itch.io

NOTE:

The space bar is the only button used to control this game!

Space - Fire

Hold Space - Reload (0.5 second per bullet)

Wow, I'm actually surprised you played the game to completion since I haven't actually done that! Yeah the scale of the map relative to movement speed was a problem I didn't foresee when I designed my levels, however I am glad to see that the game is working as intended since you were able to complete it!

You are the first commenting person that played it more like a survival horror which was closer to the intent of the game, and yeah the way I handled the mechanic is not as well baked as I would like.

I should note there is instant movement in the options but I would still say the maps are still large anyways.

I'm still certain I didn't have a bad idea, but I certainly didn't utilize my mechanics well enough.

Thank you for the feedback!

Honestly it was supposed to be a desktop game originally, but I made the main build run on the web in order to make it more accessible.

Ah yeah so I am definitely finding in common that flavor text is either received nicely or badly, but definitely needs to be skippable! It's okay! I also found it annoying while trying to test game functionality but that was right before I decided to turn it in because I decided I was not pulling an all-nighter to fix it...

Thank you for the feedback, and yeah it was my first time doing anything in Unity so I kind of figured out things either too late, or did not know of a decent way to do it.

Ah I don't think it's really step-size being small as opposed to the maps being unnecessarily big, which is just a mistake of not enough time(tm) and not really matching the scale to my map sketches!

Although yes it's definitely influenced by DOOM, but more like DOOM64 where it's supposed to play more into the horror aspect.

Thank you for the feedback!

I haven't finished it, but I'm considering doing so later, this is pretty good. This feels like one of the more balanced entries I've played so far with a fair amount of difficulty.

I quite like your spell language system, and tying it to the meters. It's a very creative and immersive interaction method!

The sound design is very coherent and put together as well. It very much helped the game atmosphere.

I'm not quite sure why but the movement feels disorienting compared to some of the other entries I've tried, and it's not an issue with the instant movement.

I feel like it has something to do with the turning (I doubt the camera isn't centered... But for instance on the statues if I turn with A/D I would expect to be facing the walls? But it appears to wrap me "around" the statue, which confuses me since under the grid limitations I don't believe it makes sense to be able to be behind the statue?)

Since I personally found it very easy to get disoriented I had to rely on the minimap spells a lot, and kind of wished they operated on a real timer or more than one "action" worth of time.

I find it refreshing that "game-over" seems to be just kicking you back to a starting point sort of like a souls-like. Although unfortunately since it is a bit annoying to retravel back after every "death" it's a bit hard for me to consume in one session since it took me a little bit to properly figure out how to play. Having a spell to make a checkpoint or something could be nice and hopefully not break the balance.

I'm glad the elevation seemed to be special enough to point out, I just wished I had a better way of making the levels outside of stacking 2D tilemaps (when you only have a day left to basically superman the levels it's not like I was thinking of anything else...)

Yeah other than the slightly uncomfortable control scheme, I really intended it to be more along "survival horror" and wanted to discourage fighting unless you really can't help it (honestly I think if I had time to do stealth, that would've been a nice addition.)

There was supposed to be more of a focus on exploration and using the two "modes" to travel through stuff. However I didn't really have enough time to design levels to properly make use of the mechanics.

I would have to replay to more specifically catalogue the places I noticed, but I do believe trying to use the key on the keyhole (clicking on it) seemed to freeze my cursor for a little bit.

I assume trying to load or instantiate something may have been an issue since it's pretty clear graphics aren't a problem.

Yeah control as attack might be pretty polarizing...

Yeah in retrospect the inventory system is a bit more unwieldy than it had to be. Although I am glad to hear you did indeed die at least once as a consequence of your own actions and not through my own fault!

Ah that is very possible... I forgot to change a lot of import settings for my textures.

I'm glad you liked the limited usage of elevation! Unfortunately it was also probably the thing that killed me on the time because I didn't use any assets for a 3D tilemap and kind of hacked together the world out of 2D tilemaps layered on top of each other. Biggest mistake of my life.

Was this really made in 7 days? This is actually pretty incredible...

I would probably buy this on steam if it were longer and a bit more polished honestly.

The graphics are beautifully done, and feels very consistent and well put together. The other Dark World feels very immersive, and I love the design of the monsters over there. It really does feel like a CRPG adventure, I'm impressed at how many plot events there were (even if most of them are just dialogue, it's very impressive for a jam time frame.)

Admittedly I don't understand the momentum in the combat system very much, but I like the strategic element of picking between different types of attacks.

The music and sound effect fit the atmosphere perfectly and it was very immersive to play through.

There are a few flaws but they're really minor and I'm sure you would've fixed them with probably even a day.

- Most of the overworld is really dark, it's basically pitch-black without a torch so I didn't find a point to using any of the shields.

- The world is a bit disorienting because the world is still visually simple (that's still good though), would've probably liked a minimap.

- There is a bug in the combat system, it seems that a "turn" is finished when the animation is finished. It was really easy to cheese everything by just spamming the attack buttons to force a never-ending turn. Victory at any cost, even RSI I suppose.

I would very much love to see if you would ever expand on this!

Haha, I don't even know what I'm doing with the UI in Unity... I also had inventory issues because I wanted to make it in 3D world space, and mine is much simpler than yours!

Do use a normal zip file incase anyone decides to try this on something else that isn't Windows through Proton or Wine.

Anyways!

Yeah the Unreal Engine really does make this look gorgeous especially at 1440p, but the it's weird discrepancy with the relative level of detail of the engine/lighting and the sparseness of the levels.

The instant grid movement seems to have motion blur for some reason? Which I'm sure is just due to the way the Unreal Engine works by default, it's a little disorienting.

Also I agree with @graphicsmismatch, the game does not run very well and the motion blur does not do it any favors... I have a similar setup to @graphicsmismatch.

Enemies appear to only die when their animation finishes, and if firing repeatedly at an enemy they will restart their death animation.

There is also that interesting issue of the player and enemies not obeying the same rules but it's pretty easy to kill the enemies so as long as you're paying attention it's not super difficult.

I wouldn't say any real time dungeon crawler would qualify as a clunky FPS.

I'd say it's more like there are certain expectations of the gameplay based on weapons you can get. When you have ranged weapons that hit at effectively instant time at least my expectation is that the danger of instantly getting hit is compensated by having sufficient cover in the level design or strong movement mechanics to provide ways to counter the ability to get hit. Which is basically just things that encourage a faster pace of gameplay. It's just an association of that stuff with the flexibility of a different genre. I can't really buy getting like a railgun but like a greatbow would be okay (both are high damage but one uses a projectile, and at least to me it would be okay even if the projectile was very fast.), but on the other hand a hunting rifle makes sense to me but not a chaingun (high damage in one shot compared to higher damage over time).

I'm sure the difference in practical terms doesn't "mean" anything, but it feels different you know? I don't really know of any dungeon crawlers with automatic ranged weapons, usually they're either projectiles or semi-automatic.

Not sure if that makes any sense but that's how I see it. 

Yeah I suppose using Unix layout doesn't really do anyone many favors (Caps-lock as Ctrl lol), I am sorry that was your experience!

Anyways the enemy health spike is somewhat intentional as the intent is to encourage you to avoid fighting higher tier enemies whenever possible since you are supposed to be relatively feeble (like a souls-like but without the getting stronger part basically.) Had I more time I would've used it to add more tools to handle obstacles (it was supposed to be that higher tier enemies could only be incapacitated and not outright killed unless you met certain conditions or had certain weapons.), but I burned a lot of time just learning how to make Unity do stuff.

Although yeah there are a lot of balance problems and outside of making sure you could beat the game (passing level triggers and the boss fight working), I did not vet anything very much!

I admit, I had planned for something far more ambitious than I realized I had time for...

Thanks for the feedback though!

This really gives off a classic CRPG kind of vibe, I can dig it!

It feels very well put together, and is very engaging to play. I was little confused by the way the UI worked at first since it feels very mouse based, but I got it pretty quickly.

I like your use of a grid based UI although on my display the hitboxes for the grid seem to be off quite a bit, but that's not a deal breaker (I'm using a 1440p monitor, also consequently since my monitor is big it's a bit uncomfortable to read the text since it spans the entire width of my display.)

I'm a little surprised you cannot seem to backpedal though!

This is a cool execution of the concept. I kind of wish this separate cyberspace idea was used more in other cyberpunk or sci-fi games. It is interesting how this is a real time game, and yeah like BrineShrimp I agree it's basically just a clunky first person shooter.

The encounters are pretty fun, but since everyone is basically firing in a straight-line (does the spread mechanic also apply to enemies? They only seem to fire in bursts so it probably doesn't influence them too much.) it's not very easy to avoid getting hit, it does also hurt that the enemies seem to respond pretty competently as well.

I know it's obviously not within the limits of the jam's requirements, but it would've been a better game had it been more like Wolfenstein3D style (or maybe a few concessions like a turn 180 degree binding or something). Although as is I found it pretty satisfying.

It's a real shame that it's not really that complete! I actually really like the exploration and the interactivity mechanic in this game, it's kind of like an immersive sim in that respect!

I like how this dungeon has interesting obstacles to go around, it still manages to be pretty varied and memorable to travel around without a minimap.

However the lack of finish is kind of killing the game, lack of music is actually fine for this in my opinion, but the inventory doesn't seem to work? Also unlike @apoly I was not able to figure out the keyhole bug...

There's also some weird lagspikes around some interactions, and I'm not sure why that is.

I'm sure with another week this could be something pretty good!

It's a real shame that it's not really that complete! I actually really like the exploration and the interactivity mechanic in this game, it's kind of like an immersive sim in that respect!

I like how this dungeon has interesting obstacles to go around, it still manages to be pretty varied and memorable to travel around without a minimap.

However the lack of finish is kind of killing the game, lack of music is actually fine for this in my opinion, but the inventory doesn't seem to work? Also unlike @apoly I was not able to figure out the keyhole bug...

There's also some weird lagspikes around some interactions, and I'm not sure why that is.

I'm sure with another week this could be something pretty good!

The pixel art is pretty nice, although a lot of it is hurt because it's inconsistently scaled sometimes but the dungeon crawling is also entertaining. I like the UI design, although it might've been a bit to try and polish up. There's little feedback in the combat system other than the messages which doesn't make it very fun to fight things (I honestly didn't really notice I had "died" since you are functionally immortal.)

Seems like a good idea, but it's not filled in enough!

The pixel art is pretty nice, although a lot of it is hurt because it's inconsistently scaled sometimes but the dungeon crawling is also entertaining. I like the UI design, although it might've been a bit to try and polish up. There's little feedback in the combat system other than the messages which doesn't make it very fun to fight things (I honestly didn't really noticed I had "died" since you are functionally immortal.)

Seems like a good idea, but it's not filled in enough!

Really visually well put together, and feels pretty polished. The combat and dungeon is simple, but it's a pretty well done simple.

Really visually well put together, and feels pretty polished. The combat and dungeon is simple, but it's a pretty well done simple.

I love your enemy portrait art so much!

I agree that the general painterly style of the art is nice, although because of the visual simplicity of the dungeon it's kind of hard to navigate around properly without a map. Also yeah I noticed that upon death it seems to soft lock the game, not a deal breaker.

Ah if it's in level 1, that one is intentional. If it's anywhere else, probably not!

Trying to figure out Unity in one week for this was not my wisest idea.

Wow I really like the aesthetic style in this that dithering is indeed very well done, and interesting looking UI.

I'm surprised at how nicely the random dungeon generation is, but yeah there's a lot of series of "door into door into door".

I do wish during battle items would tell me what they specifically did since it's a bit hard to remember or figure out what some potions are supposed to do.

I have no real comment since it's very similar to what I did, but this is more polished than I could afford to make mine lol.

Here I thought I was being somewhat original haha.

The little extra stuff on the left is because I have two monitors and PrintScreen captures both of them like this.

I really like that monster design! Very creepy, and I like the environment for the game. Although yes initially it's a bit confusing to play because it's not entirely clear when it's your turn, and that reloading also counts as one of your actions.

I think the game accidentally got into a soft lock though (I had two monsters in front of me and they got stuck on each other while they were trying to walk into me... It seemed like that locked the game up.)

Interesting idea, and honestly I think for a more full fledged game going a way of like "visual" ZORK  I think would be something you guys may want to do, if you feel like expanding on this game. Anyways yeah I agree with the TheStoreman on that minor bit of polish.

Also for whatever reason the UI does not seem to scale correctly to my aspect ratio (16:10), although the game does. Game otherwise looks like it works fine.

The game looks very nice visually, but I'm not sure if it was intended to feel so chaotic? The game feels unnaturally fast, at least on my computer and since the explosions are played at full volume always it's disorienting because the enemies are causing them and combined with the speed of game it makes it confusing to play properly. I don't think the game itself was necessarily a bad idea though.

I quite like the art style adopted for this, I wouldn't mind seeing a more featureful roguelike with the same style. I mean basically the only thing I would wish is that there were more content, but for obvious reasons that's kind of ridiculous to ask for haha.

Yeah, I have very little experience in balancing stuff so I kind of just left it to whatever luck is provided (I do weigh the randomizations to intentionally favor difficulty however, as if you get fortunate rolls it became extremely easy for me to beat the game at least.)

I think a lot of people here would probably agree it wouldn't be a bad idea. Mechanic should be solid for a little more than just a small game though :)

Haven't beaten him yet, but I like the work you did on this boss. This felt more like a proper sword fight by allowing the boss to deflect back. This one was much more Sekiro-like imo and also I think this is the only fight to encourage me to use the dash more (the mantis lord overhead hit has iffy deflection sometimes as if I'm slightly off I can't deflect it even though I believe if you're directly under the enemy and they go straight down it should always be a deflection... Unless it's like the Tengu's rolling hit, which should be deflected like a normal attack) Also I'm curious about certain moves, and projectile attack build ups being deflected on close range. I feel like that should also be possible but they will always hit when you're in front of them, although similar moves from Sekiro like Isshin's Dragon Flash can be deflected whilst standing in front of him. That could be intentional but that's just probably me expecting it to follow Sekiro's aggressive gameplay.

Ah I see, although the combat style from Hollow Knight imo is more dark souls like where you're not really in control of combat. You react to attacks and avoid them. Where Sekiro's is about being active in combat so being able to counterattack soon after to control the fight would seem important to me. So I'm not really sure what the best way to find a mix in between would be as they seem to be contradictory styles,  but I understand not wanting the slower pace and giving player free hits. However that might be okay if the enemy can be more active and "react" to the player instead of poising through hits like Dark Souls bosses. I guess you could make it so enemies have more "back-off" or distance changing moves so they can more actively avoid the player which would still force the player to close in themselves like you wanted, and avoid the Sekiro attack/deflect loop which comes from trying to replicate the Sekiro feel. Since most parry/deflect heavy games like Mount and Blade, Chivalry, and Mordhau kind of just lock combatants in a loop with the exception coming from kicks which break distance.

It's like my first time fighting Genichiro again... This is surprisingly really hard since boss 1 and boss 2 seem to not have lots of cooldown. Also I do feel the attack range is a bit short so counterattacking just narrowly misses lots of the time.

Really cool though!

I know you've stated it's an asset pack but the game is adorable. I think it's put together pretty nicely. Not very hard (although it's a bit rough once you get the key and a slime basically corners you), but not boring for the duration it's supposed to be played.

Maybe a tetris style "hold" cell could be useful?

The tracks are very very well done, it's quite abusive though to throw people around isn't it? :P Do you plan on finishing this post-jam? Cause I'd like to see where this could go.