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A jam submission

Abyssal GazeView game page

Fight eyeball mutants while orbiting a giant space eye in this old-school dungeon crawler
Submitted by Jacob Marks (@PerspectiveDesi), Digibans — 6 hours, 37 minutes before the deadline
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Abyssal Gaze's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#233.5073.733

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
The game has an endless dungeon accomplishing theme 1.

The player is the only human left alive on the map accomplishing a feeling of solitude for theme 3.

Giant eyeballs and strange mutant creatures accomplish the cosmic horror for 4.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I destroyed the eye!

I never got any other weapon than the pistol, but that did not seem to matter, I could power through the dungeon anyway. Graphics looks very nice and the music suites the game well. Combat is easy but effective. Could be more variety of enemies. The map is very helpful, but still it is easy to get lost, maybe have some text for each area naming what it is in the map as well, I don't know. 

Anyway, it was fun to play from beginning to end. Good job!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!

Sadly I didn't have time to finish the additional weapons in time for the jam.

I've been working on updates to release post jam and comments like these have been very helpful!

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

I completed the game.

Reading the comment below, it looks like I skipped the ending scene too if there's one, I saw the eye in the middle of space and that's it.

The game is super fun. The environments look very good and varied, The game really looks great through the windows and such. New rooms replacing the old ones is a good implementation of the endless theme and they are enough varied layouts, I really like actually handmade layouts in games with some automatic generation so this was the good kind to me, the change is organic and when I realised that, only after a while, I was like "Oh that's cool". 

The game is super pleasant to control, movement feels perfect, the turn-based combat which allows you to shoot out of the grid is satisfying. Rise in power is satisfying too, I enjoyed going from a loser who needed to walk slowly (and died a few times) to a war machine just rushing through the dungeon. The music can get repetitive as you spent a long time in the dungeon but that's fine in the context and I like it.

Looking for the 3rd keycard with 1000 ammo, 100 health while finding 3 times each other card was not the most fun part of the game.

This is an excellent entry, thanks for sharing.

Developer

Yeah the cutscene skips if you press any key sadly. The eyeball just has an explosion on it, and there is a prompt to restart.
The worst thing for the jam version is the key balance. I've watched multiple people power up to extremely OP levels without hardly finding any keys.
Definitely going to fix that for a post jam version!

Thanks so much for playing!

Submitted(+1)

I skipped end scene :<

Were there other guns, except starter one? I never found any. Game only 'hard' at the start where you may get unlucky with health and ammo pickups... but then it just exploration, really. Challenge ends right as soon as you get couple of ammo boxes and one or two health pickups. After you get those accuracy chips ammo won't be issue at all. Damn, that person is terrible at aiming before it.

3 days to make random generated dungeon (even though they are made from 'premade' pieces) with good shooting mechanic, all this beef around... even Eye in the space? That is damn great time management o,O The only issue is 'starting pack', game becoming too easy after it and endscreen being so easy to skip...

Damn, I am in shock!

Developer(+1)

Sadly the cutscene skips if you press any key :(
Nope no other guns got implemented in time. In updates I am going to add a shotgun and rifle.
Yeah I'd wanted the game to last about 10-20 minutes, which I figured would be good for a jam game, but the keys are far too random to find.
Thanks so much for playing!

Everyone's criticism has been very consistent and helpful, which will make creating an update much easier.

Submitted(+1)

This is an extremely solid game for 3 days of work. The endless ring of ships felt good to explore - the occasional window facing outward especially, because that meant that you might catch sight of something you really want way over in another sector of the map and try to figure out how to get there. The combat feels pretty good too-even with only the pistol. It transitions well from careful ammo and spacing management in the early-game to staying aware of your surroundings so an eye doesn't get the drop on you.

The aesthetics and audio are very nice too - occasionally catching sight of the giant eye staring at you through a window is quite the feeling.

This is one I will probably return to if you expand it, but for now here's my playthrough:

Developer(+1)

Thanks so much for playing! And especially for posting the video! It's tremendously useful to see for knowing what to update.
I have been working on updating for a post-jam version, so I'll let you know when it is finished.

Submitted(+1)

A solid little package! Is it perfect? No. Is it fun? Absolutely!

This little game has so much potential and I hope you’ll share the next iteration during one of my showcases :D

Thanks for stopping by the stream. Here is a link to the VoD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2110888610?t=03h45m00s

Developer

Thanks so much for taking the time to play it! :D

Submitted(+1)

I played more of this, than I tought. At first glance it looks very basic, no just the graphics but the systems at well. But then it shows more and more good ideas. I really liked the targeting of the enemies, even if it was a bit easy to get surrounded by the eye balls. The gazing eye out in space was sooo creepy and togehter with the droning background sound, it felt very opressive. And even if I saye, that the graphics are basic, they ooze of style. I had to think of early MS-DOS shareware games. Like the moraf stuff or something like that. Maybe the textures and the models even clashed a bit, but even that I found charming and made me wanting more. Well done!

Developer

Thank you so much! I'm glad it grew on you as you played more.

Vaguely old-school and primitive was what I was going for with the art, so I'm glad it worked out.

Submitted(+1)

Oh man that eye is so cool. I love being able to look out the windows and see the structure of the station as well as the swirling ring of ships. The environments are varied and that droning background music just gives the whole thing a very cool horror vibe. I'm not sure if it's intention or just luck but a few times I'd go through a door with a double window facing it, and it would look like the eye snapped towards me looking at me through the window which was awesome.

I died super fast a few times (The balance was a bit weird for me, but that's standard for a jam game and I think part of it was not quite groking the combat until my 3rd run) and then got super lucky with a bunch of upgrades and a ton of ammo (I think I ended with like 137 ammo or something) that kind of trivialized the enemies, I was able to blast them from like 5 tiles away.

I actually did end up finding all 3 keycards and get to the core, but it just flashed a quick scene with the eye and then restarted me so I wonder if I accidentally skipped something.

Awesome entry, I really liked it a lot.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

The eye snapping towards you was just luck. It'd be fun to program that in.

Yeah the balance was awful for the jam. I'd tested the combat a decent amount, but I hadn't had time to test the likelihood of actually finding enough keys to win.

Yeah the winning cutscene will restart the game if any key is pressed, which made it very easy to accidentally skip.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+1)

Excellent game! Very crisp movement and instantly intriguing story and setting.  

Developer(+1)

Thanks! Glad the movement feels crisp!

Submitted(+1)

Nicely done. Only found 2 keycards.

Developer(+1)

Thanks!
Honestly I'm glad you found those! The game was not well balanced in time for the jam. I had many later runs with the jam version where I couldn't find a single card.