itch.io

Reminds me of old MS-DOS games, with the tense atmosphere, the slow movement, and the knowledge that there's probably no save points. With a good coat of paint, it could feel like a straight-up throwback!

Mmm...final red room is one devious puzzle :)

You sure the errors are from Visual Studio specifically?

That's a pretty charming description, and a startlingly brutal game. The pickups just really help make it so much more chaotic :)

Uggh, that death sound is heart-stopping! (Disclaimer: I'm hopped up on marshmallow cookies, so I'm jumpy right now.)

Controls are a bit slippery, and I didn't realize the goal was to be in the air (thought it would be a Race The Sun-type game), but after the rocky start it's a really nifty little arcade-style experience. I bet my brothers would enjoy this game...!

Holy cow, it's all so simple...and so very effective during gameplay! I literally had no idea that the loop was only around 8 bars. I'm impressed all over again ;)

Ah, makes sense.

You're welcome. Will follow.

And it just occurred to me: you probably coded the movement and lookaround code yourself, didn't you....

Sigh. I was afraid that might not have come across.

You have to move while you throw it.

Controls nicely, but the one bad monster's home-in-on-you movement is kind of unmistakable (and fairly difficult to counter, honestly). If you do have the exits only open once the bad monster's destroyed, I might actually suggest slowing them down a bit so you actually can challenge them.

Love how the music all shares a common melody, showing very clearly that it's original for the game. I could feel the effort that went into it.

Also, and this is just me: the simple gameplay here doesn't jive well with my Undertale-derived understanding of friendly monsters :)

I love this game

Coming up with your own signals feels very organic, and totally took me by (immersing!) surprise. The confusion over having accidentally made short-beep into yes was a lot more fun than it would've been otherwise, thanks to the signal being for a character who I'm communicating with (and can't amend the mistake with~!).

And the lightning parts are so intense when you've already gotten to know the character...mostly because he comes across as an actual character and not just a (calling him "faceless" would be in poor taste, so, uh) soulless wad of programming code.

Gotta say, you've got skills, man. Do good with them.

Lags like heck on my computer! (Granted, all its components are about nine years old, so.)

And gotta say: not a fan of the lens dirt, but that's probably just me.

Both glitches noted, thanks. Not sure what makes the doors do that, but I figure, forty-eight hours can be better spent on level building than on fixing a weird glitch that doesn't really affect anything. (Unless they kept opening and closing--on my end it was always just whuppa-whuppa-wup and then it's open.)

I guess that is a valid interpretation of the way the game communicates. What I had in mind was that when you possess another, the first one is left free but has to spend a bit of time recuperating from the experience.... Never did get around to explaining how the kids you leave behind actually get to the next levels they appear in, so I can see how you might think they just didn't and lookalikes are showing up.

Thanks for playing the game, and I'm really glad you thought it was worth expanding on. I'd have loved to get more puzzles in there, but I kinda saved level design for last so I could ensure things were rock-solid (as rock-solid as I know how, anyway) in terms of mechanics. Might have been a mistake, but hey, at least you liked the ones that were there.... And I still definitely want to build on those ones. Two of the kids have skills that never got used, one of which was never even implemented!

Ahhhh. That explains a lot. No wonder I couldn't tell--I was thinking there were only two layers! Those extra layers really do add a lot to the experience.

Oh, YES!

Gotta say, couldn't tell if the drums were fading in and out as a dynamic layer, or as part of the track. The ambiguity was kind of cool regarding that, honestly.

frickin' jumpscare deaths

And how do I use the torch?

The sound design really is quite beautiful (and sort of intense~). You and your brother both did good jobs.

I felt at first like I should hunt everything, but I gave up on that pretty quickly so I could focus on staying alive and taking out the big guns.

The camera zooming in and out is very uncomfortable....

Strong Undertale vibes from that level with the alternating red and blue lasers.

Didn't immediately "get" that it was a mouse game as well as a keyboard game. Might want to signpost that a little.

And when I respawned the first time, I had no idea I had respawned.

8 ratings so far. Multi-character puzzler where each character can only go once.

https://sirius-bizdness.itch.io/one-by-one

I mean, that seems relatively likely in an archaeological context.

I reckon that could be a plot point, also.

That was a fairly tense experience! Won with zero seconds left--wooo!

Just saying: good call having an AI generate the "Important Email."

Ah, okay, simple enough.

With UnityEvent, you can add listeners from the editor, complete with up to (I think) one static, unchangeable-at-runtime parameter. I've no idea if that's common (it is among replacements), but I know I love it to death~

(Actually, it's the very same thing the GUI system uses for buttons and the like. Maybe you knew that already....)

I've never used another event system, actually. Just so we're on the same page, what exactly is an event system in your book?

It works fine, I believe--I didn't have trouble with it for a small-scale game like this--but there are copious replacements out there to fix problems, and I know several caveats have stopped me before:

• Callbacks don't run in a particular order, and in fact may be outright non-deterministic.
• Methods to call must be public void. No idea if this is standard; all I know is, it's tripped me up at least twice.
• To pass multiple parameters, or even a single parameter if it's not static in the editor, you have to create a class which inherits from UnityEvent<T0...T3> and use that for your UnityEvent field. To make it accept parameters when you Invoke() it, you have to explicitly select the dynamic variant from the dropdown menu.
• Oh yeah also you get four parameters max, but I've never run up against that barrier (but I've also never used UnityEvent to link together whole gameplay systems before).

Again, I've no idea what other event systems are like--all I know is, UnityEvent lets me use the editor to connect systems~

Honestly, I thought it would be, but it turns out that most of the supplemental mechanics didn't actually rely on any core mechanics beyond "character can move into this space when s/he wasn't before." UnityEvent is a beautiful thing, and I have absolutely been underutilizing it.

...Then again, I stayed up until about 5 in the morning struggling to add in the softball throwing, build out all the character abilities, and make enough levels to properly utilize at least three of the characters, so yeah, there was definitely a drawback to it :)

Huh. I said "completely different," didn't I....

I am so, so impressed. Awesome work, and a really amazing puzzle idea.

Worked fine on Chrome, incidentally.

My game was meant to have five characters, each of which has a unique ability. Not only did I decide to completely skip one ability so I'd have time to build actual levels, but I also couldn't think of anything to do with the replacement ability (which another character shared). Consequently, the game features two entire characters who only appear in the first, final, and semifinal levels, none of which make use of  character abilities at all~

On the note of the semifinal and final levels: the entire first day was spent trying to build a completely different game out of magnificently incoherent mechanics. Most of the levels were built on the second day, after completely replacing the core mechanics, but I decided to tack on levels 1 and 2 from the original game at the end, just to avoid having to make a proper ending screen.

https://sirius-bizdness.itch.io/one-by-one

Seconded! I may have to take note of that.

What the heck, I'll go for it. https://sirius-bizdness.itch.io/one-by-one

No problem.

Thanks. Glad to hear the reset button really was a help~

And I guess I did put some funny stuff in there, didn't I....

Heh, thanks. I guess I did have that sentence in there, didn't I?

Hey, waitaminute...you came up with the darkness lore to explain away Unity's delays in GI updating, didn't you? ;)

Can't say mine is exactly horrific, but it does frame the core loop in terms of unwilling possession, so that's...kind of creepy, at least?

https://sirius-bizdness.itch.io/one-by-one

Really tight little game you've got here! Also lots of polish compared to the rest--darn teams and your extra manpower ;)

Definitely needs some polish, but leaping around like this is certainly fun enough. This could be a really addicting mobile game, actually. Seems to already have the screen orientation for it.

Heh. That was a weird little experience. Not a bad use of my time~

Now this is a delightfully quirky concept~