itch.io

Thanks for the feedback!

There are a few small tweaks I do need to make to smooth out the experience once the jam freeze is over. Currently the orderly will investigate near where he last saw/heard you and then goes back to patrolling, which is fine except that he continues his patrols from the closest patrol point which can feel like he is camping you and leads to a lot of frustration. So in the post jam version I'm going to change him to go to the furthest patrol point.

I'm also going to up his footstep sounds a bit so he isn't so much of a ninja. I think right now his footsteps are at 4m and I think doubling it 8 or more meters will be good but I'll need add in some logic to shut off those sounds when he is on a different floor which is another minor tweak. 

Thanks! Many of the props and furniture are from the PSX asset packs, though I've done a few as well. Specifically every room, the garden gates, the door, fridge, oven, hammer, and gate key were things I made. I created all the music and voices as well. This Phlip fellow did forget to put my name in the credits though, so I need to have a talk with that person and get my lawyers on him =P.

I was really impressed by the main menu cinematic. The restrained use of color makes the bits you want the player to notice really pop. I will say that navigating the world felt difficult as the main bit feels like 75% hallways that aren't differentiated. I feel like that is probably intended, especially later with the hedge-maze section, but it can be a bit frustrating for those who can't navigate 3D spaces well. 

I actually managed to get very lucky the first time I played and didn't run into the monster at all until after having done the entire hedge-maze, cutting off the chains, and flipping the switch. It wasn't til I went to get the purple key that they made their first appearance, haha. Not saying there is anything wrong with that, just mentioning that it happened. Managed to get out the next day.

I did go back and wander around some more as well so I could see what happened when I failed the 5 days. Overall it was great!

100%. Going with the easier route is always good. You can always add in the harder AI as a different difficulty levels. I think random patrol points is good, but if you are looking to make changes later, you could have it so that unlocking the door aggros the guy no matter where he is, so you force the player to interact with the hit and hide mechanic. 

I think I succeeded? though I did brute force the code (I think?) I put in the code, chop chopped the chains and used the key to leave, so I'm gonna count that. The biggest issue I had was that items were white on white which led me to wandering around for longer than I should have trying to locate the items. Some quick textures on those should solve that issue though. Really liked the janitor. He actually kinda looks like a friend of mine so it was funny to get got by him. The red glow around him both acting as a menacing bit of design, but also as a convenient indicator for the player looking for him was a good choice. Great Job!

Managed to win by day 3! Really loved the design of the attendant, and the general vibe of the home. That computer terminal seems like it probably took a lot of work. I will say that your game is the first one this Jam that really got me with a jump scare. You know which one I'm sure. I went back and got captured by the attendant a bunch as well to see the game over screen. Really nice extra touch there.

Awesome! The atmosphere was great and the enemy was proper scary. I did manage to get through the first time without even seeing them, but went back cause I wanted to see how they worked. The FOV on the camera being extra high gives it a real surreal feel. The texture work with the eyes in the wall and the little tendrils and even just simple things like the way the bottles look all sticky is fantastic. The sound effects were very good. I really did like that brick sound effect, so visceral.

Since you were asking for an honest review I'm going to includes scores and pretend I was a judge haha!

Definitely some cool ideas here. Being totally surrounded by darkness, and absorbing darkness juice to use as a resource is very neat. Having combat with anything other than the most basic of enemies being brutal is also something that brings out the horror aspects a lot here.

For theme, you definitely got the shadows part down, but I think "absorbing shadows to transmute them into upgrades and abilities" is a bit of a stretch for alchemy. The shadows part is done well enough though that I think I would give you a 3/5

For Artistic Style I think all the backgrounds and sprites look pretty good for whats there (keeping in mind this is supposed to be a prototype of a game). I think it falls a little with some of the UI. The extra bit of line work and filigree you've added to all the boxes in the UI don't feel like they mesh with the spooky aspect of the game. Specifically the extra bit of detail around the health bar meant I didn't grok that is was a health bar until I got a health pickup. 4/5

For Cleverness I am only rating on mechanics, not on story as I didn't complete the game (we'll get to that in a second). Mechanically this is a pretty bare bones traditional roguelike/sokoban-esque deal. I got to the point where I had two abilities, place darkness and shadow strike. Place Darkness is definitely interesting and there is a lot of design space you can probably (and maybe already did). 3/5

For Playability I think there are a couple of issues. Firstly there is a lack of checkpointing. Getting killed by the big giant enemy is very easy to accidentally do. The exact tiles that will kill you aren't immediately obvious on first playthrough and there is no prompt to the player that forces them to consider what they are doing. That would be fine if it didn't make the player spend 80+ turns (I counted) going back through that first section again, picking up everything (including the secret) just to get back there. A simple checkpoint after escaping the first Hand Eye Coordination monster would prevent this, and while it would mean it would lessen the fear of death to some extent, having to repeat moves in a more puzzley game like this is extremely frustrating. This is the reason I didn't play the game to completion.

The second issue has to do with memory. Having to memorize a maze is not particularly exciting for me to have to do as a player. Implementing a fog of war that is permanently lifted would make this not be an issue. You could still have the darkness by making tiles not in line of sight very dark, but being able to see where you've been is more annoying than anything else. Playability 2/5 with the caveat that it would be very easy to fix these issues and bring that score way up.

Unsolicited Ideas Time. Playing around with fog of war is super interesting. Instead of having Darkness Juice™ just lying around, you could have exploring the fog of war directly fill the darkness meter. This would make the player more careful about moving super quickly because they wouldn't want to "waste" the darkness. If the player has collected all the darkness but have actually wasted enough of it that they can't advance, then a checkpoint could reset the fog of war in an area. If you were to implement the more permanent fog of war I mentioned, you could even have set sequences where returning to a place you've already explored is now suddenly different which would add a very spooky section. 

This is probably way more review than you wanted, but hopefully it isn't terrible. I think your game is fun with some frustrating points that could easily be ironed out. Have fun out there!

Had fun with this one, though I did run into a bug. 

If you are holding a direction when you talk to Big Doug you just keep walking in whatever direction you were holding. If you are going left this no big deal as you run into a wall, but going right you actually can walk right out of the scene uncontrollably and the game doesn't seem to recover from that. 

I found the default keybinds a little cumbersome as well. I feel like the toggle light and burst light buttons should be adjacent to each other. I accidentally recalled all my light buddies in the last room when trying to do the burst light because I flubbed my keys.

This is a tiny nitpick though on an otherwise great jam game. The art was charming (especially the ghosty-like light sprites) and the music was fun.

To play you drag and drop ingredients from the top to the chutes on the sides. I added these instructions to the description and will be sure to include them in some way once I'm able to update after the Jam.

Attention: If you are on the randomizer page for the game jam, Godot projects seem to have issues with playing from there. If it says it has a sharedBufferArray issue please go to the itch page directly. For the author I recommend putting a notice of this in the description.

Attention: If you are on the randomizer page for the game jam, Godot projects seem to have issues with playing from there. If it says it has a sharedBufferArray issue please go to the itch page directly. For the author I recommend putting a notice of this in the description.

Attention: If you are on the randomizer page for the game jam, Godot projects seem to have issues with playing from there. If it says it has a sharedBufferArray issue please go to the itch page directly. For the author I recommend putting a notice of this in the description.

You'll need the SharedArrayBuffer option turned on in the itch.io settings in order to for it to run in the browser. It will only run in chromium browsers, not firefox.

EDIT: It looks like running the game from the randomizer page makes it not work for some reason. I was able to play it after opening the game's itch.io page directly

You'll need the shared buffer array option selected in the itch options otherwise it won't run in the bowser. Let me know when its fixed so I can play!