Amazingly well presented, great user interface. It oozed potential with the backpack, item descriptions, stats modifiers and character traits and abilities. The "What have you learned", etc. journal/quests page was a great touch. This really felt like a classic RPG of old. Great job. Font was a great choice as well BTW!

As you've probably noticed, we're not huge fans of the retro 8 bit style graphics ourselves but it was all self-consistent. The instant movement and lack of free look made it feel a bit clunky and disorienting when moving around. The textures for walls were almost identical in many places, like the dark cave in the forest, so sometimes I wasn't even sure if I'd moved forwards or not.

Verticality was a nice touch and worked pretty well in the library.

We spotted some typos in the narrative text. On the "New Books Table" the "Well" at the end should probably be "Will".  The "Cursed Book" "draw" should probably be "drawn". It's OK. Dan (our artist) can't spell either.

Combat was nicely done. Turn based like the original rogue type combat mechanic. You move and then they move at the same time. Don't move and nothing happens. It's more tactical, which can be good and less sweaty. You avoided the two step by locking into combat when an enemy was next to you. Multiple enemies could attack at once as well and you saw an arrow indicating when they were there but offscreen. The special abilities like Frenzy and Defend which showed an active icon and the number of turns remaining for that effect was excellent. We weren't sure what the scale of health was for any of the enemies so when we did 5 damage, we couldn't understand what that meant. The enemy health light did change color but it was a very coarse way of describing enemy health. It didn't make for meaningful combat decisions.

Lots of really nice narrative touches were in there like walking up to the walls with number lines etches into them and it mentioning counting the days. This enhanced the theme of solitude. Having a conversation with someone and not killing them and them telling you about a key was something rarely done in the dungeon crawler jam and we did like that. Intro was nice, we were worried it was going to be too wordy but actually you hit the sweet spot on that.

We played for 47 minutes but couldn't get out of the forest so we quit the game. At one point a Hint came up that suggested we might have hit a bug as it said we could interact with the books of the walls, but all we saw were trees.

Sound was good with nice UI and combat sound effects.

Very small point, and we're only mentioning it because everything was so polished and well done. The light direction on your buttons seemed off on the start menu. The title "Library of Endless Souls" has the light from the top left, but the buttons/panel edges suggest it's coming from the top right. Also, when your backpack needed a scrollbar, the mouse scroll wheel didn't seem to be calibrated properly so you couldn't move more than a few pixels at a time. Thankfully you could drag to scroll. Again, small point but you might want to fix it in your toolkit.

Overall that is one of the best entries we've seen in a game jam. It felt very complete and so much thought had gone into everything, from the UI to the narrative and then the combat system. Great job. We're inspired by your entry to try to do more things like yours in our next game.

Really nice entry and a lot to like about this one. Got a huge chunk of retro vibes from it too. 

Loved to just roam around and explore the library, the forrest and caves. Found a couple of cool items and the key.

Very fitting art style too.

My only complain is that the windows bar was covering the bottom of the screen, making it impossible to use the lower buttons but was okay after a restart. Probably a Unity thing.

Big thumbs up!

I have defeated the abomination, beat the game in 3033 turns.

Everything part of the game is cool. I like the instant movement and wall textures, the library is specially atmospheric,  mysterious and oppressive especially in the big red book zone. I like that it feels super big with a lot of verticality (while also not wasting your time). I really like the structure where you advance through gaining hints, it was there but you probably missed it (spotting the key is very possible though I did not) is so much more fun than if you had to follow a scripted narrative to me. Exploring the red book zone before owning the teleport spell and wondering what I could do was interesting. The enemies and the big thing in the background at the end look cool and I enjoyed the fast combat, more than once (I mean I entered only 3 books so maybe twice?) I killed a minotaur when I was almost dead, it was tense. Smashing a crystal was a good way to end the game (rather than directly fighting a god thing).

This is a super fun entry, thanks for sharing.

Great intro.  It really hooked me.
The book entering is a great framing device.
And seeing all those tally marks on the walls was a great touch.

At first I was a little frustrated cuz I couldn't figure out how to equip my loot.  Died to the Minotaur a bunch of times.  Should have checked the page sooner.

Sometimes I encountered this glitch where I couldn't open the blue and silver chests.  Then on my 3rd or 4th book I got trapped in the house and couldn't interact with anything.  Called it quits there... or did I?

As I was writing this review I looked to the side and noticed a room I hadn't seem before.  Then I remembered the clue about the Green Book upstairs.  I jumped back into the game, and basically blitzed through the rest of it on intuition.

It's a very impressive entry overall.  The books are a bit samey.  I imagine if you had more time they'd be more varied.  Maybe a little more robust with exploring each character more.  Though then you'd probably need mid-book saves if that were the case,

Playthrough: Library of Lost Souls by Pt1 DaveLikesPasta
(I lost the first 10 minutes when I accidentally recorded my desktop instead of the game.  I don't think you're missing much.  I patched it up with some additional footage.)

The scope of this project is seriously impressive; doing all the art and design yourself is an incredible achievement,  and the art is of venerable quality. I never realised how challenging pixel sprites are, and to actually make them look nice and consistent. I would gladly insert a pineapple violently up my back passage to have a scintilla of the skill on display here.

Yes, I did encounter a range of bugs, however I was pleased to learn that simply speed-running through each objective was possible and made getting back to the same point nice and quick to finish the game.

I loved the RPG elements, they feel fleshed out for a jam and still extensible enough for this to be turned into something really great and commercially viable, should you be so inclined.

All in all, I think this is one of the strongest entries. I fear that the bugs might affect the score more than it deserves but I really loved this one and think it's a real achievement, and is aspirational for those who are new to this game and need projects to look up to.

Thank you.

This was really cool! The graphics were nice, the setup was interesting and the concept of playing the torment of various characters was a neat concept!

I imagine it wasn't an inspiration, but it honestly kinda reminded me of the library in Thimbleweed Park where every book had part of a story written by kickstarter backers. Which is a good thing imo.

The combat seems simple but was surprisingly polished and varied for a jam game considering the different characters, stats and items. Though I am sad I didn't get to use the holy plate.

Also sadly I didn't get through this game as I ran into the teleport bug, and when I tried to load the savegame, it didn't save any of my progress and I didn't have the spell or key anymore.

I did also find the inventory a bit confusing until I read another comment mentioning the inventory list scrolled. I really would recommend adding the little scrollbar in a post-jam update, it's a simple thing that can screw up an otherwise fantasic entry.

Overall I really enjoyed this though, great work!

Nice graphics and world. Bit large to get a good grasp of. There is like worlds within worlds. Movement is good, but I kept getting disoriented anyway when strafing and turning.

Had an issue where I fought a creature and died, but stayed in the combat screen unable to do anything. Think it was when I pressed the heal at the same time I died.

Thanks for the game!

This ticks all the boxes!  I am surprised how much it feels like a full game.  It reminds me a bit of Bards Tale III with all the different realms you can visit.  Combat and progression were fun, balanced, and understandable.  I'd love to see it developed further!

The issue I had with the inventory was that it was hard to equip items as they did not seem to appear in your inventory after I picked them up.  However, if you unequip an item, it goes to the bottom of your list and you can cycle through all the items that way.  It's a bit wonky, but that's a game jam, right?  Also, if you already have a certain item, just don't pick any more up, as they will prevent other items from showing.  

Moving down a straight dark path is a bit disorienting when nothing changes, you should do the "flip the floor tile every step" trick of the old games =)

The setup for the final level was fantastic, though maybe it shouldn't have been surprising, it was a delightful surprise =).

Ran into the teleport bug (still had heal/burning hands in my spell menu from coming from playing a ranger, I think), but reloading worked, although I also had to re-find the teleport spell.

The "World" info was great, I didn't always pay enough attention and it had just what I needed to know.

I really liked the art, really amazing to do all of that and the game mechanics all at once in the jam =).

The forest textures were especially great, it was cool seeing monsters through the trees.  The verticality in the library was also fun.

That is a entry with very high quality. While the graphics may look a bit simplistic at first, you soon realize, that there is quite a bit of variety and even bits of animation. The battle system works quite well and finding and equpiting the different book characters was fun. I died a couple of times, so it seems to be on the harder difficulty side. I loved the book theme and that small things changed, when dying inside a book. Good one!

I've watched a few people play this on stream and now I've played it myself as well.

I absolutely love the art, a big highlight is the crazy evil eternal evil in the sky but most of all I love the cave grubs <_< but all the art is great, the books, the tiles, the sprites, etc. The beginning cutscene was awesome and the kind of yawning void of the endless library once you get past the gate gives me very otherworldly dimension/liminal space vibes.

The games systems are also really interesting, the fact that each story has a unique world that crafts your character with skills and equipment, the stories changing once you fulfill the quest in the book, even without the overarching narrative I think it's such a cool concept. The wider story provides a really interesting narrative structure to what your doing as the librarian as well. Really cool. 

I had a few bugs. Wasn't able to equip some stuff, I had the teleport bug, but not a big deal for a jam game, especially one with this breadth of content. I also wish I could drop items, but that's really about it.

Really well crafted entry, nice job!

This was really fun! I could also have worked for last year’s “Duality” theme :)

It took me longer than I’d like to realize that I can scroll the inventory by clicking on the list and dragging. I was despairing that all my good loot was inaccessible :)

The UI looked amazing and great job on the pixel art. The counting of days on the library walls was a nice touch. I really was enjoying the librarian’s meta story :)

I encountered a couple of bugs: At some point most of the enemies stopped billboarding and didn’t animate or attack me. I could not wear the holy platemail as the paladin, and got stuck in one of the taverns.

With a little more content, I could see this as a fully-fledged game.

Great job!

Got to the end and I really had fun even though I did encounter loads of bugged pieces myself. Teleport not working and sometimes you would be locked inside of one of the cabins are major ones.

But I knew where what is located at the end and just rushed through to get the last scene. 

A lot of old-school charm in this one. I can imagine greater variety of scenes in those books and it just amazing to think about. Everything is in there - it just time for content needed. Would play full-scale for sure!

One thing is... maybe it just me, but I spend ungodly amount of time figuring out if there is inventory or not. I didn't even think of clicking on the portrait and was thinking it autoequips... would be thinking it does if not for screenshots with inventory on the discord. Maybe some "inventory" icon on top of the portrait would solve the confusion, not sure :)

Nice concept! Well put together too!

Also, I'm buying stock in Longswords of Doom. :)

The twist of the infinite library is really cool once I realized what was happening. Combat is fun with a couple of different options based on the person you embody and really well balanced to boot. Took a bit to realize I could click the portrait to equip all my treasure, at first I just thought it was auto equipping when I couldn't find an inventory button.

 A few bugs - some chests would not open, couldn't equip the holy platemail as the paladin and unfortunately I don't think I could finish the game because the teleport spell doesn't work or I wasn't using it correctly to hop the gap. 

If there's something I'm missing I would love to know to revisit and beat it.

Otherwise, awesome entry. Top tier in my book (heh)

I got further on the second run. Not fully at the end of it yet… I’ll have to ask you for hints later on Discord.

Very enjoyable game. Some iterations of the levels are quire nerve-wrecking when all enemies just converge upon you. But I also found it a quite useful strategy to rest and let the enemies come interrupt you.

I sometimes got too much in my inventory so that I couldn’t see them all and then had to rotate everything around to get what I wanted. Perhaps the game could also auto-equip if you character slot for the thing is empty.

I got to the teleport spell but I seemed no to be allowed to use it.

I’ll give it another run later after a break but I’ll just note down what I found before getting stuck in a book.

I liked the game and its setting. The combat was intuitive with one caveat. Since there was a nice UI for almost everything with instructions for what key to press for what… I missed clicking the portrait to go to inventory and equipping what I had found. It made slaying the Minotaur quite challenging. I only noticed after a few attempts.

Since the enemy health bars didn’t convey that much information, I’m wondering if it might even add to the suspense a bit to remove them. Might be worth a try.

The verticality in the library was also very nice! I forgot to test if there was fall damage. But being eternally doomed to serve as the librarian it would have been a bit too easy way out if you could jump yourself free.

This was neat. I like the art style. Good UI. If everybody did UI this way, there would be no hard to play games.

Great job.

Looks like Cave Grub is for dinner.

Excellent game! There is so many systems, and the spin about how you're a librarian forced to handle those books is really nice!