I found the camera controls difficult to adjust, so I always died in lvl2. I cheated in the end and got to your final screen.
It is a good game and well related to the given theme. The bot is nicely designed, producing the empathy needed for the player wanting him to win. You could improve the overall design, e.g., floors more to contrast with the bot. I didn't like the human face in the end screen as it looked more like a humanoid than a human to me.
Congrats on the game!
Viewing post in Plug Out! jam comments
Thank you so much for playing. By camera controls, do you mean the mouse sensitivity ? I have added option in settings to adjust it.
I will see how I can improve textures, due to time limit, I had to reuse lot of textures and make use of whatever I could find quickly. If you mean the face of the last boss (with red glowing eyes), the face is actually humanoid, not human, but puts on the face of one and is certainly not supposed to be liked by the player. I tried to implement some post apocalyptic cyberpunk themes with this but the narrative design has not been implemented up to the mark as game merely has only 3 lines of dialogue which give only certain clues about the player character and not the world around it.
Yes, the mouse sensitivity.
As for the narrative design, which does not only exist in written lines, I found it a bit confusing. I played your game again and jumped to the end screen quickly. I still find the humanoid face confusing, because while playing the game the first time the msg for me was that the "bot" (maybe trapped human inside one) wants to connect with humans, so I was expecting a human face. This time I read it more like the humanoid as the "superior, or the one in charge" was talking to the bot, wanting to know the reason why they did or didn't do something. This doesn't make much sense to me.
I think that the player character bot's behaviour by killing other bots (or in my case dying while trying...) tells much about his character. I would try and make the intention of the character, to connect with humans, which you gave the hint to in the beginning and then by killing the other bots clearer with less words in the end.
I hope that makes sense to you.
Ok, so here's some (spoiler) lore which I had planned before starting the work on this game.
The machine as referred to the black and white 'human like' face, is an entity that is guarding 'the wall' (The gate with 'danger, do not enter' sign in the last level). The reason the word 'wall' is used in the intro dialogue is because instead of just force fields, there were also supposed to be destructible walls that were going to be added to the game.
The player / the plug (or the bot, as you refer to it) is actually a few surviving human organs inside a completely mechanical body, and the body is a battery that powers the force fields when connected to its sockets (as you see the other 'plugs' at the force fields). The player has travelled far distance to reach this wall as he has heard there are humans beyond the wall. Now wherever the player has originated from, severely lacks any human elements (likely possible that the player has escaped some industrial facility).
In the final level, the player powers down the force fields and the defense systems that prevent it from 'crossing the wall' to meet other humans (hopefully, if any exist, as he has heard). Upon that, the machine (not knowing that the player is actually a cyborg(part human, part machine) asks why did he not connect to the force fields as he is a prototype of advanced generation of plug and is programmed to power its defenses only. (the previous generations of plugs being fully mechanical unable to move and easily destroyed as seen in the game) ... The player's reply implies that he is not a robot that will merely carry out a task he is programmed to do, and is a human that seeks connection with other humans.
The confusion might stem from the fact that the only human character (player) in the game looks completely mechanical and fully identical to other machines in the game whereas the only 'human resembling' element (the machine's face, and its voices) are mere illusions of human behavior and has no relations to humans at all. The reason it was designed that way was for some world building about how much of human elements have been taken over by the machines in the universe of this game.
For this reason, all the text in the game uses 'press start 2p' font signifying everything is being run by the machine, except the dialogue in the intro and second line of the ending where the camera zooms at the player character, those two lines use 'comic relief' font (a font that does not look like it is from a machine, but rather human like) .. which I thought would show a differentiation between the player and overall game world.
I was going to add comic strips style intro and exit where the player / the plug is seen with half destroyed head with some flesh popping out, but this would have required more time, plus I found scripting the cutscenes easier. One other reason I avoided it was because it was recommended in the stream to not include elements like adult themes or gore at extremes, so completely avoided that.
Now this lore certainly creates more questions like how did the player originate, escape, acquire weapons, etc. But that is a matter of lore expansion or world building. For the game, the core theme was how to focus on connection. Which incorporates both, electric connections (the plug powering the force fields and powering down the machine entity when destroyed) and the player seeking human connections.
Like the conversation with other players on this thread points out, the game was inspired by older games such as half life, doom, system shock, etc. that (partially and sometimes fully) explore the relations between humans and the unknown, hence not much backstory is provided about the world and the existing cutscenes only show the player and their motif in the game world.
I do think I can still improve on narrative design on my future games, as this is my first attempt at making scripted cutscenes in the game. Thank you for delving deeper into this.
Thank you for the extensive reply. You are already doing a great job. And I mean that. You might have guessed that already by my replies. The last scene is where, in my very humble opinion , you struggle a bit.
"In the final level, the player powers down the force fields and the defense systems that prevent it from 'crossing the wall' to meet other humans (hopefully, if any exist, as he has heard). Upon that, the machine (not knowing that the player is actually a cyborg(part human, part machine) asks why did he not connect to the force fields as he is a prototype of advanced generation of plug and is programmed to power its defenses only. (the previous generations of plugs being fully mechanical unable to move and easily destroyed as seen in the game) ... The player's reply implies that he is not a robot that will merely carry out a task he is programmed to do, and is a human that seeks connection with other humans. "
This and again, in my very humble opinion, needs work to get through to the player with less and/or a different text. I do not see the present design/exposure of the scene as fully transparent or with a more logical flow in order what you want to transmit to the player.
I hope that I could help you some with what I've said, when you develop your game further :)