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MattooseMatholomew

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A member registered Jan 12, 2023 · View creator page →

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Haha thanks. 

Actually it was made in Godot 4.  In Godot, it is quite trivial to achieve this effect, there are visibility layers for which cameras can be set to either see or ignore.

Very polished, and likely the most on-theme game here.

I really think you need to add a bit more of a puzzle to figuring out the colour codes, at the moment it is just too straightforward. This might also help people remember the codes, which I also had trouble with. Maybe something like short poems or sentences, where you need to infer the colours its talking about. Also, the theme of the riddle could hint at which mausoleum to use the code on, instead of simply telling the player.

An (extremely) simple example:

"Here she lies, wreathed in Poppies, Daffodils and Lavender"

Poppies = red, Daffodils = yellow, Lavender = Purple (or blue)

Tomb: The Lady of the Flowers (or something)

Apart from that, I would suggest reducing the size of the level, there wasn't much point making the player run all over the place.

Apart from that, good job.

We ended up with quite similar ideas for this jam! I quite liked your camera effects though. 

Visuals and mechanics I quite liked. I think a delay between photos would be good, I destroyed the poor demon in a rapid-fire series of photos before it knew what hit it.

 I liked coming back and seeing all the ghosts messing about with things like the lamp after getting the camera. Definitely a cool idea.

My biggest criticism is just the lack of ambient audio. Silence can be effective, but as a comparison or juxtaposition. If you walk into an area and it suddenly goes quiet, the player is set on edge. If it is quiet all the time, the player just gets used to it very quickly.

I highly recommend not spawning in the monster until either 30 seconds has gone by or the player finds the first item. Getting instantly minced before the player is even ready is not terribly scary - give the suspense time to build up!

Also, I suspect the gun is supposed to stagger the demon? However it keeps moving forward so it is fairly pointless. I just ran from it until it lost pathfinding.

One of the more interesting submissions to the jam, for sure. Considering that in reality job interviews ride the line between awfully stressful and hideous dull, making a game based around that concept that can keep the players attention was always going to be a difficult undertaking.

It took a little while to catch on that I was losing willpower as I was progressing. Perhaps that was the point. I did find a bit difficult to determine what exactly was causing it to drop - either resisting, going along or simply being a part of it.

I got up the eighth area, the mirror maze, before my rebellious, virtuous, repressed 68-year-old CHUMBA (he lost a year in cards) could not seem to progress past their fear of COOTIES. I did actually find a different mirror, containing the wish, but that didn't help me clear the area. I expect I was meant to go back and scrounge up some willpower from the previous areas? Instead, my man CHUMBA went back to the mirror repeatedly to stack 205 WILL like a boss. Hilariously, the wish in the mirror was OMNIPOTENCE.

I'm not sure blocking progress is the way to go here. My main drive to continue playing was the curiosity to see what the next area would be and after a while of clicking about the mirror room this started to dry up. The desire to go back to previous areas was pretty much zero, I felt I had seen enough. I was close to giving up before realising I could abuse the mirror for easy WILL.

I finished the game after that, granted something like Corporate Responsibility Manager, which I found hilarious. Very Terry Pratchett. I was a bit disappointed I couldn't refuse, especially with my extremely high WILL, though its not like I earned it :P.

Music was pretty good, though the occasional track began to grate just because the loops were so short. 

I'm going to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of AI art in general. But its better than nothing, certainly better than just grabbing stock assets and you clearly stated you were using it, even lampshading its absurdity throughout the game. I doesn't even look too bad, though Mr Beelzebub's fingers did stick out like, well, a sore thumb.

All in all, well done. Could see a lot of effort went into it.

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! It is extremely useful. 

As you have found, a variety of elements are a bit busted in a (failed) attempt on submitting on time. 

I will clarify a few things:

-You receive a text message of part of a ghost's name when you take their photograph. It sounds like you managed to find Katrina at the top of the stairs :P. There is another type of thing you can take a photograph of to get her last name, and then there is something special you can do in the graveyard once you have the whole name.

-Speaking of this "other thing",  the phone reception signal level increases the closer you get to these secret things.

-Text scrolling and viewing photos is bugged, didn't have time to fix them unfortunately.  The camera showing your info is an easy fix, will do.

-Yes, it was a bit dumb of me to have the home button that hard to see, hence the message in the instructions. Definitely will fix.

-In general, when exploring areas, you should have the radio toggled on and camera active at all times. Switching to other apps such as the map only briefly as you need them. Without these you are almost guaranteed to stumble directly into a ghost.

Thanks again for playing, and the detailed feedback.

Thanks for the feedback. The controls on the phone are meant to be a bit fiddly to panic the player when faced with a ghost, but definitely not so bad as to be frustrating. I will have a look at expanding the deadzone on the phone and perhaps merging the "aim" and "finger" toggle buttons into one action and making it a hold-to-aim, that way if you are getting attacking you can simply let go of the button to run away quickly. Separate audio sliders is also on the list. Thanks for the kind words.

Looks good, mechanics work and seems like a lot of effort went into it. Unfortunately, after I snuck past the first 3 guards and went through the tomb area, the game almost completely freezes up and the fps drops below 1. While mashing the keys I managed to get the character back into the tomb area and the fps immediately returned to normal. So maybe check something wasn't messed up in your export? I might try on a different pc later.

Still, from what I saw I liked. The main character's psychotic driving gave me a chuckle in the intro cutscene.

Ah. In my first attempt, I must have wandered around for half an hour without finding any graves at all. This time, I managed to find 850 gold - though every grave I found was purely by chance. Not sure how I was supposed to be finding them, but I was quite glad that the sky went red a bit later on because it made finding the graves actually possible.

I think the main problem is that you can either have a big level, or a dark level. Having both just doesn't really work. You did have a map, and added some distinct locations to help orientate, but all of the graves I found with anything worth inside them were nowhere near these locations so it was not of any real use. The player doesn't really have many issues finding the mausoleums, since they are big and bright. What they need are guidance to the graves.

I think the best idea would have been to concentrate the map down. Perhaps a quarter to an eighth of its current size. Have a few hidden graves, sure. But stick most of them in groups in graveyards - and instead make the punishment for digging up the "wrong" graves a lot higher. As it currently is, the graves are so hard to find and the punishment so slim (a single ghost spawned, maybe) that I dug up every single grave I came across, without ever really reading the notes. After all, if I walked away from a grave there was a very low chance of ever finding it again.

I would also recommend fading out the ghosts at long range, they were totally harmless as they were extremely easy to avoid. At least this way you might stumble into one, or it might sneak up on you. The red guy, not sure what his deal was. Seemed to be attracted to my location occasionally, but I just avoided him until he gave up. Until I screwed up and he instakilled me that is. Not sure what his deal was.

Definitely one of those games that feels totally unhinged. I did like the mechanics, as weird as they were. The fact that you can at any time gain the ability to sprint extremely fast had me on edge for a while, trying to save it in case something appeared that I would need to break the sound barrier to escape from. I think a few more threats, or at least the implication of a threat, could have helped the earlier levels - especially the forest level. Strangely enough I felt things got more normal the further in the game you got.

Out of the three weird yellow monster designs I saw , the one that actually hunts the player is the least interesting in my opinion. Having the other two appear from time to time to spook the player would have helped - the biggest scare I got in the game was trying to get into the forest and accidentally grabbing a skeleton, causing it to come flying at my face.

I also don't think its actually possible to beat the warehouse level, I had all the boxes and the door open but the physics kept throwing me off the box pile. Also, good god trying to carry boxes around in the dark while my flashlight made the box completely blind me was bloody hard.

Anyways, it was interesting enough for me to finish it. My advice is to lean more into the weirdness that was more present the first level -  it got a bit boring wandering the totally normal forest and backrooms warehouse after the bizarre intro, meme-filled house and strange labs.

Similar to what others said, once I shot a spell for the first time I couldn't bury monsters anymore.

I also think the spell cooldown is a bit too long for how quickly the monster emerge.

I like the art and idea, though.

I'm not sure what I was expecting after that spider-woman thing, but it was definitely not a suicide bomber rushing straight towards me.

You would not believe the amount of time I spent wandering blindly through the fog. Did I miss a map pickup? I got the point where I had to find the grave again, and I knew there way no way I was going to find it anytime soon.

I gave it a shot, but haven't rated yet, because I feel like I'm missing something obvious here. Am I supposed to be able to get into the mausoleums? 

Simple and effective. Though, I think two additions would make the game a lot scarier:

A sprint button (+ increasing the monsters speed to match), it was a bit hard to get into the mood when the chase was occurring at a snails pace.

Some more tension in the early game so the player doesn't feel totally safe, the danger doesn't have to be actually real, just perceived as such. 

Pretty good. I did feel that once you were spotted you were pretty much boned. Your sprint speed and meter is a bit too weak to give the player a fighting chance, which makes deaths feel a bit cheap. The cross worked once to ward it off but it zeroed back in on me pretty fast after that. 

I do think you did a great job on the layout of the cave, it is extremely easy to get lost even after studying the map. It might even be be a little too realistic in this regard, I think a few notable objects placed in strategic locations could have helped, even if it was just some unique cave features to make rooms seem more memorable.  I also liked how you could place down lanterns to mark where you had been.

All in all, good job on the game.

Short and simple, but polished. I quite liked the peaceful take on the jam theme.

The puzzles were just a bit too straightforward I thought.

Got to the ending. Actually quite spooky at points, the game builds a decent atmosphere - but it can be a bit frustrating. 

For anyone about to play, I recommend exploring the graveyard before trying to get through any locked doors inside the house, as your progress inside is reset the moment you step outside. Also, don't move at all when reading notes, or they get stuck to your face and you have to reset.

Also, I somehow totally missed the level transition from the front gate to inside the house, and wandered around the exterior wondering if I was insane for not being able to find a door. 

Still, probably the scariest game of the jam I've tried yet, so points for that. Good job.

I burst out laughing when I got back to the pile only to find goblins had nicked all my pumpkins. 

Yeah, all the world textures are spectrograms of some kind or another. I was mixing audio in audacity and thought they looked awesome and appropriately ghostly. 

There's even an easter egg cameo from a certain musician whose grinning face was famously hidden in a spectrogram.