Explore old malls, empty water parks, and existential dread · By
Hi everyone!
I've decided to convert the old comments section into a forum. I don't know if there's a way to see the old comments, but I appreciated all of the community discussion and I hope there will be more! Anyways, I prefer this to making a Discord (official Discords are better for multiplayer games in my opinion).
Anyways, I hope you like the new update. It's a project of passion.
The beta was fun! As a player of the first iteration of the game, I liked the addition of the puzzles, especially the one at the start since it was a bit obtuse trying to figure out where to go from there.
Graphics are great and clean, not much to critique there but I'm also not one to fawn over that stuff anyway. Won't spoil too much for other people but the game has definitely improved.
It runs crisp but it seems pretty resource intensive as my PC started whirring up pretty hard once I was loaded in (running a 3600X with a 5600 XT). Also, streaming it to Discord makes the frame rate choppy for some reason, not sure if that's an issue with the game itself or Discord, but I thought I should mention it.
Anyway, great work so far! Take your time with implementing and adding new stuff, I know you've been pretty busy and it's better to make sure things are done right than rushing out a passable build. Looking forward to future updates!
god there is no other game that i have been looking forward to more than this, the second I was introduced to the whole "liminal space/backrooms" thing i immediately craved an exploration-based game featuring some of these purgatory-esque environments and here you are making just that. We're all rooting you on from the sidelines, keep up the great work!
I loved the additions in this new update, I do like the uneasiness the "thing" gives you whenever I see it out of the corner of my eye but I do think that its not really a necessity for this game. I more like the idea that the MC is simply exploring this massive underground facility and maybe finds clues and hints of what this place is and why none is here. One main thing I think this game needs is shift to sprint and control to crouch, I would also love to be able to slide down a slide at some point. I'm not sure if it is just my pc but the visibility in the lockers seems to have been reduced but I could barely see anything. Cant wait to see more and I'm happy this is getting updates!
This game is remarkable to say the least. Absolutely digging the intro part and the pool segment. The voice acting. graphics, sound design and overall atmosphere is top notch. The environment resembles a recurring dream/nightmare of mine. For that reason, this is in my opinion a true horror game for people with aquaphobia / claustrophobia.
I've always had claustrophobia coupled with the thought of being stuck underwater. This has been apparent to me ever since I played Banjo-Kazooie's Clanker's Cavern. That N64 game features a specific segment in which the player needs to swim through a set of pipes and choose the correct one to get the required collectables. Mostly due to lack of time to turn around, the players won't have enough oxygen left when they choose to swim through the wrong pipe. If you don't know the title, I suggest looking it up on YouTube to see what I mean.
Anyway, I'd get lots of recurring dreams in which I'd go into some sort of indoor rapids that were 'cave' themed, going downwards crazy fast, branching into multiple paths possibly. Eventually I'd see two a two-way slide entrance, one of them being pitch black. I couldn't roll over to the other side because of the current, resulting into me being thrown into that pitch black slide pulling me underwater entirely.
Those creepy memories immediately resurfaced during playing this game. So yeah, for this reason I'm greatly impressed with this game so far.
Here are some ideas/suggestions I'd love seeing implemented some day:
• A few 3D trees, foliage or hints of architecture in the distance during the intro part outside.
• When auto-saving, an animated icon pops up on the screen.
• The water shader is stunning. It just needs soft-edge smoothing similar to Unity's particle shaders to smooth out the transition between geometry and the water itself.
• A perlin noise shake added to the camera during balancing on the water slide. Sort of like in Far Cry 3, when going up the radio towers.
• Fall damage for extremely high places. Similar to Mirror's Edge, in which the sound design and wobbling screen makes it really scary to fall.
• The water pump that breaks the electrical lock, when the water is turned upon the panel, the player should get electrocuted , so it should only be interactable after the water pump is turned away from it again.
• Some water slides will make the player topple-over and ride the slide instead of being able to walk through it.
• The shadowy figure is perfect as is. Just needs more urgency when player is within it's reach to be more terrifying.
• The bright tiled hallways. You have a perfect opportunity to scare the player by suddenly letting tiles fall off the walls when walking past it.
• Some fluorescent lights will flicker and make that common glitch sound along with that.
• Landing on the water pipes needs a sound.
• The plants at the sideline of the lazy river come out of the stone ground. There should be some kind of pottery or a cast stone planter box.
Those are the things I could think of. As for the new mall area, these areas felt really empty and way too large. I think you should make more sense out of how the player would navigate through a abandoned mall in terms of it architecturally. Perhaps a more difficult electrical panel puzzle to have a shop open up it's gate. Crawling through ventilation shafts and corridors in which the player has to break through something or make use of a portable ladder. I'm really excited to see how this project evolves. :D
Just got finished playing the beta, I started watching AlphaBetaGamer's playthrough and it looked interesting so I stopped and decided to play it for myself. The environments and audio are perfect, and what voice acting there is is really natural and believable. I'm really looking forward to the release of the full game
Finally played the demo! I've been saving myself from spoilers to play it! And it was totally worth it. It was a really unique experience, exploring these odd, somewhat nonsensical rooms that are still grounded enoughly into reality, the feeling of dread and helplessness in some areas as well, the panic I felt in THAT area (you know the one), I'm just so glad I got to experience this for myself.
One thing that I found a bit more annoying was the first jump. I kept falling a little too many times than I would like to admit. I dunno, part of me feels the jump's arc doesn't reach far enough, or that there's not much room for mistake. I know we're just a regular dude and not Mario, but a leap of about 2 feet is kinda pathetic 😅 especially when that's the only leap of that kind in the game, I think.
Also, I noticed the lack of a run button. Definitely not necessary in most areas, but in others, I felt like I wasn't moving fast enough. It was only at the beginning though, on the first area.
Everything else was great, even the voice acting!
I cannot tell you how much I loved this demo! I bought it today and played through it twice. the uncanny-ness is relaxing, familiar, and terrifying. I can't wait to see the rest of the game. I'm such a huge supporter of your work here! I can see so much potential in this game and I think it's going to be extremely popular. I was playing it in a discord group and everyone was commenting on how interesting and relaxing the background music and effects were- at least 3 or 4 people said the would be interested in playing it too. I agreed, this game takes you somewhere else when you play it and it's such a refreshing experience.
sending all the good vibes- and patiently waiting for the official game release! <3
A bit of spoiler talk, don't read if you haven't played yet
As a game dev student, I was originally opposed to paying 6$ for this (especially seeing the transformer, which I think was incorrectly unwrapped); but I got about 5 mins into watching a playthrough before deciding to just buy it myself and check it out, as liminal spaces, pools, and shadow people are RIGHT up my alley. Wasn't disappointed and don't regret it! It's a bit of a slow start but quickly grew on me. The locker room segment unnerved me a lot; it's exactly like a nightmare I had a few years ago that I've been dying to put into a game. The starting pinkish-pool area is a bit shoddily made, you can see walls intersecting and clipping into each other, but overall the atmosphere is killer and outweighs the critiques I have about the game. Being very fond of monsters/the supernatural, I'm REALLY hoping that the shadow guy gets some sort of story or development, because I'm a sucker for good storytelling and character development. I was curious about him and got myself in a couple bad situations by continuously getting close to him to check him out. I love how the first few blips of him are extremely brief and make you wonder if you were just seeing things. I was playing with a friend and I went "I think I just saw someone?" and she was like "What? I didn't see anything." and it made me second guess myself lol. Overall, totally worth the 6 bucks, and I'm really excited to see where this goes. You've got a new fan!
