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A jam submission

Who Are You!?View game page

Will you live and save your daughter, or die trying?
Submitted by Haunting Humans Studio (@hauntinghumans2) — 13 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Who Are You!?'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#34.2504.250
Graphics#64.2504.250
Overall#74.0314.031
Gameplay/Design#124.1254.125
Fun#273.5003.500

Ranked from 8 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

What would you like feedback on?
Sound/FX - Scary feeling - Story - Visuals

What did you update?
Spanish Localization - New Ending - New BGM and SFX - updated UI - New Assets - Better Textures - Animated Textures

Name of updated upload (if downloadable)
Who Are You.zip August 1st Update

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Se ve genial! Estéticamente se siente muy bien logrado, sobre todo lo relacionado a las grabaciones, cassettes y VHS. Los efectos de sonido logran generar una sensación de inquietud constante, aunque hay algunos efectos que se sienten desproporcionados (ej: los pasos dentro de la cabaña). En cuanto a la historia, la introducción y la narrativa ambiental de los items que encuentras dentro de la casa ayudan un poco para caracterizar a los personajes pero aún así siento que queda un poco corto, sobre todo cuando la motivación para descubrir la verdad está ligada a los propios personajes y su relación.

De todas maneras imagino que hay varias de estas cosas que ya están trabajando (o tienen planeado hacerlo), asi que estaré atento al avance del proyecto. Buen trabajo, sigan así!

Developer(+1)

Muchas gracias por jugar! Y así es, justamente estamos trabajando fuertemente en todo el apartado de sonido y en agregar todos los elementos que hacen a la historia, así que en los proximos updates se va a estar profundizando mucho más en todo esto para poder dar mucho más sentido a las situaciones ya desde la demo. Así que habrá varias sorpresas en los proximos updates, así como mejoras en los model de los personajes para dar un poco más de realismo. 

Gracias por las buenas vibras y tomarte el tiempo!!

Submitted(+1)

The sound and scary feeling you totally nailed it! I was spooked the whole time I was playing.
Few things to note: 
When examining the items in Mattie's room, the item is too dark and can barely be seen.
I put the VHS tape in the VCR and it started playing even when the TV is off (I know it would work like that in real life too but I missed half of the video)
Maybe a countdown timer for the 3 minutes would be helpful unless it's a design choice to make it scarier.
I love the use of videos! I haven't seen too many cinematic experiences in a game jam before so it was quite a scary experience for me! 

Developer

First of all, thanks for playing and your time!

Indeed regarding the timer, it's a design choice to add to the feeling of desperation, not being able to realize if you are ok with time or not, it's also part of how the story goes, which we are going to be showing more in the next updates!

We'll consider the TV situation, totally something we'll be checking on!

We are working on the lighting for that part so it can be seen better, there's lot of fun work to do!

Thanks again for taking the time!

Submitted(+1)

Hi!

I’m just streaming this game (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1889937622 )

I think it’s a good game, just it miss a couple updates to be perfect.

I can confirm that Spanish localization works, ant it’s nice but it miss the localization of the “in game world”.

Maybe because I was streaming I couldn’t immerse myself in the game until the point of fear. (I had to split attention between chat and the game)

The items are shadowed when you take them, so you cannot see them properly. The light reflection doesn’t convince me (with the windows and the TV).

It’s a pretty good game. Congratulations! Keep working!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!

All noted, we are still working on the materials and such, and the window is a thing that's on the backlog to work on. I watched the stream and we noted the things you mentioned. So we'll keep working hard on enhancing the whole experience!

Submitted

Good luck!💪

Submitted(+1)

Horror games are definitely not my favorite genre, but I can appreciate when they are well done, and I definitely think this has potential! In my opinion, there is a lot that should be updated still; because this is a horror game, getting the immersiveness just right is critical if you want people to really enjoy it when it's released.

This is going to be a longer post, because I've got a lot of nitpicks about the experience that I had, so bear with me! Here is all of my feedback under the categories you asked for, focusing on immersiveness over all else:

Sound/FX

  • The ambience sounds/music should be balanced more, in a way that accentuates scary moments, and also provides lulls during less intense moments. For example, I found the ambience track to be too loud while I was inside the cabin during most of the initial exploration section where you have to find the tapes. It would be better if that track would dip down, change or turn off until there is some significant event like a jumpscare/etc. Likewise, in the corn maze section, it would be nice if the track started less intense and grew as the time limit approaches or when the farmer is nearby.
  • I found some of the footstep sounds to be too loud, mainly the ones inside the cabin - sometimes it almost sounded like I was hitting the ground with a hammer!
  • I personally did not like the AI voices that much - they overemphasized certain syllables and words, and didn't bring out the emotions that I would expect from real people. None of the characters really sounded scared, worried, or distraught in the way that some voice acting could accomplish. I especially found the main antagonist 'alien guy' to be quite nonthreatening, partially because of the voice.
  • The farmer guy in the corn maze should make sounds as he moves around, especially when he's walking right through the corn stalks. Also, he should probably have more of a cooldown between voice lines so he doesn't repeat himself when he attacks you, and maybe should occasionally say things when he's far away from you so you can get a general idea of where he is. Some explanation for why he's there in the first place would be appreciated.
  • In the corn maze, there was some crying/screaming sound effect (not exactly sure what it was) that played when I was walking through some of the corn, only to cut off abruptly when I walked forward a bit more. I assume that is a bug?

Story

  • I really liked the presentation at the beginning of the game with the flashback scenes and the radio-like voice filter, but, I think it could be better if you find a way to integrate some simple gameplay into it, or build it out into the first level of the game. As it is right now, the cutscene just feels a little longer than necessary, and that can be a big turn off for a lot of people. If possible, I would suggest starting with gameplay almost immediately so the player feels more involved.
  • I would highly, highly recommend getting a writer to help clean up the characters' dialogue; currently there are a number of grammatical errors, and some phrasing that feels very unnatural. This is a very common problem among other horror games out there, often because the writers either don't speak English natively or don't have much writing experience, but IMO it is too underrated. Getting the dialogue just right (including using real voice acting) is paramount if you want to truly captivate the player.
  • Having an element of mystery is definitely a good thing for horror games in general, but I think it works best when you have more context/worldbuilding to work with. It can be a tough balance between overflowing the player with too much story at once (Metal Gear Solid anyone?), possibly taking away from the interactiveness and making it feel too much like a movie, and not giving enough context for players to feel like they care about what's going on. Right now, I think the game's introduction falls a bit into that first category, while the remaining portion falls a bit into the latter.
    As mentioned earlier, I think having some gameplay in the introduction could help a lot, but I also think you may want to consider doing more worldbuilding before the main threat of the game is made clear. I know that this is an unfair comparison, but just for reference, games like The Last of Us and The Walking Dead do a great job of building up the characters' backstories both early on and throughout the entire story so the players can get to really care about them. In your game, I want to care more about the main character, his daughter, the woman who communicates to you, and the antagonist. But with the way it's currently structured, I have to do some crazy unexplained scavenger hunt to apparently save some people that it feels like I don't even know, from a guy in an alien mask who, to me, just seems like an angsty teen wearing a party store halloween costume (again, voice acting can help here tremendously).
    To summarize, I might suggest clearing up some of the mystery surrounding the story earlier on, leaving only one or two big ones to direct the main plot point of the game, and doing more worldbuilding to flesh out the characters a bit more.

Visuals

  • I like the general aesthetic that you're going for - going with a stylized look instead of a realistic one is usually a smart choice for any developer without a large budget. The green texturing in the logs and other wooden elements gives a unique vibe that helps to make the world feel even more unreal, pairing well with the blue fog IMO.
  • While I think the materials are pretty good, I think more work needs to be done to give consistency between the texture and object scales. The floor and ceiling of the cabin had a noticeably larger texture scale to them compared to the walls and other smaller details; those should be scaled down, or you should create a higher-resolution version of those textures so it matches up better.
    In a similar vein, some objects felt too large or too small, though maybe this was intentional? Idk, but certain details did feel out of place, like the large doll toy compared to the tiny keychain.
  • The flashlight definitely needs some work, it cuts off at such a short range to the point where it feels like you're holding a candle! It should probably have a much longer range. I also noticed that the light would sometimes show up on the wall of the cabin beyond the point where it faded out on the ground, leading to some visual bugs. And certain objects are a bit too reflective or uv mapped in ways that don't interact well with the light, mainly the photos in the cabin that required me to move the camera to a weird angle to decipher.
  • The characters could use a bit of polish too. It would be really nice to give the character models some facial rigs so they feel more alive when they talk, and just a bit more cleanup so they fit the rest of the stylized world a bit more.

Even though you didn't ask for feedback on the gameplay, I feel like I need to mention a few things:

  • I was not able to make it past the corn maze section. I replayed it 5 times, and really, actively tried to find the remaining toys, but no matter what I couldn't find anything beyond the keychain on the ground, the doll on the tractor, and the ufo on the well. After the 5th try, I just didn't have the patience to try again. I even was able to jump up on top of the tractor to get a vantage point, but that sadly didn't help.
    • Please, please, please make it so you can skip the audio playback after the first time you listen to it. In fact, that should probably be how it works by default, so players like myself who die over and over again can get right back into the gameplay afterward.
    • There need to be some in-game visual and/or audio clues, or text clues that can help the player figure out where the items are when they get stuck. Get creative! Make it make sense in the context of the story, there just needs to be something. Like how the keychain was lit up on the ground - maybe there could be some other lighting effects for all the other toys too?
    • Please show the 3 minute timer in the game somehow - maybe the main character can set a timer on his phone or watch or something? It's important to be able to tell how much time you have left so you can make better decisions about where to look and what paths to take.
  • The character's walking and sprinting speeds felt far too slow - to me, the sprint felt more like a brisk walk. If you don't want to increase it for some reason, you might consider just making the sprint the default, and removing the walk altogether.
  • In the parts of the game I played, I did not find any need to jump. Perhaps it becomes useful after the corn maze section, but I wouldn't know. Regardless, it would be nice to give it slightly more purpose if it's going to be a prominent game feature.


Even though I was very critical in this review, I still did have a good time while playing your game! I just want to see it be the best it can be, and live up to the full potential. I wish you the best with your future  development efforts!

Developer(+1)

First of all, Thanks for playing and taking the time! indeed this is just the Demo and it's on it's early stages of development so every comment helps a lot and you made your points very clear. Which is fantastic, so thanks a lot for your time. 

Regarding what you mentioned we are working towards fixing and balancing the cornfield, it's the first task that's why we only made 1 toy difficult to find, but we are working on adding more time to it and stuff like that. So bear with us, we are going to make it work haha. 

Regarding the story, first of all we are all learning on how to do stuff, so we are working on the cinematics and flashbacks, eventually everything will be well explained so you can get emotionally attached to this family and understan better what's the situation, the demo will be fully updated and we have big news regarding voice acting, that we'll be sharing soon in our socials. But i can promise we are going to reach de deepness that we want to provide. Also a psychologist advisor just joined the team to add more to the psychological depth of horror, the idea is to bring this story alive. Also the whole dialogues and such are being reviewed now, english is not our first language so yeah, we saw how certain grammar mistakes break the immersion as well, so thanks for pointing that out!

There's a couple of things you mentioned that will help us a lot to make things better for everyone, we want people to get really into the story and feel this is a game to come to. There's 3 levels more that will be developed for the full release, so there's a lot to do but we'll continue improving!

I don't usually write this longer replies either, but i wanted to thank you and let you know we are doing this for the love of gaming and story-telling. So having opinions like this, make us work harder! Thanks one more time for your time and comment!

Submitted (1 edit)

OMG! I got so scared! I don't like horror games. But for someone that does, I could definietly say that they would enjoy it. 

The cvs tape bugged out for me, no audio and static on the screen, but the subtitles showed the monolog. I did not know what to do after. Also I suggest that you do not take control of the player's  camera (when you show the flashlight). I is annoying and in my opinion not necesary. On other note, update the name of downloadable, because only after playing I found out that there is a newer version

From what I've played you should publish it on steam. Well, maybe a longer version of it. Everything feels polished, exept of course that one bug.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback, yeah if the TV is on the tape should play and after that finishes there's a cassette that appears next to the TV that leads you to the next map. On the newer version we optimized the game and added the posibility to watch the VHS in fullscreen too. 

Funny thing is that for the flashlight, we added that part since in the first version of the game people was complaining that they couldn't see it. So we added that like in a funny way. But we are always trying to improve this things so we'll check again on best ways to implement that part.

But again, thanks a lot for playing and your inputs, helps a lot to make things better!

(+1)

Rather good game! Well Done!

Developer(+1)

thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Sound effects and visuals are very good, although the voice acting is delayed, but that might just be my computer not being very good.

Developer

Thanks for playing, and yeah, we didn't have issues before on that matter but still we'll check it out in case we need to optimize the game more. Thanks for your inputs!