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A jam submission

The Recluse and the RelicView game page

Cute animals in a short dungeon crawler
Submitted by tjm — 3 hours, 37 minutes before the deadline
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The Recluse and the Relic's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#253.4783.478

Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
I tried to incorporate all four themes into my game, but the extent to which they came through varies.
**Ancient Ruins**: This provides the setting for the game and is immediately obvious.
**Solitude**: The hedgehog's dilemma; most of the characters in the game are either lonely, or want to avoid other people.
**Cosmic Horror**: Cosmic horror is often represented by cults worshipping ancient, alien gods far beyond their understanding - which gives us this game's primary antagonists, the cult of Digas.
**Infinity/The Endless**: Mechanically this inspired thoughts of games like Infinity Blade and Dark Souls, with a hero rising endlessly to fight an infinite supply of evil. Thematically, Digas is endless and will persist forever in the depths of sleep.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Cute characters and the voice over style was a really cool idea, reminded me of like story book narration.
I liked the puzzle aspect and the different areas having different tilesets was good to keep things interesting.

I got the impression that the combat was a rock/paper/scissors style thing but I didn't fully understand the interactions between the different attack types.

Great entry!

Submitted(+1)

Lovely entry and very endearing characters. I keep eyeing this Quirky animal pack for a while now and I'm definitely getting is as well now (cause it's going to be on sale soon). The voiceover and the hedgehog's replies were super cute and amusing and the exploration and puzzle solving were very enjoyable. 

As other people, I was thoroughly confused about the combat and just kept on winning by sheer luck I guess. I did manage to push through to the end and wouldn't have minded if combat would've just been alternating hits like in most DCs haha.

Good work!

Submitted(+1)

This was a super original entry and obviously a lot of effort and thought was put into this. Rough around the edges (like most games made in just a few days!), but super cool.

Submitted(+1)

I loved the setting and the map itself - everything fit really nicely.

You are a hedgehog - brilliant \o/

But I didn't like the AI voice. sound mixing was not too good. load background tune,  quiet voices.

When you meed things - their render and design stye changes and they feel out of place :(

Also the left block of help seems a bit heavy - maybe have it as an overlay if wanted?

Submitted(+1)

Really  nice!

The environment, and the fact you put in the work to voice everything is great, so +1 with everyone else on that!

I did immediately get blown away by the sound and not being able to adjust the audio, but you already know that since it is listed as such. :)

I will say that I could have used a little more guidance on the contextual interactions and combat system. It took me a minute to notice that something was even changing down there at first, and I could see others struggling with it. I also didn't really get the combat system entirely for a while. Long-term it would be nice to have some visual signifiers (A flashing highlight or something) and some gated interactions with explanations the first time we go through using these things.

Great effort for a jam game though, and it could be really nice with some more polish and refinement!

Submitted(+1)

The voice-overs are great, there could be some more battle sfx added. It clearly went a whole lot of effort into this piece.

The game felt a bit random and hard to navigate the menus when you were trying to solve a puzzle. It was like the combat scene got in the way. Also hard to figure out what the keys did, and the options changes all the time. Sometimes you push with R and sometimes with T. The hard part was not figuring out what to do in each room, but to make it happen while being interrupted by combat and choices. 

The Dungeon was good looking and the puzzles would have been more enjoyable without the combat. I did not really like the cartoon animals, found them a bit annoying, but I think that is totally a personal taste thing and not on you!

The upgrades and items you buy does not really have an explanation what they do, so its hard to judge what to buy or what to upgrade.

All in All. A good jam entry!

Submitted(+1)

I fell into a blue area and outside of a rest area and a snake battle, none of the other doors opened so I was trapped.

Otherwise, it clearly had a lot of effort put in, voice overs, battles, lots of different characters about, clearly a lot of content here. And I like the art style.

Great job.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Nicely done game with a lot of cute characters with a bit confusing combat. Puzzles adds a lot to the whole exploration experience. Narrating some of the actions are a great touch.

I was stuck with the bunny for a good portion of a game, found this part the most confusing one. And that blocks with a face were actually providing you with a path, I’ve discovered it by accident.

Will buy sunglasses for hedgehog again!

Submitted(+1)

Lily emerged although she's nocturnal.

This is actually a solid game in my opinion. I love the instant movement, I did not get all the in-and-outs of the combat but greatly enjoyed it anyway with all the different moves, the visual materialization of those and it was possibly just luck but during the run some moves were more efficient against some enemies. The puzzles are good, there are some coins in the corners you can miss and all the animals's expressions and the dialogs enhances the pacing and momentum of the game.

That was super cool, thanks for sharing.

Submitted(+1)

Love the humor, and how beautiful it is. Exploring ruins don't have to be all about ugly and dark things. However I got stuck quite early because I could not get the mouse to follow me to activate those button blocks.

Submitted(+1)

The graphics, movement and dialogue are all great! I had a really hard time understanding the combat. I feel like it's some sort of rock-paper-scissor style but I wasn't sure if there was some clue from the animations (it didnt seem to be maybe?) when picking your attack. I think with a bit of a tutorial or some further explanation the combat could be alot of fun, I think there's potential! Solid entry!

Submitted(+1)

I liked this game a lot! As with other commenters, I wasn't quite getting the combat system. Ultimately that didn't bother me though, because I just kinda biffed my way past enemies to keep enjoying the graphics and the dialogue.

Submitted(+1)

I liked the narration most of all and the way all characters spoke. Their cute art style was really great too. And there was a lot of content in the game. A lot of level designs and puzzles made.

I was a bit confused though with the fighting system. From small things like push swapping places depending on if there was someone around you or not. To not really understanding the different attacks or why I sometimes got rotated and sometimes not when swiping this or that direction. The UI glitched out at times too as you can see in my playthrough, so that might have added to the confusion a bit too. In the end I think I opted for swipe left or right as attack when they were available and pounce if not.

It was also not entirely clear what the level up stats did for the combat so I took some on random. It worked out fine though. I got out.

After leveling up health when I lost health I didn’t loose it from the topmost health square btw.

First thing I immediately thought about the when seeing the game was removing the qwe/asd instructions or reducing them in size and information content to just be arrows. The interesting bit to inform the player about was the other buttons. It was a bit of information overload having it all there.

It was great that the context dependent buttons showed up on screen, but perhaps the fighting system could have been simplified or explained by adding more and more complexity. To have all options from the start was a lot.

From dungeon layout there were some puzzles that I didn’t really understand how to solve and some where there were buttons or things to interact with that didn’t seem to do anything or walking out on invisible platforms without any hint that it made sense.

Overall though, I think it’s an impressive entry and I enjoyed playing it and was surprised almost 40 minutes had passed when I finally completed it.

Link to playthrough: https://youtu.be/77EklV_wkgo

Submitted(+1)

I tried the web version and got no audio at all.  Windows version worked fine.

I like the style, the animal friends and enemies were all great!

Combat confused me.  I couldn't quite figure out what was good or bad to do, so eventually just settled on bite-ing them until they died (or similar after getting new weapons).  It seems like there's probably something interesting going on with combat, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it.  Maybe some description of how it's supposed to work (or what to watch out for) on the jam page would help ^_^.

I had a bit of trouble with the bunny, when I got him to follow me, he was way down below where there was no way to get back up, I didn't realize I needed to reset the map and try again, I kept trying to get him to get out of there, but he never did.  Eventually, I made it to the end, and stopped the abomination, though.  Some nice puzzles!

Developer

Explaining the combat would require me to understand how it works, and even knowing the underlying rules I don't, really.😅It was very much a high risk experiment, and while I learned a lot from it I can't call its current form a success; there might be a playable system buried there, but it would take another jam or two to find it. Fortunately I balanced the numbers generously enough that players (including me) can mash through it, but its flow is designed for a much more thoughtful pace so mashing doesn't feel great.

Herding the bunny is similarly painful; I was able to fix most of the problems by having it switch to following the player beyond a certain distance, but as you found it's still possible to get it trapped if it goes down that one corner path. I should probably add that to the known issues on the itch page.

Thanks for playing, glad you made it all the way through! There are definitely a few frustration barriers to players making it that far, but hopefully there's enjoyment to be had for the few that do! 😁

Submitted(+1)

The animals are so cute and funny, nice graphics and fitting music, but I wish there were some soundeffects. The WebGL version runs VERY fast (which made the animations even funnier). The movement could feel a little better, something felt not right about the steps. There is quite some game here, well done.

Submitted(+1)

Nice job! great presentation and atmosphere! crazy artstyle which made it really stand out!

Submitted(+1)

The dialogues with dub was really unnespected, but I really liked it, though the combat system is kinda messy and caused the dialogues to bug. The graphics are pretty good, the idle animation of the animals is hilarious (even if it is just a bug). The bloom of the lights hurted my eyes a little bit.