Play game
Deep Dark's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Completeness - Is it an unfinished tech-demo, prototype or a complete game? | #7 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
| Gameplay - How fun is it to play? | #9 | 3.238 | 3.238 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.362 | 3.362 |
| Audio - Does the game have nice sfx and music? | #11 | 3.238 | 3.238 |
| Graphics - Is the game aesthetically pleasing? | #12 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Originality - Does the game innovate or try something new? | #24 | 2.762 | 2.762 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
This is pretty great! I love the music and the graphics, especially the combat music. I got into trouble at the beginning after you fight the first slime that gives you the rusty sword. I brought out the inventory and click on it thinking that I would equip it, not realizing I threw it away! LOL Solid entry, great job!
RIP rusty sword.
I've noticed that there are a lot of these where the PC starts in a prison cell.
I guess that's more than a bit of an established trope.
The music in this one seemed to have a mind of its own.
Random encounter frequency was a bit too high for my taste and it made it feel like a slog here and there, but other than that, excellent entry. I stand by most of the good stuff already said! Awesome job.
Thank you!
I totally agree on the random encounter chance and we already decreased it in the upcoming post-mortem release of the game :D
Awesome game. The combat system is cool and works well for a short game like this. Loved the style too.
Thanks a lot!
Excellent game, thanks for the play! I would sometimes get the battle music to go off, even though there was no encounter. You could polish this up some and sell it. Thanks,
Haha, yeah, we are well aware that we screwed up the sound system. (We already fixed it; turns out it was only one line of code missing!)
Argh! so Close, Still an excellent submission, thank you :)
I fought the Slime Eater. I could not figure out how to hurt him. I see now from your comments I selected attack when he spitting but it wouldn't land until he switched back to cautious. Clever system but I didn't really enjoy it. Others seemed to like it so maybe this one just isn't my style. Good job on the game.
I think this just isn't your style after all the other feedback we received. (which is completely fine! Not every game system is meant for everyone (that's how we get bland open world AAA games haha))
I completed the game, had about 10 Throwing axes left to fight against the Demon Lord, which was probably a good thing, I did not do the maths but the Master Sword and the Healing Tome might or might not be enough, that's fine either way, either way would have its pros and cons. I like the perpetual renewal/neverending story ending (although I did not discarded the World ender before leaving so I'll never be sure whether there's another ending if you do).
The game has by far the best combat system of the games of the jams I played so far (I played about 3/4 of them), it reminded me of Helen's Mysterious Castle but it's likely not the only game with this single character CT-based system where managing CT and parrying is the key. That combined with very good resource management make it puzzlish the right way.
I mapped the parts I visited (I probably skipped about one half ot the dungeon), the quality of the fixed treasures is on point, these treasures are worth finding but not to the point where visiting every single tile to be sure you would not miss one is mandatory. Difficulty is on point too by the way, I think difficulty which does not increase but rather in a sense decreases (but never gets braindead) as you go further (with the Master Sword, among other things) is a good compromise to make for this sort of jam games with permadeath, it's satisfying to beat the game (and see all its content) while in the context there's a good chance someone who would die during the second part of the game won't try again.
Good job, one of the strongest entries for sure.
Thank you very much! Glad you liked it!
There was a second ending planned, but we didn't have the mental capacity left to implement it!
Helen's Mysterious Castle was definitely the main inspiration behind the combat system, but we wanted to mix in resource management :D
The systems got a bit over my head and discarding my sword the moment I found it, made me angry. But I tried again and it won me over with the graphics. I for one really like the feeling of consoleized Wizardry you have going on here.
We had a lot of fun playing that. We couldn't work out how to get more health, other than the Vampiric sword. The Glibber was aptly named! The artwork on the monsters was really nice, although there was a bit of as disconnect with the graphics for the dungeon. More variety of dungeon wall/floor tiles would have been nice. Pixel font choice was appropriate. The inventory system in battles worked very well. So frustrating when a weapon broke, which was that Darkest Dungeon frustration moment - this is a good thing. Such a good variety of monsters and weapons, which was great. Good job with the game. You did really well getting it finished in a week with so much content.
Started game, read story, killed enemy, found sword, discarded sword :D
Restarted it and got a lot further and enjoyed it. Little bit slow movement but bareable.
Liking the visuals and the atmosphere! Not really a big fan of the JRPG's but you definitely got the usual mechanics implemented so good job on that :)
Thanks for playing the game!
Yeah, JRPGs aren't everybody's cup of tea. :D
I really like the visuals of the dungeon and the battle music is great. The presentation of the menus is very ps1 jrpg as well, it looks great.
For me the only problem is that the game is just really hard. The last run I tried I got to the slimeeater with 4hp remaining haha I think I could have gotten further with a few more health potions.
Nice entry!
Thank you for playing!
What exactly did you find difficult about the combat system? Was the encounter rate too high? Was it unclear how the "CT System" works? Did RNG screw you over? (Unless your RNG is bad you should be able to stay at 50+ HP for the majority of the first couple of floors since the combat system itself is mostly deterministic and transparent (Minus the % based effects like Stun, Deadly and Stagger))
SPOILER: Here's the tactic for the Slime Eater: The Slime Eater will always use "Cautious" followed by "Red Goo Spit". During Cautious, you can't hurt him due to the high DEF 20 value of the move. So you can instead use the time to heal up with Glibber or a Health Potion but you'll need to time your attack moves in such a way that they will activate once "Cautious" ends and before "Red Goo Spit" ends as well as the Slime Eater will cast "Cautious" after that as well. For example, you'll need to use a Rusty Sword or a Long Sword between CT 2 and CT 7 to hurt it during "Red Goo Spit".
This has a cool dungeon atmosphere, sometimes the combat music would randomly play with no actual encounter but that didn't bother me too much. Great job!
Thanks!
Yeah, we messed up the audio system pretty badly! Sorry for that. Thanks for playing :)
I agree with Gerald's assessments here, but I would like to add on that the anime girl feels out of place artistically in comparison to the rest of the assets. Solid game overall though
Thanks for playing!
As we said, the game is heavily inspired by the old Japanese Wizardry games which often featured some more "anime" looking character depictions, mixed with very western monster designs, so this is 100% intended.
Ah that makes a lot of sense now
To begin, I enjoyed the PS1 aesthetic. I also thought it was interesting to implement a JRPG style turn based combat system. As a matter of fact, from art to sound it very much had a JRPG feel to it. In that way, it reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei.
The inventory system confused me a little. I tried to use a health item I picked up after a fight and it was discarded. It was only after that I saw the sign that said selecting an item discards it. Felt a bit counterintuitive to me.
With the combat, I appreciate what you were going for with the "Last Resort" combat option, but the problem comes when you pick up a bunch of shields and then you have to sit and block attack after attack until the option opens up. This can take a while if you have a lot of shields.
I think there could be a way to beat it, but I wasn't able to myself. I think the weapon durability and the lack of a melee option really got in the way.
Altogether, very good entry, though.
First of all, thank you for the detailed feedback!
Yeah, the inventory system could have used a bit more tweaking...
We also agree with the feedback on the combat system! In the future, we might revisit this idea but we'll probably give the player a default "Attack" and "Defend" options that you don't have to waste items or stand idle for so long.
I liked the graphics - very nice :)
Thank you very much!