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The Restricted Archive's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Mental Engagement | #13 | 3.870 | 3.870 |
| Overall | #14 | 3.913 | 3.913 |
| Lasting Impression | #16 | 3.739 | 3.739 |
| Overall | #18 | 3.717 | 3.717 |
| Atmosphere | #20 | 4.217 | 4.217 |
| Emotional Engagement | #22 | 3.391 | 3.391 |
| Characterization | #69 | 3.174 | 3.174 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
This is so much fun! Loved the card catalog, the variety of the puzzles, and the pixel aesthetic.
Well done!
I haven't read too much of Lovecraft, but I'd say you nailed the atmosphere perfectly. Of course I got killed in the end, so I guess I have to give it another go - but not right away, this would spoil the feel of the game. ^^
I liked the use of the library an exploring the cult and their symbols.
Really good game!
I really enjoyed this. I wasn’t sure about the chunky pixels at first, but the story hooked me in and I grew to love the pixels too! Great atmosphere, I liked gathering knowledge from the library, and the part with the mirrors was really well done. I even managed to get the good ending on my first try! Great game.
very cool! the puzzles are very fun and not too difficult to figure out, though im not sure if theres meant to be a clue for the electrical switches -- i just did it by trial and error.
the story is fun and intriguing, it makes me want to spend more time in the world and learn more. and i always love a library setting. clicked on every single book topic and shelf despite my innate understanding that most of them would do nothing.
This was really solid! Would love to see a longer game like this from you.
This was good! I thought the puzzles with the books were a fun way of translating Call of Cthulhu-type investigation into a non roleplay format. Art was very good and I like the choice of putting the game in the player's point of view.
That was pretty freaky. I don't know a lot about Lovecraft, but from what I do know, this appears to fit right in.
Excellent game! Really enjoyed exploring all the details of the cults and symbols in the library. I loved the story and the puzzles were fun and engaging. Music was great too and added to the atmosphere.
My first ending wasn't that great (ended up getting killed) so I went back and played again and escaped this time. It's really great that you managed to add multiple endings in a jam game, how many in total are there?
Overall, this game has left me wanting more, I'm intrigued! Really well done!
There are 3-ish endings, but they only really depend on choices made during the final cutscene so they didn't really take that much effort to add; the entire final cutscene was basically written in a panic during the last hour-and-a-half. Glad you liked it, though!
Really Really good! I love spooky stuff like this especially when it's well made. Reminded me of The Magnus archives in a cool way
I made it to the "good" ending, but let's face it: in Lovecraft's world, that doesn't really mean anything :)
You managed to capture Lovecraft's ominous atmosphere extremely well. The books abot the lore weren't just a nice idea, they were also very well integrated. The fact that you actually gain (practical) knowledge through the library is neat. I liked that very much. The story is well written and so are the dialogues. And the pixel graphics are really good too. They fit the theme and the general atmosphere perfectly.
Wonderful game. I hope you will visit this world again. I'd love to see more of it. Either way, I'll definitely check out some of your other games later.
The game is really nice. The atmosphere is engaging, and the music helps it. I wasn’t ever a big fan of pixel art, but I started to love it more and more.
It’s nice that you have a lot of information about the lore. At the same time, the game is rather straightforward about which part to use, so afterward, you have a strange feeling that there was (or could be) more in it. It’s not bad, of course :) maybe even good because you feel like playing more.
To be honest, I opened the door with trial and error. Almost the same is true for the other uses of levers. I noticed one thing in the library… but it could be a coincidence.
The nightmares and the “madness” topic… it would be really great to elaborate on this :) I was waiting when the “mad” part starts but died instead. That was a stupid mistake of mine, but humans are not perfect, after all :)
It felt a bit strange to go through everything once again… and here I thought. Maybe you can build a nightmare theme on such “resurrections”—sort of like Groundhog Day. Just sharing thoughts. Thank you for the great game!
The ending was a bit abrupt but nonetheless a great game. Loved the music and the animated figures VERY COOL crows mvp
This was really nice. The graphics made me think that this would be much more simplistic than it turned out to be. Such a very dense atmosphere and well thought-out story. I LOVED that you actually had to use the library to advance the story.
Two puzzles need a bit more work IMO: the mirrors and the levers (I ended up using trial and error in both). But overall a very nice entry that is remarkable for its story and atmosphere!
This was awesome! I really enjoyed the game. It was the perfect length and I was invested all the way through. The puzzles difficulty was spot on, they took a bit of thinking but I never felt stuck. I really liked the mechanic of looking for information in the library books, it felt very fitting. The sound and art fit perfectly with the setting and created a nice atmosphere. Great job!
Read lots of Lovecraft at some point, and this game is so in the mood! Loved the design, the pace, the music in the background. Very involving and intriguing experience.
There’s so much to love about this. The pixels, the dialogue, the story, the atmosphere.
Everything just feels so nice and cohesive. Feels like I’m playing an old school point and click adventure game, and I really like that!
Heh very cool Lovecrafty point and click. I thoroughly enjoyed the simple pixel art and the exploration. Nice little touches like swinging the lamp around, reminiscent of DOS point and click interactivity. I'm curious what the logic behind getting the elevator to function and the light working is as I just did trial and error until I got it right. Seeing the 'S' in the glyphs book made me laugh.
I can say I initially experienced the same bugs SeaFishelle mentioned below, using firefox browser. It also made the hallway to the professor's office inaccessible, and some of the books seemed to not 'read' past the first page. Installing it on the itch client seemed to alleviate this on my end, so maybe it's something with the way your implementation runs in firefox.
There isn't really any logic to the elevator/lights, you do kinda need trial-and-error to figure out which switch is which. I know it's not ideal, and was gonna add instructions somewhere (rifling through Jim's pockets, maybe?) but ran out of time. I did deliberately make it so that the lights start "on" and the elevator starts "off" so that just reflexively flipping every single switch isn't the correct solution, but that might have been too harsh.
I primarily tested in Firefox (on Linux, mind you) and have not had any trouble with this, so this bug has me seriously confused. Could you maybe try it with browser extensions turned off? But oh well, stuff happens.
Anyways, thanks for playing!
Hmm unfortunately it seems to be the same even with browser extensions turned off :[
Browsers, amirite? I shoulda just used Godot. Sorry about the bug.
Sorry to ask more follow up questions, but I have a theory about this bug and some more information would be useful, since I can't reproduce it myself.
When you say "the hallway to the professor's office" was inaccessible, do you mean that you couldn't go from the library entrance to the corridor, or that you could enter the corridor but couldn't enter the professor's office itself? Also, were you able to go to the loading area and/or ring the call bell next to the librarian?
Heh you seem to be on the right track with your theory
Wow, it's worse than I thought. At this point I'm pretty sure that it's not just different browsers that're the issue, it's a combination of different browsers and different system display gammas (!?).
The way I'm defining clickable areas involves rendering images with big blocks of colour (blue for one item, green for another, etc.) on a canvas, and then checking the pixel colour at the location that was clicked. But some sort of arcane gamma correction details in the PNG standard can apparently cause PNGs to render slightly differently on different systems (see https://hsivonen.fi/png-gamma/ , I think). Great! You love to see it. And in this case, specifically the areas that I coloured green are broken for some and not others.
Thanks for the help!
Hopefully I can fix this when I have time & get permission to upload the fixed version before the jam ends...Update: I fixed it, I think!
Huh, I seem to have gotten stuck in the bookstacks room. There was no way for me to go back, and going deeper into the stacks wasn't an option. Was I doing something wrong?
I'll refrain from voting for now, because this might just be user error and I'd hate to judge a game based on that, but please let me know how I can finish this game! :)
It should just be possible to go back by clicking on the green carpet near the bottom of the screen. If that's not working then something is definitely broken. Do you know what you did immediately prior, so I can try to reproduce it? Might also be helpful if you could open the browser developer tools and tell me if there are any weird error messages in the console?
All I did was enter the room. I tried multiple times, doing various things in the other rooms, no effect. It's like the trigger zone isn't there.
I did get one red error in the dev stack, though I'm not sure if it's related:
TypeError: a.default.detectStore(...) is undefined
I have no idea what could be causing that. I don't think that error can be directly caused by my game (I don't have a function called "detectStore" anywhere in my own code or dependencies), but after some googling it looks like similar errors can be caused by the browser extension "Honey" conflicting with page content (not sure why that would affect the bookstacks room in particular, though). Do you have that installed and/or did it say the error was produced by a file called `h1-check.js`? Maybe try disabling browser extensions?In any case, sorry about the bug & sorry for all the questions! No need to keep helping with the troubleshooting if you don't want to. hankworx above suggests downloading via the itch app (or maybe try another browser?) if you still want to play it.Never mind, I think you're right that this error is unrelated (but probably still caused by an extension). Problem has something to do with PNG gamma correction; see my response to hankworx above. Hopefully I'll be allowed to upload a fix at some point. In any case, thanks for helping provide information!
The bug should be fixed now, if you're still interested in playing! Understandable if not.
This is pretty much everything I want out of a spooky point and click. The difficulty was just right and the narrative stays very true to its cosmic horror roots.
wow - this game really has HPL vibes - and the extra-world gfx works quite well - how many different finals are there?
it didn't work out too well for me with the last action .-) - even if I'm sure there could be a "good" one
There's basically one good ending, one bad ending, and one good-ish/debatable one. But which one you get really only depends on your actions in the final cutscene, so it's not like there's a lot of replayability.
Anyways, thanks for playing!