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A jam submission

Death is just the beginning... for those left behindView game page

A platform game about grief. Gamedev.tv Game Jam 2022
Submitted by RyanH82 — 5 hours, 38 minutes before the deadline
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Death is just the beginning... for those left behind's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Story#94.2824.282
Theme#164.2954.295
Music#363.9623.962
Aesthetics#1074.0004.000
Mechanics#2293.3083.308
Sound#2373.0513.051
Fun#4392.7822.782

Ranked from 78 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.
Music from opengameart.org and HR Utilities (made by me)

Link to your source?
https://github.com/NancyJames/deathisjustthebeginning

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Comments

Viewing comments 40 to 21 of 63 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
Submitted

Thank you for sharing your experience. It must've been hard but releasing it out than keeping it bottled inside is way healthier and better. I hope that doing this project has helped you in some way. I'm sorry for your loss.

Submitted

Wow that was really deep. Sorry for your loss. This game was very unique and a big twist on the theme and I enjoyed that. Thanks

Submitted

I'm sorry for your loss! Really great work, with deep meaning and gameplay/mechanics the makes the player feel exactly how you intended. I wish you the best and keep on the good work! :)

Submitted

This was something... You were able to simulate human feelings in such a touching way. No one should have to live that, but I hope you will feel "better" soon... Take care

Submitted

This was something... You were able to simulate human feelings in such a touching way. No one should have to live that, but I hope you will feel "better" soon... Take care

Submitted

Thats deep, shared a tear at the end. I am sorry for your loss. I hope you get to the final stage! Be well.

Submitted (2 edits)

This game is special. I am sorry, mate. Really. Also this game reminded me to spend more time with still-alive ones.

Submitted

This game hit very close to home. I think you executed the concept and emotional journey beautifully. Thank you for making this experience. Playing this was an intensely personal and validating experience. Thank you for this.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I just gave you a very high rating I want to see this game do well.
Not in fun though, because of course it is not.

My wife's sister died of lung cancer recently.
Every time I hear the door open for my wife to smoke my heart breaks a little more.
I don't want to be alone either. 

Thank you.

Developer(+1)

I'm so sorry for your loss. I totally understand that feeling. My OH parties and drinks like he's 30 years younger than he is and my parents are in their 70s. 

Submitted

Wow. It's a game of a different kind. The valleys of despair feel very real and and the slog out of it is very well implemented. The mechanic to fall back when you hit a thinking bubble is also very good. I think it hits the feeling of not wanting to think not wanting to hear that could remind you.

Thanks so much for making and submitting this game. I will definitely play it longer in the next days.

Submitted

I am also sorry to hear about the journey that led you to making a game like this. However, you game definitely bring out the emotions you were aiming for. This is game is very mood and atmospheric. You hit the nail on the mark for what you were going for. Good Job on the Game Jam entry. 

Submitted

I am sorry that you went through what inspired this game.
The game itself is pretty good and definitely insteresting and very much gives the player something to think about, but I think sometimes the mechanics are not clear enough, which takes away from the reflection on the topic and just adds a small layer of frustration at obtuse mechanics. In a similar way, I would probably make the UI a bit more visible and clear.

Submitted

Wow that's a good concept! Loved it. Maybe the game is a little slow, but well done in any case!

Submitted(+1)

It's sad that this game needs to exist but I'm glad to have played it. It's well made and feels very real. I hope that with this game you have managed express some of your feelings in a form that others can understand and that the process has also been healing for yourself, in some extent at least. All the best to you in the future.

I have listed below some comments about the game, mostly from game design perspective. If some of by suggestions goes against your vision you don't worry about them. These are just my thoughts after all:

  • The controls were a bit difficult. I understand that in some levels this was partially meant to be that way but the same difficulties existed in Denial level which might not have been intended. Improving the character controls in general but still have the slow high gravity settings in selected places might make the effect even stronger. It's hard to say exactly what felt wrong about the controls but I would guess it was about jumping and air movement.  One specific thing that I notice is that after after jumping straight up it is actually impossible to in the air so to jump to left or to right one has to first move to the direction and only after that jump. This is different than in most other games and was on of the things that made some of the platforming sections more difficult that I would imagine to be intended.
  • The game is an very creative interpretation of the theme and there is very clear narrative. The way you have used different style of level layouts and game mechanics to match emotions is very well done. This reminds of the game Journey which is famous for it's story telling trough varying the movement of the main character. I would be interested to hear if you have been familiar with this concept before or did think about using movement mechanics to show emotions/story only yourself. In any case, this kind of thinking is quite advanced game design, I would say. More on each level below:
  • Depression:
    • I know that it is bit contradictory to say this but the first level was really really demanding to play trough because the character moved so slowly. I understand the metaphor / narrative meaning here and (as said before) I really like the way you use different movement mechanics in different levels but currently the first level is so slow that I'm afraid that most people would not have the determination needed to play trough it. This is totally okay, if your goal with the game was study your own emotions but if you want to also be able to share your emotions trough this game you might consider making compromises to make the first level more easily playable. I don't mean to ruin your vision by any means. I'm just saying that I like your game and it would be really shame if other players would not see the rest of it because the feel too frustrated by the first level. My suggestion would be to have the character generally just a bit faster than it is now (it can and still should be slower than normal game characters) and then use certain areas (like the hands) to radically slow down the movement. Having higher difference between the "slow" and "really slow" speeds would also make those bottom moments more easy to notice and have higher impact.
    • The up and down hills shape of the level is really fitting for this level. Also grayscale visual is excellent choice
  • Denial:
    • Colorful second level was nice contrast after the first level. Good visuals here too!
    • As mentioned before there was some difficulties with the movement and jumping that were especially noticeable in this level because it had a lot of platforming
    • Most interesting moment was when one of the speech bubbles told a sad story, the platform was flipped and I fell directly to the black hands trap.
  • Anger:
    • This was a bit weird level compared to the others. I didn't really understand the new mechanics (Q and E buttons if I remember correctly) or why I suddenly died and taken to the previous level. In the end I solved the level just by moving trough everything without using the abilities at all. I wonder if it was intended to be beatable like that?
    • The background music was especially fitting in this level
  • Regret:
    • The stone walls were nice metaphor. Although I think they were not always optimally placed. They usually were not blocking the path that I was using so their appearance did not affect my playing as much as I think was intended. Maybe the level design in this level could be finetuned so that the player would  experience the effect of the walls more frequently. You could consider making more easy looking routes to lure player to those paths and then block them and force the player to use more difficult route instead, or even backtrack their steps
  • Acceptance:
    • An easy last level with nice atmosphere was  rewarding experience after all the difficult levels
    • The narrative was also wrapped up nicely here. The ending was very good.
      • Although I have to warn you that my friend who was also playing the game first thought that flying to the sky represented suicide. Just so that you that there are multiple interpretations 
  • Lastly, reverting back to previous levels was interesting mechanic but after first two times it became quite frustrating. Especially when it can happen that one drops multiple levels on a row. I think I once dropped from the level 4 all the way back to level 1. The good thing here is that you have took that into account by allowing the player to return back just by completing one level to the end, which makes it a lot better than if player would need to play all the levels again in that scenario (I would surely quit if that would happen). Although this also creates weird strategies that you might not have intended: if player drops from level 3 to level 2 they actually should intentionally drop themselves to level 1 because the end section of level 1 is easier than the end section of level 2. You could maybe consider limiting the number of situation in which the player falls to the previous level to lessen the chance that someone quits the game before getting to the end.

Overall: very strong theme and narrative with clever use of game mechanics to deliver the message.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for such a detailed review! 
I had wanted to tweak the physics but that would have meant rebalancing all the levels and I didn't have time for that.
You're the second person to mention not being able to move horizontally after jumping, that's not been my experience of how jumping usually works but admittedly I don't play a lot of platform games because I'm rubbish at them, maybe that's where I'm going wrong! After you mentioned it, I tried it in your game (haven't tried it in any of the other platformers yet) but that was really difficult for me to get the hang of, I found myself using both the arrows keys and WSAD! Just seen you can do it in Tilevania too. Huh.
The end of acceptance was definitely not supposed to represent suicide. Originally the "character" was supposed to be surrounded in glowy balls that floated around but there wasn't time.
I do agree that the first level is a real slog, when you've played something a hundred times its hard to gauge whether its the intended level of awful for someone who is only going to play it a couple of times (and each time you start further in, I even made it so that if you ended up there a 4th time, you're basically by the exit, just in case!)

With the dropping platforms, the first one was supposed to drop you on to a platform below it, to introduce the mechanic in a "non fatal" way. I think there's only 1 that is directly over a trap.

I may relook at Regret, you were supposed to head towards the sprigs of Heather (doesn't always work as when it disappears it moves to the next waypoint in the list, regardless of where you go), I did add additional platforms after the original design to put powerups on and that might have messed up the path.

Developer

(and to answer your question, no I had not heard of the game Journey, but I will look it up). My original idea (even before this Game Jam theme was announced) was a survival game where the different emotional states were represented by different biomes but firstly there wasn't time for that and I hadn't even conceptualised how that would work when I thought of this idea)

Submitted

It was really a nice gaming experience and I had fun trying it out :) 

Submitted

Wow, it was a sad game but a original concept! I miss more player speed and maybe maybe he could jump more often. Good work!

Submitted

Good concept and theming with the different levels.

Submitted

Thanks for making this and sharing something so personal with the community. 

Submitted

The transition from dark to light was beautiful. Maybe the movement could have been a little faster character movement. A different design could have been preferred as a character. It was nice to change the music when the atmosphere changed.

Developer

Originally it was supposed to be a person, not an abstract ball but compromises had to be made.  Maybe one day I'll release a remastered version with all the features that didn't make the cut!

Submitted

Really good use of narrative to drive the mechanics. The hands could be pretty hard to see, though maybe that was intentional. One thing I struggled with was the jumping, like I couldn't jump to the side without already moving in that direction. I'm not suggesting free movement in the air, but it might help to have a few frames of buffer, so if you try to press jump and move at the same time, it will read as a sideways jump even if the sideways button comes in a frame or two late. That said, really good entry and use of the theme.

Viewing comments 40 to 21 of 63 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page