I like how you've started it Josh, you've got some good ideas with lots of potential. Also, glad to see some new blood join the jam and create something. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress and final project!

Also, to answer your first question, yes it's best if each participant has their own topic thread sharing their journey.

About your first question, to clarify it a bit more, you are not required to have devblog, but it is strongly encouraged to have one.

Interesting idea on how to implement the passage, and very suitable title name forerunners.

I didnt get your vision completely yet, but here are two possibilities that came to my mind when i was thinking.

Potential problem here is that if player needs to repeat same things, even if he has instructions, it is still boring doing the same thing. Therefore I can see two possible ways to fix this problem.

first one is door locked with number code. It will take some time before you can find the code for the door somewhere in the neighborhood of that door, but when you find it, you can write it right beside that door. That way one hour of play can easily squeeze into some tens of seconds of play time next time.

Another idea that came to my mind is that lets say there is some for example stone in front of some certain place. Lets say there are for example three different paths in front of that stone, and two of them have traps. Now after you figure out that road A is safe way, you can write that to the stone. Now catch in this is, that after this forerunner dies, next character comes out, but he comes many a year later to that some place, and for one reason or other, things have changed places. However, puzzles themselves havent changed, and when you in some other location than last time come to that place with that same stone, you can now read it is pathway A, and get forward instantly. So puzzles locations can change into different locations, but puzzles themselves stay the same, and this way it is more interesting to play the same place again, as all the puzzles are in new random locations each time, yet you can leave instructions for them, despite their new locations.

Log #03: Taking It Further

I brainstormed a bit more about practical needs and metaphor. Like, practically, making sand look good sounds hard, actually. I'd be pitting myself mentally against Journey's sand, and maybe that'll happen, but I'm not so sure.

I began sketching out perspective and how the maze could look, and stumbled up on an idea:

What if the maze wrapped around a mountain?

I briefly experimented with different types of shades (the walls and mountain ground need to be distinctly different). I figure if I start you at different random locations around the mountain, you'll have to find your way up, and it'll be a good challenge.

So you don't memorize a path, I think I'll mirror the maze every now and then too. Maybe. That might mess with your notes too much if you get detailed.

I'm not quite sure when this moves past "prep" to "actually making it" looks like. It all becomes a blur to me. But I have a script draft.

After the end of every journey (not sure if I'll call it a "death" or go with a more metaphorical term), a scripture will come up on the screen- up to 13 (after which point they'll no longer display). At the end of the game, when you reach the mountain, the seemingly random scriptures all have different elements that are pointed out and mentioned in a longer text segment.

This is all accessible in the doc I'm building in. w00t! It's a draft and has some weird wordings IMO, but it's late and I should probably edit when I'm more awake.

G'night! 😪

I am trying something bit new for this year game reviews of mine. I am planning to make a video from my playtest session of each game. Yours was first, so it gave me a nice test ground. Heres the gameplay video:

Your game was so unfinished, I will only comment some things.

First of all, graphics (which maybe werent meant to be final) looked actually pretty interesting and made me want to go around a bit and look if I could find something. However, at same time I noticed there was problem in them not being very clear. When I went in maze, it was many times difficult to see if there was a turning couple of steps forward or not. Sometimes even step ahead.

However, Im not sure was it so or not, but if it was, a good idea, if not, do so. But I found it was fun idea that you are aiming at top of the hill. This way even inside maze being lost you had some idea where you were supposed to head. That if you got uphill, direction was basicvally right, going downhill, you wuold be going bavckwards from goal.

One small detail i noticed i hadnt realised before, Naturally when you had AWSD as controls, I was happy, since those are the natural ones. However, I noticed that in this case i kept moving by repeatedly pushing the keys, especaily the W, and I noticed it was actually bit uncomfortable, that I was wishing for an option to change the keys to right side. There might have been the arrow keys, but I actually have this Advantage 2 keyboard, which doesnt have those keys placed that way. Therefore, if you ever make this in future and still keep keyboard as controls, do give a choice for a player to configure the keys himself. For even if i change the keys to right side, I still have space on right side too in this keyboard, as this doesnt have that big comfy space but has different, more efficient space button in its layout.

Also regarding controls, I would have liked having strafing as well. Going in maze was already confusing due to current state of graphics, but always having to turn 90 degress, go forward, turn again 90 degrees made it even more confusing. Hence strafing option would be nice.

Anyway, overall your game was surprisingly interesting and one that made me want more despite it being in such an early stage and simple. Hope you get next time further to see what you are up to, since right now I am interested in seeing what you could come up with based upon this little.

By the way, my votes were very low, but this wasnt due to you being lousy, it was simply because there was so little there that couldnt justify giving more. So if your voting end results are very low, dont get disappointed, it isnt because the little you had wouldnt be good, it is just that there was too little to really give any votes that would make sense.