| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #8 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Overall | #11 | 4.044 | 4.044 |
| Graphics | #13 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Innovation | #24 | 3.911 | 3.911 |
| Gameplay | #37 | 3.556 | 3.556 |
| Theme interpretation | #51 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
Ranked from 45 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/charlievit/Nyxterra
Game description
Solais is a narrative-driven game with multiple endings, taking its dramatic foundation from the tragic real-life events at the Fair Isle Lighthouse. Balance survival with duty through five engaging minigames and an immersive atmosphere.
Theme interpretation
We embraced the interpretation of the literal waves of the ocean by setting the scene on the harsh Scottish coastline. However, we managed to incorporate the theme in a couple of other ways as well. The title of our game, Solais, is Scottish Gaelic for "light." And while the quantum physics enthusiast on our team points out that light has a wave-partical duality, the concept of light waves was central to our design. Lastly, as a bonus, one of our minigames is very wave-oriented, as you'll find out (we won't give away the fun yet)!
This is a stunning game. I rarely am amazed by game jam games but this did it for me. The art is beautiful, even to my old and blurry eyes. The music, and sound effects were really well done, adding depth to the game without taking away. The voice acting was great, very realistic and you can tell it was done by a real person, props for that.
The story was incredible, with so much emotion and heart. This is a top rated game for sure. A contender for top spot I've no doubt.
Pure dead brilliant!
This was really good! Feels very rare to find a story game executed well in a fairly short game jam, but this does a great job. Art was wonderful, voice acting was solid, minigames were fun- like others have said, I can definitely feel the love that went into this game :)))
The art was definitely a main selling point of this, and definitely held strong throughout the whole game. The landscape scenes looked really good, and the art for cooking in particular was really nice. I do think a couple rooms in the lighthouse could do with a bit more detail, but that's a minor issue- especially when you guys have a full map of the building on the side and high detail there would be a bit garish.
Voice acting was pretty good too, Elise felt a tiny bit different(?? not sure what I mean here but there was some kind of difference) but I didn't really mind. The story itself was good, I know there's not a lot of creative liberty when depicting something that actually happened, but you guys did a nice job at keeping things entertaining. It took me a moment to understand what that first scene was depicting and that it was unavoidable, but it did make sense- the rest of the story flowed nicely, and I like the little dialogue changes throughout depending on the previous choices. I also enjoyed how the minigames joined the story progress, that was well done, and the minigames themselves were all really solid (I actually quite liked the gear one, but given it was a more substantial puzzle I can see why it was a bit out of place)
The cooking scene was one of my favourite parts, that was super fun once I worked out how to play it! I do think a tutorial would be nice though, it wasn't entirely clear what the colour of the loading bar under the pot actually represented, and the temperature setting was a bit unclear (I initially thought the icon itself had to match the icon on the temp dial). Once I worked out the controls, though, I had a great time preparing the food and trying to nail the timings. The dialogue during cooking did interrupt me sometimes but it was short enough that I could work around it (and that could've been the intent).
Overall, really nice game- clearly a lot of heart was put into it and it turned out very well, had a great time playing :)))
Holy moly, this game was so awesome. I loved the pixel art, the animations, practically everything to do with graphics is very well done. I also really enjoyed the voice acting and alll of the sound effects! they brought the game to life seriously. Really solid stuff there. The cooking minigame, holy awesome!! I got 8 my first time and didnt even think i did that horribly, until i got 70 the next round lmao. Wonderful.
My gripes with this game are few, it is a very well rounded game! On the graphics side of things, I got a little thrown off by the game not being 'pixel-perfect' (meaning it uses the same size pixel art throughout the entire game). It kinda made the sprites seem disconnected from the backgrounds and felt a little weird. <-- this might just be my personal preference, as games like stardew valley that do the same thing also throw me off lol, but still something to at least consider! I don't want to sound too berating here because it is truly a masterpiece, especially within the timeframe! Anyway, audio is very great, no notes there lol. Gameplay is awesome tooo, all of the minigames are great!
This was a great experience and im still astonished you guys managed this with 30 freakin days! Amazing work to every aspect!
Thank you so much!
Yeah I know what you mean about not pixel perfect, we had two artists and one handled the sprites and animations for the most part so there’s a little disparity there!
Haha yeah the cookings a trip, I had the same experience at first it feels like a particularly evil dev at fromsoft created it but once it clicks it’s relatively straightforward.
Thanks for playing :) absolutely love your submission too btw! If you’re reading this and you haven’t played EVAW.. You know what to do.
Wow, what a labor of love this turned out to be. So great to finally see this unveiled after following tantalizing screenshots in the discord.
First let me start with the best parts. The pixel art style and the production value put into this project are outstanding, I think the artists on your team need a raise.. metaphorically i guess :P The spinning lighthouse beam title screen is just outstanding.
The audio is also very well done, and although the voice acting is admittedly amateur recording quality, lacking the extreme polish levels of the graphics, for a jam game it was excellent work and i really liked the characters by the end based solely on their voice acting.
The storyline was interesting to me, but I should mention that the tone of the game was not what i expected. I was geared up for a horror game of some kind based on the tagline “Worse than the dark… is what the light reveals” I kept waiting for something spooky to happen until i realised what the gameplay loop was going to be. Even so I appreciated the ambition of telling a true story and framing it as about balancing choices (family, duty, sacrifice etc)
Next some criticisms…. Starting with the game play
First off the gear puzzle sucks :| Sorry to be blunt, but it’s the only one i didn’t enjoy at all, and it’s not as well implemented as the others. I didn’t find it interesting to solve, I just trial and error solved it based on what gears could or couldn’t reach each other.
Second of all, the adventure game style framing with the lighthouse view would be much more suited to a full adventure game, perhaps finding a gear under Elisses bed… adventure game style puzzles etc.. would flesh this game out and address my third complaint…
Which is that the gameplay is a bit samey. The exact same routine each day is not very interesting. Although admittedly this experience doesn’t overstay it’s welcome - some variation in the daily routine wouldn’t go astray. By far the most memorable parts to me were the diversions in the daily routine. When Elisse was waiting in the kitchen for me I was suddenly very curious and immersed.
I think this game would have been fine with just 3-4 screens, 1 per mini game, and didn’t really need the walking up and down the lighthouse. Of course, the fantastic artstyle wouldn’t have been so clearly on display in that case, but purely in terms of gameplay the traversing up and down the tower didn’t do anything for me.
Finally, the loading screens are ass and very unimmersive imo. In retrospect, I would have preferred to play on desktop I think as the loading screens really break the immersion, especially taking you to a simple puzzle game and back warranting a loading screen seems excessive. What can be done though for a browser game :shrug so I get it.
Finally Finally, let me close this criticism sandwich with a disclaimer and a compliment…
So this is by far one of the most polished and ambitious entries I’ve played, and I’ve played almost 250 now :) I’m only taking extra time to go into close detail on my criticism because the high level of effort put into this submission warrants it.
And I wanted to make special mention that the first time I played the cooking minigame, I got a quality score of 0, slightly furious and ready to write a scathing comment about the cooking minigame being terrible. However by the end of the playthrough - and once I’d figured it out - the cooking minigame was my favourite part of each day, and would probably warrant an entire jam submission by itself.
All round very high quality entry with a clearly tremendous amount of effort put into it. Great work, continue to grow and challenge yourselves!
Edit: Oh! Almost forgot to mention, the suspicious german accented guy claiming to be an american is by far the most dynamic character in the entire game :’D Loved it
Thanks so much for the detailed review! This was CyberSugar’s first Game Jam, and your honest criticism alongside the kind words really validates the effort we put in. We worked with an international team totaling seven people, plus three voice actors and a local musician we are friends with. The size of the team was a double-edged sword, but we are overall glad we participated.
To be honest, the last two-and-a-half days of development were all-nighters spent fighting a browser-breaking bug (that still persists). I was exhausted and wasn't sure if the stress was worth it, but seeing the final result and reading comments like this makes me realize how much we learned and the skills we gained. I actually checked out your entry via Git back in week ~2 or so, before the part after the satellite dish was even implemented. Playing the fleshed-out version now is a real treat!
Regarding your feedback on the gameplay, the Gearbox puzzle was actually the very first minigame I coded, while the Kitchen was the last. My understanding of GDScript evolved massively between the two, so the discrepancy in quality definitely reflects my learning curve. The "dollhouse view" of the lighthouse (as we called it internally) was a point of contention, but since our artist had already created the asset, we didn't want to waste it. We agreed the loop up and down can feel repetitive. We also played it safe for the HTML5 build with the loading screens, and as we play tested, we too realized how much time was sunk into waiting, but it was too late at that point. Luckily our artist made those animations to keep them somewhat entertaining.
The cooking minigame was a happy accident. We wanted to show Sutherland taking responsibility for his daughter, and since I have a personal passion for cooking, I took a leap of faith on that one. I definitely went a bit too hard on the complexity and it did need a more comprehensive tutorial, but I am so happy to hear it ended up being your favorite part once it clicked. The cooking minigame has received the most criticism by far, rightfully so. Finally, I'm glad you enjoyed the suspicious "American" character, our VA friend will be happy to hear that!
Lovely game that tells a very beautiful tale in a very beautiful way. The repetitiveness of the daily chores, with the light mundane tasks like chopping vegetables and cooking dinner being just as normal as the gruesome sneaky threats you get by radio and Morse code... this set the tone so nicely you feel part of that reality. And all of this mood is neatly tied up with the AMAZING music. Having voiceover [late edit] is impressive and shows that a lot of love was involved in the process of making this game. [/late edit]
A couple things I would point out that could improve the whole experience is small things like the floor transitioning, because sometimes (specially with the bedroom's stairs) I wanted to walk down the room and the player ended up going to the lower floor. Maybe changing the region in which pressing down changes floors, idk... The other small thing is some UI elements, like in the (amazing) Morse code minigame, the coded message could stand out more, or in the (also amazing) cooking game it wasnt super clear if some ingredients really were added at first.
Overall, beautiful game! Congratulations.
Thank you for the lovely review! We are so glad the balance between the mundane chores and the underlying tension worked for you. I will definitely pass your compliments along to our local musician friend and the voice actors.
We totally agree with your feedback on the polish. The stair transitions were tricky to get right, and we know they can be a bit aggressive. The UI in the minigames also could have used better visual feedback, especially for the ingredients in the cooking section. This was our first jam with a large international team, so we really appreciate you taking the time to play and share your thoughts!
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