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A jam submission

The Corner of Your EyeView game page

Your eyes are just playing tricks on you
Submitted by StudioDread — 20 minutes, 56 seconds before the deadline
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The Corner of Your Eye's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#713.6673.667
Theme#983.8003.800
Overall#2123.3673.367
Graphics#2573.5333.533
Innovation#2873.1333.133
Game Design#3613.1333.133
Fun#4142.9332.933

Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does you game fit the theme?
In two ways, one is quite clear in that there seems to be someone following you though you can never seem to catch more than a glimpse of him. The other you'll have to reach the end to find out.

Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
The visual assets and character controller were purchased/downloaded for free from the Unity Asset Store and are specified in the credits. All other code and assets including audio assets were created by me from scratch.

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Comments

Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page
Submitted (6 edits)

Hey, Dread.  Just today I managed to get my internet running again. It was quite the hassle, haha. So now I'm going around on a sprint, playing the games of the people that dropped me a comment over the past weeks.

So let's get straight to your game then.

First things first... your sound clips are, no doubt, quite high quality (as is your standard). 

Sadly, I found that the atmosphere of the game didn't really put me on edge all that much. But anyway, let me just do a quick recap of everything as I experienced it: 

  • The monster was the biggest weak point in my opinion. 
    • I found the monster's behaviour quite predictable once I studied it a bit. And a monster you can understand, loses a lot of its edge from a psychological standpoint.
    • Your monster was very human in nature, in the sense that it had very human limitations in its capacity to move and hunt you. So I could very easily tell the direction where it would come from.
    • And quickly realized I could keep it in check just by looking in its general direction. So, once I realised it was turning itself into traffic cones and such, he became that much less threatening.
    • Therefore, I felt too empowered to control this monster for him to have an effect on me.
    • However, these comments have the caveat that the game ran kinda laggy on my PC, so I most likely had a lot more time to study behaviour than intended.
  • Now, things you definitely did well:
    • The bustling of the city actually relaxed me (but I don't know if this effect was intended). However, the occasional creepy sounds did bring the tension back up.
    • I definitely appreciate your use of lighting to guide my path, since roaming aimlessly would have led me to assume that there wasn't anything else to see and drop the game halfway before its actual end.
    • The voiceover lines do keep you on edge, as long as you don't fully understand what the monster is doing.
    • And the use of darkness to keep you on your toes was also proper.
  • Another point also related to the lag in my PC, is that the camera felt kinda slippery and difficult to control, but that's definitely due to my system's performance.

In summary, I feel like this was a very "by-the-book" horror game. It didn't really push that many boundaries of what is expected from the genre.

Though I'm definitely grateful for it deviating from the "jumpscare doctrine" that plagues the genre since the last decade. A horror experience centered around the use of tension, rather than shock, was a breath of fresh air.

Developer

thanks for the feedback Jay! As stated in the final message this game is based off of a real life experience I had struggling with psychosis. The monster is the closest I could get to what I actually saw and it's behavior was based on the idea that he's never actually there he's just something your character is hallucinating out of the corner of his eye, I realize the intention wasn't completely clear but the idea was to give people who have never experienced the mental health struggles I have the opportunity to experience a simulation of it firsthand. After the jam there are changes I'll likely make to make the intention of the behavior more obvious.

Submitted (1 edit)

Yeah, the end message recontextualised things quite a bit, and changed my opinion on some points (which is reflected on my comment above).

That said, I know that on these jams people tend to be a bit apprehensive about being critical of people's games, due to fear of being rated poorly in turn. But since I know you like things said straight, and I'm not in this one to win it (specially since my own game was pretty bad this time around by my personal standards, lol), I choose to give it to you straight then. We grow better that way.

Not gonna lie, this is actually impressively smooth as an experience, despite you not being a programmer. So I applaud you for it. 

I don't think I found anything you could call a bug at all. And you chose assets that all fit pretty well together, so overall on those fronts the game was solid.

Great work indeed! :D

Developer(+1)

I actually am a programmer now XD but yeah I definitely appreciate the honesty

Submitted (1 edit)

Lol! I didn't know, hahaha. I stand corrected.

Cheers on your career expansion!

Submitted

A simple game but on the subject! It has its effect :) Good Job!

Submitted

My God, this is horrible (in a good way, of course, like every good horror game)!

I am not a super fan of horror games because of monsters and jumpscares, so I really liked how you made the game a "horror" game without these things. There are a lot of other things that can create a spooky ambience and you used it to create an awesome game. Well done!

Submitted

Great atmosphere and sound design! But something that holds back this game from being scarier is the fact you're instantly thrown into the pan. If the sound of a bustling city was present at the beginning maybe even some cars and pedestrian to lull people into a semblance of safety and then either gradually or suddenly they stop, throwing player out of that safety bubble and into "Yep, something's wrong" territory.

Other than that, the sound of what I assume to be the player's inner thoughts warning the player and telling them to keep going is actually kind of soothing, not sure if this one is intended or not. But hearing a human voice even if it's just actually your thoughts is comforting.

Submitted

What a terrible atmosphere! 

The gameplay is simple but effective, the atmosphere is captivating and the sound.... pouah in the headset I had chills! 

Congratulations!

Submitted

This is so nice, job well done

Submitted

Awesome suspenseful atmosphere, this game seems pretty well developed, the use of lighting and the models look great, nice job!

Submitted

I didn't really understand that there was an actual threat, after about one minute of playing I guessed that nope, this is the sort of horror game with spooky sounds for no reason. I did notice a few traffic cones appear, but never saw this guy (and guessed it was just too dark to notice the cones). And even going back now that I know the threat, I still can't see him. So maybe he isn't visible long enough or maybe it's just too dark, I'm not sure but it seems he just appears at random spots, maybe it could've been more authored where he appears. So you could tell him to make an appearance under this flickery light, which grabs my attention, then it'd be a lot easier to notice this. It is a very cliche horror trope, but imo having a vast featureless street makes it very hard to notice that anything happened. And there is totally a balance here, I understand you want something subtle and anxiety inducing, but too much subtlety and you get the opposite where it seems like random meaningless sound effects. Particularly at the start, I think it's important to make the threat very obvious. 

Perhaps if you ignore the sounds he could get closer and closer and closer, then if you've been ignoring him and turn around, suddenly he's right close, he does his vanishing thing and then blam that's stuck in your mind. That way if you're vigilant, all you'll ever see is those distant glimpses, but if you let your guard down that's when the game shocks you back into that paranoia, to confirm those gut feelings. 

But anywho those sounds are very well done, I can't believe you made all that, very impressive! Also I noticed the font isn't credited in your credits, I believe it's this one by ggbot for anyone else looking. Overall a neat little game, and amazing audio design, when the guy did actually attack that got me good!

Submitted

Im really not a horror game person, but I still tried it out and found the atmosphere very affecting. Good job!

Submitted

Playing it itself was a great experience.

Pros:

The setting was great.

The game itself was very anxious.

Very interesting how the theme is connected.

The game itself is truly original.

The final message is really nice.

Cons:

Just having to walk for a long time was slightly boring.

It would have been nice to see more interactive sequences

I might have put some music on for when we turn around and see our pursuer.

In general I can say that playing it was certainly a beautiful intrinsic experience of anxiety and mystery.

Developer

thank you for the feedback! Encounter music when you turn around is a great idea and I'll definitely note that down for post jam updates. I was also planning to add some visual element like flickering or the screen going grayscale when he disappears but I didn't end up having time

Submitted

Positively surprised by the ending, though it could have been a bit shorter. The tension was fading away after a few turns, I really was feeling kinda bored.

The environment is amazing, gives a nice feeling of "safe spots" that make you want to sprint through the dark parts.

I felt the footstep sound was a bit weird, didn't feel like it accompanied my movement at times. But the one at the end felt very unnerving! Good job! Maybe with some ambient music that got eerie as time went by it would be easier to keep the tension throughout.

I noticed a line in the streets as if the models were not aligned, like some huge crack on the streets, not sure if that's from the asset. But it was a really minor thing anyway.

Congratulations on the message and the creepy atmosphere!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback! For clarity I believe that the weird footstpes you heard were of the guy who's following you and that's why they felt out of sync (two different sets) the guy at the end is following you the entire time but you can only catch glimpses of him out of the corner of your eye (hence the name), and there is ambient music throughout but for the life of me I couldn't get the levels quite balanced enough to keep tension within the deadline, had a lot of issues with audio levels right up to the edge of development unfortunately. Thanks again for the feedback!

Submitted

Oh, I see now! I looked behind a few times but there was no one there, so I figured those were mine.

Developer

The idea comes from a period of psychosis that I would often see a tall masked man out of the corner of my eye and when I looked it would turn out to be a plant, traffick cone, pole, etc. So you hear him behind you but when you look you can only catch a glimpse of him for 0.1-0.2 seconds before he disappears and is replaced by a prop. It's difficult to spot so I understand not everyone catches it but a few people I've watched play it live have had the reaction of "I keep feeling like I saw someone but I can't tell" which was ultimately the goal. Difficult mechanic to get perfect lol

Submitted

Absolutely spot on with the atmosphere and should design. It was a bit railroading to only have one viable path, which gave it more of an interactive experience for me. Getting through this may very well have been more of your intervention. Great job!

Submitted

very nice atmosphere, really captured horror genre. I like the high contrast but maybe could have slightly more color. Nice work

Submitted

this game screwed with me more than it should have jesus 

Submitted

Could'nt make it to the end because well.. horror games. But regardless the game is amazing, graphics and audio wise. Good job 

Submitted

I liked the use of darkness and light.

Here's mine: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-8/rate/1675396

Submitted

Great Submission!
The Terror aspect was incredibly well made, I was never sure whether something I saw was them or not.  And there's nothing more scary than instructional text out of the blue just as everything seemed to be calm. I barely made it to then end.

I’m not a big fan of horror games, so I didn’t finish the game, but for the little bit I did play I could tell that you had to put a lot of work into making everyone feel tense when they launched your game. Overall really good though. Do you mind rating my game when you get a chance?

Submitted

Your game looks so awesome! I really like the tieing to the theme and how  it raised  awareness . Also the quality and  features were cool. However this is a good game but in the future for more projects or jams I think you should improve the game by making  it a littleless long. Don't get me wrong this is a great game and a super cool submission. If you feel like helping out you could play my game or view other submissions from the low rating category. Its totally up to you and keep up the excellent game development.

Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page