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The Hiding Place's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Cleverness | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
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.
- Music, theme, mechanics, clever use of shadow, and a very interesting story. I really loved playing this game. The only thing that I think that might be useful is some tutorial aspect of the mechanics. They weren't too difficult to figure out, but from the perspective of someone that isn't as experienced in games might get frustrated without a little bit of guidance.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
yup
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
yuh huh
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
yessir
Tell us about your game!
The Hiding Place is a puzzle platformer centered around things changing in the dark. You play as a girl named Bell. She is trapped in a place called "The Hiding Place." She doesn't remember anything about how she ended up here. Join her as you uncover the dark corners of your past as you shine light on your hidden memories.
Game Jam theme: Shadows and Alchemy
I interpreted the "Alchemy" part of the theme to mean change, and made my game all about how things change in shadow. This idea plays into the main gameplay mechanics of the game, as well as the story.
One little detail about the way I made this game is I participated in two jams during its development. The other was the OST Composing Jam #7, where I made most of the soundtrack for this game. The theme for that jam was "Inside My World," which partly informed my choices for this game. The link to the OST I submitted is in the description of my game. (Note that the final OST that made it into the game is slightly different)
Extra Notes
Everything made by me - CodeRed
I'm so tired
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Comments
What I saw of this game seems very cool (music + opening screen/first piece of art) but sadly I couldn't get past the very first screen! I tried all the commands and clicking around, but couldn't get anywhere (let me know if I'm just being dumb).
I'm on a Mac (tried Safari and Chrome on here) which does notoriously have issues with a lot of these web pages. But I'd love to play more if there is a way around it!
Hi, thanks for trying my game! I would’ve updated the game by now to fix the bug you’re experiencing, but I’m currently on a trip so I can’t do so :(
The work around that has worked for the most people is using specifically Firefox, and/or not going full screen. I totally understand if you wouldn’t want to download a new browser just to try out my game tho lol. Regardless thanks for playing :)
I just tried in Firefox but same issue I'm afraid :( I think it's because I'm on a Mac. Would love to know when it's updated, the music is awesome!
Thanks for trying. I’ll be sure to let you know when I put out the fix :)
This is amazing. I related to so much of this, hit me very hard in the feels. I was super invested in this as I played. I don't really want to spoil anything in the comment for other people so I'll just say that I though the narrative is excellent! Very happy to have played it! The visuals are amazing, the music is great and very fitting too! Loved the game mechanics too!
Here's some feedback notes for when you continue working on this (please, please continue to work on this!!):
Thanks for making this game! I really enjoyed it, and it was meaningful to play. Great job!
damn that was deep
Feels like I've found a hidden gem honestly. I absolutely love when people put so much effort into their story, and I can see some personal aspect that's put into it. Relatable stuff actually, really enjoyed it.
The gameplay is great, nicely balanced with the story so that there's enough of both. Basically keeps you entertained and allows you to enjoy the story at the same time. The mechanics are interesting too, got some nice puzzles there.
The art is pretty neat, kinda reminds me of this minimalistic flash animation style. And the music is soooo good, really enjoyed the atmosphere it creates.
Can't wait to see how the story continues, hope you'll successfully finish it!!
Wow, thank you so much! You pretty much got it spot on with the story. Bell is mainly inspired by aspects of myself, so the story feels very personal to me. I'm glad that the effort I put in came through on screen. :)
I'm also very glad you enjoyed the gameplay! I did attempt to strike a balance between the gameplay and the story, and although I'm not sure I struck it perfectly, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Art is definitely not my strong suit, so the style of the art was just based on what I knew how to make lol. Considering that I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
It means so much that you enjoyed the music!! It's one of the aspects I'm most proud of, so it means a lot for it to be acknowledged.
I'm so happy you're excited to see it continue!! I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to keep people up to date on development yet, but I'll be sure to let people know on itch.io somehow. Your comment honestly just made my night lol. Thanks for playing :D
wow that was really good!!! the game mechanic is really unique and clever, and the story was really impactful. reminds me vaguely of omori (<- mega compliment!!!!) the music was really good and set the melancholy tone of the game really well! I will admit it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the game mechanics and i felt a little stuck sometimes lmaooo but I got it eventually! overall I enjoyed this game a lot and i look forward to a continuation !!!!!!!!!
oh also forgot to mention that there seems to be a glitch when you leave a room and come back, it restarts the dialogue/cutscenes. but yeah good job on this game !!!!!
Yeah idk why I kept the ability to go to previous rooms lol. It breaks the game in a lot of different places
Thanks! Yeah, the story did end up being very similar to Omori in a lot of ways lol. I was trying to teach the mechanics in a nonobvious way so I can totally understand getting stuck. Thanks for the feedback!! :))
It seems like a nice game and enjoy the cinematics made for the game. I however though suggest that you have it better optimized as that would be your "browser issues" also I think I saw that suicide and self harm was against the rules. Unsure if u saw that or not but otherwise on it's own its a good game besides the optimization.
Actually, optimization has nothing to do with the issue. I already fixed the issue with the text not showing up - had something to do with TextMeshPro materials. It just isn't fixed yet because I can't update the game until after the voting period. Also, I haven't yet gotten any feedback about optimization being bad, although I'm not at all surprised, since I had to do a bunch of my own raycasting and algorithms to detect if stuff is in shadow.
I never saw that self-harm and suicide was against the rules. Could you maybe provide a link to show that? These are the only rules for the jam I could find, and unless "Don't be a dumbass" is the rule you're referring to, there is nothing here that suggests what I did was against the rules.
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the game besides optimization. I'll definitely see if I can further optimize the game in the future, although I did quite a bit of profiling and found that my own custom raycasting stuff never lowered my performance significantly, so maybe it's just an issue with your browser/computer? Unity's URP 2D lighting system isn't exactly perfectly optimized for WebGL on its own, so it could just be that, and that's not really my fault. Regardless, thanks for the feedback. :)
So I can say that Unity's URP lighting is optimized for Webgl as my 10+ games are made using Unity for Webgl it's just a balancing act and trying this and that here and there would improve the fps a lot and the code for how you do it also has a dramatic effect especially if you use a private void Update function on your Raycasting which would 100% make the fps drop a bit.
It wouldn't be a hardware issue as long as your device can run DX9 then any game on Webgl should work. Its not a desktop game that is very much hardware dependent. It's like why doesn't a ps5 game run on the ps2 ? Its about what it can use and optimizing your game to work with what it can do.
https://docs.unity.cn/560/Documentation/Manual/webgl-gettingstarted.html
Some resource for you for Unity with Webgl.
Also I had thought I saw not Violence in the rules. That is my bad.
Well, I've actually personally found issues with Unity's 2D URP shadow-casting system where it would unnecessarily be handling shadows outside of the lighting range depending on the scale of the object - I had to add custom code to the 2d shadow caster in order to make my previous 2D URP game w/shadows performant for that very reason, so it might be in general performant, but in particular the 2D shadow casting is definitely not perfectly optimized.
Also, I know for a fact that my raycasting is not the issue, as doing some quick profiling shows that the raycasts I'm doing are using a total of 0.4% of the CPU the game is using, which is an insignificant amount in the scheme of things. Believe me, I did try to bring that number down, but it was about sacrificing performance for the accuracy of visibility detection with my objects, and I wanted to be as accurate as possible so objects wouldn't pop in and out of existence while you could still see them.
I was merely suggesting hardware could explain the game being laggy for you but not other people (like myself), not that it would cause the game not to run. As I mentioned, I know for a fact that the text not showing up (which was the "browser issue" I was referring to) is due to an issue with TextMeshPro materials, not due to any lack of optimization.
Regardless I appreciate the advice. Sorry if I'm being defensive - I'm trying not to be but I know that I am to some extent. I definitely am not an expert on optimization (it is definitely one of my weak points), so I'll still definitely consider your advice for the future.
Nice game you got here! The main puzzle platformer mechanics is well designed and implemented, the story is good, and the music is exceptionally nice. Good job! There is even a matching "boss fight" which utilises the core mechanics, which I'd say is a satisfying touch and conclusion.
A bit of suggestion would be making the story a little bit tighter and shorter, or maybe spreading it more throughout the game. I get it the story is quite a main focus here, and it is nicely told, but sometimes it feels like breaking the flow a little bit. But besides that, it's quite a nice game! Well done!
Thank you! I'm happy you enjoyed the boss fight, took me a while to get it right.
Yeah, the story is definitely the main focus of the game, but I get what you mean when you say it breaks up the pace. I was originally planning to have a higher gameplay-to-story ratio, but the story stuff took longer than I expected and I didn't want to cut anything from it, so it left me with a lot less time to add gameplay stuff. I'll keep this in mind for the future. :)
This was very well done! The mechanics and music were phenomenal!
My only recommendation is the first time you have to run, I got hit in the first room and had to restart which is fine, but I would have preferred not to have to get through all the dialog again. Just starting with the thing chasing you immediately would have been preferred.
Really, really good job overall! I enjoyed playing through it and hope to see it continue!
Thank you! I'm really happy how in particular the music turned out. Glad you enjoyed it. :)
I totally get the frustration with having to repeat that dialogue, I'll make sure to fix that when the jam is over. :)
I like the music and the first art of the tree the sun and the houses. Felt like I was really pulled into it by the calm animation and I felt sad.. Then I felt sad when I realized none of my browsers, chrome and edge can see the text and Ill be stuck with the sad sunny tree forever :(