Fun game and that jump scare got me.
Play game
Cube Game's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Story | #112 | 3.306 | 3.306 |
| Theme | #213 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Sound | #232 | 3.056 | 3.056 |
| Mechanics | #353 | 2.944 | 2.944 |
| Fun | #362 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Music | #410 | 2.639 | 2.639 |
| Aesthetics | #411 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How many people worked on this game total?
1
Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Footsteps-essentials by Nox_Sound on the unity asset store. All sounds can also be found at freesound.org (individually). Phenala (coin sound) from freesound.org. Pixel Operator font at https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/pixel-operator. AllSkyFree by rpgwhitelock on the Unity Asset Store, pixel horror low poly train carriage by little dog creations on the Unity Asset Store. Finally, the first person controller from the Gamedevtv Jam starter pack
Link to your source?
https://github.com/AndrewGarcia1119/CubeGame
Comments
I didn't expected that at all!
Looked at this game day ago and thought to play but forgot, remembered about that and, oh boy, i wasn't disappointed!
Awesome twist, really put me in uncomfortable position, was expecting screamer from everywhere (knew from comments that something will happen), and when you actually did it, i was prepared to be scared, but still you managed to do that! I saw that long text, turned off my mind from game and thought about screenshotting that text, and when i brang my attention to game back it striked me! Really great way to do screamer, loved that!
Atmosphere in train is awesome, really uncomfortable, good job.
Overall, nice game, would love to play your other projects, and especially something with twist like that!
Submitted
Failed DeliveryThanks! This is my first jam, so I was wondering if it would even be effective when I first submitted the game, but I am happy to see that you like my game. I eventually want to make horror games, so I decided to practice making a scare during the game jam without expecting much, but I am glad that it worked :). Did you end up reading the rest of the long text?
Hi! That's also my first gamejam and i also tried to make horror game!
Your jumpscare maybe not very scary on its own, but how you timed everything and placed it in very unexpected place, when you just feel that you have control and nothing will happen when text on-scree, that's what made it so great! And image actually wasn't somewhat scary, but sound and timing was! Also, because i felt like something will jump at me at sometime, i was paranoid, so it turned out as it is!
I didn't ended up ready whole text because when i was deciding to press or not PrSn button it striked me, soo yea. If you have it i would like to read :).
For a jump scare to work, there are several parts, the sound, the timing, the environment, and the image/animation (or at least that is how I see it). Any of them alone won't be enough. Even if I had a super scary-looking image, it won't work without sound. My timing was inspired by 2 different things. One of them being the scary maze game, and the other thing is the escaping the prison game (part of the Henry Stickmin collection). If you know both of those, you might know what I am talking about.
The scare timing was intended. When the narrator talks to you, it gives it a feeling of a casual game that you can play all relaxed, but the environment is a bit more horror-like. It gives a mixed feeling of relaxation even in a dark place, which I thought would be a good environment for an effective jumpscare because people wouldn't generally be prepared for it (unless they read the comments).
As for the rest of the text, I might put it after the jam rating session is over on the game page. I think my game has been spoiled to whoever reads the comments anyway, so I would prefer not to directly add the text until after the jam (because no further spoilers). Ironically, it is my comments also spoiling it though.
I did it!
This was enjoyably spooky. I didn't expect to get these kinds of spooky twisty surprises from a game jam game. Nice! Extremely impressive for your first jam! I loved the writing too.
I actually looked away from the screen for a moment to try to find my screenshot key to be able to read all the text, so that certain moment in the game perhaps lost a bit of its impact on me... :D
Anyway, I'm proud to say I made it all away across the platforms.
Nice entry!
Submitted
ChipNo worries, and thank you. Oh, don't get me wrong, I was looking at the screen again in time for it to happen. It did spook me. I was already spooked from the atmosphere and had to be careful not to get too freaked out, since it was late at night. I didn't mean to make you sad, you did a great job at creating an unsettling atmosphere!
I've never pressed Alf+F4 so fast before, the jumpscare is brutal :D. I should have read the comments first so I could've at least expected that. An interesting game though. Good writing.
Submitted
You Are DeadWow, a simple yet fun game with a twist! I liked it! Was there more than one ending to this? Seemed like there was definitely more with the ghost-like entity but my ending just resulted in me eventually winning (after many times dying) the glass bridge. Great work all around!
Submitted
Last StandThanks, I had plans for more content but I couldn't properly pace myself since this was my first jam, I didn't add everything that I wanted to. I planned for the train segment to be longer and force the player tp be pulled back in if they died again, probably bringing them to another place with the same narrator/ghost. As of right now, there was only one ending. I hope you enjoyed the portion that I had.
HOLY SHITT!!. That Jump scare triggered my fight or flight. I don't think I've ever jumped harder in my life. Nevertheless the game was fun and I enjoyed it. But the Sensitivity is crazy high .
Submitted
Death QuestThanks, I had based the scare based off the scary maze. About the sensitivity, I have already gotten another discussing that issue as well, at this point I am contemplating whether I want to fix it so that other reviewers will have a better time or whether I am to lazy to fix it since it is a game jam game where bugs and other issues are already a common thing :)
This was very fun. I found it a bit too dark maybe. Couldn't really understand what was around me. But it was well executed. Nice.
Submitted
Escape DeathOh my lord, was not expecting the jumpscare xD You really timed it well with the long message, well done!
For a project as small as this I really felt invested and wanting to know more, the story was mysterious enough, and the twist of goal was original! Great game jam :)
Submitted
Rise of NecromancyHi! Just tested your game. Here is some comments, suggestions, questions & random thoughts that I wrote while playing:
- I can see where you got the inspiration to the first game.
- The switch after the first death was fun surprise. I really wasn't expecting something like that. It was clever and fun way to incorporate the theme to the game.
- Text speed is too high. I did not always have time to read all the text. To be noted that I'm not native English speaker so that might of course affect that. So if no one else has troubles then just keep it as it is. Otherwise I would suggest you to make it slightly slower or have it continue only when player presses a button. The narrative was interesting and I would have liked to enjoy it in more calm pace.
- It was very dark in the train game. This was probably partly intended but I might have liked it to be just a bit easier (=bit more light). I needed to go trough the train maybe 3-4 times before finding everything. The sound effect when the last item was found was a good addition. It was very intuitively clear that it meant that I was ready to proceed.
- The atmosphere in the train section was nice. The train looked good.
- I'm not really a fan of jump scares. But that is just an personal opinion.
- Getting back to the first game felt rewarding because the train was kind of claustrophobic. I was motivated to finish also the first game even though I believe the main experience was the train section?
- You might consider adding an action part to the main game by allowing the player to jump from the falling platforms. It felt weird when playing that I was not able to jump after the platform turned red. It might feel more fair to the player if the game would forgive one wrong guess. And I believe the game would still be hard enough. Although if you would allow jumping from the falling platforms you would need to think of some other way for preventing the player just hopping trough everything. Maybe the platforms fall faster after the first error? Maybe the first error will trigger all of the platforms falling starting from the beginning and proceeding forwards while each consecutive error making it go faster? That could add extra layer of chaos in the game and would definitely make it even more exciting!
- I would also be interested to know whether you planned to have other mini games there between the deaths? I could see it as a very interesting concept that the player would be playing a memory based game like this and between every failure they would have to finish a minigame to try the main game again. It might become really hard but interesting challenge to keep track of the right path while being constantly interrupted by random mini games or the narrator speaking.
- The edges of the last platform (the goal) were not clear. I fell down after getting to the the last pair of floating platforms because I couldn't see where to go next. It was not very nice experience... But luckily I already had learned to remember the path by then so it did not take many attempts after that to win.
Overall, interesting experience. It was something that I certainty was not expecting. Creative use of the theme!
Submitted
Sacrificei actually made it so that i could easily adjust the text speed, would you like for me to change that part? I could really only judge the speed based on my reading. I did leave one part fast on purpose though. About the lighting, yes that was intended, but I do see what you mean. I was planning on adding mini games, but I couldn't really figure out how much time I could allocate into making other parts, or at least making the train longer. Jumpscares aren't everybody's thing, so fair enough. The platform thing was to sort of feel the dread that you missed it, the other reason was to make sure you could not get to the end before going through the train. There was supposed to be more light but webgl didn't seem to like post processing for the platform part, so it was a bit dark. I can try to fix it tomorrow if I don't feel lazy.
Edit:
I was reading it on my phone and didn't see everything :). I will make the text changes if I get others with the same issue. The ideas that you mentioned, such as adding more chaos by getting all the other platforms to fall would have been a nice addition, wish I thought of that earlier. As for adding additional minigames, I did say I was planning on adding others, I was thinking most likely going back to the train but you have different tasks or different interactions. Other than time, the other reason I didn't do it was that I couldn't think of anything else at the time.
My original idea was that every time you would die, an unknown other being (the train narrator) would pull you in their world trying to keep you there and you would have to try to get out. I didn't put too much time in the lore, but I was going to use the cube as the thing that could transport you between the games. In the case of the game that I made, it was only used once and didn't have much of an explanation.
Thanks for trying my game, i was trying to reply to each part :)
Yeah, I think you answered to all of my points!
It would have surely been interesting to have multiple visits to the train. There was certain mystery around the voice and it would have been cool if there has been even more depth to the lore there. Then with each new visit you could have learned more. But I definitely understand that in a jam game one can never include all the possible ideas because the time is just going to run out at some point.
Very spooky, nice atmosphere, always felt like I was being watched :)
Submitted
[2022/Jam] GDTV - Ozball
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