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A Walk in the Dark's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #38 | 2.994 | 3.667 |
| Music and Sound | #48 | 2.041 | 2.500 |
| Creativity | #50 | 2.313 | 2.833 |
| Overall | #54 | 2.096 | 2.567 |
| Gameplay/Fun | #62 | 1.497 | 1.833 |
| Graphics | #63 | 1.633 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game follow the theme?
Player is required to move in the light and loses sanity if they wander in the dark.
Did you use any pre-made assets? If so, credit them here:
Fonts: Pixel Digivolve, New September
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Comments
This game has a fun concept and I coomend you for going thru with completing your project as a solo (?) dev. I like the way the light theme is clearly displayed as a central mechanic and the graphics utilize it appropriately. The backtrack changing with the state of the character was also an interesting touch to showcase the state of mind the player character is in. That said, there are some concerns I had with mechanics.
For a game like this where the main gameplay emphasizes quick and precise movements (especially given the fast and unreplenishable sanity meter), the movement just doesn't suffice. There is a major bug that occurs when the player tries to change direction while the character is moving, causing them to continue moving in the same direction they were walking in before. This forces the player to have to slow down and wait until the character stops moving to switch to another direction, which increases the time they're in the dark, making it even harder than need be to find what they need. Additionally, I think that while the idea of collecting keys to unlock doors is a classic and familiar concept that people are used to, it could have been done better by indicating which keys go to where. If there were less doors, floors and keys overall, this wouldn't be as much of an issue since it would be more obvious, but because there are so many doors to unlock, not having any kind of indication makes it so it is virtually impossible to win with the quick sanity drain, difficult movement, and overabundance of darkness unless you are the developer yourself.
That said, this isn't the worst game I've seen and I think there's some potential to the idea, but it definitely needs some polish and a little reworking of values to make it achievably fun. All in all, I hope you have a good day :)
Cool idea and good atmosphere of the game. Character movement is litlle downside.
I like what u did with the lighting and idea itself is pretty good. The movement and the graphics weren't that good, I think stuff in the game was 16x16 or 32x32 but your characters resoulution was much higher, and it doesn't look too good. Besides that it's awesome
Solid use of the theme, and the art is pretty good, there was definitely an error on the character sprite it has a slightly weird outline, but it's likely negligible. I love the creativity of the music track increasing in pitch and speed. However, for me, the controls are wildly out of wack, making the game almost unplayable. The art and soundtrack, are really good tho. And the shadow work is amazing. Great Job you should be proud!
Thank you so much! For the controls I tried to replicate the controls in the controls in the early Pokemon series but I couldn't quite get it right.
Every floor looks the same, character has weird white outline, music track is a bit annoying, though I like that it increases in pitch as the character becomes more overwhelmed.
Hi! Thanks for playing!
When you said every floor looks the same did you mean every floor with the stairs or the other floors? I want to learn how to improve on it.
The staircase rooms were fine looking similar, as they had numbers to distinguish them, but I feel like the actual floors themselves need more variety, as they all use the same floor, walls, tables, etc. Maybe some floors being carpetted or having wood flooring instead of the tile would help, as well as having more debris and objects in the environment like water coolers or different desk variations. I also think there should be a way to regain sanity, as (as far as I was aware), you only lose it and if you don't know where youre going its very easy to waste sanity looking around empty areas
Thanks for the reply. I'll make sure I add more variety in my future games. Also there are ways to regain sanity, but only in key locations. Once again thanks for playing.