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A jam submission

LuceatView game page

Escape this dark place, you may not be alone...
Submitted by Cearáj — 6 hours, 47 minutes before the deadline
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Luceat's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Metroidvania#54.0774.077
Overall#63.8773.877
Relevance to the theme picked#64.3854.385
Sensory#64.0004.000
Execution#113.5383.538
Enjoyment#113.3853.385

Ranked from 13 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme Chosen
You are not alone; the game's quite dark and gives those vibes.

Engine
Godot 4

Team/Developer
Cearaj, furoyu

External assets
Mostly sound effects; the links are all in the page's description.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

pro:

  • pretty good execution as far as gameplay/mechanical basics and controls
  • good aesthetics
  • solidly on-genre
  • pretty well on-theme i'd say!

con:

  • a couple of crashes, once on a reload I think and once when trying to reach the end of the game

conceptually kind of wasn't my thing. not terribly by any means, but i suppose it might have done to have a game be slightly brighter or otherwise more quickly readable if i'm going to be chased fairly constantly by enemies that one-hit me

Solid overall. Really dug the aesthetic and mood and controls were good. I would probably urge you to rethink the combo of central enemy mechanic and the un-lit-ness of most of the game.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!
I'm still investigating the issue that causes the crash, the frequency it happens seems to vary from player to player and it's rather difficult to track down as it only happens in release builds. The save and load system was pretty rushed so I'm assuming it might be related to that. This is the first report of a crash when reaching the end screen though, I'll look further into it.
I'll take what you said into consideration. There was actually some sort of radar mechanic that was originally planned to be in the game that would let you see the whole room for a moment, but I thought it felt somewhat off in relation to the gameplay overall; I couldn't figure out an interesting way to limit its use and make it more meaningful back then and I was running out of time, so it got cut. I might definitely rethink it in case I keep on expanding the game.

Submitted(+1)

Wow, really loved this! The atmosphere is oppressive and full of dread, I just about screamed the first time I encountered one of the enemies. Figuring out ways to lure the enemies around in order make a window to hit a switch or grab a power up makes for some nice, lite puzzle solving. The character movement also feels really great, with lots of juicy feedback on jumps and landing. One minor piece of feedback, which might just be personal preference, is that there were a few times when I wanted to double jump, but was too close to a wall, so I would wall jump outwards into an enemy. This could be solved by having to hold a directional arrow into the wall in order to wall jump. Other than that, great little bit-sized game! I'd be interested in seeing it expanded upon with more power-up types and level variety. Great work!

Developer

Thank you for the feedback!
I'll definitely look into tweaking the wall jump, I've noticed people struggle a bit with that. I was actually thinking of maybe making it somewhat narrower horizontally, but I'll surely try your suggestion as well.
I'll see if I can join SMVM too! Really glad you enjoyed it :)

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Short and sweet, that was good. Really fun game to play, movement felt great and juking the ghosts out felt really awesome, and the hitboxes are on point for cool looking close calls. Love the squishi boi char too, he's adorable.

Not a lot to say about it tho, it's still super simple honestly, but that's not a bad thing by any means.
Only critique I really have is that the ghost sounds are kinda very weird, and also a little too loud so they block off the music, wich is sad because I was vibing to it. The atmosphere didn't really creep me tho, but it might be just the very music's fault as well. It gives way more of a sense of "chill mistery" than something actually dark and scary.

I got the "try again" bug a couple times, and as far as I've noticed it glitches because after pressing the button the game unpauses for a bit before reseting so sometimes you just die several times before respawning and that might mess up the game's brain a little, but that's just my theory.

And that's all I have to say really. I recorded my run if you wanna see it for anything, but it was pretty chill so nothing outstanding about it.

Por sinal, linda foto de perfil

Developer (3 edits)

Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

Yeah, it's actually my first time making a metroidvania so I tried to go as small as possible (and still crunched a bit in the end, ofc xD).
I did try to make the ghost noises sound somewhat very glitchy and strange, but definitely might've missed the volume balance. I think I could add sliders for sfx and music, and make these noises a bit lower by default.
And I agree the music's rather quite chill, the musician did go for those vibes. We just thought it blended pretty well either way, despite missing a bit of the creepiness.

Sorry for the annoying bug, but thanks for the observations! I really hadn't noticed that the game unpauses for a bit at that point, that's a nice theory. I'll look into it.

I'm actually interested in seeing your run if you don't mind, it's always great to watch playthroughs!

E valeu! Na boa, muito brabo ver outro BR por aqui

Submitted(+1)

Ta na mão!

(E esse é um daqueles momentos estranhos em que vc não sabe em qual lingua falar, então eu só vou continuar em ingles huhauhauhau)


Anyway, as I said, nothing super amazing happened, but who am kidding, I really just wanted an excuse to show me tauting the ghosts x)
A thing to notice tho, the only time the "try again" button worked was when I didn't die again after pressing it, so I guess my theory is on the right path.
Developer(+1)

(Deixei em inglês tbm pra todo mundo entender akldspalskdaplkd)
Oh the beauty of playtesting:
I somehow completely missed that gameover bug, and you managed to get them in almost all your deaths LMAO
When it did crash to me, I think it was instant somehow after pressing try again only once, but it must be all related in some way. I'll investigate it further; this was really helpful, thanks for that!

And thank you for the whole playthrough! It made me notice the ghosts are getting stuck a bit easily with each other sometimes, and there's a little part around the second key that would lead you to the lever and actually wasn't meant to be skippable (but had nothing crucial either).

Submitted(+1)

Nice. The atmosphere and feeling of dread work great in tandem with the art. The difficulty felt fair to me as well (considering 2D platformers are often challenging for me). 

There were some parts of the music which felt a little happy given the environment, but that could be considered creepy as well. 

I wonder if you could keep your powerups upon death? I got the double jump, died, I realised that I'd have to go back and grab it again. Maybe there's a mid ground?

Overall, great job!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!
I'll definitely consider keeping the upgrades upon death, I just didn't consider it for the current length of the game because that would allow for skipping some considerable sections just by dying and thus could make someone miss some key. Since there's no map of any sort, I just tried to go for a somewhat more linear route. But I'll keep that in mind too next time.
Glad you liked it! :)

Submitted(+1)

I love the concept but theres just a couple things that just made the experience a little rough. First is the menu on death - its something I'm never a fan of and especially not in a game where you die in one hit like here, as it just makes deaths slow and annoying. The other is the abundance of dead ends, which are never obvious due to the darkness effect. It lead to a lot of unfair feeling deaths where the ghosts cornered me in an area I had no way of knowing was unsafe. Atmosphere is generally great though the music feels strangely upbeat at times.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it :)
I thought restarting from the gameover screen was fairly quick using jump to confirm (though it only works with space, forgot to add the other keybinds), but I'll surely consider replacing it with a short, skippable reload transition instead as well.
And yeah, I see I definitely should've polished the map further to get rid of dead ends or add a few cues, will keep that in mind next time.

Submitted(+1)

really fun....

Oh did I say fun??? I meant stressful.... But also (still) fun

Good Job!!!

Developer

LOL thanks! Precisely what I aimed for >:)

Submitted(+1)

Excellent work! I really enjoyed your art direction for this entry - the tileset and background art helped lend to the dark and mysterious/scary atmosphere that you conveyed in the world. 

I had a sense of dread as I was exploring, and I legitimately screamed when I began being chased. The chases felt exhilarating and also terrifying when the enemies would cross through doorways to pursue me!

There were a few times where the jumps felt a little *too* punishingly difficult with 1-hit KO, as sometimes I would save and enemies would be just outside the safe area, so getting out was a lil dicey. But overall, I really enjoyed the level of difficulty, and the controls had a nice amount of responsiveness and precision.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback! I'm really glad you enjoyed it :)
I actually found your channel yesterday and watched the VOD of your stream, thanks for playing my game there! It was very fun to watch and naturally gave me A LOT of feedback too. I see the wall jump could definitely use some tweaks, I agree the checkpoint's safe area is not quite the easiest to get out, and you also managed to skip a little part around the second key that wasn't supposed to be skippable (but fortunately wasn't crucial either). Also, you made me realize that I did actually add controller support but forgot to put it on the page's description, brilliant.
Thanks for all that!

Submitted(+1)

Woooo this game deserves a 5/5 in Sensory for sure! The enemies, SFX and level design all contributed to some high-quality atmosphere building right here. I like the difficulty curve, and save & load also worked perfectly smoothly even on Web!

One potential issue I think players may run into is that if you save with enemies right nearby, it may cause a softlock where loading constantly gets you killed with no way to escape. I never actually encountered this, but I think it's something to keep in mind. Maybe make the save points be put in "safe rooms" that will despawn the enemies when you enter them?

Overall, awesome work!

Developer (2 edits) (+1)

Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it :)
Thanks for the heads up! I did actually account for the softlock you mentioned; I made it so that the enemies can't get near the checkpoints, in the same way they're stopped by the torches. Not the smoothest solution I think, but it works. They still do wait in there at a certain distance though, so I'll definitely keep an eye out in case anyone does find it too difficult to get past them at that point.
Glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted(+1)

The atmosphere of this game was really good and kept me on edge the entire time!

Having the ghosts constantly follow was very intense, which was fun, although I could see it being a bit harder to handle in a longer game.

The difficulty rose with each key which was a great feeling and tied in well with the overall tension-filled feeling of the game.

Developer

Thank you for the feedback! That was my first shot at a metroidvania and at an atmosphere like this, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

Submitted(+1)

very cool! a little tough for me, but still interesting

Developer

Thank you!

Submitted(+1)

I really like the art style and the music meshed well with the atmosphere. I think the most important piece of criticism I can offer is that you should increase the damage you take before dying. I think 3 hits should be the minimum. This gives the player some time in figuring out their strat. Also, the ghosts continuously following makes this even worse. If you didn't know you can use a VisibilityNotifier2D to pause their behavior once they are out of the viewport, which would work well with your game and how the rooms are designed.

Congrats on submitting!

Developer (3 edits)

Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah I'll be honest I completely overlooked playtesting in this jam and ended up not knowing exactly how to balance the difficulty, I'll definitely try to pay more attention to that next time and actually get people to test it out first. And thanks for the suggestions! I did actually use VisibilityNotifier2D but it was for the opposite purpose: making them stay on screen most of the time. I made bounds for them though so that they'd be limited only to certain areas of the map, but maybe it could have used smaller sections in the beginning for a smoother difficulty ramp.