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Escaping the Cosmic Abyss's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #10 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
Ranked from 40 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
**Please Read** there is a UI bug that may make the item and skill bars go away. If you encounter this, you can open the console with the Tilda Key ` and type the following:
show_widget("skill_bar_custom")
Cosmic Horror - takes place in space and there's monsters and events that fit this theme. This is apparent upon exploring the first planet, if not earlier.
Ancient Ruins - the player explores ancient ruins on the planets they land on throughout the game
infinite - the player is stuck in an infinite loop. this is apparent after the final boss is defeated and you go back to your cryochamber
isolation - the player starts on a space ship, theres evidence that there is a crew but they are mysteriously gone. The player is alone and explores abandoned facilities and ancient, abandoned ruins....except for the whispers
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Comments
This is a damn fine entry. Obviously there are a few bigs to iron out, but I was actually disappointed it was over so soon. Turning space travel into a dungeon crawler too was a delightful idea. Nice work!
Playthrough: Cosmic Abyss Pt1 by Realms&Ruins
Cool entry! I love the visual style, though wish a little more had been done with the voxels - they were nice in the first room where it wasn't just sprites =).
Not being able to see the ground of the tile to your right/left made navigating the planet with lava nerve-wracking, I did walk into lava accidentally a couple times, though it was probably due to thinking I was turning when I pressed the Strafe key, not the visuals -_-.
I got the console dropping down and saying `Error in put_entity (lava planet - walking out): Invalid entity.`
For some reason the "space" key couldn't open the engine room, I was stuck for a while on that until I tried reaching for the mouse. Other than that, it played pretty well with just keyboard.
After the "oh no not again", I got lost, went to a planet I'd been too, and then it reset so I had to go to cryosleep again. After reading here, I guess that's the infinite loop (maybe mention it on the game page would be less jarring ^_^)?
I love the grid based space travel, it felt surprisingly good.
I looked forward to playing another 2D in 3D retro looking game. I really liked the animated water tiles.
Very impressive atmosphere. The empty mysterious space ship was a great way to start a game. Having so many prompts really added to it. So, many elements worked together. Even some random wall had a text prompt. There were some items that didn't though, for example papers on a table. So, it felt somewhat inconsistent. Still, it's no doubt just a minor oversight.
The mouse cursor wouldn't change for some items, so I ended up clicking on everything that looked interesting.
UI: when I equipped a weapon in the inventory, it didn't show up on the HUD like I expected.
Nice use of flashing lights in a dark scene, very movie like feel to the game. Again, great atmosphere.
There was some minor light bleeding through your wall textures.
When dying after collecting the last crystal, I still had it in my inventory when waking up.
I killed off the final cosmic horror, but still stayed floating around in space.
I guess the infinite theme is that the cosmic horror keeps coming back? I'm not sure it's that satisfying, but then the theme was an odd one to me at least.
Overall, great entry.
It's a very complete game.
The idea of grid-based space travel was surprising and a great experience. It is also fun to explore different planets.
Unfortunately, after being trapped in eye area, I had to give up because I couldn't escape after a lot of trial and error.
But there is no doubt that this work is very well done.
We've never seen RPG in a Box before so that was really interesting to experience a game in it. We're guessing the UI issues were related to the game engine?
The graphics were nice and self-consistent. The voxel approach worked well here. Even the ambient occlusion added something unexpected to what were basically extruded sprites. The variety of the items you could interact with was great. The level design was excellent. You really felt like you were on a spaceship or on different planets. You'd incorporated all the themes in a way that wasn't a stretch, even the Infinite bit where the game restarted at the end (and we groaned). Picking up things from cupboards was very satisfying.
A/D to rotate. Q/E to strafe. NOOOOOOOOOOOO...!!!!!! This almost made the game unplayable for us, especially on the lava planet maze where we were constantly strafing when we meant to turn and then ended up in the lava taking damage.
The user interface was a bit frustrating. Sometimes you were blocked from moving and sometimes you weren't. It was neat that you could move windows around but sometimes they lingered when you moved away from the place they were supposed to be. We had the Neutride Engine slots visible while we were on the planets. We thought putting the crystals in the slots at that point would cause a bug so we didn't but it was a bit messy. The Inventory was also on the screen when were were in the space view navigating to planets. The window configurations seemed to change randomly and it ultimately detracted a bit from the fun of the game. The madness bar made us mad, because we couldn't tell whether it was full or empty. It should probably have had the same background color as the health bar, even if the foreground color was different.
The combat worked well, even though it didn't kick in until we were 30 mins+ into the game. It was simple, and you only had one weapon (that we found) but we could feel the potential for more in there. The enemies had health bars that were nice, so you could see if you were close to killing them, even the boss at the end. The enemies even had animations to them in their voxel form which was a nice touch.
The narrative text was at the right level. Most of the time you didn't show more than one or two lines of text so it wasn't overwhelming to read. It would have been better if you didn't have to click out of it to continue moving, it stalled the gameplay when it didn't need to. Perhaps this was an RPG in a box issue?
The sounds helped with the immersion and you got audible feedback on things you did in game which was nice.
We finished the game after 56 minutes of play time and we enjoyed it a lot. Good consistent graphics and sound, atmospheric with good narration. Nearly perfect for a jam, had it not been for the UI and controls. Well done!
Haha, nice, that ending though.
Sorry, it took me so long to play; I like it, though! I thought it was interesting how many similarities our game shared as well, especially the narrative!
I did find myself missing some kind of navigation assistance (map, arrows, compass). There were also a few bugs that I am sure you are aware of; occasional invincible zombies in the bridge, the boss sticking around after you die, and keeping items after death, even though that may have been a design choice. After I realized that was a thing though, I did use "return by die" instead of fighting my way back through the enemies after I collected a crystal.
Also, I think after you defeat the boss, it should automatically trigger a transition back into the ship! That was sort of awkward the first time I ran into it.
Really well executed in the jam time frame, though, and fun! I like all of your incorporations of the themes. :)
This was fun! I especially loved the mix of 2D pixel and voxel styles. The movement was nice for me, I found it added to the tension. The planets were all very interesting with their unique mechanics too. (And who is that mysterious guy in black??)
A very fun game! I really liked the atmosphere you created and enjoyed exploring the 3 planets. I also liked the little puzzle for the runes! A solid entry, good job!
Really nice entry! So much stuff in here.
Though when I decided to heal after second plannet - i got 'dream' with unkillable zombie? Couldn't snap out of it, I guess I am stuck there :D
Quite a nice story so far, though. I didn't find second piece of the weapon, but... not sure it would help me in that dream either haha!
The only real complain I have is how slow it felt to move. Though, maybe, its to make it more tense. Other than that - really nice entry. Two unique planets visited with unique mechanics. Ship itself. Dream.. I enjoyed it!
First of all, I absolutely love the style of this game, the pixel art and retro-menus work super well in my opinion. Using the dungeon crawler movement to fly through space and control a space ship was really cool and unique. The atmosphere on the mining planet particularly was great as it left a spooky atmosphere just long enough that when things suddenly appear it pays off well.
Only a couple of small bugs/oversights, dying to the final boss caused the projectiles to still be there in the ship leading to a few extra deaths, and after defeating the final boss it's not very clear what to do after that, I only found out by looking at this page you're supposed to go back into the ship afterwards. The game doesnt really do the whole looping thing very well as you just kind of go back out of the pod and can instantly just go back into it again as you still have the 3 warp crystals and if you go back into the ship it acts like you've just killed the final boss again.
I also felt the movement could be just slightly faster sometimes, not by much really just a little bit for the slower/tenser atmosphere you were going for here without making it feel like you're being weighed down.
Overall very good! I had fun with it and would be interested to see it expanded upon!
Thanks for playing and for the detailed response!
Good note on the projectiles remaining, I don't think I had seen that one so I will try to replicate and see how to fix.
Yes, in hindsight the infinite loop was tacked on, buggy and probably not as well explained as it could have been. And 100% I will be speeding up movement, both in this project and my main game! Thanks again!
I got to travel in space.
I got to fight zombies.
I got to put three letters in order.
Excellent game.
I gave up when wandering around the eyeball room on planet Mustafar.
Thanks for playing, it sounds like you had some fun! Yes, the eyeball room needs to be tweaked, something I plan to fix and make it easier to not get lost. I appreciate the feedback!
This was a cool entry. I dug the premise: waking up from cryosleep on an empty ship.
I liked your art style, as I’m a sucker for the pixel art/voxel aesthetic. The music and sound effects were good at setting up the mood. For some reason, the gun’s “pew” really tickled me, though.
The movement was really good, and the only weird thing I encountered was when I shot enemies on a diagonal, I’d turn to face them (45 degrees or so, depending on where they were), and then I was stuck in that direction until I turned, which fixed it.
Anyway, this was a really fun entry. Great job!
I appreciate the kind words and thank you for checking out my entry. The snapping for shooting is a bit weird, so I am definitely going to address it. Thanks for playing and I'm glad you had fun!
A lot of good ideas here, I love your concept! I like the low resolution pixel art a lot, and how you can explore space from your ship, head towards a planet and then explore it. The atmosphere was oppressive, I enjoyed that a lot too. You might want to pull back the camera a bit, because when you are directly facing a wall, it takes the whole screen and it can make orientation harder. I lost some time on the mining planet trying to orient myself in the dark/blinking section, but besides that, it was a very enjoyable playthrough. Great work!
Thanks for the feedback and I'm happy you enjoyed your play through! The camera orientation was definitely one I struggled with, and am working to address and there's some tile you weren't supposed to be able to walk into (like the lockers for example, they should have been interactable but not walkable) that exacerbates the issue.
Pretty cool. I’ve heard of Godot’s RPG in a Box but didn’t know it could be used for things like this. More content than I expected with the different planet tilesets, story, etc. The extra ship layer of Dungeon Crawler flight in space was something I haven’t seen before.
Had some bugs, and combat would be better served by some form of progression, but thankfully it was tuned a bit on the easy side so it didn’t stop me from seeing what else the game had to offer. Definitely would’ve preferred faster movement. Oh, and QE strafe turn controls really confuse my brain (though you’re not at all alone on that choice) so I strafed into lava a bunch of times, haha.
Thank you for playing and for the feedback! There's a few bugs that i do need to adress and the QE strafe seems to be either or for people, but it was totally something I wasn't paying attention to when I submitted. I thought this jam was a really good opportunity to showcase the kinds of games RPG in a Box is capable of, dungeon crawlers being a great one. Thanks again!
The artstyle of the game didn't appeal to me much but i respect your decision. The overall atmosphere is pretty cool though. The eerie sci-fi music and ambience sound really enchances the atmosphere of the game. The galaxy map idea is a very ambitious and cool idea but you managed to execute it perfectly. I love how all three planets have distinct biomes and enemies. Inventory system works perfectly , so is the gridbased moving. It fits the theme but getting stuck in an infinite loop made me feel that i didn't beat the game. The loop thing usually goes well with roguelikes but i think it's nice to do someting out of the usual formula sometimes.
A pretty solid entry to make in only 9 days. I salute you for your great work sir!
Edit: I encountered some bugs playing the game. One of them is you get an error message after you get the crystal in the lava planet. A console appears on top of the screen. The other one is i got stuck and had to restart the game after the hallucination when i first enter the lava planet.
I get it, the art isn't for everybody! No worries. I'm glad you liked the rest for the most part. I agree the loop part was poorly implement, it was pretty buggy too and I'd like to flesh it out later on. If you happen to know the error message I'd love to know, but don't go out of your way to get it again (you may not be able to replicate). Thanks for playing and for the great feedback!
I got this error right after i load the saved game. Also debug window appears showing this error message: "Error loading tile at (0,0,0) try loading tile at (0.0.-24). " Debug window closes when i hit escape. I didn't use to get this error, they kind of happen randomly.
Awesome vibes! The atmosphere is great, loved it. Felt on edge the whole time, even though in hindsight the actual enemies were rather simplistic and not much of a threat. I sadly only found one half of the new weapon, and I'm curious to know where the other half is and what it does :D
I love the story telling and the world you have created. I think the crawling of the lava and water world could be expanded a little, and that would be my main critique. Combat felt a bit weird with the camera snapping, which then stays in place until you rotate, but that's only a minor thing.
Also, when the game loops, the inventory and planets don't reset. Not sure if that's intentional or not. At first I thought there would be another twist coming when playing through it again, but on the mining world the puzzle wasn't reset so I checked the comments here to see if the game actually ended or not. So that's also something you could improve to make it more clear to the player.
Overall though, excellent game!
I'm happy you enjoyed it! Yeah the loop had some weird world states that didn't revert correctly for some reason, so I need to revisit that and actually flesh out a second playthrough. I really appreciated the feedback !
This is quite odd. I was planning to record the game play but when capturing with OBS the game hide the mouse cursor even if it’s visible in the recording: https://youtu.be/dxRqEWpZhe8
However, once I closed OBS and restarted the game I can see the mouse. So something really strange is happening with how your game runs.
Now to the game. I really liked the assets. Their extruded 3D but yet flat shape.
The movement was quite slow really, and while moving around of the ship I could walk inside lockers and basically come too close to the walls, it felt like. The camera should probably have been moved back a little bit and movement made much faster.
I played through the red planet. I suffered a bit of sanity because I figured it didn’t matter to insert a single of the signs first and then come back to solve it. But that apparently counted as attempting it with just one put in. The insert signs UI also kept popping up all the time afterwards as I was running around interacting with things.
Speaking of, I honestly got a bit too lost. It would have been nice with some map or having the layout be a bit less complex.
A very small thing, after solving the riddle the thing disappears but it’s still there blocking movement.
I though I could just press the return to ship button there and then, but I wasn’t allowed. Which made me think OK I have to find my way out. And promptly got lost in 10 minutes trying to get out.
When out of the cave I though I could press it to go home then. But no. And by then I think in my mind I gave up on that button walked back to the ship and flew to the next planet. And it’s only now that I realize that the button might have been for when on the ship to be able to walk around in the ship again. If that’s the case, it should probably not be called “Return to ship”.
The next planet I landed on, I should say I had no sanity or health damage. I took some steps and then the screen turned black with some eyes all over it. It seemed I could still move, but I had no idea where and whatever I did I seemed stuck in the black eye things so I gave up there.
It feels like a pity because there seems to be a whole lot of systems in the game, and I liked the art style. So if only the movement had been a bit snappier and the situation I ended up in a bit more understandable, I would have kept at it.
I probably spent 30-40 minutes in total though.
Thanks for the detailed response. I don't know how to address the OBS issues, but as a user of OBS I can say its a fickle beast sometimes lol. I can try and see how the engine interacts with screen recording.
The movement could definitely be faster I'm learning. Even while playing other entries and going back to mine I can feel how slow it seems in comparison. The walking into the lockers was a mistake on my part which allowed navigation into the space, rather than an interact only on the object itself. Something I plan to clean up post jam.
The red planet maze I personally believe was already fairly small, with enough landmarks, and no pits/spinners/teleports to get around without warranting a minimap. I don't think I would change much there but I can take a second look. And thanks for the recording that will help analyze it more.
The rune puzzle disappearing and preventing movement was a mistake on my part not replacing the navigation on the tiles to allow walking. a simple fix, but a good note. As far as it popping up after closing it, that's not something I was immediately able to replicate and somebody else had mentioned this too, so I'll have to do more testing to find out what causes it.
The eyeball event was not based on sanity, but just intended to be a spooky/confusing moment to reinforce the them. It's a a fairly small space, but I could have added more spaces to step on to let you escape or set a timer to put you back. I know that part can be pretty jarring.
The spaceship skill could use a tooltip description to explain more what it does - the intention was not to let it be a fast travel tool, just a way to actually get back *in* the ship when flying around. Many of the events based on madness level occur after interacting with the statues and getting neutrinide crystal, so I didn't want these just to be skipped.
Thanks again for playing and this valuable feedback will help me fix it up.
I think for the camera, it’s not a global rule, but walking up right next to a wall, most time you want to show some of the floor at the bottom of the tile you are on. And to not get a really wide perspective, moving the camera back a bit is part of the trick as far as I’ve understood it.
With the red planet maze, it might also be that the exit could be a little bit clearer. Since the cave is dark and you enter from a well lit room, it could make sense to make it bright even. I bet I passed by or was looking at it when trying to find my way out without realizing it.
A compass could be a middle ground, but I totally get if you don’t want to add that.
As for the runes, I’m not 100% sure what I did, but I only had 1 rune in the inventory when I reached it. I placed it in the middle slot, then I might have just walked away. Later when looting other stuff the UI popped up again and again. But it wasn’t there if I opened the inventory. Because I was wondering if I could trick the game to turn in the puzzle while standing next to the exit but the two ui wouldn’t be on screen at the same time.
Adding time as a secondary constraint on the eyes would be a great solution, I think.
Nice great game! It has a great eerie feeling to it and nice sound and music implementation. Graphics is simple but looks nice. I like that there is various biomes to explore.
I somehow lost one of the runes while trying to move them between containers.
Got an error when trying to go back to the first red planet to look for the third crystal.
After killing the three cosmic horror entities their health bar was still there with a small amount of hp showing. After returning to the cryo chamber the game seems to restart in the same solar system, but as I understand you know this already.
Tiles are a bit small but it works. Movement could be a bit more snappy and/or queue up next input.
The game was a fun experience to play! Good job!
Thanks a lot for the details feedback and chat on discord. This is great for when I go back in to fix up the game post-jam. I'm glad you had fun and thanks for finding all the bugs!
I loved the game's aesthetics, especially the way you did the cables. The UI and menus where nice and grabbed my attention. The game's scope surprised me, it felt massive for a jam title! The atmosphere, especially on the first planet, was fantastic. It got creepy at times too, which kept me on my toes. Flying between planets added a nice layer of immersion, and the story clearly shows a lot of effort was put into it. Overall, while i do think that some systems could of been refined a bit more, I still found myself really enjoying this entery! nicely done.
Thank you for the kind words!
**Please Read** there is a UI bug that may make the item and skill bars go away. If you encounter this, you can open the console with the Tilda Key ` and type the following:
show_widget("skill_bar_custom")