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The RED Vial's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Aesthetic | #9 | 4.167 | 4.167 |
| Innovation/Design | #9 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Overall | #10 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Audio | #12 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Fun | #13 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Theme/Lore Reference | #16 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How did you incorporate the theme and lore?
I used the theme because the player has to break Jeff's experiment by freeing everyone.
In the intro cutscenes the player gets handed the red vial, and sees its dangers to the world. And then, just before being exposed to it, a loud thump announces the hacked robot that frees him.
I created all the art assets myself, only not some of the audio, and the credits are in the description.
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Comments
This was quite a fun little challenge. I really like the clarity you brought into this. With the robots having tile-based vision, there is no ambiguity where you can go and where you can’t. And also the moment you get caught, the color change and the fact that you let me sit there for a second to either explore a bit more of the room or just think about what i just did wrong is great. Also great was that if you fail you don’t have to open every door again, that would be quite a insane difficulty, so i can gradually explore and get better.
The game felt quite a bit like a speedrun after failing a few times, because i was just optimizing the start section until i found a really fast path through it, the gradual improvement was quite enjoyable. The only issue i had was with the player hitbox, it felt a bit wanky. Sometimes i would just get stuck at objects, or got detected standing behind and object because some corner of my hitbox was in the robots vision. Since the robots have tile-base vision, wouldn’t have tile-based movement for the player been nice too?
What’s missing is probably a counter for how many people are left to save. I just ran out and after the ending realised i missed some, but i thought i got everything. And also the thing with the red vial. You started a great story with quite some dialogue, and then didn’t tell my more about, you just left me hanging there. I just wanted to know, what the vile does, what it is for etc etc. It might be a great idea to get a part of the story each time you free sb. That way you could reward the player for freeing sb. and also move the story forward.
Thanks for the feedback! I have some ideas to make the controls a little better, I think a lot of what people have said about being "stuck" is just because the player had a bit of friction when hitting something and slowed down, and that's an easy fix. Also making the hitbox the robots can detect smaller and inside the main hitbox to avoid that and being seen through tables would help. The counter is also a good idea
As to the vial, what it does is it-
Not but seriously, I wanted to leave it as a bit of a mystery, kinda like on some TV shows when each time they're going to say a character's name, a bus passes by and you can't hear it, like in a frustrating but funny way.
AndI did itin no small amount because I couldn't think of anything (at least not within scope, or at the time).I might get more into the story laterI'm glad you liked it!
Interesting game. Since you cannot see an entire room before entering it, there is a lot of trial and error to figure out enemy movement patterns. So there is a big memory component to the game for each subsequent run.
This is an amazing game, very interesting and full of potential! Good job! :)
Thanks!
Hey, Great game here! I played your game on stream here for real time reactions (Game can be found in description next to time stamp):
Thanks for playing it live! It means a lot!
Yeah the robot could see you through the table because it illuminated the square the table was in, so if you got close enough it triggered it :/ , the whole Field of View thing is a little wonky with how I made it tbh
I guess you could've gotten to the end with only the two doors opened, but if you want to know what the Vial does is it
but you didn't miss much more
Hey, Don't be hard on yourself! I thought the field of vision was awesome! I was just wondering how the robot was seeing. It makes sense if the trigger zone was next to the desk! lol I thought this was a great game overall all though. Keep up the effort!
This is a gem that has somehow escaped my radar until now! It looks gorgeous, and plays really good. There was a ton of replay to remember the robot movements but the fact that pressed buttons stayed pressed was very welcome, and made it worth to keep trying. All in all, superb!
Thanks! It is a little hard but I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Love the design! well done
Wow I can't believe you managed to make such a cool game in just a week! I like how you reinterpretated the theme I think it was really creative and even if I'm bad at stealth and I kept loosing, I really enjoyed this game
Thanks! I kind of can't believe I finished in time lol
The back story set the intention nicely for the player. It was a very nice addition to make the player choose how un-selfish they should be!
Movement was nice and smooth, but it anoyed me many times that i got stuck on walls.
Thanks!
How did you get stuck on walls, by the way?
I expressed it in the wrong fashion, sorry.
What i meant was that i was annoyed that i often got stuck on 90 degree corners. I would have preffered their colliders to be rounded, instead of sharp. But that's just my personal prefference.
Well done And i love the path which can be detected by the robots
Great Game! I managed to get all 3 endings :) Also, I don't think this is intended right? (11/8 saved)
Um yeah I have no idea what happened there, what did you do before getting that? lol
Thanks for playing to the end (3 times)! Also, there are 4 endings ;) (0 saved, under 4, under 8 and all 8 - or over 8 if you do whatever you did lol -)
I dont know where exactly, but when you walked over a button, the dialog would trigger multiple times. Thats probably why the number keeps going up but I might be wrong.
Yeah that's totally related, I'll check into that, thanks!
Loved the story and visuals.<3
I love the art style, and the story and gameplay were fun.
It is pretty similar to my game! (yay) But this was hard.. One of the things that make it that way is the drones don’t really turn, they just flip, so it is really hard to time when you can move and when you need to wait. I had the same issue in my game so I made them kind of turn around instead of just flip instantly and it felt better.
Thanks! Great minds think alike lol
That's a good idea! I thought of it, although it'd a little hard to implement with how I did it
Great game!
I love the art style and simple, yet fun mechanic. It is very challenging but that's part of the fun.
The only thing I wasn't really a fan of was the camera movement, which feels kind of clunky to me.
Thanks! This is probably the most art I've made for a single game
I used an external package for the camera (Cinemachine) but I could've probably spent a bit more tweaking the settings tbf
nice game with good art but it is so HARD for me