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Rune Secrets's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #11 | 4.487 | 4.487 |
| Overall | #34 | 3.795 | 3.795 |
| Audio | #36 | 3.823 | 3.823 |
| Theme | #44 | 4.080 | 4.080 |
| Innovation | #46 | 3.761 | 3.761 |
| Game Design | #97 | 3.619 | 3.619 |
| Fun | #275 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 113 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
The main objective is learning how to open a mysterious door presented at the beginning.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Only the 2D sprites, textures, and the simpler 3D models.
There's a list with all the resources we used but didn't create on the game page, such as models, sound effects, and shaders.
They are all licensed under either CC0 or MIT!
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Comments
The style on this game was amazing. Took me a second to figure out that the arrows were transformations and not a greater than sign, but once I did it was very fun. The ending was worth staying in.
The graphics and audio are stellar! Really nice work. I love the sound of clicking the stones so much I was sitting there spam clicking for a bit haha. I couldn't figure out how to solve the puzzle or what I was supposed to be doing, but I've always struggled with these sorts of games.
Nicely dithered piece, work smart not hart on the modeling part for your first game and the execution shows.
My brain was about to explode until I figured it all out ! very polished game guys congrats !
Really cool game! Took me a long while to understand what was happening until I actually paid attention to the signs on the ground lol! I will admit that some of those signs were confusing for me but not too long.
Overall, great game! Especially for it being your first 3D one!
I absolutely love what you did with the style and sound design. Now I feel kinda bad, but I couldnt figure out what the runes were trying to tell me. I'm sure there's a good puzzle going on here but I just could not get my brain cells around it, I'm guessing it has something to do with transformations or some sort of cypher. Really cool stuff tho
I absolutely love the art style and the sound design was stellar!
Once I got a hang of things I felt very clever solving the puzzles and once I was returned to the main room it all suddenly made sense!
I also like how there could be more than one way to solve the final puzzle!
The pause after picking a door where I sit in darkness waiting to see if I take damage was very suspenseful.
My only gripe was that it kind of took me a long while to figure out what was going on. I didn't realize the M runes were mirroring the symbols because I didn't look closely enough at the crack on the skull. Took me a while to catch that.
I like the funny chicken at the end.
Really awesome game!
Hey! This is a proper puzzle and a mind worker at that!
It took me a while to figure it out but I started getting there in the end!
nice job.
For your first 3d game is great! :D
Please can you try my game? :)
It took my smooth brain a while to realize the runes encoded transformations. Once I did it was a lot of fun. I liked the colors and aesthetic too, and it really fit the theme of the jam. It wasn't just "a well known game genre but with some doors added for flavor". One thing that was a bit weird was how the rune hint pages worked. It seems like you could open the same one multiple times, and you had to close each one separately. You could also click through the page to accidentally activate things in the background. That part was a bit frustrating but I just wrote down the transformations on a sticky note so that pretty much solved it.
Great great great game. Really enjoyed it. I would appreciate it if you could rate my game.
This is a great puzzle game! I loved the art and music. This game oozes style.
I experienced some jank when selecting the rune “pages” in the bottom left corner. You can click to summon the page multiple times, with each click summoning a new page (that needed to be dismissed with another click) in front of the last, and the screen getting dimmer each time. I was also able to click to activate doors even when they were behind the pages. I would’ve really preferred to be able to click the page in the corner again to dismiss it.
I also didn’t like that the blown-up guide pages would cover the symbols over the middle door and on the sign in front, but not the doors on the sides. I think you should cover all the doors (to make it clearly a design choice that you can’t see the reference and the choices at the same time), or make them all visible.
I actually pulled out a pen and paper to take notes on the symbols, which was awesome. I felt like an arcane detective even though I was just doing simple transformations.
I think you should do a little more to highlight the rune guide. Maybe a glowing outline or something. It’s easy to miss because it’s not in the center of the screen. Similarly, I think the note pages could have a glow or some other indicator to them.
The puzzle mechanics were great. I loved how they were simple but strung together to create increasing complexity. At first I didn’t like the health system because I kept having to restart, but I played for a bit more and started to develop a more intuitive feel for reading the symbols (taking notes helped), so it got faster and more rewarding. Good design choice.
This is the only game I’ve played this jam that left me perfectly satisfied and with a sense of mastery.
The duck ending was cute!
Easily the best game I’ve seen in this jam, and the only one I’ve given 5 stars across the board. I’m recommending this game to friends who aren’t even participants, that’s how good it is.
Hey there, thanks for playing and for leaving such a detailed feedback! It will help me a lot. The other comments so far has been kinda mixed, with some people finding it confusing and others loving the mystery and the puzzles, so I'm not 100% sure how this game will evolve in the future... but having ideas on how to expand on it will surely help a lot with at least making a decision!
A lot of people noticed the pages problem, but I haven't solved it yet since the rating is still going on. I'm considering fixing it anyway though haha
Your point about the pages being too blown-up also makes sense, and should be easy to fix. I'm also considering other ways to guide and hint the player, maybe I can think of something that solves everything... well, we'll see. This would also make it harder for the pages to NOT be seen, which happened quite a lot too. The glow outline is a good idea, it would also add quite nicely to the mood!
Also, thanks for rating it so highly and even sharing the game with other people. I know that doing this is a very, very ocurrence in game jams hahaha
Cheers! More to come in the future 🙂
I’m fixing some UI stuff in my own game, take that for what you will. I’m less concerned about winning than I am about making something good - this is after all the time that the most people will probably be playing my game.
Sometimes I wish jams included a feedback & update period. Like 1 week of dev, 1 week of feedback and updating.
I also wanted to add, regarding puzzle confusion - I think there’s an element of targeting your audience here. Some folks like puzzle games that let you figure everything out and do not hold your hand. Cultist Simulator has some of that energy.
Other folks are going to want a more streamlined puzzle experience. So at a certain point you just have to ask yourself - what kind of game do I want to make?
Hm, you are right. It's all niches basically. Some people hate Cultist Simulator, while others really enjoy it for being novel, unique, and letting the players figure things out by themselves. Taking that into account, maybe the reception for this game was better than mixed I guess...
What you said is something I've already heard before, but that doesn't mean I took it to the heart, I suppose. Thanks for the comment, it'll sound cheesy, but this is actually I actually needed to read.
It's so beautiful, the colorpallet an everything feels so great!!
Would love, if you'd play and rate my game :))))
This game is so awesome! I got the “Winner!” ending.
Hi, glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for playing!
Do you remember how you got this ending? It is actually a debug one, and should not be appearing.
Also, in case you want to see the correct ending, you can just enter the "password" you found last playthrough at the beginning of the game. It's quite silly though :)
Yeah, I got the actual ending, and at the credits screen, I realized I could click the main puzzle still (the visuals were hidden but there was sound for interaction). When I repeated my solution for the main puzzle at the credits screen I got this ending, I thought It was a super secret ending, and was proud to have gotten it (please don’t remove it and make it an actual super secret ending).
Love duck ending
Amazing game!
The first thing that stands out is the art style. It looks so good! I love how it looks. I can't really describe the style or effects used but suits the theme sooo well. The mistery of having weird runes and trying to decipher them is a cool idea, I had a lot of fun doing so.
I like how the main door is always there at the start, but if you want to understand what any of it means, you have to go to the rune guide, which is the actual game in which you discover what everything does. Only then can you go back to the main door and open it when you finally understand it all.
The audio design it top notch too. The cave SFX like fire and water dripping sets the mood very well.
I have to admit that the first few times that I unlocked the door I did it by clicking the runes at random. It seems to be very easy to do so! I didn't even understand how any of it works but I still was able to open it, which obviously is something no to be desired. Any player will instinctively just click things at random so this could feasibly happen, but of course we want the player to go through the guide!
One of the things I would personally change is the arrow icon that you use to convey the meaning of "this on the left turns into this on the right". For quite some minutes my mathematics a** was thinking of the symbol "greater than" instead of just an arrow since they are the same. So I was a little bit confused by that. Maybe it's not that common for people to think that though.
One of the best so far <3
Hi, thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it and noticed some much stuff! The rune guide being the actual game is spot on :)
I hadn't noticed what you said about the arrow looking like a "greater than", it makes a lot of sense actually. Having a better arrow could also help other people to understand the game better. I'll take that into account in a future update.
Also, people clicking random buttons until it works has been a recurring situation with other players hahaha
I'm still thinking on how to solve this. Maybe a harder puzzle, or one with more steps, or allow the user to insert only 4 symbols at a time... well, I got some time to think on this.
Once again, thanks a lot for taking the time to play and leave a comment, I really appreciate it. Cheers!
really beautiful and well polished game
Really good game design with beautiful art. A bit complicated but I like the game!
Maybe a bit to complex for my lill brain but what a game !
Beautiful, I really loved the art direction and overall mood of the game ♥
This is really great, we went in very similar directions but you've done a much better job of making the solution intuitively solvable. It also looks incredible!