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A jam submission

The RitualView game page

Submission for Game Off 2024
Submitted by Anas3101 — 22 minutes, 14 seconds before the deadline
Rated by 22 people so far
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The Ritual's itch.io page

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GitHub repository URL
https://github.com/anas-abudaqa/GameOff2024

Game description
You play as a character trying to save their beloved from certain death. One day, a mysterious shaman shows up at your door, promising you a cure for your beloved using a certain ritual. You must collect all the necessary items from the abandoned church in town while going through some minigames. Using a mouse instead of a touchpad is recommended.

WASD to move
E to interact/start dialogue
LMB to move dialogue forward

Theme interpretation
I decided to go with a dark tone and create a narrative focusing a lot on the occult and the unknown. It inspired me a lot when writing the script for the story. Try and figure out what the story's about!

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

The music is absolutely magical — it completely immerses you in the atmosphere. Thank you! Huge respect for the graphics and art style — I absolutely loved it. The narrative is captivating. Some of the mini-games were quite challenging, but that only made them more engaging. Truly beautiful — thank you for the game!

Developer

Thank you so much for the kind feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Really great entry :) very intriguing atmosphere. You've managed to achieve a specific dark medieval fantasy vibe here that's really quite effective. 

The thing that stood out to me the most was the pick-pocket minigame. I think that one in particular has the bones of something truly great with a bit of tweaking and some extra mechanics. Getting through it required a surprising amount of skill and understanding of the mechanics, even though it seems like a very basic concept from the outside. I think it could be a game in itself if you spent some time on it, and it would work with mobile too because you just need to drag your mouse around (although reading through the comments, sounds like you'd maybe have to dial back the difficulty a smidge ;) )

I also got the sense that there's more to this world than what we get to see in the game so I'd love to see it expanded! 

Developer(+1)

Thanks for your kind feedback! I did already dial the difficulty a bit due to reviews from others hehe, all the minigames need more careful tuning imo. 

Submitted(+1)

Interesting game, gameplay slightly lacking but audio was very creepy.

Developer (1 edit)

glad you enjoyed the atmosphere. Was there any particular minigame you felt lacking?

Submitted(+1)

Nice Game, well done. there's a hidden wall missing near the 2nd statue so i was able to escape the map lol, game didnt break though. Lighting effect of the game was great especially the shed area. story was fine, minigames were a bit hard, the catch the ghost mission gave me too many red ghosts so i had to play it over and over again.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I did want to control the ghost hunting minigame to guarantee a certain amount of good ghosts every run, but ran out of time before implementing it. Glad you enjoyed the game!

Submitted(+1)

Roguelike with a dark atmosphere...

Developer(+1)

hope you liked it!

Submitted(+1)

Atmosphere is great. The Dr. Corvus mini game too hard. I think your game core is story not the mini game. The item which can interact it can show ui for tip key to interact.  And then if  add run key will better. I don't like repeat walk on same map.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! You make good points, I didn't play around with the walk speed much. I did make interactable items glow a bit, but maybe it is not actually noticeable if you do not know where to look. 

Submitted(+1)

You managed to build a pretty cool atmosphere there, good job

Developer

Thanks!

Submitted(+1)

graphics and thematic style are good, and I liked the use of minigames, but the interaction/dialog needs fixing - you have to mash LMB and E because different conversations randomly require you to do both, at different points, and there's no indication that you need to do the other one - took me a long time to discover that the interaction key isn't enough to interact. Also minigames were insanely hard - the first one often spawns projectiles right on top of the mouse cursor so I instantly lost a life, gave up at that point.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback. E button is the only interaction button, and it is the same button to start dialogue. Once you start dialogue, you press LMB to continue it. This is the case for every interaction in the game. I know it's annoying to have 2 diff buttons for dialogue, but it is consistent. The whole dialogue manager is from a plugin, so I didn't dig into how to change that. I guess I'll make it clearer in the description what each button does

I did want the minigames to be challenging, but they're probably overtuned now judging from everybody's feedback. Hope you do give it another shot later in the voting period :( 

Submitted(+1)

It’s an interesting concept. I like the atmosphere; audio and I love art! The dialogs are great, and I enjoy interacting with the environment. It is fun to play!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

I find the theme amazing, with that eerie and mysterious atmosphere!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Really nice atmosphere to the game! I wish the walk speed was tad faster though lol

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! Good point, I didn't play around with it much. I didn't notice it when I was playtesting because I knew where to go after every event, but it can be irritating if you have to walk up and down the map trying to discover what to do with that low movespeed.

Submitted(+1)

This was a really good creepy game! I loved walking through the map and interacting with different objects. It was really fun to try and figure out how to unlock the shed and so on. I could not for the life of me get the key out of his pocket though. I think I tried about 10 times lol. It was super hard! I think adding a bar at the top to show how close you are to completing the game would be a good touch, as well as moving the lives to the top so they are out of the way. The objects also spawn out of nowhere, so maybe having them spawn off screen would help ease the difficulty too. I loved the art style and the walking animation for the character, however some pieces felt out of place because of the different color palette, etc. Lighting was great and great use of the theme. Overall, this was a fun challenge! Amazing work!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I did want the games to be challenging but I think it's a bit too challenging right now. I'm curious if you have a high mouse sensitivity, as that will definitely make it a lot harder (I use quite low, so I probably biased the game difficulty in that sense). I agree with the progress bar bar and moving the lives to the top of the screen (as well as the text when you fail the minigame), just didn't have time to properly implement them. And indeed there is no single unified color palette, largely due to me trying to minimize how much art I drew myself. 

Anyway glad you liked it overall

Submitted(+1)

Your game has a great atmosphere and was fun to play. I never knew what to expect and where the story/game was going. And I'm always happy to find a cat somewhere in a game.

Great audio design and overall creepy/scary.

My biggest feedback will be the difficulty of the mini-games and personally the first mini-game. I almost gave up after the 10th time. Maybe it's a skill issue or maybe not. The most disorienting/confusing thing was that your hand/mouse moved with the camera while you were moving and dodging. On the other hand, I felt a great sense of accomplishment when I finally did it. Keep up the good work. 

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I may have amped the difficulty too high indeed. The camera movement can be improved a lot. it is the way it is now because it is technically just navigating the line on its own (so also rotating and shifting). Also does not help that I did most of the playtesting myself. I did want it to be challenging but I didn't get quite a feel for how difficult the games really are.

Submitted(+1)

Loved the game visuals and sound effects, the lighting effects and the stealth genre is also nice.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+1)

Super creepy game I liked the vibe a lot and soulful music was great. The dialogue was fun and off-putting which was great, I liked the writing a lot. The whole thing has a nice old school adventure game vibe. The mini-games were a little bit brutal for me. I could barely do the line one and the heart one almost made me give up before I realized the 'top' was the flat part of the circle. I barely got through the ghosts. But I managed and they were a fun idea, just really hard. I like the theme of loss and discovering some clearly cursed artifacts to bring back a loved one. The characters were all fantastic too. 

Developer

Thanks for your feedback! I may have overcompensated on difficulty to make the games more engaging. Definitely did not help that I did most of the playtesting myself so I got used to the difficulty hehe. But glad you enjoyed it regardless.