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Shadows // The Shroud in: Calm Before the Storm's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #837 | 2.417 | 3.222 |
| Fun | #863 | 2.417 | 3.222 |
| Graphics | #948 | 2.417 | 3.222 |
| Overall | #1030 | 2.111 | 2.815 |
| Game Design | #1074 | 2.000 | 2.667 |
| Innovation | #1123 | 1.833 | 2.444 |
| Theme | #1269 | 1.583 | 2.111 |
Ranked from 9 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 premise of the game is all about the protagonist investigating a case that will go way over his head, the calm before the storm, before the incoming gang war and attempts to kill him. Wave based levels and stealth also weave themes of cyclical chaos and relief into the experience.
Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Code, mostly - some is similar to other projects but jankily reimplemented for the jam as fast as possible. The intention was originally to reuse a lot of code from another project, but it ended up being unfit for purpose, so I built tailored versions that only do what the game needs to do.
Art wise, no - a lot of Unreal Marketplace art assets are used to make this project possible. As well, Mixamo Fuse is used for creating characters. Some AI art and machine learning based tools are used for the comic panels.
Sound wise, mixture - our great musician friend Ian Leech did the soundtrack and we did all of the voices, other SFX are from around the web and marketplace. CC credits on main game page. Trailer music from Incompetech.
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God damn, 14.9 GB!?!?!?! Not a bad game, but you can't just put enemies in a big area and call it a day. And also wished that the player would heal as the time passes(or at least faster), the player isn't really guided where to go and it's pretty hard to find out where exactly you have to go and idk why you get rid of the bullets inside the revolver when reloading. It's always about fun, not realism(most cases).
Hope that you'll also play mine :) https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2973690
Feedback well appreciated.
-How can we improve upon the existing objective marker system to indicate to the player where to go?
-The player begins to heal after 3sec without taking damage, and will be fully healed in about 25. This is actually twice as long as intended due to a bug made in some late night jam marathon coding - the interval on the timer that controls this is hardcoded and does not match the interval used for the math in the function. Good catch! Correcting this for the upcoming P0.2 update. The design intention is 12.5 seconds, which is meant to roughly match the time it would take for the player to, once behind cover, reload both of their weapons, meaning that all of the actions requiring downtime could occur at once.
-Yeah, the entire revolver is itself a design misstep. But, I hope I can answer your question - the shooting here was designed and written during a very early phase where a slower, stealth based, tactical shooter was the plan. Then, as the movement morphed because the game was more fun as a movement shooter, due to time constraints, the gunplay did not fully get tightened up to match. The result is that these two sides of the game directly conflict. In the upcoming P0.2 update, I've rectified this by making the default starter weapon a 1911-style semi automatic pistol with significantly tighter handling, adding crosshair highlighting to help with timing and hitmarkers that indicate enemy health, and buffing the revolver with zoom and the benefits of a reworked ADS system to turn it into a true hand cannon, punishing both to the enemy if the player is skilled and thoughtful and to the player if they make a mistake, for the kinds of people who love to play deagle in CS, the reload being punishing if you try to "COD load" becomes part of the fun if the revolver is an option for some playstyles but is absolutely not fun for most players when it's the default option. There's a devlog on our page here if you are interested: New weapon implemented for P0.2: Semi-automatic pistol (1911) - Shadows // The Shroud in: Calm Before the Storm by Winnitude!, Cageramnod, Kyron VideoArts (itch.io)
I post new updates and progress every couple days, our goal is to reach a state where we have a very fun, polished, playable, multiplatform game with strong multiplayer and singleplayer to match, to then fund and build into something even greater. We are fully committed for the next 2 years. So if you like the core game but want to see it with more polish and time behind it, feel free to follow along :)
-Yeah, levels came last - still proud that we managed to get 4 levels with at least a taste of a parkour section, a stealth section (though it sucked and the map itself was an asset demo), waves modes, and 5 cutscenes in time - but level design is absolutely not the strong suit here and we're reworking the campaign as we progress towards P1.0. Do you have any suggestions?
Hope you enjoyed & hope you consider coming back in the future!
Will give your game a shot in the morning.
-The objective marker isn't a bad addition but it can't be at last building. It can be a bit disorienting. Being in every consecutive building could be an upgrade. Not only that but there are many other ways that you can guide the player where to go like: different light colors, signs, new enemies on the way, yellow paint lol and other many ways :).
-The healing takes too long, especially when you fight enemies with shotguns(at least get full healed during each break between waves).
-Getting rid of the bullets inside the gun while reloading is just a no no.
-And be more careful with the collisions.In the first level, you can jump on the second building only if you get on top of one of the little pillars, which is a bit annoying.
PS: Just know I discovered the dash mechanic and it's very broken. I think just a simple wall run mechanic would have been more convenient.
The game does have a wall run mechanic - if you hold forward as well as the direction of the wall while wall jumping you move along the wall, you can time it to ride the surface, kind of like flappy bird without obstacles. You can do this infinitely without losing height. If you only hold the direction of the wall when wall jumping, but not forward, you bounce off of and away from the wall. This, combined with the dash, is the intended way to cross the gap and reach the final buildings in the first level, wall run, bounce, dash to next building, wall run, bounce, dash to next building. Based on the wording of "discovering" the dash mechanic, I am wondering - did you play the tutorial?
Can you explain what you mean by very broken? Other reviews have mentioned it makes the game fun, I am wondering what bug you encountered with it, or if you mean it is overpowered, so that I can improve it for Sunday's update. Right now it is infinite instead of being only twice in the air, which is to allow jam players to circumvent difficulty to play the game, as a courtesy owing to the limited time we can give each entry as we play them.
Had a lot of fun playing this game, but definitely preferred the shotgun over the revolver (I am not very precise at aiming). I loved the music and sound effects. The story was good too, but I would have liked a way to skip the cutscenes so I didn't need to watch them each time I loaded up the story. It took a little bit of time to get used to the wall run, because you don't actually stick onto the wall like in most games I play, but it didn't take long to get used to. Apart from that, killing the enemies was very satisfying, and I love all the different mechanics that this game has!
Hey! Glad you liked it!
We're definitely going to add a skip button in the next update - speaking of: you're going to love the next update if you don't like the revolver - new starter weapon has much tighter handling. I sent a video on the discord but, here's a more up to date clip: New weapon implemented for P0.2: Semi-automatic pistol (1911) - Shadows // The Shroud in: Calm Before the Storm by Winnitude!, Cageramnod, Kyron VideoArts (itch.io)
In the meantime until we patch it, if you ever feel like playing more Shadows and not watching the cutscenes, the Level Select will skip the opening cutscene for that mission. It's not a perfect solution as you can't get out to menu once you end the level and start the next levels' opening cutscene, but I hope that in some way that can help you derive more enjoyment from our project.
If you like the game feel free to follow the devlog, we are bringing out tons of new stuff gradually over the course of the next few weeks in patches, bringing this game to the state of a full prototype for the full fat, full length title we plan to turn it into. That includes multiplayer and a bunch more stuff :)
Thanks for playing & thanks for the feedback!
Really cool game, amazing graphics, gameplay feels amazing, great job!! This game should have much more ratings!
If you like the game feel free to follow the game page/devlog, we are bringing out tons of new stuff gradually over the course of the next few weeks in patches, bringing this game to the state of a full prototype for the full fat, full length title we plan to turn it into. That includes multiplayer and a bunch more stuff :)
Thanks for playing!
I like the sound of the weapon when it fires, it's very satisfying. The game is fun once you understand you can dash infinitely, for anyone reading this comment I recommend trying it out.
Edit: I did not know you could dash infinitely lol I completely misunderstood the game. The reloading didn't feel good enough though, if I tried to fire it reset and increased the timer, maybe thats intended? I was able to complete it on medium just fine, punching felt good too. I initially said it was overwhelming because I didn't know you could spam dash. That's entirely my fault. The game plays pretty nicely and the enemies have enough feedback. Also, after dying focus is restored to the game by shooting once instead of automatically, and sometimes wall jumping still felt a little inaccurate, but it was enough for me to use the dash system.
> The wall jumping mechanic seems to be done with a slightly bigger cube on the bottom which I found to be a pretty janky way of implementing that.
I am very confused about what you mean by this. There are no cubes involved in this mechanic to speak of, only one identical trace that is done three times, once at the feet, once at the mid section, and once at the head height, always from the center of the capsule. The distance of this trace is always the same, multiplied by the normalized input vector rotated into the space of the character, which will, of course, always have a length of one. The result is a trace that is, mathematically, always the same length, which is the closest thing I guess to be analogous to the sizes of these "cubes".
Can you explain what you mean in terms of actual gameplay effect? As what you are describing in terms of implementation to change does not exist in the game in the first place, it is not that helpful, but I'd love to fix whatever gameplay issue you experienced.
As well, if you are having problems dying too quickly, there are difficulty options you can use in the menu. Story mode gives you nearly unlimited health. I've yet to see someone fail to complete the game in under half an hour on medium though in various Discord streams and whatnot except one person who had to change it to easy, but if you do need the option, it's there. I have also never seen someone become overwhelmed by the concept of using the dash since we added the infinite time you can stand on that ledge unnoticed (though it was definitely much more problematic in an earlier incarnation of the level where there was an enemy on the first platform), especially after playing the tutorial, but I will keep this in mind for next time.
I'll give it another shot. From the tutorial it looked like the ledge of a slightly bigger cube was being used for the player to step on and wall jump and it seemed to not work sometimes. I only tried it for a few minutes, and I gave an unfair review. (edit)
This "cube thing/ledge" is what I mean
Ah. yeah that's just a flaw with the tutorial level and has nothing to do with the wall jump mechanic itself. In Unreal we still use old style Constructive Geometry to cut into larger blocks to make levels like it's the 90s and the two blocks are misaligned. The mechanic is not dependent on the geometry of the wall next to it though - you can ride the wall at any height regardless of if you're over the lip, and wall jumping/riding is a necessary mechanic along the flat surfaces of the buildings in the first level, the walls in the second, and the fences etc in the fourth for maintaining speed to avoid getting shot.
Also, reloading interrupts the counter if you try to shoot mid reload because it's a revolver, most FPS games do this where you can interrupt the reload at any time to continue shooting, but you only have as many bullets as you inserted. I will be keeping this in mind though and giving the player a simpler semi automatic pistol as the starter weapon that is easier to get the hang of at first. This is definitely a design flaw on my part - the revolver is way too cumbersome. This originates from the game being originally planned as a slow paced tactical shooter but morphing into a movement shooter, and not everything about the design changed to keep up - the gunplay/aiming system is also noticeably inappropriate to the movement.
Will definitely patch this after the rating period, we are totally redoing the tutorial. Thanks for pointing this out!
Hi! Can you upload a browser playable version? In that way more people can play and rate it!
It's made in unreal and is 14GB so a browser version probably wouldn't be possible.
It's 100% possible using the built in tools for Pixel Streaming and the server I already have to deliver the full experience to a couple dozen players at a time through the browser so long as they have high speed internet and with zero download time, plus there are older greybox versions of every map that use cubes for everything that I could specify in place of the final maps to make the build a couple hundred MB and then use one of the current community solutions for WebGL.
Just time constraints unfortunately. Jam's over so no new builds for 2 weeks too.
oh that's interesting as I've never seen an unreal engine web game. If it's possible that's crazy.
Yeah Pixel Streaming is pretty cool, my day job is almost entirely writing code for a pixel streaming application. It's like Unreal's built in version of Stadia. You provide your own servers and let it mostly handle the rest, so while it's not sustainable for a huge game, totally doable to let 15-20 people try a jam game remotely at a time.
This is their solution to not having working web export since 4.27 :P though the community has picked up the slack and made their own webGL plugins, the beauty of the engine being source available is that the community can continue to maintain and port the old WebGL plugin forward.
No, the jam is over.
It looks amazing! I love all the ambientation and visual effects. Great submission
It would be awesome if you could take a look at my project as well. Any feedback would be fantastic!
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2972711
Thank you! Yes, I'll give your game a shot tomorrow/today once I've slept. It's been a hell of a week so far but finally getting to play these!
I really liked your game, it has a "how am I going to compete with this" look, really a professional game :)
If you can rate my game I would really appreciate it: https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2970215
Thank you! Yes, I'll give your game a shot tomorrow/today once I've slept. It's been a hell of a week so far but finally getting to play these!
damn i ain't downloading all tha
It's worth it, I swear :)
Can always leave it downloading overnight and remove it after you're finished with it if you have space for it.
If not, understandable! The decision to buff up the graphics and get those levels done as fast as possible with a ton of high-resolution assets at the last minute was, while beneficial to the game itself, one that comes with the consequences of making the game less accessible to people on slower connections and hardware.