This is quite sophisticated. I didn’t get very far, I felt like it was liable to make me motion sick if I played it for much longer, something to do with the FOV or movement perhaps.
Reminds me of some challenge levels in Dishonored or some game, and I think that’s a good direction, though the floating head enemies were a bit too annoying and didn’t feel very stealth-able.
Thanks for playing @Zackarotto. Sorry the game made you queasy, that's never a good outcome. Interested to hear why you didn't feel the floaters were stealthable - our intention is that they have a predictable behaviour (turn side to side) and that their field of view is visualised with a light cone to assist the player in avoiding it. Do you have any suggestions for how we could we communicate that better?
Hey, giving this one a more fair shot after some time has passed. Hard to say if the motion sickness was entirely your game or just the cumulative effect of playing a dozen of these entries in one sitting lol, it tends to come on subtly at first. But it was definitely at least partly responsible, so I don’t know if there are any settings you could tweak for that.
Of course, motion sickness in FPS games is a general problem many have to deal with, but I don’t get it too often – really old Doom-like games never gave me problems, and it’s rare from very modern AAA shooters, but older Source Engine games like Half-Life tend to do it to me. It’s hard for me to diagnose more specifically, but movement/acceleration/deceleration probably play a role.
I think the game had sound the first time I played it but not when I redownloaded it, hmm, strange.
But yeah actually I do think the floaters are pretty easy to avoid most of the time, I might’ve just been blindsided around a corner once or twice. I see you have some randomly generated maps which is very cool. I admittedly wasn’t paying enough attention to the lighting, I might’ve just scanned it as environmental lighting – not necessarily saying it isn’t obvious enough for players, I was just more concerned with the motion sick stuff going on by that point, but you could try coloring the enemy light a more unique color if you like.
Not to sound too critical, just that the one thing can make it hard to appreciate the rest. Love the art style, love Thief-type games, many places you could go from here.
Thanks again for your feedback! I can imagine that the camera movement is a bit nauseating for some, so I will add a setting to reduce the automatic camera tilting a bit.
Sound is definitely there; if not, check the sound settings. Otherwise, we'd be happy to see a log file.
In response to ratrogue on the discord I did redownload to check the sound again and it worked, so it could’ve just been some hardware issue on my end. I’d say don’t worry about that one unless someone else runs into it.
I love this! It has such a great atmosphere and mood. I absolutely loved the art, and the enemy designs are terrifying. It was fun to just explore the levels, almost relaxing.
Great mood! This one gave me serious Thief vibes, and that's a good thing :D
I really enjoyed getting lost in the environment and explore all the corners in search for loot. I did get >666 coins but got killed immediately after that. So I didn't beat it, yet.
It's not too punishing and I found myself playing it for quite a while.
Wonderful entry!!
This game has some great atmosphere and whatever method of procedural generation is being used, in the time I had with the game, presented me with a very enjoyable experience. I’d say this game is very Lovecraftian in feel!
There were a few things I that niggled at me while playing. The biggest one was around jumping, climbing, and ladders. While I say this is the biggest thing that niggled at me, bear in mind this didn’t kill my enjoyment, but… while I love the fact the game has the ability to climb over ledges, the game seems to give priority to ledge climbing over just jumping. There were a couple times I was going to make a jump that I felt I could easily make, but that just was interrupted and the ledge climb occurred instead, even for “ledges” that were only at knee height. My thought would be, maybe only engage the ledge climb if, after a jump reaches full height, test to see if a ledge is nearby and [i]then[/i] trigger the climb.
Ladders also felt a little off. Having to “use” the ladder to attach feels a bit strange. Being able to automatically grab on if you walk directly into it may feel smoother. I say not knowing the time and technical constraints you were under. As I said, these issues were ultimately very minor.
One last thing is, perhaps the game could use one or two more monsters (or, [perhaps there are and I just didn’t find them). I only ever encountered two types in my play through. I thought both were cool (especially that eye on the black-ish blobby body), but a few more I think would add to the tension!
Over all, with a few tweaks and a few extra monsters, this would be a very enjoyable game even for a small price, in my humble opinion!
I did stream my time with the game. If you are interested, you can watch it here :)
Comments
This is quite sophisticated. I didn’t get very far, I felt like it was liable to make me motion sick if I played it for much longer, something to do with the FOV or movement perhaps.
Reminds me of some challenge levels in Dishonored or some game, and I think that’s a good direction, though the floating head enemies were a bit too annoying and didn’t feel very stealth-able.
Thanks for playing @Zackarotto. Sorry the game made you queasy, that's never a good outcome. Interested to hear why you didn't feel the floaters were stealthable - our intention is that they have a predictable behaviour (turn side to side) and that their field of view is visualised with a light cone to assist the player in avoiding it. Do you have any suggestions for how we could we communicate that better?
Hey, giving this one a more fair shot after some time has passed. Hard to say if the motion sickness was entirely your game or just the cumulative effect of playing a dozen of these entries in one sitting lol, it tends to come on subtly at first. But it was definitely at least partly responsible, so I don’t know if there are any settings you could tweak for that.
Of course, motion sickness in FPS games is a general problem many have to deal with, but I don’t get it too often – really old Doom-like games never gave me problems, and it’s rare from very modern AAA shooters, but older Source Engine games like Half-Life tend to do it to me. It’s hard for me to diagnose more specifically, but movement/acceleration/deceleration probably play a role.
I think the game had sound the first time I played it but not when I redownloaded it, hmm, strange.
But yeah actually I do think the floaters are pretty easy to avoid most of the time, I might’ve just been blindsided around a corner once or twice. I see you have some randomly generated maps which is very cool. I admittedly wasn’t paying enough attention to the lighting, I might’ve just scanned it as environmental lighting – not necessarily saying it isn’t obvious enough for players, I was just more concerned with the motion sick stuff going on by that point, but you could try coloring the enemy light a more unique color if you like.
Not to sound too critical, just that the one thing can make it hard to appreciate the rest. Love the art style, love Thief-type games, many places you could go from here.
Thanks again for your feedback! I can imagine that the camera movement is a bit nauseating for some, so I will add a setting to reduce the automatic camera tilting a bit.
Sound is definitely there; if not, check the sound settings. Otherwise, we'd be happy to see a log file.
In response to ratrogue on the discord I did redownload to check the sound again and it worked, so it could’ve just been some hardware issue on my end. I’d say don’t worry about that one unless someone else runs into it.
I love this! It has such a great atmosphere and mood. I absolutely loved the art, and the enemy designs are terrifying.
It was fun to just explore the levels, almost relaxing.
Great mood! This one gave me serious Thief vibes, and that's a good thing :D
I really enjoyed getting lost in the environment and explore all the corners in search for loot. I did get >666 coins but got killed immediately after that. So I didn't beat it, yet.
It's not too punishing and I found myself playing it for quite a while.
Wonderful entry!! This game has some great atmosphere and whatever method of procedural generation is being used, in the time I had with the game, presented me with a very enjoyable experience. I’d say this game is very Lovecraftian in feel!
There were a few things I that niggled at me while playing. The biggest one was around jumping, climbing, and ladders. While I say this is the biggest thing that niggled at me, bear in mind this didn’t kill my enjoyment, but… while I love the fact the game has the ability to climb over ledges, the game seems to give priority to ledge climbing over just jumping. There were a couple times I was going to make a jump that I felt I could easily make, but that just was interrupted and the ledge climb occurred instead, even for “ledges” that were only at knee height. My thought would be, maybe only engage the ledge climb if, after a jump reaches full height, test to see if a ledge is nearby and [i]then[/i] trigger the climb.
Ladders also felt a little off. Having to “use” the ladder to attach feels a bit strange. Being able to automatically grab on if you walk directly into it may feel smoother. I say not knowing the time and technical constraints you were under. As I said, these issues were ultimately very minor.
One last thing is, perhaps the game could use one or two more monsters (or, [perhaps there are and I just didn’t find them). I only ever encountered two types in my play through. I thought both were cool (especially that eye on the black-ish blobby body), but a few more I think would add to the tension!
Over all, with a few tweaks and a few extra monsters, this would be a very enjoyable game even for a small price, in my humble opinion!
I did stream my time with the game. If you are interested, you can watch it here :)
Thanks a lot for the extensive feedback! I watched your video and enjoyed it. :-)
We definitely want more monsters in the game, but yeah, there are only 2 in it right now. Hopefully we can fix that soon ...