Really Impressive how much you made in the short time frame! I really liked the atmosphere, visuals and audio. The story is really great and I liked how it connected with the gameplay. Great Game :D
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Break the Normal's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Originality | #68 | 4.240 | 4.240 |
| Overall | #200 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Presentation | #289 | 3.560 | 3.560 |
| Gameplay | #321 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What do you like about your game?
I like that its finished. I think the settings are actually really interesting, despite my limits
Comments
wow, both a great game and a great callout post xd! this really reminded me of Yume Nikki in the best way possible! you're kind of just thrown into the game and are left to your own devices to explore this abstract (at least on the surface) world that you've built. allows players to kind of just vibe and wonder the meaning of it all, with each room contributing to the overall message of the story and the "hallways" acting as a nice transition to slow down the pace and allow players to think about what they experienced in one room before reaching the other, great stuff! a lot of the dialogue and narrative bits felt pretty relatable for me personally, and this grapple between the main character's experience between the real and virtual world matches up with the aesthetics of the game really well, with the real world being visualized as slightly broken and uncannily off-putting!
i agree with most of the comment's feedback about how the game would be elevated with audio and how some parts could have been better communicated more, but i think despite that this was a really nice experience to go through, especially for a first completed game! great work!
Submitted
POST HASTEThanks for playing! I Appreciate the compliment on pacing, definitely something that was deliberate to break up the story. I'm glad you related to it as well.
Great feedback, I've gotta put a volume control in all future games to avoid this trauma of making sounds but then mixing them as quiet as humanly possible lmao.
I really like the overall atmosphere of this game! Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out the mushroom part :/
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I Haven't Been Here BeforeI enjoyed playing this - it had it's own style and a particular feel unlike any other games I've played so far, and I appreciate the walkthrough too, I don't think I would've worked out some of solutions initially.
...and now for the feedback bit.
It was a little confusing where the exits were in the levels, sometimes there's paths and lighter areas, but I felt this wasn't clear enough so it was a case of randomly picking areas and seeing if the player would travel beyond the current screen. Perhaps a cursor change or something when hovering may help with this.
I did find the detection boxes on things too small, I think you mention this in the description, but in some cases it was make or break for progressing with the game. Like picking up the rod and the right most alter, I think it's natural for object like that to click on the object itself, rather than where you think the character should interact with it - and I think perhaps this is where the triggers were placed.
I felt the characters animations were a little too robotic and there was a lot of foot sliding, which broke the atmosphere a bit for me - it made the character not seem planted in the world.
Also, although the atmosphere of the game was great I did find it was lacking in the audio side - would've been great with a bit more ambience, sfx for interactions and cutscenes etc... (probably down to time, I know, it's a short space of time to make something complete...)
One last minor thing, but worth mentioning - the game was about 1Gb on disk... not sure why, as the resources in the game didn't seem be that big. You'd probably want to see where the size is being taken up, perhaps it's a massive texture or audio file somewhere, but the size definitely didn't match the game.
Saying all that, I really enjoyed it and with more time I see it being a really cool game :)
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Unexpected Panic!Appreciate the feeedback, glad you enjoyed the style. Luckily for the feedback, a lot of these are known issues to me (thankfully lol) and are intended for a final 1.1 (web) build just to keep for the 1 traveller a year that randomly finds this game.
Yeah an onhover cursor change is probably the least intrusive way to signal exits - although I was probably gonna end up putting something either particle based or animated at the exits to signal them better.
The character thing is because I am shit at animation and spent most of the jam learning to armature in general loool.
I do have sfx for most interactions (except opening consoles and opening dialogue with altars) theres also music to fill in the space, things may be ungodly quiet though and a rebalance is in order. Cutscenes with a sting wouldve been nice (these need a bit of a UI change as well). same with different music for the ending but that was a time thing and we'll see how much I care after 2 weeks lol.
and yeah I am very aware of the texture thing. It is the texture maps being giant, completely unbenknownst to me as this was a first shot. A problem that will be addressed in a final web build lol.
That was really interesting. I love the way you used textures "wrong" to get a nice effect.
Submitted
The Blessed Cursethere’s an uneasy vibe to this game’s audiovisuals, which contrasts nicely with the writing. it comes together to form an intriguing liminal experience, that unfortunately suffers from the same problem as most other point-and-click games: obscurity.
the guide was appreciated, I needed it to figure out what to do with the router. the rest was not too hard to figure out with some trial-and-error, I just have some thoughts about the UI:
- having to press E to interact is a bit awkward, as everything else is handled with the mouse.
- the small text box that pops up in the top-left corner is not great, maybe it should appear near the interactive thing instead, where the player’s focus is.
- the text message view should scroll to the bottom when new messages appear.
- the entire mushroom puzzle UI could be overhauled by not requiring discarding — instead, focus on which mushrooms to keep, and build the UI around that. if I picked the 3 correct mushrooms, why do I also have to discard the 3 wrong ones? it’s implied.
in conclusion, great mood and interesting writing, somewhat held back by a lack of clarity and some UI issues. and I gotta say, I really dig that wonky house.
Submitted
Geometric DreamsAppreciate the criticism, you make a lot of valuable points which are totally reasonable. and very salient coming from the designer of geometric dreams.
Right mouse click for interaction is like deeply logical actually and easily the strongest criticism about input design.
Oh yeah and scrolling is a known issue, that a was a product of running out of time and shipping it, thats why speech bubbles are a fixed size too lol.
I don't think what you said about textboxes is incorrect, it is probably objectively correct and the correct way to design in the modern. However, it's probably not gonna change in the final cut, mostly cause I like it - feels like nostalgia for old-ass poorly designed RPGs and keeps the space pristine.
The mushroom puzzle is the way it is to force full interaction and sacrifices realistic behaviour. I think it's too easy to game otherwise; just keep all the mushrooms and you pass the check. and the addition of some rejection mechanic ends up in a very similar loop (although I agree there is some room for simplification there (persistent check).
(As a disclaimer, no need to reply, mostly responding as i would to any reviewer comments on my work!). Thanks for playing, I appreciate the feedback and commentary!
about the text box in the corner, that nostalgia is a great reason to not change it. the main problem I had with it is that it’s easy to miss if my focus is elsewhere. you could consider showing a little exclamation symbol near the player character as a clue for when the text box appears, to make sure players don’t miss it. it’s not strictly necessary though, so do what you feel like.
for the mushroom puzzle, that could be solved by only passing the check if you have 3 correct and 0 incorrect. I don’t get your point about “forcing full interaction” — seems a bit contrived to me. but that’s sometimes the charm with games like this, so again, do what you feel like!
what a beautiful art piece, there's not much more i can say, just got me thinking. masterful work.
Submitted
SHAHARAZONThe setting and premise (and even the gameplay) remind me of digital dystopian horror stories, such as "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream."
This was a nicely packed story, which left enough to interpretation for me to find some connection with it.
Great choice (or design) of music, the visuals tell the story well. The only thing I struggled with was knowing where certain movement breakpoints were - and whether or not they should all happen automatically, vs which should require input.
All in all, I enjoyed it :)
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A Short Walk In The SnowTo even be compared to a great piece of speculatice fiction is a huge compliment,I appreciate it. I actually didn't have it in mind when conceptualizing this, but on a quick reread, there are glaring similarities.
Funny story about the music is that, it was totally composed on feel, I just sat in front of my keyboard, frantically found a VST and EQ that sounded like it should in my head and devised something in like 20 minutes. Also, it turns out its impossible to play quarter notes on beat when you are freaking out that your jam submission is due today and you have 0 sounds in the game yet.
Thanks for raising those gameplay issues, I probably intend to make some area movement more obvious in the post jam 1.1 and with a web release.
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you connected with it in some way.
Ooh. You really nailed the "liminal space" concept with this while neatly hinting that basically the entire world (maybe thanks to the internet) has become something of a liminal space in the process. This is just the wonderfully weird stuff I love to see in game jams.
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Awaken Ye Elder GodI was filtered by the mushroom check 🍄. There’s some old adage about not eating something you haven’t seen someone else eat, cause your brain won’t believe it and you’ll get sick anyway.
Nice little game. The pentagram power line ritual site was inspired.
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Monastic Inversionhmm maybe I should put a small guide up on the page. I thought the mushroom guide would be bad but not like unfinishable bad haha. interesting adage :hmmge:
Appreciate the comment on the ritual site. I prevaricated for so long on whether I would blender "model" a power station and then the wire thing came to mind and I just had to.
The RTS-style point to move control scheme is interesting. Don't see that too much anymore in my experience. I did get stuck on the first screen for quite a bit. Not too bad for a one man project.
Submitted
Nexus Core
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