I deliberately tried to keep the game output more narratively focused rather than directly explaining mechanics to the player, relying on "common sense" for decision-making. But I might as well clarify some things here for those like you who are more mechanically-focused.
Negative status effects like bruised, stressed, agitated, etc. do contribute to the overall risk of dying. Some are worse than others, but it's impossible to die exclusively of dysentery (for example). The death message attributes the death to the "worst" affliction available currently, but maintaining general health is important. So waiting to eat/sleep/warm up until you're starving/exhausted/hypothermic makes you vulnerable to dying if you then also get dysentery or a broken leg, which wouldn't happen if you were otherwise healthy.
But you're right that the bible and doppelganger event are mostly just for flavour, and it's not well balanced for variety over multiple playthroughs because I never really expected it to be played more than, like, twice.
Gur fvtvy ba gur yrggre va Cebsrffbe Fzlgur'f bssvpr vf fvtavsvpnag, naq gurer vf n eryrinag obbx va gur yvoenel pneq pngnybthr gung pna gryy lbh zber nobhg vg.
Bigger hint:
Fzlgur vf va n phyg. Vs lbh pna yrnea gurve frperg cnffcuenfr (ivn zber erfrnepu) lbh pna hfr guvf gb pbaivapr uvz gb tvir lbh npprff.
I like this! I'm not usually a fan of Bitsy games, but I think that's because a lot of the ones I've seen stray from the ideal use case of Bitsy (i.e. games about "walking around and talking to people and being somewhere") and instead try to tell an extremely linear narrative, which IMO is not the best use of an interactive medium or of Bitsy specifically. But I think this particular game is a nice example of a "little world" that works well. I also really like the choice of colours.
P.S. As someone who does a bit of contact juggling, I cannot refrain from commenting on the "junky juggling ball that I bought off the TV" comment. Contact juggling can be a neat hobby, but that whole "Fushigi"-brand marketing campaign was misleading and bad. Thank you for listening to my ted talk.
I'd like to clarify that the party members are supposed to be human and are separate from the dogs. No dogs are harmed in this game! I thought the new graphics would make this clearer, but apparently not :(
If by "original game" you mean the version made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare, just download "serum_run_COMPO.exe" from the downloads page. Sorry, I guess the meaning of "compo" is not clear for people not familiar with Ludum Dare.
Publishing on Steam would cost me $100, and so far I have made precisely zero dollars from this game, so there is no plan to publish on steam at this point.
Lo siento, no hablo español y no planeo traducir el juego. El código está disponible en github, y estoy abierto a que otras personas lo traduzcan si lo desean.
In case it wasn't clear, I did not create the colour palette, which is "Rosemoss 8" by lospec.com user polyphrog as stated in the credits. It is a great palette, though!
Very atmospheric, and really nails the feel of the Alice in Wonderland inspiration. The characterization of the cat is great. I feel like that comment about things that only *seem* nice is probably relevant here. Also when I saw that it was made with RenPy I was worried it was going to be more visual-novel-y, but no, you actually made a full puzzle-based point-and-click game in RenPy. Neat!
Shame you couldn't get this finished in time; I want to see where it goes.
I think this is one of the most "adventure-y" games I've played so far this jam, in some sense. Fairly short, but with a lot of narrative packed in there, and a mystery that mostly resolves itself by the end (still a bit unclear on when & why I was chained up, though, I think I misunderstood something). The puzzles were fair. I got stuck on the password for a while and found the correct solution partially by accident, but aside from that everything was pretty straightforward. Good ambience as well, and very polished with coherent artistic direction.
The art is very pretty. The colour palette is especially nice. And of all the games of the jam that I've played so far, this is the one with the most narratively impactful choices. It's a bit short, but I replayed a couple times to get all three endings, which balances is out a bit. The characterization of the cat/player character is really good as well. A solid game overall!
I really liked this one. The puzzles were reasonable and felt grounded in the setting. The characterization was great as well, the art was great (love the flashlight effect), and the ending was strong.
I think I may have gotten softlocked during my first playthrough, by taking the cup as Scotty before he went away? At least, I *assumed* I was softlocked, after wandering around without making any progress for a while, so I started a new game and didn't take the cup this time. But then I saw that Scotty comes back eventually, so maybe I wasn't softlocked during the first game (I'm not sure what triggers Scotty coming back, so maybe I technically didn't need the cup yet at the time?). In any case, aside from that I was able to finish the game without issues.
Overall, this was very solid, polished, and fun entry!
This was fun. There were lots of nice visual touches (the wobbly brick, cat following you around, changing colour near the forcefield) that I haven't seen in other similar games so far this jam. The puzzles were fairly easy, which is fine. A bit pixel-hunt-y at times, but not too bad. The ending was fun; nice to see that the intuition of "maybe it's a bad idea to just yoink this orb?" was correct, and I also like that you acknowledge if the player just keeps the cat at the end. Overall, a very polished, well-written, and enjoyable little game!
To clarify, it didn't *crash*, exactly. The screen went black, but I could hear the text advancing when I clicked, so presumably the game was still going and only the graphics were broken.
Wow, this was really good. Definitely my favourite of the jam so far, as far as puzzles/deduction are concerned. Figuring everything out was very involved, with a lot of cross-checking and interpretation required - I definitely ended up needing to make notes on paper - but it was definitely fair, and I beat it without the walkthrough. There were lots of really satisfying "Aha! moments" throughout, although there was at least once where I sorta guessed & had my guess confirmed by the UI, which is maybe not ideal.
All of the deduction was very grounded in the setting, rather than seeming forced or out-of-place, which I think is important. It had a very cohesive feel/atmosphere, and everything came together satisfactorily in the end. The art and audio are solid as well.
Overall, an amazing game!
PS: The web version didn't work for me in Firefox on Linux; the screen went black after I left the wardroom at the start of the game. But I was able to run the Windows version successfully in Wine.
Once I figured out the mechanics properly I really got into this! I don't think the force fields were rendering properly for me (they were totally invisible except when very nearby), but that might be related to the fact that I'm playing on linux using Wine. But I did eventually figure out how they worked.
It seems to me like some of the checkpoints aren't working, which made things a bit more frustrating than they probably needed to be. I eventually got to the monolith on top of the tower, and I very nearly got to the other monolith as well (came within one platform of it), but ultimately gave up (after at least an hour of play) as the lack of a working checkpoint on that section became too annoying With working checkpoints I probably would have completed it.
The setting is beautiful, and I like how the platforming feels fairly well integrated into the overall "world feel," if that makes sense. The audio is pleasant as well. The mechanics are fun and very novel (to me, at least). Overall, a very solid game!
There are 3-ish endings, but they only really depend on choices made during the final cutscene so they didn't really take that much effort to add; the entire final cutscene was basically written in a panic during the last hour-and-a-half. Glad you liked it, though!
The art and the soundscape are really pretty! The worldbuilding is great as well. I managed to beat it, but I wasn't 100% sure about the logic of the temple/shrine puzzle at the time of beating it, so it felt a little accidental. I think I understand now, but still, beating it partly by accident doesn't feel ideal. The chain-reaction-of-spells mechanic seems neat, would've liked to see a bit more than that. Overall, it gives an impression that you didn't get around to implementing everything you intended to, but the base is solid!
Wow, it's worse than I thought. At this point I'm pretty sure that it's not just different browsers that're the issue, it's a combination of different browsers and different system display gammas (!?).
The way I'm defining clickable areas involves rendering images with big blocks of colour (blue for one item, green for another, etc.) on a canvas, and then checking the pixel colour at the location that was clicked. But some sort of arcane gamma correction details in the PNG standard can apparently cause PNGs to render slightly differently on different systems (see https://hsivonen.fi/png-gamma/ , I think). Great! You love to see it. And in this case, specifically the areas that I coloured green are broken for some and not others.
Thanks for the help! Hopefully I can fix this when I have time & get permission to upload the fixed version before the jam ends...
Sorry to ask more follow up questions, but I have a theory about this bug and some more information would be useful, since I can't reproduce it myself.
When you say "the hallway to the professor's office" was inaccessible, do you mean that you couldn't go from the library entrance to the corridor, or that you could enter the corridor but couldn't enter the professor's office itself? Also, were you able to go to the loading area and/or ring the call bell next to the librarian?
A lot of people are reporting this. Seems to be a bug that I can't reproduce in any of the browsers I've been testing on. Sorry about that!!! You could try another browser, or try downloading via the Itch desktop app.
I think winning can probably only feel satisfactory if it's the result of an actual deliberate decision. In my case I figured I had gotten most of the information I needed from the first playthrough, which is the only reason why I didn't talk to the flight attendant on the second attempt. So maybe what you need to do is have some sort of incentive for players to talk to the flight attendant (maybe to get an item?) so they think they need to do it again on subsequent playthroughs, so that not talking becomes more of an active choice?
Also, maybe I should mention that when I was operating on the assumption that there was still a "real ending" to try to achieve, I assumed that the issue was that I would need to be the one to deliver the energy drink to the captain (i.e. maybe the captain needs an energy drink *but also* something else needs to happen that requires the flight attendant to be distracted). It also wasn't clear to me that talking to the captain directly causes a crash by distracting him, since I only got into the cockpit right as the 10 mins were expiring, so the captain fell asleep while talking to me. So I assumed I would be able to give him the energy drink once inside the cockpit, although this proved to be false on a subsequent playthrough. (I did notice the cockpit slowly tipping once I entered, but then the captain visibly falling asleep overrode the idea that I had directly caused the crash by entering the cockpit).
Hopefully that provides some insight into my thoughts/interpretation of what I was seeing.
Made it to 70% or 80% a couple times, but then both times the ghost appeared immediately in front of me suddenly without any warning/audio interference. Not sure whether there's something that can be done to avoid this? Is it related to the flashlight, maybe?
The graphics are nice, although the environment gets kinda samey. The audio is really good for ambience. Very usable pause menu/settings and clear tutorialization, lots of polish in general. A solid game overall.
There isn't really any logic to the elevator/lights, you do kinda need trial-and-error to figure out which switch is which. I know it's not ideal, and was gonna add instructions somewhere (rifling through Jim's pockets, maybe?) but ran out of time. I did deliberately make it so that the lights start "on" and the elevator starts "off" so that just reflexively flipping every single switch isn't the correct solution, but that might have been too harsh.
I primarily tested in Firefox (on Linux, mind you) and have not had any trouble with this, so this bug has me seriously confused. Could you maybe try it with browser extensions turned off? But oh well, stuff happens.
I have no idea what could be causing that. I don't think that error can be directly caused by my game (I don't have a function called "detectStore" anywhere in my own code or dependencies), but after some googling it looks like similar errors can be caused by the browser extension "Honey" conflicting with page content (not sure why that would affect the bookstacks room in particular, though). Do you have that installed and/or did it say the error was produced by a file called `h1-check.js`? Maybe try disabling browser extensions?
In any case, sorry about the bug & sorry for all the questions! No need to keep helping with the troubleshooting if you don't want to. hankworx above suggests downloading via the itch app (or maybe try another browser?) if you still want to play it.
Never mind, I think you're right that this error is unrelated (but probably still caused by an extension). Problem has something to do with PNG gamma correction; see my response to hankworx above. Hopefully I'll be allowed to upload a fix at some point. In any case, thanks for helping provide information!
It should just be possible to go back by clicking on the green carpet near the bottom of the screen. If that's not working then something is definitely broken. Do you know what you did immediately prior, so I can try to reproduce it? Might also be helpful if you could open the browser developer tools and tell me if there are any weird error messages in the console?
Very cinematic, and definitely the most visceral/emotionally impactful entry I've played so far. I don't think I've actually watched anything by David Lynch, but based on cultural osmosis and context I assume this is what you call "Lynchian"? I think it's interesting that the more grounded scenes (with the cop) provoked more of an emotional response than the more out-there stuff at the end. I'm curious whether any of the choices made a substantial difference; I guess it's not exactly a format that encourages replays, so it's probably for the best if you don't hide large amounts of content that requires a second replay.
It was consistently pretty dark and difficult to gain much information from the visuals. Obviously the story is supposed to be dark and the player is supposed to feel a bit lost/powerless, so maybe it works. But to be honest, for a lot of it I was basically tuning out the visuals and just focusing on the audio/text, which is probably not what was intended. Then again, my vision is worse than normal, so maybe that experience isn't typical. There were definitely some visuals (e.g. the cornfield) that were fairly striking, though.
Overall, this "cinematic"/linear visual novel style of game isn't what I usually play, and I'm not sure I'd seek out more like it, but I can't deny that it maxes out most of the specific scoring categories for this jam!
Probably my favourite art of the jam so far. It's also nice to have multiple ways to accomplish the same task, and the options available were pretty clearly laid out. Overall, it feels like a coherent setting/moment in time with a consistent logic to it.
I made it to the cockpit on my first playthrough, and then immediately accidentally "won" on the second playthrough. But from the framing it wasn't clear that this was what had happened so I thought maybe there was some sort of Groundhog Day loop / "dream within a dream" thing going on, with a better ending to try and get. So I still tried again before reading the walkthrough and understanding that I had already "won" by accident. Not sure whether any of this is actionable information; just explaining my experience of playing the game.
Anyways, I definitely enjoyed this one! Extremely polished and fun to play.
The card combination mechanic seems like an interesting and novel way to write an adventure game. Unfortunately extremely short at the moment, but looking at your code it seems like you have a good system set up to continue writing more cards/combinations in the future. Since you're not using an existing engine, I assume most of your development time went into writing the engine and you ran out of time to actually implement the content. I get it.
I managed to beat it (I think? At least, I got to leave the lighthouse, although there was no explanation of what happened, and then the game froze). However, the last two symbols above the combination lock are definitely in the wrong order (unless that was intentional? But that would be pretty unfair). I only figured it out because of the... semantically meaningful choice of number.
Aside from that issue, the puzzles mostly felt fair, and also pretty grounded in the logic of the setting. The audio provides great ambience, and I definitely prefer the first-person style of point & click over the seemingly more prevalent 3rd-person style where you have to wait for the character to walk everywhere. Overall, this is on of my favourites so far!
The art and audio is very nice. There's not really any puzzle solving, but that's fine. The world building/narrative content is pretty evocative. A pleasant little experience overall!
Love to see an Oregon Trail-like. I've thought about the phrase "Oregano Trail" a weirdly high number of times before, actually, but unlike some other pun-based Oregon Trail spinoff names (Gorgon Trail, Orion Trail, Oregon Trial...) it doesn't immediately suggest an obvious interpretation. But the interpretation you found is super cute and innovative!
The balance seems fairly good, although I think it depends a lot on the RNG. On my first playthrough I grabbed lots of Elixers and won pretty easily. On my second playthrough I got a ton of sea monsters in a row, which was fairly brutal, and ended up not even making it halfway. Either way, I definitely felt engaged & like I was making meaningful choices. On top of that, the art and audio is nice and the UI is very polished.
Overall, this was very enjoyable to play. Great work!
I really like the idea of showing personal growth mechanically by starting with a truly awful set of possible actions, and then gradually adding more reasonable ones. Unfortunately, by the end it was starting to get a bit frustrating seeing the prince sorta-kinda learn some lessons, but without a clear way to act on them. I also encountered a bug where the king would sink lower and lower every time I tried asking him something, to the point where it was causing problems. I feel like I got tantalizingly close to the ending without managing to finish it. But I enjoyed it overall. A very in-depth character study!
There's basically one good ending, one bad ending, and one good-ish/debatable one. But which one you get really only depends on your actions in the final cutscene, so it's not like there's a lot of replayability.
The art and audio are amazing! Beautiful backgrounds and great ambience. The puzzle interface felt very juicy and pleasant to use. I feel like most of the puzzles were pretty easy, but with an interesting twist on the last one (I did briefly turn on the hint for that one). Overall, I really liked it!
