There are a lot of super neat concepts in this one. The flashlight mechanic is superb, and the wheelchair movement makes the experience much more tense. I love that the player has to juggle between different items as a way to manage resources and decide between moving, investigating, or fighting. That said, I found the execution of the movement system to be very cumbersome and more frustrating than exciting. I spent a lot of time turning in the opposite direction of what I was expecting and instinctively moving my mouse side-to-side or at an angle; I also found that the distance I would move was inconsistent, even when dragging straight from the top of my screen to the bottom. I think you would find a happy medium if the wheelchair was mouse-only control, where you simply drag the mouse in the direction you want to move, so that the wheelchair is still clunky to control and the gameplay remains tense, but it's more intuitive.
What an absolute joy to play! The writing, in particular, puts this game in a class of its own above most games I've played in my life, let alone in this jam. I'll have to play some of your other games, since you've said in the comments that this is not your first game in this setting.
Was there a third weapon to find? I played through twice and I could have sworn I visited every room and interacted with everything on each level, but I may have missed something...
I like the concept and the writing a lot. I think there needed to be more visual/audio feedback for each task and scenario. I could be wrong, but it seems like the beeping doesn't really correspond to anything happening in-game, which was very confusing and got a little annoying after a while. The ambient sounds were really awesome, though, they definitely set me on edge. I also agree with the other commenters that a pause while reading emails would be nice. The writing was great but I didn't get to enjoy it because I was worried about losing!
Great job to everyone involved! The art and sound are fantastic, the gameplay is unique, and everything feels very polished. I thought the visual filter on day 4 was maybe 10% or 20% too strong, but I understand that was probably intentional.
The sound was pretty sweet. I think it would be a nice touch if the arrow locked onto a chamber instead of the cylinder spinning freely (kind of like how the Wheel of Fortune wheel has those pegs in between segments to keep the arrow locked into a specific segment once it's done spinning). I made it to negative money!
Thanks for playing! There are actually two ways to avoid the witch. The bell stuns her temporarily, and there's a way to break aggro that's hinted at in the dialogue with grandma (something to do with hiding...), but after seeing player feedback and playthrough videos it seems like we should have made that message more overt.
The shovel is there so you can bury the witch (presumably, after she has been killed in the victory cutscene). Originally, we had dialogue from Grandma to describe what each item was used for, but we cut the lines because they were cumbersome and distracted from the experience (we wanted the player to get to the gameplay and scary parts quickly and without too much fuss).
This is seriously super impressive. It's the best game I've played in this jam so far, and I really do mean that. The narrative is great, the gameplay is smooth and bug-free, and it's super fun! It took me such a long time to figure out how to use the first tool, but once I did, I had a great time! I think you should keep going with this game. I would gladly spend money on this if it had more content and I'm sure other people would, too.
Nice, simple game. I liked the art for the enemies and there's something really satisfying about the way the light from the flashlight looks against the background. I think it would be nice to have some more sounds and/or visual elements to give feedback about the different interactions the player has. Stuff like how much charge your flashlight has, enemy spawns, how much time is left, stress level (I know there's a bar but it would be cool if you could hear your heartbeat or something).
I found two bugs, not at all game-breaking, just little things. First, you can actually click on the stress bar and move it around. It seems to reset itself after a second or two and I don't think it has any impact on gameplay but it confused me on my first run because I thought it was an interactable UI element. Second, there seemed to be a delay during the stress minigame with my mouse input. I was playing in Firefox on Windows, not sure if there's the same issue in other browsers or in the downloadable version.
I love this concept. There was a game on Steam a few years back that had a similar player input-filled database (I can't remember the name) and it's cool to see a creepy spin on it.
This is so sick. It's not often people make text-based games anymore, and I'm not sure I've ever seen one that also has text-based graphics executed the way you've done. So awesome!
Looks amazing!! I love the creepy twist on blackjack. I found two little bugs, though. First, nothing happened when I ran out of money, so I was basically soft locked. Also, at one point I went bust and nothing happened.
In another comment you mentioned that the enemy is invisible because you had trouble modeling monsters. I think that actually worked out for you here, it's cool to have an enemy you have to avoid with sound. Solid concept, would love to see this expanded upon in the future.
Using cultists as a resource is an interesting concept. The writing is awesome, I love teams that develop a narrative for jams. Gameplay is simple and feels good. I didn't make it very far because I'm terrible at these sorts of games but you guys did a good job!
Really cool mechanic with the mirrors. I'd love to see more exploration with it - I could totally see an extended puzzle and/or horror game with it. One small note is that, on my first playthrough, I didn't see the mirror so I just walked down the road until I found more parts and walked back, which took a long time and was not enjoyable (maybe add boundaries on the road?). Totally a skill issue on my part, though, and once I read the comments I did a proper playthrough using the mirrors and had a much better time.
