itch.io

Just released it as a relaxing narrative game.  It's my very first attempt at a narrative game and I'd like to get general feedback on it.  The gameplay, narrative design, style, etc.

https://sundle.itch.io/swipe-stream

Swipe Stream: revolves around a mysterious book, De Vermis Mysteriis. What is this book? Why do people want it so badly? How are your dreams connected to it? Is it real, or just a fantasy? So, many questions - can you find out the answers?

https://itch.io/jam/mystery-game-jam-2024/rate/2689325

Menu - first version:

In my second version, I made the side info more distinct by using different colours.  This was after getting some feedback on the design:

Menu - first version:

In my second version, I made the side info more distinct by using different colours.  This was after getting some feedback on the design:

There were quite a lot of interesting points raised in a discussion. People suggested that using gibberish as a substitute for voices is a viable alternative, examples included Banjo-Kazooie and Animal Crossing. Others recommended using musical instruments used in games like Don't Starve. Both appear to have a long history in gaming. Not only are these solutions quick and easy, there's no cost to making them. So, it's perfect for my entry to an indie game jam.

Having trouble finding free recordings of gibberish, apparently it's a lot harder to create than you'd think, I made an attempt at the latter. I used music notes. I'm certainly no musician, so I simply opted to randomise the pitch and wait time between the notes. Changing the latter had a huge effect on the outcome. Short delays produced a very comical effect. Other suggestions are highly appreciated.

I tried a variety of different instruments. There are 6 in total. Some seemed to work better than others. I'll make my final decision after reading through feedback. Right now, the violin works the best. I believe I heard somewhere that the violin owes its popularity to being close to sounding like a human voice.

I wonder what other people think...

Having trouble finding free recordings of gibberish, apparently it's a lot harder to create than you'd think, I made an attempt at the latter. I used music notes. I'm certainly no musician, so I simply opted to randomise the pitch and wait time between the notes. Changing the latter had a huge effect on the outcome. Short delays produced a very comical effect. Other suggestions are highly appreciated.

I tried a variety of different instruments. There are 6 in total. Some seemed to work better than others. I'll make my final decision after reading through feedback. Right now, the violin works the best. I believe I heard somewhere that the violin owes its popularity to being close to sounding like a human voice.

I wonder what other people think...

There's a discussion on voicing dialogue on Reddit's gamedev sub.  Someone there claimed they got over 50 voice actors interested in participating in a game jam.

Added a whole bunch of visual effects.  Some using Godot's WorldEnvironment node and others are shaders.  Went for a CRT effect to give the game some texture and a slight retro vibe, which is very popular and well appreciated by gamers.  I felt it needed a little more texture, so I added some noise created using Gimp's filters.  On top of that, I turned on Godot's glow feature to give the game an ethereal, surreal, dreamy look.  

This all helps create the right kind of atmosphere.  It's not dark and gloomy like blatant horror games, so people don't get the wrong impression as I'm going for a more lighter vibe.  It's more of a thriller than a scary game.

All in all, I'm happy with this as the final look of the game.

Added a whole bunch of visual effects.  Some using Godot's WorldEnvironment node and others are shaders.  Went for a CRT effect to give the game some texture and a slight retro vibe, which is very popular and well appreciated by gamers.  I felt it needed a little more texture, so I added some noise created using Gimp's filters.  On top of that, I turned on Godot's glow feature to give the game an ethereal, surreal, dreamy look.  

This all helps create the right kind of atmosphere.  It's not dark and gloomy like blatant horror games, so people don't get the wrong impression as I'm going for a more lighter vibe.  It's more of a thriller than a scary game.

All in all, I'm happy with this as the final look of the game.

Thanks a lot.

Added some character sprite images.  I think they suit the style.  They look quite a bit like Nerial's Reign's characters, yet distinctly different.  Not having eyes adds to the surreal and mysterious atmosphere of the game.

Lots more cards added to the game. They're quite straight forward to write. I'm using a gd script for them instead of a spreadsheet, as I'm trying to get it all done by the game jam deadline. I might switch to spreadsheets post-jam and thereby let people mod the game.

I also added loss conditions and managed to die 1 minute, 13 seconds into the game!  Looks like I'm going to have to balance it more carefully.

Lastly, added a week (turn) counter.

Added some character sprite images.  I think they suit the style.  They look quite a bit like Nerial's Reign's characters, yet distinctly different.  Not having eyes adds to the surreal and mysterious atmosphere of the game.

Lots more cards added to the game. They're quite straight forward to write. I'm using a gd script for them instead of a spreadsheet, as I'm trying to get it all done by the game jam deadline. I might switch to spreadsheets post-jam and thereby let people mod the game.

I also added loss conditions and managed to die 1 minute, 13 seconds into the game!  Looks like I'm going to have to balance it more carefully.

Lastly, added a week (turn) counter.

Added bars to indicate the four main statistics used to control the game's outcome. The bar meters deplete or fill up depending on the decisions made. The player needs to keep this bar between 0-100%. This is what really helps make Reigns such a compelling game.

Entry for the 2024 Mystery Game Jam on Itch.io.

Added bars to indicate the four main statistics used to control the game's outcome. The bar meters deplete or fill up depending on the decisions made. The player needs to keep this bar between 0-100%. This is what really helps make Reigns such a compelling game.

I thought this style of game is a nice fit for the 2024 Mystery Game Jam.

Added a pixel texture for the character, a modulated background image and some text.  It's starting to look much better.  It looks more like a game now rather than just some UI element.

Added a pixel texture for the character, a modulated background image and some text.  It's starting to look much better.  It looks more like a game now rather than just some UI element.

When browsing, we can filter in games, but consider letting us filter out games too.  

For example, let's say you want to look at action games, but no sports games.  Currently, there's no way to do this.

Very short game and simple, but compelling as you added each item to the pentagram.  Maybe something could happen at the end, instead of a congrats message.  Like something appears.  Not much else to say.  You managed to do a lot with extremely little.

Making a start:

Check out my play through, the game is actually quite easy on easy mode: 

Check out my play through, the game is actually quite easy on easy mode: 

Check out my play through, the game is actually quite easy on easy mode: 

It's not as hard as people have been saying.  Just search the tents, load the gun with bullets, take medicine and use the mini map to navigate around until you have searched all the graves for the 3 relics and the book.

Warning: spoilers at the end.

Evil ending version (17 minutes):

Nice fast, snappy movement.  FOW works well.  Enemy AI is good.  I like the water effect.

The difficulty is very high.  Enemies swarm you and the limited space means it's hard to run away and avoid getting cornered.  They also seem to get tougher, but your player character doesn't.  Do they always know where you are or only when you're in their range?

Some music and sound effects would be a nice addition.

Perhaps consider a skip turn function?  Otherwise, you're forced to keep taking out enemies and increasing your trace level.

In one level, I needed more keys than were available.

You're forced to move into the enemies when they block your path and so die quite often.    

Consider adding some music and sound effects.

The game's difficulty is very high.  Seems like luck plays an important role in advancing.

Fun game though, the concept is really good.  

It's a really nice 3D top down game.  A real delight visually.  A good effort for a short game jam.  

I do have quite a few suggestions:

- Add continuous movement.  You have to move one tile at a time and wait for the animation to finish playing.  Consider a faster movement animation and queuing the input.

- The camera got out of sync with player's position, so I couldn't see what I was doing.

- Add a HUD to display the player's health, gold, and other stats.

- The footstep sound effect is too regular.  Randomly shift its pitch and volume a little to vary it, as you hear it so often.

- Add a pause function.

- Add a basic menu.

- Dungeon generation takes place in view of the player camera.  Should really place tiles ahead of the cam so that it looks seamless.  Perhaps you meant to make it that way?

These are all easy things to fix and I'm sure will make your game more enjoyable.  Once you've done them, you'll be much quicker at them in your next jam.  

The best of luck to you.

Nice art, music and sound effects.  Really get that retro vibe from it.

Good, amusing dialogue and story.  Very weird and wonderful.

The combat UI seemed a little complex.  To attack, I have to press space 4 times.  I couldn't move and then attack, unlike the enemies, some of which can move long distances.  I have to select attack, then exert, and then move from there to move and attack.  When I run out of energy, I can't do that any more.  

The combat AI was good.

When I equipped a weapon, the character's attack points stay at 0.  

Maybe indicate on the doors when you've completed their room challenges.

Overall, a very enjoyable game, if a little bit slow and grindy for a dungeon crawler.

I had an issue when keeping movement keys pressed, the game would pause while it finished playing sound effects.  So, I had to slowly take one turn at a time.

I liked the hand drawn art, it really stands out.  The enemies looked especially good.  Lighting was nice and moody.  The colour scheme was great.  Again, made it look very unique and the HUD was clear and stood out well.  Aesthetics were the highlight of your game.

The character UI goes off screen (I played it in fullscreen mode).  I did like how you laid out all of the commands on screen, so I  didn't need to confer with your game notes during play.

The voiced sound effects were a cool touch.  Though the above mentioned issue did detract a little from them.  Music would definitely have been a good addition.  Even some ambient sounds.

I couldn't find any health, armour, or weapons pick ups.  Even shooting a wall seems to cause injury (?), which is particularly unfair due to no health boosts or armour.  After death, you could respawn in the ship with progress intact, but with enemies respawned, instead of the game restarting from scratch.

A mini map or even a compass would have been very handy as some of these caves get quite expansive.

With a few touches, this game could be really good.  

The controls were quite tricky.  Not a bad thing, mind you.  It can can otherwise easy games more challenging.  But you might want to balance this one.  For example, on top of the difficult controls, the fish all quickly move away from you despite their not having any rockets.

The concept is nice and crazy.  Perfect for this jam.

Visuals are fine.  I really liked the helmets on the fish.  Audio was ok.

Let me guess, you played way too much Minecraft?

Dungeon had nice placement.  Enemies were in good positions.  The maze structure was great.  I'm guessing it was hand made and not procedurally generated.  Not sure what you had in mind for the collected items, perhaps some kind of crafting?  Movement and mining were fast and snappy, so the game never got tedious.  Though I did take a look at the map to get the progress more quickly.

Graphics, animations, musics and sounds effects were all well done.  I appreciated the little touches in the bedroom.  Only criticism would be to remove the AI voices.  I don't think they added anything of real merit to your project.  Retro games have no reason to require voice acting, text is more than sufficient.

Overall, it was very enjoyable.

I would really have appreciated a way to pause the game.  Subtitles would have been real nice.  It would have made Jill a lot more tolerable if she wasn't voiced.  Her dialogue is way too random and interrupts other characters.  Messages would be easier to parse.  I can't see how voiced dialogue is easier to add than text.  In retro games, voicing doesn't really add to the atmosphere, at least in my view.

Why no compass?

I got stuck in the dungeon.  I wasn't able to backtrack either, as I was walled in.  So, I couldn't progress much at all.  I guess that's the bug you mentioned on your game page.

I look forward to replaying your post-jam fixed version.  I'll withhold my rating until then, as it's unfair to rate a game suffering from one bad bug.

I looked forward to playing another 2D in 3D retro looking game.  I really liked the animated water tiles.

Very impressive atmosphere.  The empty mysterious space ship was a great way to start a game.  Having so many prompts really added to it.  So, many elements worked together.  Even some random wall had a text prompt.  There were some items that didn't though, for example papers on a table.  So, it felt somewhat inconsistent.  Still, it's no doubt just a minor oversight.

The mouse cursor wouldn't change for some items, so I ended up clicking on everything that looked interesting.

UI: when I equipped a weapon in the inventory, it didn't show up on the HUD like I expected.

Nice use of flashing lights in a dark scene, very movie like feel to the game.  Again, great atmosphere.

There was some minor light bleeding through your wall textures.

When dying after collecting the last crystal, I still had it in my inventory when waking up.

I killed off the final cosmic horror, but still stayed floating around in space.

I guess the infinite theme is that the cosmic horror keeps coming back?  I'm not sure it's that satisfying, but then the theme was an odd one to me at least.

Overall, great entry.

This was far better than I had anticipated.  The game itself is simple, but the difficulty curve is reasonably high.  The aesthetics are clear and visually appealing.  I feel like the water shader is a little too eye catching for background.  There also needs to be more music variety, I had to turn audio off after just a little while.

Overall, great entry.

This was far better than I had anticipated.  The game itself is simple, but the difficulty curve is reasonably high.  The aesthetics are clear and visually appealing.  I feel like the water shader is a little too eye catching for background.  There also needs to be more music variety, I had to turn audio off after just a little while.

Overall, great entry.

You really wouldn't want to compete in paid game jams.  It'd just be gamed by pros, who would cheat to win.  It also ruins any chance of making truly creative, imaginative or interesting projects, as most people will opt for a safe bet.  Just look at the state of the AAA industry.

What an incredible game!  This is insane.  You got such an impressive game done.  It was a lot of fun putting together a crazy monster web of fishes and battling them.  Highly original idea.

I've rated your game.  Here's my feedback:

- I really like the movement.  It has the right kind of floaty feel to it.  The gravity, acceleration is all nice.  It's fun to simply swim around.  That's a big deal, so well done.

- Graphics are good.  Consider some simple particle effects like bubbles.

- The level design was decent.  

- Don't just use the arrow keys for movement, they sometimes get interpreted as browser actions making the game difficult to play.  Instead also use wasd keys.

- Game really needed music and more sound effects.  Even some underwater ambient sound would have been enough.  Consider spending some spare time building up a library of free music and effects.  Itch has plenty of good stuff.  Categorise it so you waste less time during game jams.  

- Create even a simple menu with options to remove the mobile UI.

- Add some text and images to your game page.  Change the colour scheme to match that of your game's.

You can rate my game, if you'd like.  It'd be most appreciated.