That looks really really cool, impressive! I like the idea of you actually being inside the brain and being careful about not hurting an already overworked and burnt out brain :D
An amazing narrative game. I really really like how you made it both narratively engaging and informative, with the small messages about bullying, depression etc. The aesthetics of the game, the sound really add to the experience. And the loop at the end - ahh simply brilliant. Great job!
While this doesn't necessarily touch the topic of mental health in a helpful manner, I thoroughly enjoyed the game itself. It's a really cool horror game with a very strong atmosphere. It was really immersive, and any random noises genuinely scared me haha.
Technically, there is only one thing that I found annoying - the text was very slow, and you couldn't skip it.. But other than that a really great demo, great job!
This is an amazing entry! It has a good narrative with a very strong matching aesthetic. The game feels very satisfying to play. I would love to see more days to this, and how it could develop. Good job!
Amazing art direction and narrative! I really like the idea of the game design itself. I would love to see more of this game :D
My feedback regarding the execution:
1. I think it's best to have a pause when you're inside a minigame. Because what sometimes happens is that the player clicks somewhere and accidentally turns on another minigame.
2. It's nice that you highlight things that you can do, but I feel like not everything is super clear in terms of what you can do. For example in the drink\smoke mini game, I thought you have to click on the icons instead of hovering to the sides, so I was left confused. I understand that the approach is "Show, don't tell" so it's quite a challenge to make everything transparent to the player.
3. The.. phone images don't disappear.. I have a.. I have a cat on my screen.. Just stuck there.. A cat.. I like that cat.. Yeah..
4. I wonder how the comfort and depression meter would really get used.
Brilliant! You did a really good job there! I really like the scene transitions and the little interactions you can do. I would love to see the full game. It's funny that it is so proper you actually have an installer :D
Some feedback from me, because I know you want to improve:
1. The bee sprite seems to have interpolation on, so it looks blurry. Next time working with sprites like that make sure that you have no filtering on, so that it looks pixel perfect. I'm not sure how it is done in Game Maker, but most other assets look perfectly fine.
2. I noticed that you only have one entrance for the room to the right. Because of that when you get back there from the Queen's room, you start on the far left instead of far right, which breaks the immersion a bit.
3. Adding sound effects would definitely make it more fun.
But overall really good work, really proud of you guys!
I really like how you made the entering cutscene! The game though unfinished, looks like it could have some potential. Really wish there was some sound there, could make the dream space more atmospheric
I really like the looks and feel of the game. It looks good and quite polished. I would love to see a proper narrative in this.
Though one thing I noticed is that with just binary option, most decisions would seem a bit obvious. Like opening up = good, closing = bad. So just a thought I had was that from a gameplay perspective you could add some sort of "comfort" bar, that fills up once you open up with some things. And if something is okay for you to say, is in your comfort - your comfort level rises, but if you share something too deep, or you get a negative response from the other person - it goes down. That would give more dynamics to the game, making it more tricky, just like real conversations are sometimes :)
This is a very solid foundation, and a fun narrative :D
I really like the idea of the narrative going from the "haha, drugs are good for ya" and then the more you take them the worse it becomes. There's a lot to play around with really. Technically, the game runs well, and if developed more I can definitely see it being fun and cool.
This is technically quite impressive, and I think it's a solid foundation for a game. It feels like an interesting retro and psychedelic experience. However, I'd point out two points of feedback:
1. Some people found the narrative lacking empathy, and it definitely made a point that offended some people. You can deffo work make it a bit more humaine for the future, but I understand the satirical notion of the game.
2. I'd say a good improvement for the future would be having more feedback to the player, such as sounds when you hit an enemy, or having a health bar.
That's a cool game! I really like the idea, game design here feels quite unique. Though technically it could be improved in a lot of ways. I feel like the sad ball is pretty much useless, making it quite imbalanced. Also the controls are a bit unusual to play with, was that a conscious choice, or a limitation of the engine?
Haha thank you! The randomized locations sounds like a cool idea. At first we put the switches near the doors, but it was quickly obvious that it would be so unfun haha
Could barely play this on my laptop. The idea is nice, but either because of the framerate or just the way it is, the execution is quite janky. The library problems came up so often, that it felt impossible to win the game. Also, a sour fact was that without the lights the game didn't lag much, but I had to turn it back on to win :')
One funny thing I've noticed is that you can win after losing if you just continue stamping the books when the fail message is on the screen :)
I feel like if not for performance, it would've been a much much better experience.
At first, I didn't get how to play and thought you only have two shots, but then seen the inventory thing in the description and it finally got to me. The game is awesome, it's really atmospheric, and establishes a very solid rhythm, which is slow but not annoyingly so. The reloading feature makes it really deliberate and immersive. Aiming is also really well executed.
The enemies were really hard to see, and from the comments, it seems to be unintentional, but I still enjoyed it, almost like invisible fears and guilt haunting the hunter. And the old photo in the inventory is really simple but adds so much to the subtle narrative of the game.
Absolutely loved this submission, I'd love to see this developed more!
YES! Boxes were basically a free mechanic, because I made them randomly while waiting for another thing to finish, and it actually worked like a charm. We should've included more of those in the level design. Thank you :)
Thank you for your feedback. Indeed difficulty is something we didn't have time to balance out. Also thank you for the audio source comment, I noticed this only after uploading the game, and indeed I misused this in Unity. I'll make sure to fix this after the jam!
I don't think that the game fits the idea that much, but the idea seems to be quite fun. The art is quite authentic, it definitely has a cohesive style.
The main issue for me was the general gameplay execution. Shooting is not satisfying, and the range is quite short for it to be satisfying. I also found micromanagement of all the enemies really frustrating, since if you let the low-level guys go for at least a few seconds, you're probably going to lose. And because of this, the jumping platforms were rendered quite useless to me. So in this regard balancing would be really appreciated. Another thing I found annoying is the camera. The shift in camera zoom is so drastic and disorienting that every time it happened I forgot where my character was. It made me even physically nauseous sometimes.
I like how simple yet effective it is. It really feels physicambianceally uncomfortable, it's cold, in a way claustrophobic and immersive. I think the diminishing light and ambiance contribute to this the most.
To me, the biggest flaw was how confusing and difficult it was. Like if there were at least some sort of signs or rememberable elements to the level, it would help tie in players' progress to something they remember and thus making it a little less frustrating. But then from the ideological perspective, it does its job of making the player feel uncomfortable and wanting to find comfort really well.
This is a great entry! It took me a little to get the gameplay, but once I got into the flow, it worked pretty well. I really liked the graphics and music, really well put together. And to even have a system of changing the soundtrack depending on the location, although not perfect, is still quite impressive.
Regarding the mechanics, I really liked the RTS elements blended with the regular top down walking, but the toy bros are really slow and it becomes a little difficult to manage them when you can't shift your camera to them. Also the idea with portals reminded me of the game Kingdom. But as I understand destroying the portals is not mandatory to win. The stun mechanic didn't seem to work for me, or there just wasn't any visual feedback to understand it was.
Overall, awesome submission! It feels quite polished in terms of assets and aesthetic considering how much time it was in development :p
A very solid entry for the first game ever. Nice little platformer puzzle game. Very intuitive and brings a cool shape-shifting mechanic. Also, the art isn't as horrible as you think haha, you undersell yourself.
In terms of core mechanics, I'd suggest making the shape-shifting have no cooldown. That way it would make it snappy and more fun to engage with. And of course, more levels and complexity, later on, would also be appreciated. One last thing I've noticed there are some bugs with the hitboxes, sometimes I couldn't move at all when there were no obstacles or even with the appropriate shape I couldn't pass through the doors. Just something to look into in the future.
The idea is interesting, but the overall experience is quite confusing. Unreal 5 was really demanding, and my computer barely ran the game at like 10-15 fps. It's quite unclear how exactly the light hits the player (or what happens generally, as I spent quite some time to understand that), and I even tried to lose but didn't succeed :p
I'd suggest going for something a little more lightweight and making the core gameplay a bit more clear.
The core gameplay loop is really engaging when you get into it. I like how you have to provide comfort not to yourself but to your companion, making the gameplay a little less egocentric and more challenging. The fact that you have multiple affordances to comfort your companion also works really well, as you have to think about different strategies at once.
The graphics are also really cool, good pixel art + the lighting makes it fun to explore. The UI elements are also really well done. One thing overall that could've made this game instantly more enjoyable is having some sort of score identifier so that you could compete with yourself in a way.
Despite being unfinished it really has the "finished game vibes". The assets are really well put together. All menus are really well designed and the sound use is great too. The card game prototype is actually functional, intuitive and even winnable. I'd love to see this grow. Cool attempt!
I liked this. It has a charm to it, and the basis for mechanics works and is quite simple. I imagine it'd be nice to build some more narrative-based game with multiple decisions like this. The music is nice and general aesthetics are quite nostalgic. I was startled to hear the night music, it made me really anxious there's some monster following me or something.
This is great! It was actually quite fun to play, and the theme was really interesting and fitting. I loved how it went through the different stages of coping with a breakup, indulging into alcohol, food, getting violent, getting jealous, and then ultimately finding comfort.
The gameplay was simple but effective. It was a little challenging, but it wasn't frustratingly so. The way the story was told and how the levels changed was also quite satisfying. Good stuff!
I really really like the idea of the game. Also you really nailed the Hotline Miami style and feeling, both in terms of visuals and music! I'm impressed you made all this in two days.
But I feel that the gameplay has a fundamental issue. The abilities are awesome to use, but it's extremely unapologetic. I died of overusing abilities more than from actual enemies, making the player themself a huge enemy. It's an interesting mechanic, but I'd either increase the base health or make the health penalty smaller. Also considering you can only kill enemies from behind when having full hp, the level design doesn't account much to it, as there's not enough dark to properly stealth around.
On the brighter side of gameplay I really liked the enemy design, it was creative and intuitive. It was clear which enemies could do what, and therefore change the strategy in approaching them. The samurai guys tho are a little overpowered haha.
Indeed the challenge isn't really there, especially if you replay the game multiple times. We originally planned to add the challenge in the way of making the ghost faster or adding more obstacles, but that fell out of our scope during the jam haha. More ghosts would also be a viable option for sure.
I like the game idea, the narrative choice is quite original. The mechanics could make this a cool endless game, but I found a few issues that made the experience a little irritating: - Roombas spawn in exactly in your location sometimes, making you randomly get damaged despite playing well
- Hitboxes weren't precise sometimes, making it a little frustrating to navigate near enemies
I guess I'd also love to have some more buffs and upgrades to make it more fun to progress, but what you got is already great and comfortable job for a 2 day jam!
This is awesome, it's really really unsettling and weird, but fits the theme in such a meta way. Mad props for using the modular synths, the textures you made with it are fascinating. Really intense and crazy stuff. More polish would be awesome, but I for such a modular beast, two days and back pain it's too much, so completely understandable. Great work!
