Wow. So that was a thing. Lol
For me, I adore dark and disturbing visuals like this. And I like them even more when they seemingly have no reasoning behind them. Like, the image of a heart, or other mass blob of movable flesh, maneuvering through a world filled with calcified human parts and rusty metal. There's something really fascinating about that.
So kudos for being able to put this all together in 6 weeks.
Should you ever plan to develop it further, here are a few thoughts I had about my experience.
First, I do think I like that each stage of the game doesn't really tell you what you're supposed to do, but it was easy enough to know where I was supposed to get to.
However, I do think that rather than just fading out after the player character gets to where they approximately need to be, there ought to be something more that indicates players have reached their destination. I get that the experience is meant to be dream-like, so the scenes will fade seemingly to random new locales, but I think a bit of extra art direction could lend itself to making each stage feel like it has a definitive start and end, while still maintaining the aesthetic.
Second, the in-game cut-scenes are a bit too much. I feel they keep me out of the game more than draw me in. I specifically had an issue with the skull socket part, as that cut-scene really dragged on. If you were to adjust that level so that the player character started more at mid level to the skeletal structure, and then had the lighting make it even clearer that the player has to reach a particular spot, that would achieve the same goal as the lengthy cut-scene does.
Third, and this is just my very personal preference; I think I'd enjoy the game a bit more if you only used the tendrils half the time rather than all the time. Like, if I could move about with WASD like a slug, or if you had a some kind of secondary movement more like a worm where you stretch forward the whole mass and pulled the rest up from behind, I think that could contribute to the atmosphere a bit more so that the player isn't constantly clicking around with all the rapid sticky slapping sounds, and getting tendrils caught into the camera.
All in all, it's a fantastic achievement in the time you dedicated to it. I'd love to see more games that use these kinds of visuals. And thanks so much for the experience.
Thanks very much for taking the time to play and leave such detailed feedback!
I don't plan to revisit this project to develop it further but I wholeheatedly agree with all of your points here and the feedback is very useful for future projects. A few people brought up the fade length in my project after this one too so it's definitely something I need to find a better way of transitioning. And the cutscenes were way too long, but I was watching a lot of Tarkovsky at the time and was really into long lingering shots. I don't know how he makes his so gripping!
Thanks for sticking with it and playing through to the end.
Oh that's hilarious, and makes so much sense. I've been meaning to watch Tartakovsky's work, but my best friend has told me that Stalker and Andre Rublev were the most engaging. I was fascinated by the imagery being discussed at the beginning of Solaris, but I couldn't make it past the half way point.