I carried the high score for a little while, the first "not Anonymous" one. Now I'm only in the top 30. Don't worry, I'm going to play this game a *lot* more, it's absolutely one of the best in the jam.
I have to play it with a small window though, the CRT effect and acceleration / deceleration of the movement makes me queasy.
A great concept. I really loved the way you built the forest, having foreground, mid ground and background elements really made it feel alive and good. The badguys falling over like paper dolls was hilarious!
The game hung several times for me, then continued. Twice I thought it wasn't going to recover.
Key bindings! Thank you! I loved that, so rare in a game jam. As for the story concept, it's great. A bunch of steampunk era gentleman are creating a factory in the woods and deforesting your home, so you have to slaughter them all. Wonderful!
Your head canon is correct, you did win! I ran out of time to implement "important monsters staying dead", the "game over: you win screen" and new lines for the Oracle. So yes you did all the things you were supposed to, it's just the game didn't acknowledge your greatness.
Yeah, equipping is such a common thing in games after one play through it was clear I needed to do it. I figured the shield bash was a soft lock avoiding mechanism.
Yeah, my PC heating up issue is probably my fault. I played on a Mac with Windows inside of Parallels while simultaneously streaming Twitch via Airplay (wireless video) to my TV. It was a bit much for the poor laptop to handle!
The wait time was long and the skeleton took almost 20 turns (I was doing 2 damage per turn, but it healed 1 per turn). I had found a better weapon but I guess it wasn't equipped for that fight because I killed the skeleton using shield bashes, my only legal move.
This is the first game that got my computer to run hot and turn on the fans, so well done with that :). Fantastic use of theme. I really like how different the worlds felt and the puzzles were good. I didn't like how slow the combat was though, killing the Skeleton took a very, very long time.
Every piece of it looks like it belongs with every other piece. The mood, lighting, textures (I loved those), ambient audio, it all really felt like it belonged together. I found it very difficult, it required very fast movement to deal with the monsters. After a bit I got the hang of it but the first guy killed me multiple times.
When I try to play this game I get OpenGL driver errors :( I'll try again on my other computer later but so far I haven't been able to play it (and haven't rated it consequentially).
A good entry, I had fun. I like the feel of the dungeon, really dig the mood. My favorite moment was near the beginning when I clicked on the torch and it was a secret. I love stuff like that. Then I found the wall that was textured differently than the rest of the game (in a corridor) and some traps through the ground, it was good. Honestly I'm not sure the monsters added anything to the game though, I figure a few more trap types and puzzles instead probably would have been stronger.
Thank you for the kind words! I'm pretty happy with it. As for the flaws you are 100% correct. The light side of the world is near pitch black which makes no sense, it should be lighter to further differentiate between the light and dark side. Also there is glowing gear, a sword and a shield each glows as much as a torch. The game does a terrible job telling you about it. As for spamming the attack button, that's a very unfortunate bug. Took 1 minute to fix after I learned about it. Oh well.
For the text I highly recommend learning Ink by Inkle Studios (open-source interactive dialog system). It's absolutely amazing and makes large complex changing dialog trivially simple. Really a great time-saver.
As for the map, my next crawler will either have one or I'll put a lot more effort into making sure it doesn't need one. I still get lost in the forest and the Beasts Who Walk lands all the time!
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the lengthly review. Right now I'm playing an actual old-school game "Yendorian Tales 3" and the UX is horrifying! So I'm glad I captured the feel of and old-school dungeon crawler without capturing the weaker parts.
The momentum system wasn't well explained. Basically if you hit the enemy and they miss you, you gain 1 momentum. If the enemy hits and you miss, you lose 1 momentum. If you both miss the momentum moves 1 point towards 0. The higher the number the bigger the attack bonuses you have. I couldn't figure out where to put this explanation so it didn't get communicated very clearly.
You are 100% correct about the exploit, spamming attack wasn't intentional. The Necromancer is very easy to kill this way! :) It's a really tough fight otherwise.
The Relic Sword and Relic Shield both glow as much as a torch so that helps. The game does a terrible job telling you this of course!
As for the caves there is a hidden object in each cave, Relic Sword and Relic Shield. The caves are massive though so it's easy to miss.
Thank you! I 100% agree about the resolution of the environment textures, I even upsampled them in preparation for creating higher resolution ones but never got around to it. Oh well.
Thank you for the detailed review! I also really like the kill sound effect, it was a big hit.
The dialog doesn't change when you kill the spiders or the Necromancer, that's just content that wasn't written. It would be better if the game had a game over screen but honestly I didn't realize I forgot to create it until the jam was over. The changing of the Oracle text after killing the spider was the same deal. Oh well.
Combat-wise the combats weren't hard enough to really need to defend but the utility is that if your momentum is very negative this is a good way to get it back up. As for Cautious and Heavy, those are what I use most of the time unless I'm really on a the back foot and I usually die when that happens anyway.
Resting is a mechanic I'm surprised I didn't see more often. It's a staple of the old-school crawlers but much less common these days.
Thank you for the kind words! Yeah I agree the Dark World was too similar to the light one. It could use a bit more work. As for the mashing the attack button to prevent enemies from attacking that's 100% a bug that I didn't notice until the game shipped. Too bad, it's a 1 minute fix.
I appreciate a fellow turn-based game lover! I've always preferred turn-based, lets me be strategic and think about what my next attack will be.
Thank you so much! I'm glad you liked it. You're not the only one that gets lost, I had to cut the map sadly. It would be better with one for sure.
The story was very easy to do, I just leveraged the Ink (Inkle Studio's open-source dialog language and system) which gives me loads of flexibility and power.
I'm glad you liked it, thank you for the kind words! I'm glad to hear it runs on Wine, I didn't test that myself. As for the "Not Implemented" message that was my bad, I forgot to implement the "return to main menu" button. As for the monsters not hitting you when your health was low, that's a coincidence. They don't go easy on you at all. :)
Thank you so much! Yes, the spam attack bug is unfortunate. I didn't learn about it until the jam was over but it ended up being a 1 minute fix. Oh well.
Thank you! The Oracle didn't have any further text content written so after killing the 8 Legged Ones the Oracle doesn't say anything different. You're not missing anything there. The Big Bad is very hard to defeat regardless, but I've done it with nothing but Ceremonial Robes, Relic Shield and Relic Sword. Tough fight though, requires careful use of attack moves and momentum.
A very nice game. I liked having a card game to play for each battle, it made for interesting strategy. Between the quantity of health of the enemies it felt a bit slow but it was fun.
The game looked great and you have a wonderful use of theme! I especially liked how you changed the color of the environment to make it clear I was seeing the world through different eyes. I found the enemies to be a bit far away from the camera for my taste it really didn't feel like I was fighting them in hand-to-hand combat, rather they felt at range to me. I would recommend moving the 3D models to the front edge of the grid cells they are standing on to give a more "in your face" impression.
There is something really pure about this game that I really liked. The simplicity of it combined with strong nostalgia feels for me (I played crawlers with a similar aesthetic many decades ago). Also thank you for including the map, this isn't a game that I would consider particularly playable without one. For this title I think BFXR would have been a great choice for audio.
I encountered a Wyvern when I had 26 health and despite casting death spells every turn until I had 3 health, then trying to run away for the next three turns I still ended up dead.
My suspicion is that you can create a lot of quality content from this engine.
I like it. The movement and turning feels really good as does the combat feedback. The graphics are also great, everything looks like it belongs together.
The game took a full minute to load and was hung during that time. I'm not sure what's happening there but I almost aborted the process believing the game to not function.
When I finally blocked the badguys I felt really powerful but it was very hard for me. I had maybe a 10% success rate - probably I need to "git gud" :) I also really like the hacking mechanic but I would have liked a keyboard shortcut to get to the typing input box, and maybe something like Esc to get out of it. I found myself fumbling with the mouse to get there and taking a lot of damage from the shielded bots during that time. Perhaps you mentioned this in popup text and I missed it.
Overall a very good entry, I think you should be really proud of it!
I just got video card errors when I tried to play this one. I'll try on my other computer later to see if that will help. I have not rated it yet because I cannot play it.
I cannot rate it because I couldn't play it. It constantly just flashed the textures, mostly to black. I'll try again later on a different computer but so far it didn't work on my machine.
I loved the graphics style. It looked really good, super old-school but also very modern with the high Fps and high fidelity animations. The text was microscopic in my computer, completely impossible to read. I found the heart icon action to be largely useless, it heals 1 hp? Eating corpses was a fun mechanic. I think the main thing that would improve this title is feedback. When I shoot an arrow it's very unclear if I've hit or not, having the enemy flash red or move back quickly, something like that would be the way to go.
I really enjoyed your stream, thank you for featuring my game. I agree 100% on the dark world should feel different. So cool that you spent the effort to link directly to my game's play through, that's awesome!
Beautiful execution, very well done. I really enjoyed this. The genuine pang of sadness I felt when I reached "the end of the demo" was a strong indicator that it was a great experience.
I think it might have been stronger if the enemies moved around or perhaps if there were more danger - at no point did I ever feel threatened. Could be fine, the overall experience was very strong.
Character building was impressive but felt unnecessary, I think the effort in creating all the different character portraits could be better served created more monsters.
The overall CRT aesthetic, black and white treatment, etc was just perfect. Also the choice of cassette tapes, really into the Top 40, huh :)
Really solid game. I love how you've handled the duality of the red and blue worlds. Every time I reached a dead end and switched to the "other world" and discovered a path forward it felt like I found a secret. The path to the early blue button felt like four or five secret finding accomplishments in a row. Really hit my dopamine.
I found the controls unintuitive and ended up using both the arrow keys and W to get around. I'm glad you added looking up and down but if I could have done all the movement and looking navigation with on hand I didn't figure out how.
Having the combat be a "get the cursor to the targets without getting hit" slow-mo bullet hell was a nice twist. I like it a lot although consistently I found it really easy.
Thank you. Very common problem. It's a lot more work to teach the user what's going on without text dumps, and it's a skill I'm still working on developing for game jams.
Thank you for the review! You're not missing anything. The play balance needed more time, the game was too easy until the Necromancer, and the "Gameover: You Win!" screen didn't make it in. Honestly I didn't actually cut it, I just failed to write it down on my final "TODO" list and kind of forgot. Like, I checked off the "Game over" screen and failed to realize there are 2 forms of it and I actually only implemented one of them. Oh well!
I'm glad "the script is working" :) I have a couple messages like that in my game too.
Good core for a game. I think you could build a lot onto this and make a very interesting maze crawler. I did feel like I accomplished something when I found the dragon/devil dude.
It took me a while to get used to this but I did enjoy the unexpected ways I was solving puzzles. Like flying over spikes and the such. The mood was very strong.
I also liked the aesthetic. The world had a really good feeling to it. I was especially happy to learn I could go up ramps, I love elevation in games.
Inhabiting bodies is cool and I really like that you injected flavor text into the scenes at progress points. It really adds to the feeling of the world. Also solid 5 stars on audio, it really helped set the mood for me!
I think you might have "Generate MipMaps" turned on for the textures, some of their detail seems to abruptly stop at a certain distance which is what I've seen happens when you're point sampling from a blurry mip map.
