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A jam submission

Unfathomable!View game page

A game jam dungeon.
Submitted by Don Bisdorf — 14 hours, 57 minutes before the deadline
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Unfathomable!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall fun and playability#872.7652.765

Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Theme incorporation
The Endless: part of the story you receive after a victory.
Ancient Ruins: you're exploring an ancient, forgotten, shunned labyrinth.
Solitude: your character is alone, and the story emphasizes solitude and isolation as a theme.
Cosmic Horror: the prose, the unearthly monsters, and the idea of exploring to discover a terrible secret are all inspired by Lovecraftian fiction.

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Comments

Submitted

I really liked the simplicity of this. That the download size is only 4MB is a rare sight nowadays.

My only complains are that you only support the cursor keys for movement input and the perspective is a bit off. I often thought that the items on the ground where one tile away but was not.

Overall a solid entry and a bonus point for the small download size.

Good job!

Developer

Yeah, the game size is one of the reasons I like the LÖVE engine. It helps me build games quickly without a lot of bloat.

Thanks for playing, and thanks for the comments!

Submitted

Unfortunately kept running into the following error:

Error

play.lua:827: attempt to index a nil value

Traceback

[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler'

play.lua:827: in function 'determine_browsing_options'

play.lua:484: in function 'player_action'

play.lua:86: in function 'play_update'

main.lua:38: in function 'update'

[love "callbacks.lua"]:162: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144>

[C]: in function 'xpcall'

Developer

Yeah, I feel terrible about that bug. It seems to happen when you press ENTER to try to select an empty inventory slot. I should have found it during testing. Thanks for trying, though!

Submitted

This was very well executed and quite addictive. The procgen seemed to work fine for the most part, but item placement could be improved a bit (others have mentioned this). I liked that you get a little bit of the story with each floor you go down and I also liked the variety of items that you get, from curatives to gear to one time utility stuff. Difficulty could be balanced a bit, but it's fine for a jam game and some sounds would be great. Overall, very enjoyable! Well done!

Developer

Glad you had fun! Thanks for the comments, and thanks for playing!

Submitted

Neat game. I liked the simplicity in it and the combat was easy and understandable. Inventory worked well, had some issues moving and using items, but got the hang over it after a while. Sometimes the enemies hit very hard and sometimes not, unsure why this is.

I got the error screen. I thought I was using a flower but it could have been the enter pressed after that.

Nice entry!

Developer

Yeah, the combat results are more swingy than I expected. That's what I get for not thinking about the math. And I'll be kicking myself about that one inventory bug for months. But thanks for the comments, and thanks for playing!

Submitted

I descended into the unfathomable dark.

I almost died around 10th floor then I got plenty of good items in a row and caught up.

A soon as I saw the font in the main menu I knew it was a going to be a game for me (the font and the other things like the small window by default, the game reeks DOS sharewares, the good ones), and 10 seconds into the actual game confirmed this. 

I love the controls and art, and the narrative was actually pretty atmospheric. Instant gameplay which goes as fast as you press the buttons is so much my thing. and this fully resource management-based gameplay is too. The roster of items is pretty great too, I won't list the items as you know them. Finally the challenge is appropriate to my taste, the game is not easy but it's not insane, in fact I think I won one of my first runs where I did not crash for clicking on an empty spot.

Oh yes there's a bug when you press Enter on an empty spot but I'm sure you're aware by now, I won't say I didn't care at all for this one as it killed me a couple of times ;) . 

The game is among the highlights of the jam to me, thanks for sharing.

Developer

Yeah, I feel bad about that bug. I should have caught it before the deadline. But I'm glad you had fun with it! Thanks for the comments and thanks for playing!

Submitted

Rather impressive, that you got the procedural stuff working in this short time frame. While battles seem a bit basic, there is enough meat around the equipment and items to make it more interesting. I also like the story bits between the levels. But the game is HARD! Jeez, tone it down a notch ;)

Oh and Löve...always nice to see some love for Löve :)

Developer

Yeah, I should have done a little more thinking about the combat stats. But thanks for playing, and thanks for the comments!

Submitted

Hey! I played your entry, and unfortunately couldn't get very far; for some reason I had a lot of stability issues where the game would crash after using the tablet items. Here's one of the error messages, if you think it helps.

But the experience I had while trying to play was decent, so here's some impressions I have had! The random generation is impressive but needs a bit of rebalancing regarding enemy placements, I think. One run spawned an enemy on the starting tile, and another put me at one end of a long hallway that had three enemies in a row before I could get into the dungeon proper to begin with. 

The simple greyscale aesthetic works very well and the menu  tips are incredibly helpful! The controls would have been very confusing for me was it not for that, so really good job on the interface design.

Submitted (1 edit)

I think this crash happens if you press enter when having an empty inventory slot selected, so you can avoid it

Developer

Thanks for playing! I feel terrible about that bug; I should have found it during testing. As another player has noted, it seems to happen if you hit Enter on an empty inventory square. And I totally agree about the balancing and random placement of stuff. I threw a lot of parameters together without really thinking about them. Definitely something for me to pay attention to if I come back to this!

Submitted (1 edit)

Overall, this is pretty hard but quite fun. There's an early phase where you are figuring out what all these mysterious items do, which is something I enjoy, and you definitely don't feel like a combatant. It took me a while, and I did run into one crash (while bandaging away some bleeding), but I did complete the game. You really have to manage your resources and pick and choose your battles based on what healing items you have and what damage types the monsters do.

I will say that I think equipment loot drops could use with a little tweaking, to reduce how often you run into something you already have or that is strictly inferior (the 1 ward and 3 ward necklaces, for instance, appear to coexist in some floors.) It would be nice if the healing items were more consistent, as well - so that you aren't wondering if your 5 flowers will heal 25 Will or just 5.

Also, I just assumed the gold collar was doing something - I'm kinda curious if it actually does anything?

Full playthrough here:

Developer(+1)

Wow, congrats on winning the game! That took some dedication. I definitely wanted the game play to be more strategic and cautious so I'm glad that came across.

Yeah, all the random generation of levels could use quite a bit of work. The collar was supposed to give you a boost to your first-strike chance, so you'd have better odds of getting a hit in before the enemy does. That's related to your speed, which would have been a more important attribute if I'd managed to implement traps, since I would have rolled against your speed to see if you evaded a trap. Sadly I didn't have time to put that in.

Thanks for the video and the comments, and thanks for playing!

Submitted

Hey,

quite nice entry you got there. I liked the strategic touch very much. Avoiding the enemies. Deciding weither to go down or look for more loot. But it is just to much randomness. I came till 7 but the WillEater just eat me up without a chance. No Flowers anywhere. :( And I was really nicely equipped. Also sound for more feedback on the interactions would have improved the experience by a lot for me.

But nevertheless it is just one week and I liked playing it. Would be a game I would play more given more balance. Nice Timekiller. Good Job.

Developer

Thanks for playing! Yeah, the randomness is way off; it's way too easy to get killed off without anything you could have done about it. And yeah, I really wanted sound and visual effects during combat, but I just ran out of time. Those are all great things I could work on post-jam.

Submitted

Game crashes when you press enter on an empty inventory slot. Just FYI.

Props for using LOVE. There aren't many games that do(another one that I found is Spell Tower)

Developer

Yeah, I feel terrible about that bug. I should have found that myself pretty easily.

I really like using LOVE. It helps me get a game up and running pretty quickly. I'll have to check out Spell Tower for solidarity. :)

Thanks for playing!

Submitted

Idea is good. Played a lot, hoping for a better start. I think furthest I managed to get was floor 6 or 7... Its quite brutal, since most of the runs I launch would end in floor 1 due to unlucky streak of the mob/loot spawn. Had run with 8 teleporter stones (didn't help me much!), had run where I got everything for physical heal and stuff, but got blocked by that mental mobs that I had no protection or cure from.

Would be MUCH better if you would do less floors for victory for a jam, since balancing that wouldn't be possible in that time frame. At least it would be more likely to get that victory screen... 13 floors of randomness is a lot of luck to get through!

What strange is that quite often if i would find hat on the level - it will be full of hats. In general felt like one item would be spammed on the same floor... or it just my luck...

Developer(+1)

Yeah, the combat math and loot distribution needs a lot of work. But thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!