You can interact with the menu with WASD and Space/Enter!

It's interesting because a lot of people seemed to have trouble with this - I will add a note to the main menu saying this is how you interact with it :)

Thanks!!

Thank you!

Thank you so much for playing!

Hello Everyone!

Check out the latest public development build of my stealth immersive sim game, Heir Obscure!

Heir Obscure is a stealth immersive sim inspired by beloved classics. Stay in the shadows, listen carefully for enemy positions, unlock magical abilities, and take back what’s rightfully yours. Unravel the deceptions of those who took everything from you, and restore an old kingdom to its glory.

https://andrzej-gieralt.itch.io/heir-obscure-alpha-demo

Thank you!

I hope you liked our sound effects :)

We made it a primary goal to make the gameplay feedback in-game (in terms of hit impact, etc) unfortunately, that fell flat with the block animation bug (it fails to play randomly). Also I actually don't remember if we intentionally made the 3 death limit (I feel like we did but it was getting late in the jam, and late into the night haha :P) But you're absolutely right, it's the ideal for sure! Like some sort of flashy popup to really be like "Hey! You got a new ability! Memory gained!" (So we tried to at least do it with dialogue and let the player piece together what was going on). Glad you overall enjoyed it, your criticisms are absolutely right.

Haha ok fair enough :P Kinda like stonk!

Awesome! Yeah I mean you don't necessarily need a "story" or anything, just some sort of minor explanation or reason as to why the player might be doing this, just so that the player doesn't think "huh? What the heck?" Good stuff! 

Thank you! Yeah that was something we were worried about, although I don't think players would've heard the lines plus we wanted Resfin to have his own lines too, but yeah it is something we considered and it's a good point!

Thank you!

I've seen some insanely polished ones but yeah, not often haha!

Thank you! Yup lots of things could be improved haha, well the player is just Knight Resfin recoloured so, the animations exist we just ran into trouble implementing them. You have a small window to react to the enemy's telegraphs and there's a difference between his standard and rapid attack. With more time we would've polished it quite a bit more and solved some issues we ran into along the way, as they were plentiful haha. I'm really glad you enjoyed it overall and thank you for the compliments on voice acting!!

Thank you! Yup there are some bugs unfortunately.

I see, ok good idea after all, I should have paid more attention. There's too many games haha!

Awesome, thank you!

Thank you! Can you provide more details about the bugs you experienced after blocking? I have played while spamming controls often and found no such issues.

In terms of feedback, we are aware of a bug that caused the enemy to not display the block animation from time to time, is that what you mean? Other than that we tried to really go for feedback elements. I think the player is missing the blood effect but he still says "Ugh!" when he gets hit, and has a distinct voice from the enemy.

The 4 slash attack has a much longer charge-up than the normal attack, it's twice as long I believe. Probably should have been longer :S
I can't remember if restarting after 4 deaths was intentional or if it was an accidental bug, but I think the reason for it is because there still needed to be an actual fail state. Thanks for the feedback!

I definitely enjoyed the game :) Thanks for clarifying!

The game looks great and cohesive, sound is great, it's even fun except is severely hindered by the lengthy dialogue to explain the game. And really not sure it's too fun to just let the hero win because I think you technically don't have to do any attacks to counter him do you... but the combat mechanics are good as they are, even if you don't have the rock paper scissors element.

Not bad! Although severely less than it could be with bad camera controls (none) and the fact that it was remarkably easy (if it gets harder later on, it is too slow paced and didn't keep my interest long enough for me to get there). I think the mechanics are really cool, especially the dodge.

I actually really like this game! Super fun, super sneaky, 5 stars across the board save for simplicity which is 4 (I don't even understand that rating tbh. Maybe just brought it down because of possible convoluted reasons as to why we might be knocking out robbers but also killing hostages lol). Great crunch.

Oh I see. Ok so you essentially have to balance when to die and upgrade and when to try to win. An easy grind at the beginning, let them rush through, and then a challenge once you have the upgrades you want... could be good but could end up OP.

Hilarious xD But also I had no idea how to determine which option would result in what purpose and got fired in the end. Not very clear as to what does what and how to achieve your desired results.

Although corpse platforms are probably the most common idea I saw on this jam, yours is the best. I don't know if this was intentional but you manage to retain elements of good game design where many have failed. You may respawn endlessly but you still have a resource - how much you overstuff your levels. So your level design was perfect. Also I love the way you have to be precise in your jumps. This game is great, I do wish though that if you're gonna be respawning a lot, that the respawning is instantaneous but only the restart level has the fade effect.

Such a tight and crunchy game although, I think it's unfortunately an example of a beautiful game that ends up lacking in execution a little. It is very possible to get stuck. I brought all the box with me into the second level, teleported back to the first without the box and with no way of going back to the second level. Also wasn't clear that you actually touch the electricity to activate power. The crunch really makes this game though and there's a lot to be proud of here.

The art is really well done. It was hard for me to tell what actually caused me to gain abilities, it seems like trying to win as normal gets you money and stuff so not sure how it plays with the win states.

Solid stuff and what a whacky premise haha!

This is great! Not much negative to say other than maybe you should still have some sort of per zone resource of life and... idk just killing yourself seems odd, maybe a story reason for why you have x lives. I had a weird bug with the chameleon that when he snagged my and I pressed K at the same time it froze.

Thank you! I'm really glad it was enjoyable, we were worried players would just want to skip them. But the idea was that you'd mainly be progressing by failing to get the story, so we really wanted it to be cool and unique. Thank you!

Thank you!

Haha I'm glad the only thing you didn't like was the one thing that we didn't actually make :P I agree I don't like the tilemap either but it was the first one we found (I forgot about the Wowie Asset Pack!!!)

Thank you! Actually the attacking is not random, but for some reason the enemy's blocking animations sometimes just doesn't show up and we have no idea why! :O Glad you enjoyed the story telling! Thank you!

Ah, I see, sorry for missing that!

I really think you should continue this project, make quite a lot more levels and maybe bump of the visuals, and it could be a really good small steam release. I think if it's your first puzzle game, you've done a lot and are on the right track. Better than what I could've done lol!

Oh I see, ah yeah that's a tricky idea, I guess you're not really progressing though right just getting back what you had found by playing the game normally.

Cool! We made a very similar game as you haha. I wish there were more crunch elements, sounds, particles etc, but yeah very nice submission. You might want to take a look at Veromir Post Mortem as it is also a fighting game - we failed where you succeeded but also succeeded where you failed, as we have poor conveyance of when the enemy is blocking, but we have pretty good crunch. I'd love to know what you think. Yours seems quite a bit more polished and cohesive.

Very cool! I love flying games, but yeah I wish the camera was a bit higher up on the bat with some more dynamic angles, and that keyboard control was smoother. In the second level the conveyance with lighting was unclear, I assumed the difference color lighting meant I had to go that way but I think it was a dead end.

Very interesting idea! Quite unique for the jam. The one this is I found it frustrating to navigate my own messy mine haha but maybe that's my fault? Also I don't know if it's a good idea to have the player lose all money upon death because they've probably dug deep by then but then and won't have access to ladders. Perhaps I am missing something but how is the theme tied in exactly?

Yeah that's fine it doesn't matter why you chose six just there has to be something in the game to put an idea in the player's mind as to what is actually going on.

Oh I see. Ok that's fair, yeah it should've moved fast then and been more clear. Good idea to update it :)