Sry i noticed this game after the voting ends. I would rate it 4 or 5 probably. I definitely love the hand drawn art eventhough how amateur it is. It has a great retro vibe. I love the music, sfx as well. I think most of the sfx was recorded by you. It shows how much passion and love you poured into this project. It was a little too hard for me though
Truly a great work, congrats!
Honestly i think this is one of the most complete and polished games of the jam i played so far and i really had fun playing it. The movement is smooth and snappy maybe a little bit fast. (not turning, only moving). Art and sound design is perfect. Art is very consistent, nothing sticks out. You may have used AI for sfx and art but you have utilized it perfectly, your art direction is great in my opinion. I love the old school UI. Character portraits look fantastic. Fonts are a little bit hard to read and hurt the eyes but no big deal.
Inventory system works nice but there are some critical flaws like both characters shame the same inventory space. Each chararter needs it's own inventory space in a RPG game. Also you cannot drop unncessary item to open up space for more useful items. The implementation of armor system is great.
Levelling system works well. We level up too fast but it's a jam game so it's a condensed experience, not really a flaw.
Combat is fine but we need to see the how much cooldown time left on the UI. Also there should be a window where we can see how much dahamage we inflicted to the enemies. The window is there i know but it opens up when we click on the character portraits. I think it should be more accessible. Enemy sprites look very cool but i haven't noticed whether they have differen attack types. I think only difference between the enemies besides their look is their health and damage but this is just nitpicking at this point :)
Game has a few bugs. One of them is you cannot move or turn when you engage in combat. You can turn actually but if you tap q/e like 5 times. This is annoying since enemy can hit you while you face a different direction. Another bug i encountered is i think at the last section of the game where there is a fog. I encountered an enemy and couldn't do anything, can's hit or run. Game is just locked out there and had it to quit.
My final thoughts are;
Definitely a very solid dungeon crawler. The art and sound direction is top notch. Gameplay loop is fun and engaging. A great throwback to 90's gridders. I'm guessing that this game will be in the Top 10 but i can be wrong of course. Great entry, nicely done!
Cool game. I love the red/black color palette. Nice PS1 style visuals. Event Horizon/Alien kind of story is very well crafted.. Multiple endings is a great touch. But this is not by any means a Dungeon Crawler game. This is a horror game with gridbased controls. There's no combat, no inventory, no level progression, no automap. The game level is very small.
If this wasn't a genre specific game jam, i would give this game a higher rating. This is not what i perceive as a dungeon crawler. Besides all that, i love your work and i think it's a very solid game. Nicely done!
Retro graphics are cool, don't like the character models though, too cute for me. Movement is perfect, snappy and smooth. Dice mechanic add depth and fun to battles i like that. Automap is great and very functional. I haven't seen an inventory system maybe i missed it. There's level progression, not exactly the way i expect it to be it but it's there. Couldn't get into the story much, it didn't piqued my interest.
Overall a very solid and polished entry. Nice work!
Pretty interesting idea to mix dungeon crawler mechanics with an anomally game. I like the overall atmosphere and visuality of the game. There are some issues with movement. Rotation speed is too slow and i don't like queued up movement. If i tap w two times by mistake it doesn't stop until the queued up movement is executed. Movement gets especially frustrating when you fight the monster at the last level. There is no feedback when you hit with the sword, there's no sword swing animation either. It doesn't feel like you're using the sword at all. I managed to reach the end of the game but couldn't kill the monster and died, maybe i'll give it another go. Oh and there's a bug when you die and restart the game, there's an invisible wall blocking your into either of the corridors.
My final verdict is, it's a good game but feel like you wanted to make a horror game with gridbased movement. It is not really a dungeon crawler game so i don't think it would be fair to other games if i give this a high rating. I would give it a higher rating if this wasn't a Dungeon Crawler jam. Regardless of this thought i like the idea behind it. Nice job and good luck!
I like the nice handcrafted visuals. The use of colors in battle screens reminded me of Persona 3 Reloaded. I think the game looks clean and polished in terms of visuality. The movement is also smooth snappy but it gets staggery when player climbs up/down stairs. Story and setting of the game didn't piqued my interest that much but Ancient Egypy and Pyramids are always a nice setting for dungeon crawlers i think.
I think it would be better if you had done the battle screeen on first person camera as well. It looks weird when character portraits are attacking the monsters. Also it may be a personal thing but i think random battles really interrupting the flow of the game. They are not too frequent but still it annoyed me bcs the dungeon is like a labyrinth, navigating through is is already a challenge and you get into battles in every 1-2 mins. I played a lot of old school JRPGs and i still love them but i never liked this random battle thing. Another thing about battles, i think in a JRPG style battle system there should be Item and Run options too.
I like the party banter stuff, it adds more depth to the story and makes the game feel more alive. Encounter are also nice, you advance the story progress as you explore the dungeon further. I encountered the Sphinx boss and it killed me very easily. I think my party was underpowered for that boss. I believe it serves as a skill check for players by guarding the enterance to the next area.
In terms of UI/UX, automap looks very good and functional. Lack of an inventory i think is a downside in this kind of game. Checkpoints where you can heal the party and respawn when the party dies is a good idea. Otherwise the game would be much tiresome and frustrating bcs you can die a lot in this game.
I like the JRPG style music. It made me feel like i play Futaba's dungeon from Persona 5. It's theme was also Ancient Egypt.
Overall i think the game almost works perfectly in terms of gameplay mechanics except inventory system but it is not a big deal since it's a jam game. This is a pure JRPG style Dungeon Crawler game, a genre which i am not very huge fan of but still i think it's a pretty soild entry.
Thx for playing and for your feedback. I changed the intro cutscene as you said. Now you go the the next page by pressing enter key. I made some serious changes in the movement as well but i think it needs some more fine tuning. Combat is the next issue i will adress. I cannot post the updated version of the game until the voting ends but i want to develop this game to completion nevertheless. I am also planning to make it a full game and if everything goes well i want to ship it with some serious changes on it of course.
I think this is the game with the most unique artstyle in the jam. It's like a cartoon sketch with low framerate animations, i totally like that but it was kind of disorienting because i can't tell if i'm moving or not. Animation style make me feel that i'm always moving. Also the movement being instantanous make it hard to tell which way i'm headed but automap negates that issue mostly.
Love the old school RPG storytelling with narrative text boxes. The UI of the game is prett unique too. At first it felt ugly but you get used to it quick. It bolsters the old school feeling that all UI is text based, i like that too. I couldn't beat the game yet but i think as you progresss through the game some events are triggered and you lose a team member in each of them, by selecting who you are gonna let go and at the i end you remaining with one part member thus using the theme "Solitude". Also losing each team member make you lose a specific power like breaking the cracked walls and such. This is absolutely a genius idea i have to say. Really loved it.
My overall opinion about the game is that this is totally an arthouse game with very cleverly designed gameplay elements. I wish you best of luck in this jam and for your future projects!
Hey thanks a lot for your time for playing my game and writing this comment. I don't see this as repetation, you share your thoughts and observations and they happen to align with others. The more people stress the same issue, the more it shows how serious that problem is.
It's not nitpicking, i should've chosen a torch model which is consistent with the rest of the artstyle of the game. If this was a commercial game, that would be an unforgivable mistake. It was kind of a panic move to use the first torch model i found without losing more limited time.
The combat system in my game is very rushed. It's protoype level stuff to tell you the truth. I am not happy with that by any means. It's the second biggest issue on my lisy after the movement.
It's totally cool that you din't like dialugues and cutscenes. Every person to their taste afterall. I'm not too crazy for cutscenes myself, i'm more of an enviromental storytelling guy, like in Half Life. But i think sometimes a cool presantation is a perfect way to introduce players to the story and to boost the presantation of the game. A recent example for this i think is Baldur's Gate 3. I also have to admit that i got kind of overexcited about making a game which is inspired by the anime "Goblin Slayer" and renact some famous scenes from it in the game to add to the cool factor :))
Love the old school art style of the game. The art in the cutscenes, textures, UI everything looks wonderful. Movement is also very smooth. Combat is straightforward and tough. I lost most of my HP to a single skeleton. There are no spells or abilites , you just bash it with your sword by spamming lmb. Sanity goes down too fast and i haven't seen anything in the game which restores sanity which makes the game a race against time. Not sure it's a good idea in a dungeon crawler game.
Overall it's a pretty solid game. Nice job!
1-bit artstyle looks very cool. I especially liked the enemies. There's a Dark Souls vibe in the game like the camp fire mechanic, music and overall art. The music is also very good, fits the mood of the game.
I think you also got the difficulty from Dark Souls :) The enemies have too much HP and they don't die forever. You eventually die after 2 or 3 fights bcs you don't have any healing item left. You also cannot avoid enemies bcs they appear randomly it's a good thing that the frequency of encounters is low at least.
Overall an artistically good looking game with punishing difficulty. A pretty solid entry. Nicely done!
Nice dungeon crawler/JRPG game. I like the interesting premise and conversation with the characters in the party. Handdrawn enemies and NPCs look good. Dungeon looks more like a palace than a mall. Camera jitters a little when you move. Music is nice too. This game kinda gave me Shin Megani Tensei/Persona 1 vibes.
Overall pretty complete game with an interesting setting. Nice job.
The core gameplay of the game works perfectly. It has all the necessary mechanics of a grid based dungeon crawler game with JRPG elements. I think only thing that is missing is an automap. The dungeons are labyrinthian and you can easily get lost. I hate it when i lose my sense of direction and start going in circles in these games. This is partly the reason why i couldn't play this game until the end.
In terms of visuality, everything is too low res. I know that you went for a 8-bit look and feeling but i played a lot of NES games on the emulator they didn't look like this. Top down view has the 8-bit look, you pretty nailed it there with the color pallette and everything, enemies looks nice too. But in FPS camera, everything is too muddy. You hardly can make out what is what. Wall sprites look too big and ugly. I think this happens due to the fact that the engine you use is a 2D engine and those sprites were made for a topdown game, when you zoom in on them, everything looks muddy. Also i think due to the same reason camera perspective is off. When you turn in the dungeon, the wall is directly in your face.
You managed to capture the 8-bit JRPG vibes with musics, they were nice.
I like your storytelling and the game has an interesting story. You wanted to reverse the typical JRPG stories and make the players play from the enemies perspective, that's a very cool idea.
These are my overall thoughts on your game with pros and cons. My final verdict is: It's a very complete game with a good amount of content for a 9 days game jam. However, the visual quality and gameplay loop didn't make me want to play the game to completion.
Wow this is a nice one. A very complete and polished game. There's no story or indtroducing the player to the game world but there's a premise. That's fine, not every game has to tell a story, this one focuses on gameplay and i think it does a pretty good job at that! In terms of gameplay there's not much to criticize, everything works perfecty. Movement is very smooth and snappy, enemy AI is fine, inventory, levelling system, it has all basic mechanics of a dungeon crawler game.
Third party assets you used in the game are very high quality especially the enemies and the shaders on the objects. It's more nitpicking than criticism but the environment doesn't feel much like a spaceship to me. This could be place like mall or an office too. Comparing to some other contenders of the jam, the atmosphere of the game is a little weaker i think. Also there's something off with the lighting. With the lighting capabilities of UE5 i think a much better lighting could be achieved to contribute to the game's atmosphere.
Combat works well. It's pretty straightforward but it works. There's a decent feedback, you know you hit the enemy. Enemy's death animation activates with a 1 second delay.
All in all i think it's a pretty solid game especially taking the time limit into account. I am really glad that your game wasn't disqualified from the jam, it really would be a shame. Great job and good luck!
Thank you very much for playing my game and for your extensive comment. Yes i want to finish developing this game. I spent a lot of time on it, i think it would be a great waste to abandon it in an uncomplete state. I added the intro on the last day of the jam so it was pretty rushed. I noticed the things you pointed out but it was too late to fix them at that point.
Assets are mostly from Unity Asset Store and Skechyfab. Yeah it was very stupid of me to pick a toon shader torch and shield while the rest of the game doesn't have toon shader. Firts thing i'll do is to change those models.
Yes movement distance can be changed but i'll have to recreate the map from scratch because i adjusted the metrics of the map according to that distance. Since it gridbase movement when you change movement distance, everything is misaligned. But i'll probably have to change the movement script and the map soon anyway. Current movement script is very faulty.
I agree you on the combat as well, it was very rushed. One of the top priority issues for me to adress. No there are currently no items on the map. In the jam version i wanted the player to start with a set of items but those items didn't appear on the inventory in the final build due to some error in the code i think.
I killed the final boss with just 2 health! That gave me kind of a Bloodborne boss fight feeling. I really had a blast playing this game. It looks basic and simple but it works very well almost on all aspects. Starting from art. I dig the black/white/red color pallette and simple wall textures. Enemy design is very cool. Those shadow type emerge from the ground slowly, it's pretty spooky. It's random enemy encounters but there's a subtle transition to battle screen. It's a very nice touch.
Combat is pretty straightforward but intuitive. I think parry system makes the combat more engaging. Destructable envioronment, another very cool idea. You can open shortcuts and other stuff with that in the future builds of the game. Inventory works great. Movement is smooth and feels good but feels a littlle bit slow i think.
Final verdict: I found this game much more fun and engaging than i expected. It has a simple but very well executed formula with good polish. If it was a little longer with some more content i think it could be the best game of the jam but even in this state it's a great game to create in 9 days. Cheers for your hard work and good luck!
I love the setting and story of the game. Underwater setting is always cool especially if you can pull it off and you absolutely did. The amibence of the game with the superb PS1 aesthetic and ambience sound is very well crafted. I especially loved the enemy design. The creepy sound effects of the enemies, glowing blue eyes, they really look scary(The shark is my favorite).
The movement didn't bother me that much but turning around could a littler faster. Afterall the game is set underwater and you cannot move the same speed under the water as you do on the surface. I think you managed to give the immersion to the player that they are really underwater perfectly. With sound effects, bubbles, particle effects etc.
Combat is intuitive, it feels very good. There's a little glitch which others mentioned as well. Enemies get to the same tile as you do to attack the player. I think you did enemy pathfinding with an algorithm like A*. You can solve this by setting the target for enemy one or two tiles away from the player, that's how i did it.
Storytelling is top notch. I love that you get tidbits of information about the story with those audio logs(?). The ending was a banger, i totally dig it.
My final thought are i think it's one of the strongest contenders of the jam especially in terms of visuals, atmosphere and setting. It plays more like a horror game than a dungeon crawler minus the grid based movement although i like it anyway. I think this is a an excellent game to complete in 9 days and it's very polished as well. Sooo double thumbs up!!
I love the old school Final Fantasy games. Great execution of JRPG style dungeon crawler. The different character classes with different abilities is impelemented very well. The inventory system, automap it has it all. I also liked the artstyle very much. It's too bad that the game crashes when you kill the tentacle, i wanted to beat the game.
In any case, it's a very solid entry for the jam. Cheers for your great work!
I couldn't be able to see through the game bcs of the reason i'll state later but i think this is the most complete and polished game of the jam despite it's bugs and flaws. Firstoff, i think that this has the best movement system of this game jam. It is very close to Legend of Grimrock's movement feeling. What i like the most about the movement in this game is when you hold w key player moves forward continiously but it snaps from tile to tile. It feels very smooth and snappy.
Inventory system works perfectly. It would be nicer if you could add an equipment window where you can drag the armors /weapons to the slots on your body there but this is good too. Level system also work great for a jam game. You can get new skills and spells. UI is very good. It looks nice and works well. Combat system i think is perfect. It is just like you expect from old school Dungeon Crawlers of 90's.
I like the visual style of the game especially the textures. You successfuly created atmosphere of an ancient necropolis. Enemies are just sprites with no animations but they look good. They don't stick out from the general artstyle of the game. It's a very good idea to make enemies with sprites in a 9 days jam. There's also a good variety of enemies with different difficulty levels.
I don't like very much the level design of the game. Level is branching too much and too frequently. In these kind of games it is very easy to get lost. There's a compass in the game but it doesn't help much navigating you way around. There needs to be an automap which shows the sectors i have been to in this kind of game. Verticality is a nice touch and executed well but i don't think it contributes too much to the game. It would be cool if you had designed the dungeons like an Escher Labyrinth, then it would mean something. I got stuck in the game like many others that posted comments here. Since it's difficult to navigate through the map, you keep drawing circles in the same places and it bores you after a while. I also tried to beat the game for around 30-40 mins to no avail.
These are my general thoughts on your game. I really liked it despite it's flaws and it think it's one of the top contenders of this jam. Congrats for your hardwork and good luck!
Thanks very much for playing. Yeah i fell into the overscope trap again. I wanted to make a game with a nice presentation and decent gameplay actually but my skill level and experience didn't allow me to accomplish that in the given time. I made the level with the probuilder feature of Unity and set all the tiles(actually cubes)to 1x1x1 units. I don't know how other people coded the movement system but in my system, the movement of the player is not determined by the tiles, player just moves by snapping 1 unit of transform position to desired direction. Since everyone criticized that the movement doesn't work well, i must have did something wrong there.
The artstyle of the game didn't appeal to me much but i respect your decision. The overall atmosphere is pretty cool though. The eerie sci-fi music and ambience sound really enchances the atmosphere of the game. The galaxy map idea is a very ambitious and cool idea but you managed to execute it perfectly. I love how all three planets have distinct biomes and enemies. Inventory system works perfectly , so is the gridbased moving. It fits the theme but getting stuck in an infinite loop made me feel that i didn't beat the game. The loop thing usually goes well with roguelikes but i think it's nice to do someting out of the usual formula sometimes.
A pretty solid entry to make in only 9 days. I salute you for your great work sir!
Edit: I encountered some bugs playing the game. One of them is you get an error message after you get the crystal in the lava planet. A console appears on top of the screen. The other one is i got stuck and had to restart the game after the hallucination when i first enter the lava planet.
Thx for playing and the feedback! That wasn't a pit trap actually it was supposed to be a sacrificial pit where goblins throw humans to feed some eldritch creature :) If i had time i would put another cutscene there and a fight. I got the trap from the anime too. At the end of the hall there is a staircase, when you approach the staircase it takes you to the subterrenean temple where you were supposed to meet the cosmic horror. That was my plan at least :)
I like the bomberman/minecraft style gameplay meshed into dungeon crawler mechanics. It's great that you try something out of the usual formula. It feels very good to break the walls with a sledgehammer :) Beginning sequence and voice acting is very cool. Enemies look cute. I didn't find combat very intuitive but it's fine nevertheless.
What didn't work for me in the game is that the dungeon is too big and there's no information or hint on where to go. When i don't know where to go next i feel like i'm running in circles and it tires me up quickly.
With all criticisms and nitpickings aside i think basisc gameplay works well it just need some more stuff to make it more enjoyable which is tough to do in 9 days.
Very short and simple game buy i ike it. The traps are well done. I like the voxel graphics, textures and color palette of the game. It looks nice visually.
I'll give it a 3 because there are no enemies, it's too short and there aren't any mechanics other than walking. But it's a good one despite the shortcomings. Good job!
PS: Love the ending too, it was funny :))
I beat the game once and liked it. My thoughts on the game:
Intro is very good with the voice acting but a little long perphaps. The artwork in the cutscenes look very nice. You managed to capture the old school DOS game vibe very nicely. As someone else mentioned, the textures look like they are straight from Eye of the Beholder 1 Sewer Level but it's fine, they look good. Enemies art is very good and scary but i wish there were more enemy types. Love the illusory walls detail. You did a distortion there like breaking of light, it looks very nice. You could've added chests too. Drag and drop inventory works perfectly. Weapons and additional spells would be nice too. Btw i love casting lightning spell effect. I think the artwork in general is AI generated but they looks great. Don't know which AI image generator you used but i think it's a perfect utilization of AI in making a video game.
Kudos for your work and good luck.
The intro of the game is really cool, with voice acting and all. It shows how passionate you are for your game. Graphics of the game and monster design is very impressive. This is probably the most visually best looking game for me in the jam. Enemy designs are also great. Combat system is a little weird but it works well. It's not straightforward and feels good. FOV of the camera is too low and there are too many pillars on the map. Everything feels to cramped up. I'd prefer corridors, instead of this kind of level design. I didn't like it much the progression of the game. You kill monsters to level up and when you level up you advance to the next level. This gameplay loop makes the game all about grind. I don't see much sense of purpsose in that. I feel like you wanted the gameplay a little more like Diablo. Enemies drop gems to upgrade weapons and stuff that sounds like Diablo to me. It would also be nice if the enemies moved on the map and had a simple animation.
Final thoughts on the game; artistically beautiful game but gameplay loop didn't really work on me, it didn't make me play the game. Hats off for your efforts and hardwork in any case
I think this is the game with best core gameplay and flow in this game jam. This is a perfect game to make in 9 days game jam. Just core, solid gameplay after a little introduction title and muahh, just lovely! Timing of the game is perfect too, just when everyone is crazy about that weird Dungeon cooking anime :) It could become a hit if you develop into completion and release it on steam. Really cool game, nicely done!
Hey txh very much for playing the game and for your valuably feedback! I think i should have designed the intro cutscene so that you can go to the next slide by hitting a specific button since every person's reading speed is different. The fact that the protagonist looks different in every slide really breaks the immersion i totally agree. I need to find a way to fix that if i'm gonna use AI for this purpose in the future. I haven't encountered the freezing bug on my play test but it could have occured when you press space once before cutscene ends. I'll try to replicate that.
Movement issue is on top of my list of "to be fixed" issues since everyone in the comments pointed that out. I mentioned it another comment, there are actually no grids for movement in my game. There's a virtual grid for enemy movement.
You went out of bounds bcs unfornutely i couldn't finish making the level. The darknesss was intentional, not just for the atmosphere but also for putting the player in a disadvantage. You need to proceed carefully without being ambushed by the goblins, at least that was my intent if i could've realized it. Yeah i wish i haven't spent 4 days for the inventory which has no use in the current version of the game, but yes i'll use it as i keep developing the game.
Thx very much for playing my game. I note all kinds of feedback especially coming from you. You are correct with your assessment. I didn't set my priorities right. I wanted to immerse the player into the story with cutscenes, but that took a good chunk of time. In fact i could still add a decent amount of gameplay to the game. I got the enemy AI, level design and all but as i said in the description i lost too much time on useless things. I worked on the inventory system for 4 days and there is no use for it in the game, there aren't even any items, i'm really angry at myself for that but hey we all learn from our mistakes right ? At least that's what they say :))
Cool dungeon crawler game with a horror twist. Not exactly my cup of tea but i respect what you tried to do here. There are some design choices that didn't make much sense to me like why do we have to hold LMB to keep the flashlight on or why can't we both carry a flashlight and the weapon? Another thing i don't like that the enemies attack you without any warning and you die suddenly. There's no feedback in combat. I tried to kill the enemy with axe once, but it didn't seem to damage the enemy at all and i died.
Anyway, it's a different take to dungeon crawler genre. I appreciate that you wanted to make something that seperates you from the rest.
