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A jam submission

In The Forest - Game Jam VersionView game page

A short, retro 3D, horror game about banishing an entity in the darkness.
Submitted by SomeAsianGuy — 11 hours, 49 minutes before the deadline
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In The Forest - Game Jam Version's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Playability#15.0005.000
Cleverness#15.0005.000
Theme#2334.0004.000
Artistic Style#4014.0004.000

Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

  • Great GDD! Love the idea of the game and the mechanics! You have done a great job for the 2 week period! Please keep developing this game! Constructive Critiscm: Add a tutorial for how to play the game with prompts in game Add more creepy sounds to add suspense to the background of the game Add a health bar

Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes, a link in the description.

Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes lol

Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes

Tell us about your game!
Your name is Jake and you arrive at a campground to investigate missing campers.

Standard FPS game controls. Use numbers 1-3 to switch tools.

The lantern provides light, but is old and needs to be charged often. Left click to toggle and scroll wheel to charge.

The polaroid provides a flash of light to scare things that don't like flashes of light. Left click to use.

The journal shows lore and a task list. Scroll wheel to switch pages.

Extra Notes
Thanks for playing! :)

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Comments

Submitted

What a fun experience. I love short retro horror games like this and The Entity looks and sounds creepy so well done. Especially the rapid approaching footsteps if you don't see it. Chills down the spine. I also really like that you have to scroll to charge the lantern, reminds me of those kinda spin recharge flashlights.

Anyways for feedback here's my two cents/things I noticed throughout playing:
- I wish the lantern recharged faster. Once its out i just find myself scrolling the wheel for way too long at a fire
- At one point I barely just left the campfire but i was in the shadows so the entity had the opportunity to attack me, but it attacked from behind, where the campfore was, which doesn't make much sense if they're afraid of lights
- At one point it was approaching me from the top of the hill and i whipped my light out so it just started floating above me lmao
- Sometimes the game just  lags, a little more optimisation would be great
- I feel like there should be a small light source on top of the rock formation, to give at least a little time to read the task update once you assemble the rune

Other than that I really loved it ^-^ Having to bait it at the end was a frightening task, but the sprite change to frowning was great. 

PS.: I found Thor D:

Submitted

image.png I am on a Mac using Chrome, any ideas? It keeps telling me that WebGL lost context and that I need to re-load. :( I really wanted to play it

Developer

Ahhh, according to Godot's official documentation:

"Godot 4's HTML5 exports currently cannot run on macOS and iOS due to upstream bugs with SharedArrayBuffer and WebGL 2.0. We recommend using macOS and iOS native export functionality instead, as it will also result in better performance."

Sorry ☹️, in hindsight I could've made downloadable builds for Windows and macOS as well, not sure if that would've been allowed lol, but also I don't have a mac to test with 🙃perhaps in the future though.

Submitted(+1)

Spooky stuff hahahaha I like the jumpscare face!!!

Keep this going, I'd love to see where this goes!

Developer

Thanks for playing 🙂 yeah, I found a free CC0 picture of a face, cut out the smile and duplicated the eyes a few times lol.

Submitted(+1)

Love this type of game!! Everything was good, the monster was SO FAST. it snuck up behind me kind of a lot, and the audio for it was not that clear, maybe that was intentional for more jumpscare.
For some reason i didnt get a stats screen after i got in the car, i think my internet cut out though. Overall great work! Some stuff can be cheesed just like Nevakanezah said with the scroll wheel but i dont think that's a big deal. Can just add a simple cooldown or max rate to that. I loved seeing Thor's face in game hahahaha

Developer(+1)

Glad you liked it 🙂 I hope he finds his face if he plays lol

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Solid!  I rather like the lowpoly aesthetic.
+ The lighting and mechanics make for good atmosphere (With one exception below)
+ The guidebook works quite well for keeping you on track
+ The entity's omnipresence forces you to treat the dark with (some) respect

- Using scroll wheel to recharge the lantern means that people with free-scrolling mice (I have a G502) can rapidly toggle the lantern, and so long as their mouse is spinning you will actually gain charge while using it.
- It might be my crappy earphones, but I never knew when the entity was approaching. This made the polaroid pretty useless, as it'll catch up to you long before you can spot it coming.
- The entity has all the hallmarks of cheesy internet-horror jumpscares, which detracts from the otherwise-great atmosphere. It's a solo game jam project though, so I can't blame you for implementing something simple here.

STATS
- Deaths: 1 (...I fell off the rock after the ritual.)
- Lantern usage: 3m42s
- Snaps: 0
- Times attacked: 25
- Final time: 9m37s

Developer

Thanks, sticking with the lowpoly aesthetic definitely helps with dev times lol

A coworker of mine that playtested also had a free-scrolling mouse, so he beat the game entirely with the lantern lol. I was on the assumption that most users probably don't have one, so I didn't write a workaround. 🙃

For the audio, you can actually hear the Entity's "footsteps" approaching from a little bit away, so it indeed may just be your headphones. ☹️

As for the jumpscare, yes lol. I agree, it is a cheap and cheesy one. I originally planned for the Entity to be a full 3D model and have a full death animation (it probably would've still been cheesy), but I decided to focus my time elsewhere.

Submitted

>beat the game entirely with the lantern lol

Yep, pretty much exactly what I did. I think i got a higher "times attacked" score cause i kept toggling it.
If you end up working on it more after the jam, I figure the scariest thing the entity could do is grab your leg or something (lowering the camera, and dropping your lantern), then drag you into the woods in a fade-to-black. It's just a little jump scare-y, but pays it off more cleanly

Submitted(+1)

This was a pretty good horror game, I liked how present The Entity was at all times, though I couldn't figure out how to bait them into the rune, good game nonetheless :)

Developer (2 edits) (+1)

Thanks for playing :)

Balancing the tools, The Entity's speed, and his aggro timer were definitely some of the worry points for me, so I'm glad you liked it lol. I feel like I should have used more specific words for the tasks because I know how everything works already, but other people don't lol. (there's probably a term for that)

SPOILER (if you will), to bait The Entity into the rune, you must let him attack you in the darkness and make sure he runs into the rune before he reaches you. :)

Submitted(+1)

I think the wording of the tasks was fine, I just couldn't figure out how to get the entity to follow me up the rock as they kinda got stuck at the bottom :P

Developer (2 edits) (+1)

Ahh, oh yeaaah, there was that too on my to-do-if-there's-time list lol 🙃I kept pushing that off and just used the lantern/polaroid to spook him away to reset his path. 😭