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Man was not Alone's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall fun and playability | #38 | 3.274 | 3.375 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme incorporation
I mostly tried to incorporate the theme of Cosmic Horror. The general theme of the game is about how you get toyed with by outer gods by being sent to their different realms while trying not to lose your sanity. There are also a few ancient ruins you go through during the game, and you happen to be the only living human around.
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Comments
This was pretty cool actually, the graphics were very nice, UI was pleasant and the atmosphere was fittingly creepy with the sparse lighting.
I like the concept of being only able to retreat unless you have certain items too, in fact for most of the first level I kept thinking "man, if only I had to escape in real-time" And then sure enough the deer god comes out of the ground and gives me the most tense moment I've experienced so far this jam! The running sequences were incredibly successful in panicking the player, the third one especially though I kinda have mixed feelings about it. The third was by the far the closest call, but also felt like it could easily be the death of several players. Because I had to mash the mvoment keys with both hands just to be a single tile ahead of the chaser, and I had died once to it. So while it wasn't that bad for me I could see it leading to players dying multiple times, and then the fear would turn to frustration and ruin the excitement of the sequence.
I should mention though, I highly appreciate the checkpoint system. Very helpful and always nice when it exists in a jam game (unlike mine lol).
Regarding the combat mechanics itself though, I found I was able to slightly cheese the fights by just using Pray and then moving into a light source to get my life to recharge to 60%. I also noticed there was an item later on that said it could dispel all illusions, was there planned to be multi-enemy fights that wasn't implemented?
I found the underwater level was neat where you could look outside, and I almost had a jumpscare when I saw a large creature swimming up to the surface. The last level was also fittingly creepy and esoteric for a cosmic horror game, though I agree with there being a bit too many combat encounters.
Overall this was a very solid entry, great work!
Thanks for playing!
About the running sections, they're actually designed in a way that if the enemy can't see the player they gain a really large speed boost to make sure the player always has the feeling they're right behind them, but their actually movements arent that fast when they're close. In the third chase particularly the section at the end is definitely the harder part since whenever you turn the corner the enemy will quickly boost to the corner you just turned around, which really added to the effect of being close to dying.
Far as I know i've not had anyone ACTUALLY struggle to complete the chases, as you said maybe one or two deaths on the third chase but other than that I think it's balanced enough to feel intense and close without actually being frustrating. The first chase is also extremely slow when close to the player, since it's the first chase the player encounters so I didn't want it to feel unfair to suddenly have to start running super quickly to escape. I think you can actually just auto-walk and still escape from that one.
And yeah I figured out the 4th levels encounter rate was actually a mistake on my part setting the encounter rate to 50% instead of just the escape-chance to 50%. oops. In a way the pray to light mechanic is kind of intentional as a reward for good situational-awareness, but it definitely might be too strong
Thanks for the feedback.
This was pretty good, if a little frustrating at times.
I feel like the game springs some action set pieces on you without giving you much of a chance to change gears. I at least appreciate that you couldn't get a random encounter in real time chase sections. Though once I was accustomed to the chase sequences I quite liked the 3rd one.
The encounter rate was so high ion the last area, it made collecting items almost pointless. Maybe that was the idea. That you have to ignore the items and take a quicker route, but even then you could get very unlucky with a single encounter.
But there a plenty of checkpoints, so it wasn't too bad. I like the variety in biomes, both in look, but also layout. Like some are more open while others are more labyrinthian.
Playthrough: Man Was Not Alone Pt1 by Volcanolord
You know i'm actually only now realising why everyones been saying that about the last area. Turns out I think I accidentally made the encounter rate 50% while changing the base escape chance in the area to 50%. Every other area in the game is set to 30. I do think I could have also put a few more lights around the items to make them more worth picking up.
In a way I expected the chase scenes to be quite a surprise for players, that's why there's always a save point right before them most of the time, so if you get caught out the first time you won't lose anything.
Thanks for the feedback.
I washed up on some beach. Nice with different biomes to go through. The game was simplistic in the gathering of items and keys and going through gates. But in addition you had some nice being hunted sections and some combat management. Combat is escaping pretty much but it has some options and it was kinda fun. Graphics looks nice and Audio is engaging, scope was good.
I liked it.
I like how it looks, how it sounds. The bulls, environments... Its all quite well polished and put together!
I want to talk about defend mechanic and items though. Thing is - currently you want to use items/defend only when eveything went poorly beforehand. So basically, when you are already on low sanity. Pills become useless (as damage is getting higher), Defend loses sanity and you also unable to utilize it by then.
I went with 0 defend or items used up until last stage basically.. and then I died after unlucky attempt to escape (failed like 5 in row - its quite unlucky at this point!), thinking that using pills would at least give me time to use defend after (idk why i though that. but here is that). It almost always safe to just run without taking defend. And when stuff start to be harder - you already failed, since you are already at low sanity to use anything.
Maybe make running not as powerful at start so player will get used to use defend and managing of sanity? Also still not sure how to use pills, since in combat they are useless - you get hit right after and chances are - for more than pill heals for.
But game is fun and has even more potential.
I enjoyed the graphics! The pixels/jagginess were nice and clean, I liked the underwater palace level when the windows were visible to the outside. Had a good ambience with a legit bit of fright for the run sections! I also enjoyed the couple details you could see, like the snake/dragon coiling around the planet, the underwater creature you end up running from showing up in the window, and the deer creature rising from the ground. I got through pretty much the whole game by just trying to escape without using any other defend mechanics and I only used items twice to heal, but I like the idea that you are just trying to escape, and not fighting back! And even though I got through it without it being difficult, sometimes the enemy encounters are too constant. I had the same problem in my game though too! (I just read that you adjusted the rate depending on the darkness, which is actually pretty cool, but maybe still a little less would be better!)
Overall, good atmosphere, good sounds, good scenery, fit the theme well, and just the right length!
A quite enjoyable experience - carefully picking where and when to dip out of the light and navigating between objectives is a solid core loop. Adding occasional physical wandering monsters and chase scenes works well, thanks to the solid movement implementation. The bits of story are enjoyable too.
It would be great if you mentioned the inventory key somewhere, though, given how important it is. I also noticed that the stability flask is only healing 10 sanity, not 15, and I think the 'Defend' options aren't quite balanced - I did some Monte Carlo combat simulations and they appear to all be strictly worse on average than just repeatedly attempting to escape.
Here's my playthrough:
Thanks for the feedback! Interesting point about the combat. I kind of balanced the defend actions around being useful for fights that start at lower percentages as they give you a bit of protection from the attacks from longer fights, it might be better mathmatically to spam escape but you could also very likely just get killed before you actually succeed that way due to damage the enemy deals.
My general strategy revolves around using guard first then attempting escape on the next turn with a slight defence boost and increased chance, not sure if that would still be mathmatically better to just escape twice but you'd also probably lose more health that way if it were to fail 2 times in a row.
It was definitely an interesting system to try and balance but I think it was worth it for the theme.
I'll add the inventory key to the games main page, sorry about that I guess I assumed people would try escape anyway lol. I suppose putting it on "I" could have helped too.
My analyses were based on average damage taken, to be clear - it is possible guard is worth doing in specific circumstances if taking standard deviations into account. And you might be underestimating just how strong "just try twice" is - if the chance is 50%, 'guard' will give you a 60% chance, but trying twice is a 75% chance. Plus, you have a chance to just not take any damage, and in a game with this many encounters attrition really matters.
I redid the simulations, tracking extra statistics, and it seems that there are specific circumstances where 'guard' will give you somewhat better survival rates, though you still take more damage per fight on average. 'Pray' also seems to be basically the best option if you have immediate access to the autoheal after the fight and are okay sitting at 60 hp. 'Swipe' seems useful only against low-damage enemies like the Deer Reflections and the Eyes.
The results are interesting. I definitely was aware the pray was designed to basically be a get-out of jail free card if you were aware of your surroundings and near a light, this is why it's got quite a high cost so if you use it poorly and end up in another fight you'll be in trouble.
I was definitely thinking of adding a stronger guard at some point midway through the game but couldn't really think of a good reason to suddenly give you a new ability. I want the player to feel quite weak and, well, defenceless so giving an upgrade midway through the game just felt wrong.
Swipe honestly started out as just being an ability that added more escape chance at the cost of more sanity, but I found I never really used it so I kind of redesigned it be a bit of a gamble to add some escape chance while also having its own chance to instantly escape the battle. I actually added a mechanic quite close to the end of development to it where if you use it at 80% then you can instantly guarantee your escape by using it but i'm not sure how useful that was. maybe if it came with a reduced cost it would be worth doing.
Thanks for doing this analysis! It's interesting to see as I was unaware of a way of doing some raw data testing on the combat before.
It's only really possible because player choice is so limited and enemy behavior is nice and simple. I just threw together a tiny JS fiddle that tested different scenarios and tracked statistics in a loop. I think 'Swipe' suffers heavily from the fact that taking an action other than attempting escape more than once is virtually always a terrible idea - and you need to do so to get escape chance to 100%
I was found washed up on the beach.
The conclusion cool, if it's an appropriate term, only sorrow and despair, no place for anything else. The game consisted in trying to flee from your sad fate, you can barely even try to fight it, and it was all in vain anyway. No mercy.
This game is fun. It's very pleasant to control, which makes the running away parts fun. The other layer of gameplay is some resource management and trying to get the shortest route and especially trying not to go around in circles, which are fun things too. And you're doing this in quite some varied, weird and unique environments which makes it even better.
This is a solid entry, thanks for sharing.
Nice idea to turn the battle system around so the hero need to flee instead of kill. The graphic and music are very nice and the game has a great mood, fitting the theme well. Maybe there are some balancing issues, because I found it getting quite challenging, maybe cut down on the random encounters a bit. But a very solid entry all around.
Great scenery, very atmouspheric music and soooo creepy! Well done!
My heartttttt. The you-know-whats scared the absolute shite out of me.
But wowee this was really polished and well put together. I think of the entries i've played so far, this had the best movement for my own personal taste, just buttery smooth and super snappy. The art through and through is stunning and consistent, and the music is beautiful.
The combat is really interesting and I quite enjoyed early on trying to work out what was the 'right' way to do it. I'd be quite interested to know how the calculations are done, and if it's a straight probability roll or if there's more going on behind the scenes. The only reason I say that is because I tried just spamming escape without using abilities and lost 9 60% rolls in a row, which is I think 0.0002%.
Regardless, really great entry. I echo some of the other comments in the encounter rate was a little high, and having the save game there was an absolute godsend, as the nature of probability is that it can just be punishing sometimes when it doesn't go your way.
Thanks for such a great entry, it was a pleasure.
The escape chance is actually just exactly as shown far as I know, although I do question how unreal engine does probability sometimes because yeah sometimes you'll escape really easily a lot of times in a row and sometimes you just wont so idk what happens there.
The encounter rate is set up to be very high in dark places but areas near light are immune to random encounters, which i'm not sure how many people picked up on but I'm also aware there are some areas that force you to go through a lot of dark spaces (particularly in the third level).
Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
Ah I didn't pick up on the light thing! However that would have probably really changed the way I play, so it's interesting to think how I might have gone about things differently.
Really loved it so thanks for the further info.
I really like the visuals, retro graphics and sounds in this game, but the enemies literally stopped me from completing the game every step of the way. I wish you good luck in your development
I'm a big fan of low poly graphics and I really enjoyed these, lighting was nice and moody as well. The intense chase sequences is a testament to how snappy the movement system was implemented. The combat system was a unique balancing act to keep your sanity. Overall well done!
So far, the creepiest entry I've played. The chasing sequences especially were really gripping. A very good idea and you've nailed the atmosphere, from the lighting to the music and all. I feel that, maybe, the encounters get a bit too frequent towards the end, like in the area with the eyes, where it breaks the flow of the game a bit too much. But I had a good time with this entry.