  I also had more fun when I finally clicked I was supposed to be shooting the loop entity and it was different than the more passive guys.

There was also some blue tint on the web version (I think it was an overlay from the instructions??) that hurt the atmosphere and it all made sense when I checked the windows one and it was gone.

Developer

Yeah, honestly the webgl version has been more of a harm than a help for our game. From this and other comments, we are going to take it down and just leave the downloadable version. I don't want the experience to be worse for someone just because they went with a different option to play. Awesome feedback, thank you for playing!

(The cat shrine is favorite part too 😸)

Submitted(+1)

Yeah! Sounds like a good idea.

 I've definitely had similar experiences (and I think it hurts my own jam entry a bit), but, the accessibility is so important too that it's hard to just... not have a web version. I think maybe my takeaway is to play and test the web version during the jam itself rather than during the submission scramble haha

Developer

Noted, lessons learned lol always next time!

Submitted(+1)

Pretty cool third person controller, if maybe a tad too floaty. I think you nailed the atmosphere, one of the few games to give me some genuine jumps. Cool game, keep it up!

Developer

Thanks for playing! Yeah we messed with that controller for daayyys, and I still think I could've spent even more time tightening it up. Appreciate the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

A very spooky time!! Prayed to the cat shrine and got jump scared by the statues

Developer

LMAO, Winston is pleased with your penance 😺 Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Jeeeeez, those maniquins are going to haunt my dreams. I hated that in the best way possible haha. I still have shivers from the first time one moved.


Also I ran it perfectly in chrome!

Developer(+1)

That is amazing, your comment makes the whole development worth it! Sincere thanks for playing our game!

Submitted(+1)

Oh yea! And I love the kitty cat shrines :)

Developer(+1)

Ah yes, I see by your profile picture, you are fellow cat enjoyer. That's our cat Winston 😸

Submitted(+1)

Worked for me in Chrome fullscreen! Fun!

Developer

Heck yeah! Thanks for playing! Loved your environment as you probably saw in my video of yours lol

Submitted(+1)

I tried to play in-browser with Firefox on Windows 11, and the game got stuck on the initial Unity loading screen.

Developer

Yeah, I think it works on Chrome, I didn't test it on another browser, probably should've. The Web build was a last minute decision to be honest, I just wanted there to be a way for anyone to play it. Thanks for giving it a try though!

Submitted(+1)

How do you start the game? Seem to be stuck on the title screen using Chrome.

Developer

You'll have to open it fullscreen, sorry I should've put a note on my page. The Start Game button is to the left cut off in the browser.