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I won't spoil it too much, but the game has been out a while now so I will reveal that but the solution is intentionally very dumb and frustrating with no obvious hints. I would call it a secret ending, if you ever played dark souls its a specific trick from their playbook. this is all I will say on the matter

Appreciate your feedback and thanks for playing!

fair enough. the risk was always there that changing too much about what makes it a dungeon crawler would give us a worse score. In a way though I'm glad it went off in this direction, even if we don't get a high score on this ground I'm happy with what we made :)

in a way you got your wish 😁

thanks for your feedback & thanks for playing :)

Any time I can turn a hated mechanic into something cool is a rush. Next game will be yellow paint everywhere telling you where to go

thanks for your feedback! Glad you enjoyed it

Yeah I think you're right about some parts seeming unclear or unfair and has definitely been a learning experience in that regard. 

And yes our lovely start menu! Honestly just wanted somewhere you could listen to the sound designers whole song so it lives there 

Thank you for your feedback!  Our sound guy will be happy that its considered a banger!

I'm not sure about a bomb.. there is an odd device laying around but it is remnants of a deleted feature. my bad :)

Thanks for playing!

Appreciate the feedback. Yes the content is rather on the light side, and we knew it would be from the get-go just due to timings and schedules. Knowing this we tried to see how much player interaction we could get out of a limited amount of custom assets. Still could be more I agree 👍

I feel you. I think the fun part of game jamming is having to make those decisions on where you pool your effort. Everyone will pick different things to focus on. Your choice of strong UI definitely seems to contribute to the overall feeling of completeness, probably more than dialogue would. That's just my opinion though!

The effort is so palpable! 
The game feels complete and polished and exploring the map has a good sense of mystery, but the best part for me is the UI. everything is so nicely presented such as the character portraits and the button that turns on the light. Definitely a strong contender! 🤘

I see what you're saying, but our thinking was that if you engage with these systems in different ways, you will get a different outcome. The core conflict is between the ship's AI and the entity and who "wins" that encounter is down to how the player engages in the dialogue system. The conflict isn't directly the threat of an enemy attacking you, but rather the question of who you side with in this cosmic horror situation. Which fate is least miserable? you resolve this with your actions and chosen paths.
It's a stretch I know but I'm glad we went with that route for the sake of atmosphere, adding a traditional combat system would be cool and we will consider it for future builds, but for this Jam requirement, we focused on narrative conflict. If that's too far of a reach for some people, so be it, had fun and learned a lot either way :)

Glad you enjoyed it ! Thanks for playing 

As for combat or similar mechanic I would argue that the health system tied to the dialogue is our replacement for that. Could be debated as to whether it counts but it was certainly the reason for that element of gameplay. We took the "similar mechanic" to imply that it doesn't need to be explicit combat just some sort of conflict resolution, similar to the way disco Elysium doesn't have combat but there is conflict within encounters. It's up to the jam hosts to decide whether that counts or not :)

its pretty much par for the course on itch. I don't know a solution to this problem but I can say for certain that even frontpage stuff has this issue so don't worry it doesn't reflect badly on you as a dev and wont put people off playing

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing!

I went to open a door with a spooky man stood in front of it

"Look"

"It's just a normal door"

not sure if it's intentional but there's something that works really well here about how the "Look" command refuses to acknowledge these dudes are there. makes me feel like I'm loosing my mind seeing these fanatics everywhere and the game is like fanatics, what fanatics?

love the vibe of the game, great visuals and super cool that you went with a text based interaction system 

After playing some of the entries (great work everyone btw) I'm seeing two major control schemes cropping up...
W&D are invariably the vertical axis, but some games use Q&E to turn and A&D to strafe, while others swap it over and A&D are turn and Q&E strafe... 
this is interesting to me as the former was instantly the one I felt intuitively made sense and developed without a second thought. I was actually surprised to see the other control scheme. But after playing some of them I now find both sort of make sense in their own way.. 

Was just wondering what everyone else's preferences were and why 

Love the art style. great way of using the time limit to your benefit - the wobbly lines feel quick and expressive like the doodles you do when you aren't paying attention is school. Some have said they don't like the wobble or shakiness but I think it makes it really stand out. Also huge props for the narrative focus. I know how hard it can be to tell a story and get a solid game in there in a short space of time

Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for playing, I hope you find the final ending!

On the one hand, if I go by personal taste I find it interesting when a game goes to great lengths to hide it's secrets. I love when people find something hidden in like a 20+ year old game or something. just the idea of a game as a cryptic mystery that keeps unfolding is really interesting to me
On the other hand I can understand how it can be frustrating if the game doesn't let you "100%" it without doing something obscure. perhaps I should have said there were only 3 endings and had this be like a secret hidden ending... but then that wouldn't prompt people to go looking for it? who knows - it's one of those things to which there is no right answer. 

Either way I understand what you are saying and will consider it going forwards :)

I think there is an issue with dialogue where its hard to tell when it has ended so you keep clicking only to restart the whole dialogue. It's been a learning experience in UX for sure! otherwise I'm glad you enjoyed it and I'm very sorry about your eyeballs

I'm very sorry about your eyeballs, Sir! New ones are in the mail 🙏

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! Very glad someone got the fourth ending... 

glad to hear it! Thanks for playing 

dang who knew! Glad there's a way to skip dialogue - it's a feature not a bug 😉

Click on the inventory slot with the key in it :)

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for playing!

It's something I've had some feedback about, you're supposed to select the key and use it on the thing you're interacting with like an old school point and click. Next time round I'll spend more time with helping the player learn the systems

I will make future games more speedrunner friendly ;D 
thanks for playing!

I'm glad you had a good time!  thanks for the feedback

really fun and creative presentation at play here!

ahh... sweet I know the part. A friend i showed it to was stuck here too. I feel like it's lame to just give out the solution but it has to do with the gum! Perhaps I ought to consider a hints system in future

glad you had fun - I'll take a look at adding the full screen in

Thanks for playing! which part were you stuck on?

Thanks! I will take this into consideration going forward, its a much requested feature!

Thank you for your kind words!

Thank you - yes I think giving players more control over how fast or slow they read the text would be a good feature