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A jam submission

At Lands EndView game page

Entry for DungeonCrawlerJam 2024
Submitted by FatWednesday — 2 hours, 29 minutes before the deadline
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At Lands End's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#772.8852.885

Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
Solitude:
You are the only person in the games secluded location. There are shadows that you catch a glimpse of, but you never interact with other people, only reading about events in notes left behind.

Cosmic Horror:
Inclusion of everyone's favourite Lovecraftian big lad, Cthulhu makes a pixelated appearance as the 'enemy' of this experience... even if not a very active part.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Fantastic atmosphere and gorgeous graphics! A lot of the feedback that I wanted to comment has already been said: sanity shouldn't drop while lockpicking, allow us more time to take in the setting rather than rushing. Controls are also glidey sometimes when you spam and you can end up missing a tile you want to stop on haha. 

Took me two runs to complete the game as in the first I was a bit lost and didn't realize I'd have to use the orb manually in the church. On the second run, if you know the game, you do indeed have a lot of sanity to go around.

Developer

Yeah I think knowing the game was the cause of me not realizing just how harsh the sanity drop was :D Ya live, ya learn :D.

Anyways, thanks for playing, and for commenting. Glad you managed to complete the game.

Submitted(+1)

Love the ambiance and the city. The little shadow on the corner and the bad guy appearing in the distance is really cool. I didn't mind so much the minigames, but dying when you explore was a bit eh, like I was incentivized to not explore and look at your game. I got stuck at the end because I didnt manage to use the orb, but someone helped me :D Nice game!

Developer

Thanks for playing and commenting.

I realized after releasing the game that there’s no real obvious instruction to ‘use’ from the inventory… or even get into the inventory. Hopefully I’ve made that a little easier for a post-jam update.

Thanks again.

Submitted(+1)

To be more precise, I pressed tab and selected the item, but I did not see the "Use" button (maybe it was not big enough or shiney? It's very far from the item.

Submitted(+1)

Very nice pixel art/low poly assets. Really liked the consistent style of everything and the shadowy figures appearing. However the lack of any kind of saving combined with the kind of slow movements outside would definitely turn some people away from finishing it. Personally if i'd died outside before the end I definitely would have given up. 

I found out the final room with the blue orb has no collisions so I used that to go out of bounds and skip back to the room with the magic circle since I was so low on sanity I don't think i'd have made it there in time otherwise.

The lock picking minigame/defend your sanity minigame was a nice addition and I suppose the only thing close to combat here but it works, however I would have liked it if sanity didn't drop in the lockpicking sections as it can be kind of rng how quickly you can get through them.

Overall I enjoyed it though!

Developer

Hey there, thanks for playing and for the feedback.

The issues you raised have been a common theme across feedback, clearly there were I few things I didn’t pay enough care to or consideration during the Jam.

A post Jam release will try to address some of the issues at least, and maybe in the future if I expand it some more I’ll get some cultist combat in there too.

As for the out of bounds, I wasn’t aware of any from indoor spaces, so that’s a new one. I’ll have to go back and patch that now :D thanks for pointing it out.

Glad you enjoyed it though, thanks again for playing.

Submitted(+1)

I loved the look and feel of it, but I agree with others that the sanity ran down a bit faster than expected.  I am not even sure what or how or why it was happening, or if there was any way to prevent it.  I am assuming these things would be explained in a more fully developed version of the game.  But atmosphere wise it gets an A+

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing and commenting. Regarding the sanity, whilst In hindsight I agree it drains too fast, there are 2 ways to combat that. The torch when located will decrease the drain speed, and you can use potions that you find to restore sanity as well. However I somehow missed any indication of the inventory in the game so I think many people don’t know it’s a thing, my bad :D

Anyways, thanks again for playing, and for providing feedback.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Incredible graphics and atmosphere but I'm a sucker for this 3D pixel art aesthetic anyway. :)  I think your sanity drains frustratingly quickly. I felt like there was a mismatch between the atmosphere which said to me 'be cautious' but then the meter is saying 'dash about like a madman'. I really dug the lock picking minigame, super simple idea but works well. Movement-wise I missed being able to hold keys for continuous movement. Also, unsure whether this is intentional but I completed the game on my third try but never had an encounter with any enemies. Overall, really enjoyed playing this one. :)

Developer(+1)

Hey there, thanks for playing, and for the feedback. Several points raised I think have been addressed now in a build that will make it to itch once all the voting is over, such as sanity drain speed, holding keys.

As for the lack of combat, that was unfortunately by design, I didn’t allow enough time to really put a combat system together, so the shadowy figures you see are purely mood and serve no other purpose.

Hopefully I’ll find time to add a combat system in the future so you can go toe to toe with some crazed cultists.

Thanks again.

Submitted(+1)

First off the graphics - Clucking amazing. you nailed the atmos completely, the lightning everything well done.

movement was a bit slow, some enemies or traps, etc would have been nice. Also the floors are very 'smooth', almost glassy  I would suggest a material change and also add some vegetation or other stuff to break it up a bit.

But It looks a solid start for something :)

Developer

Appreciate the kind words.

As for the feedback, I think you’ve nailed it. Some of these points I’m addressing for post-jam update, others like the floor I’ll try to play around with if I can squeeze out some more spare time somewhere.

Thanks again.

Submitted(+1)

Good submission!

My primary critique is the sanity system, which, like many others have said, is too fast and a bit annoying. Furthermore, as I have said with other similar systems, I really don't like the fact that the result of this hitting 0 is just a game over. I would rather see it impact gameplay in some way instead of being just another route to a dead end, I think it detracts from the experience the way it is.

You had  lot more things here that were great though, good job!

Developer(+1)

Having the 0 sanity do something other than loosing is an interesting idea. Maybe I can rework the Cthulhu sanity battle to be something fun that occurs as a last chance when you hit 0.

As for the rest of the feedback, appreciated as always, I think there’s a few points that have come up enough to be obvious areas of improvement that I’ll look to address for post-jam updates(s).

Thanks for playing and providing feedback.

Submitted(+1)

I have succeeded in banishing Cthulhu. I also had previously recovered my memory, this bad ending for not performing the ritual in the right place was super cool.

The game looks pretty good and atmospheric. Movement is kind of smooth and then kind of pleasant but it's too slow for my taste anyway, I think keeping walking ahead when keeping the button pressed would have helped in this one as it uses slow movement (with instant movement it does not matter). One thing I really like is that the difficulty feels appropriate, the game is not hard but it's not completely trivial either and there's actually little chance you'll win on your very first run, and then the game is fun to play.

This was a cool entry, thanks for sharing.

Developer(+1)

Ayee, glad to hear from someone that decided to give that second ending a try :D

Thanks for the feedback, regarding the movement, I’ve already upgraded to a holding key support, and added strafing as well. That will show up in a post-jam update once the voting is all sorted. On the difficulty front, I think I’ll have to revisit it anyway as I’d like to add in some sort of combat events and add more exploration eventually.

Anyways, thanks again for playing, for finding the secret ending, and for the feedback.

Submitted(+1)

You have a bunch of nice mechanics, like locks minigame, inventory and storytelling through the notes. Really nice atmosphere and all those shadows were a great addition to the overall mood.

It was not apparent in my first playthrough that I can use inventory so I went mad, but on a second playthrough I managed to “deny” the Cthulhu. Maybe making inventory a bit more apparent will benefit it a bit, but it’s not a big obstacle anyway :)

Great job, one of the best atmospheres in games I’ve played in this jam!

Developer

Appreciate the kind words. Thanks for the feedback and for playing. I’ve got a ‘backpack’ button ready to go for an upload once the voting period ends, as it’s been mentioned a few times in feedback, and in hindsight seems a silly oversight on my part.

Thanks again for playing.

Submitted

Oh, and one thing I really wanted to mention is that if you know what to do, next playthroughs are getting better and better. I like that kind of design in games, when player also grows and understands world/layout/rules better meaning next run will take less time doing the same things and more exploring/playing.

Submitted(+1)

This is some of my favorite graphics so far, but man the quickly draining sanity was hitting me hard

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the kind words, yeah I think I underestimated how much wandering around non-me players may do.

There will be an update post jam to address that among other things.

Submitted(+1)

Good sound and graphics! This has the potential to be a super good submission, but just lacks some fluent gameplay, combat and general gameplay. Kinda the opposite from my game to be fair.. :P

Anyway, I really liked the game as short as it was. Took a while to figure out I needed to open the inventory to proceed. Good Job!

Developer(+1)

Yeah I think that’s fair, I got caught up on the art bits and missed some more expected elements like combat.

Definitely got a few ideas to implement that sort of thing post jam though, so maybe if I can find the time I can brush it up into more of what folks might expect from a crawler.

Tha ks for the feedback and for playing.

Submitted(+1)

PROS: I really enjoyed the art, the map, and the environmental effects.

CONS: The lockpicking and cthulu minigame seemed a little out of place, and the game was very punishing. I didn't really know what to look for and even though I thought I checked every house, I was unable to figure out the next steps. I also encountered a bug where I clipped outside of the map.

Developer(+1)

Appreciate the feedback. The punishment and clipping issue are ready to go post-jam. As for not knowing what to do, That’s fair enough, I’m no designer so always room to improve communication in game.

Thanks for playing.

Submitted(+1)

Nice ambient and atmosphere.
Unfortunately i couldn'y beat it due to the sanity going too fast.
the lockpicking and Cthulu minigame were fun tho.
I would love to play it with a bit of adjustment.
Good Job!

Developer

Already made a few adjustments from feedback. Once the jam voting period is over I’m sure I’ll be posting an updated version that hopefully addresses most of it.

Submitted(+1)

Played it all and finished it!
Very cool game, nicely presented and also polished, I kinda found the shadow figures funny, maybe adding sound to the encounters or making them appear in a tight corner would have been more scary :')
Overall very cool!

Developer

Thanks for playing and for the feedback. Definitely a case of far grander plans than I could fit in regarding the figures. Definitely wanted them more responsive, more shadows, sounds etc. maybe in the future some time 😄

Submitted(+1)

I wasn't able to finish this one sadly, if it does have an ending, but I like what I played. The lockpickling minigame was fun, and the atmosphere and weather effects are great!

I especially liked the little (big) visual in the distance when the lightning flashed.

Also I think you're missing a collider on the little wooden fence, because I managed to circumnavigate the playable area outside the walls.


Beyond that, I found the quickly draining sanity to be a neat idea since it forced you to move quickly. But a little annoying in that depending on the path the player takes it can lead to multiple restarts just to progress somewhat. I don't think it should be outright removed, but maybe a little fine-tuned post-jam.

Also like the other comments, I'd suggest adding the ability to hold down a button to move, and also add strafing.

But as for the narrative and presentation aspects, this was great! I hope you do expand on it post-jam.

Good work!

Developer(+1)

Appreciate the feedback, the holding key is absolutely something to add post jam. Of course I missed a collider somewhere 😂 always something.

Submitted(+1)

Nice job! great presentation and atmosphere and graphics. I just wish i could side step and rotate!

Developer(+1)

Not being a big dungeon crawler person I had completely overlooked strafing, I’ll be sure to add it post jam though as it’s clear to me now that it’s a fairly common thing.

Thanks for playing and commenting

Submitted(+1)

The graphics are very nice and atmospheric. I like the story approach, but the movement could be improved, having to press a button for each step is a bit cumbersome.

Developer

That’s fair, I imagine my brain got very much in the ‘discrete actions’ mindset with grid based stuff. Appreciate the feedback and kind words.

Submitted(+1)

Lovely atmosphere. Very dark on my screen, and couldn't work out how to resolve it!

But the weather and rain really sets the mood. Well done.

Developer(+1)

Thanks, true I didn’t think about brightness/gamma settings until it was too late. definitely something I’d have to sort out for any further work in this sort of theme.