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Ominous Darkness's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Playability | #719 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Cleverness | #755 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artistic Style | #893 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- GDD Document seems good! Good job! Game I like the game and its mechanics. The crafting system could use a little more love, so it is more easier to do. I had to restart bunch of times at the start because I wasnt pay attention that space bar is also the button to put down the lights and the button to continue in dialogue. Ya cant put them back after mistake, which is annoying.
- Based on my time playing this, and based on your interpretation of the themes from your GDD, I can understand where you decided to implement the usage of shadow and alchemy. And while the music and artistic style of the game were both nicely done, I found that there wasn't much I could do within the dungeon. The controls are straightforward, but by the time I got to the second level, I couldn't even place down any of the remaining candles I had in my inventory, nor could I press any keys in order to use items I had already learned how to collect. I'm not sure if this was something I personally missed, or something else, but I am still intrigued to see more of what this game has to offer. Good stuff all the same
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
yes
Tell us about your game!
In our game, you play as a young alchemist who delves into an abandoned dungeon in order to cleanse the darkness from it.
The gameplay is about searching for ominous spots to light up, collecting raw resources and crafting potions and torches from them, as well as evading hostile shades in later levels.
There must be a reason behind why the shades exist in the dungeon, and it comes to you to find out what it is and then deal with it!
Controls:
W, A, S, D - movement
Shift - sprint
E - hold to collect
Space - place torch, drink potion, select item for crafting, continue in the dialog
1,2,3,...,0 focus item in the hotbar
scroll wheel - change focus in the hotbar
Esc - game menu (restart level)
Extra Notes
A more in-depth narrative story is inside GDD.
This was our first experience working in a team and our time management was a little bit off. ;)
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Comments
I don't understand why your game needs to open in a new Fullscreen view as Unity is quite easy to implement a fixed UI scaler. The idea is to have a game play in the browser and I couldn't get past the forceful nature of putting me into a new window to play your game.
Hello AACA Game Page, thanks for the feedback, can you provide more information on how you tried to run the game? Maybe which browser are you using and which version?
It will be useful to try to reproduce the error to correct in a future update.
I tried to run it on my desktop on chrome. I use the up to date version.
It's a last-minute workaround we had to put in due to an issue discovered way too close to submission deadline... Though I must ask, why does it upset you so much? Being fullscreen does not stop it from being a browser game, nor does it cause technical issues on a well-maintained machine. I don't understand why such a triviality would stop anyone from playing, when this game jam is all about creative expression over technicall correctness.
Well here are a few reasons why I don't like or will like Fullscreen.
1. It makes my pc the whole game which means I can't use my discord or lookup anything or multitask.
2. If something happens in game and crashes it stops my whole browser from working and if Fullscreen its even worse because some will just freeze my display instead.
3. I should have a choice in if I want to play in Fullscreen or not? I play your game not because "I have to" I do it out of enjoyment and if I am not comfortable or enjoying my display being changed to suit your game and that is the only way I can play how is that fair to the player?
4. Fullscreen is a poor excuse for most for not having to "Optimize" or even put effort into making a proper Webgl game.
5. I use my laptop atm and Full screened games use more ram in the browser which I am limited to on my laptop.
Do I really need an excuse to not use Fullscreen ? It should be the players choice.
Hi ACCA Game Page. I understand your concerns, but even Thor himself promotes mainly the Steam platform on which we would also like to release one day. Almost every game on Steam is desktop and played fullscreen. Only this year Thor changed the rules that games need to be playable on the web because of malicious content/files/viruses. We weren't even focused on small screens because we are not interested on mobile platforms at all.
1. this can be solved by multiple choices. Either you have a big 4k+ monitor and you can create separate desktop for each "corridor" (corner) of the monitor, then the fullscreen is played only on one corridor. Or you can have multiple monitors which solves this. How are you solving this problem when you are actually playing a desktop game?
2. as a senior web developer - yes your tab can crash, but because browsers are nowadays multithreaded it's not actually touching any of the other tabs you are working in.
3. If this was a game you would actually payed I would personally fix this in a day. But this is free content created by no experienced game developers at all, learning and having fun together, working many hard hours even when some of us are on vacation with our families and children.
4. The fullscreen is a choice that you actually are allowing on the itch side, not unity. You don't need to click it at all.
5. If you have 1-2GB of RAM then I understand your concerns and I would use a different browser which is more RAM-friendly and not Chrome-based browsers.
So your because you knew you needed to make a game Webgl but you developed it still like it's for a windows desktop build and your first response is to get a bigger monitor for my computer?
Maybe I should buy a better graphics card to play Cyberpunk on day one because its unoptimized but if u had a better GPU u could play it still. Maybe the same for Battlefield 2045 etc.
If you response and your start is to say "Oh well its unoptimized get a better setup to play our game" then your really not understanding of a player and their feedback.
Nice game, and good implementation of the themes :D. The sound design and visuals are great work really well. I have a few points of feedback:
Other than that, Well done!
Thanks a lot for the feedback! :). I agree with all the points you mentioned. Placing the torch in the middle without any indicator is a feature to let you figure that out by yourself ;).
I really enjoyed it! I loved the crafting and the resource collection! really good. I would like to be able to read the note when pressing a button. At least a second I I come on it.
Other than that it was a really good experience. I really enjoyed it. I did get lucky on some resources that were not appearing but still let me collect, but it was a feature for me XD encouraging to explore to see if I did not miss anything!
I would love to see what is next on that story and go deeper in the dungeon.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I agree the dialog is annoying and should be changed to open on keyboard press or mouse click.
Strange, there shouldn't be any hidden resources :D... If you are in the range of some resource you can collect it. Maybe something was behind a wall.
We would like to release it later and now we want to get as many constructive feedback as possible :).
This was fun, I haven't had to stress craft while running away in a long time! Everything played really smoothly and the art and the music were great. Really good ambience and feeling. There was a good ramp up in difficulty too from the starting map.
Small complaint that every time I ran over the plaques the instructions would pop up in the middle while I was trying to run away or do something. It would also be nice to have a recipe book or something, since I couldn't always remember the combinations.
Really good fun and well done though!
Thank you for your kind words!
The recipe book is a good idea, I think we should consider it if we keep working on the game.
The dialogue popups from plaques are a common annoyance, yeah, wish we could fix that before submitting.
Glad you enjoyed it!