Play game
Ars Pestis's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #11 | 3.895 | 3.895 |
| Audio | #23 | 3.316 | 3.316 |
| Accessibility | #29 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Overall | #30 | 3.282 | 3.282 |
| Controls | #37 | 3.105 | 3.105 |
| Theme | #38 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
| Graphics | #39 | 3.447 | 3.447 |
| Fun | #52 | 2.789 | 2.789 |
Ranked from 38 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.5
Game Description
A plague doctor's journal. A town consumed by miasma. Treat the afflicted, preserve your sanity, uncover the source before despair takes you.
How does your game tie into the theme?
What is a plague doctor without a Plague Mask, I ask? Well, still a doctor but stuck in the slums...without a mask...
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
ladymeba
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
1
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Cute graphics. I liked the concept of curing a town. It wasn’t really easy to read the treatment progress, not very user-friendly to scroll back up a bit to read the text. Other than that, the UX was great!
I definitely dropped the ball with the UX of the text windows - lesson learned for next time! Thanks for playing!
It’s a jam! And it wasn’t a game breaker issue, so don’t be so hard with yourself. We all had to cut corners.
I’m looking forward to your next games!
Excellent depiction of the town with the map, and really enjoyed the writing as well. Reminded me of tabletop RPG's, had a great time :)
Loved the mystery element too, especially the bit in "The Pit". Very cool tone, awesome job!
I love tabletop rpg - so I am very influenced by them - I am proud of what I did in the short time but would have liked to have made more of the mystery!
The aesthetic is really cool, but I think the UI could use a little polish. Besides that, it's really thematic, and the music is really on point!
Keep it up :)
Thank you for playing! :D
I love the aesthetic, art, and music. It was very pleasant to just be in. As others have said, it was a bit text-heavy, and perhaps this is just my lack of knowledge on this era of vocabulary :), but some of the instructions and words went right over my head at first haha. I figured out what was going on pretty quickly, though. I think this game could really shine with some more puzzles in there to really engage the player but I know that can be asking a lot in just a 9-day-long game jam. Overall, excellent entry and well done!!
Thank you for your kind words… I would have liked to have done more but I did have to sleep some time! 🤣 but I agree that if there had been more time more puzzles and strategy would have been there!
Really cool twist with medieval era virus game. A little more reading then Id personally like but overall great entry!
Thanks - next time I will go with a less text heavy game :D
This is a lovely game - the music and visuals are beautiful.
I did find myself getting a little lost in the text sometimes - especially when new events popped up, so maybe a bit more visual separation could help those moments stand out?
That said, I really enjoyed the writing and thought the descriptions added to the atmosphere! Overall, it was a great experience and I had a blast playing Ars Pestis
I could learn a thing or two from you - your less is more worked so well... I can't take credit for the music (I did credit them) - I definitely am going to look at making the text more readable overall and work on signalling when things happen too. thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing!
The theming and writing was very nice.
The mechanical loop didn't interest me very much, maybe just me, and I do wonder if the UI could be more skeuomorphic or era/artstyle appropriate.
But there was already quite a bit of content, and the story and overall style was very cool.
Yeah, I forget sometimes that the old style text games are niche now...lol - but thanks for the props on the content etc. I found out that 9 days is no time at all and had to make some hard decisions and the UI was more basic (although I do have to add, as a beginner, I haven't really got the 'skillz' yet to do a much better job) ;p - thanks for playing!
Yeah I get the time limit is super hard especially when you factor in the learning element on top of that, I ran in to that myself.
And to clarify having a text based game is totally cool. I liked the writing and I liked exploring and all that stuff. It was just the treating the malady loop specifically that I found didn't have much fertile ground for me, again it could be a personal thing, just because it always felt obvious what to do (like I didn't feel like I was choosing it really) and being able to restore all your sanity by pressing bolster spirit a bunch and basically starting over really reduced any tension for me.
That being said your game is more than just a mechanical loop, and I enjoyed all those aspects.
This game is really cool! The music and sound effects fit the game well, the art looks great, and the whole concept is really interesting, well executed, and enjoyable to play through. Great work on this project!
Thank you for playing and your kind words. :)
Nice quick game of point and click. I liked the puzzle section of investigating first to get all the equipment and then reading through the notes. It was a little hard to decipher the instructions, but not impossible. If that's what you were going for then you've succeeded.
For sound the music fits really well. I suggest adding a swish sound when gaining an item. A page turn sound when looking at notes. Praying could use some sound (The classics are a Vocal Ahh, murmuring, or chanting. Though to fit the calmness, maybe just rustling of cloth would work). There's lots of options for the treatment, but I'm sure you've got ideas.
The text could use some line breaks like how a <br> element looks to delineate separate entries and make it easier to tell which text is new. I found myself rereading previous text because I couldn't tell where the new text began due to the scroll not moving to the top of new text.
For the treatment minigame, it would help if the value change text was highlighted somehow. Bolded or italicized or white for good, dark red for bad or something like that. Another minor thing that could improve it would be to add a lerp to the number change on sanity and infection stats as well as the color coding mentioned.
The art fits well. Though the background seems a little stretched horizontally. Take a look at the settings for Expand Mode and Stretch Mode of the TextureRects.
The color for the buttons seem decent, though I think they still need something.
I liked the visible green fog disappearing after curing the diseased. It could probably use a small animation of fading out to transparency.
It would be nice to be able to reread the investigation text after leaving and coming back. Though maybe make the button a different color to show that there's nothing new.
There were only a few bugs. The Pit investigation button can be pressed multiple times and it prints the text again. The Well's investigation button doesn't disable itself.
All in all a good entry. First time I ran out of sanity, but the second time I was able to figure out how to balance the stats and win. Congrats on your first game completed!
Thank you for the feedback and the bug reporting - all noted... and I do agree with you, there were a lot of things that could have been more polishes with the text and buttons - if I do update it (currently thinking that I might leave it as it is so I can look back and see how my first game was) I'll definitely be addressing all the things. And thank you so much for playing the game - glad you got a WIN! :D
I find the music very relaxing and the story was interesting. Managed to seal the well :D
It was a fun playthrough. Great game :)
Congrats on sealing the well! and thank you for playing it through!
Beautiful art style and I always love plague doctor stuff. I did really struggle to tell where I was allowed to go as there were places with little miasma that it said i couldn’t go because of the miasma but placed with tonnes that it let me which just worked out to be very confusing for me.
Ah, yes - the miasma - my thinking is the opposite of yours... if the miasma is in a small space it makes it more concentrated and thus you need a better mask - over a wider area it is much more diluted so therefore not as deadly. But I see your viewpoint as well - perhaps I should have made it clearer in the text? Thanks for the feedback and playing the game!
Very interesting game.
I like the old hand-drawn map style, and the music feels like I'm in the medical area.
The main mechanic was quite unique, but the game has so much text to read, which was not ideal.
Good work for your first jam.
I am sorry for the walls of text. I know it's very niche nowadays... lol. Next jam I intend to do something less... wordy.... thank you for checking it out.
It was a real pleasure playing your game. The art and the background music are adorable. It would be nice if there were some constraints regarding how many times you can use treat and bolster spirit, so the player must strategize more.
I did want to put in more constraints but in the 9 days I had to simplify some things and that was one of them - given time I would have done that. So feedback taken and thank you!
The artstyle is so beautiful, like those old map drawings.
If i had to be picky about something, it's too much text (maybe I'm too burned out from playing so many games in this jam that I can't even read enymore, haha!) but I can't tell it's wrong because that's the main game mechanic. If there was some narrator (I know, I'm asking a lot for a jam game) it would be 100 times more pleasant.
But other than that, awesome aesthetics, super relaxing game, great experience. Good job!
I know what you mean about burn out - I know it's text heavy but I did want that when I started - would I do it the same after the jam? Probably not - and you say it would have been good with a narrator but I didn't even think of that - I now wish I had! Thanks for playing though.
I just played yours and am blown away - so the fact that you thought mine was a 'good job' makes me feel all warm inside! I just hope that one day I can make a game in 9 days as good as Masks of Madness is! Thank you for taking the time to play mine.
Super unique and original entry, that was nice! The art was quite cool and overall a neat vibe. Great job, and congrats on your first GWJ submission!
Thanks for checking it out!
A fun story and theme, a great first entry. I think more clarity on the mechanics might’ve been good, it seemed like there were two sanity deductions when you tried to treat a patient (or maybe it was a bug). I’d definitely be interested in more along these lines.
I realise that I need to change how the treatment is recorded in the log - there were 2 sanity deductions as every action you take is followed by the infections action so the second sanity loss is the infections 'attack' signalled by 'The infection progresses! You lose X Sanity.' - but I think it could have been clearer so thanks for the feedback, it's certainly something to work on.
I'm not a huge fan of text heavy game, but the art, gameplay was interesting enough for me to see the hardwork and have a good time, good job!
I'm sorry to expose you to the text... but thankyou for, at least, having a look around :D
Props for creating a UI heavy game and making it all work. Those control nodes are an interesting beast to tame. Good work.
Tell me about it - I had no idea... mainly because I am very inexperienced in all things godot and coding. I did learn a lot though and was determined to be able to submit something. I might try something else next time...lol
Absolutely loved the atmosphere of this, always a huge fan of largely text based adventures too, great job! especially for a first jam!
Thank you, always good to meet another text based fan...I grew up with them and was inspired for that nostalgia - and had I known what a 'mare doing all UI was going to be I might have gone for a little mask running round a dungeon - but I am so happy I did it!
Awesome game!! I really dig the art style and writing. Fantastic submission, great work! :)
Thanks for taking the time to play! :D