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Down the Ladder's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Horror | #18 | 3.848 | 3.848 |
| Aesthetics | #70 | 3.970 | 3.970 |
| Enjoyment (Best Game) | #124 | 3.152 | 3.152 |
| Sound Design | #133 | 3.121 | 3.121 |
| Story | #144 | 2.788 | 2.788 |
Ranked from 33 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Pretty art style, creeped me out a lot. Just got stuck a few times that I weren't able to move and had to restart the game which is too bad. Beside that though well done!
Thank you very much for the kind words! We're glad you liked the art and the creepy vibes of the game! Sorry that you got stuck a few times though, we sadly didn't have time to playtest much and implemented a few things last second which probably broke some stuff, if we had more time we would've polished the experience more! We hope it wasn't too frustrating and was still enjoyable nonetheless!
Very cool art style and presentation. Feels very atmospheric but unfortunately the sound design is incredibly abrasive (in a bad way), even at low volumes. It's a shame because the sounds feel well executed, but are just far too harsh on the ears. It felt intuitive figuring out the puzzles and navigating the map, and the monster design was very cool, but pretty unforgiving in some of the places where it'd catch you.
Thank you for the kind words! Concerning the SFX, we ended up doing the mixing with less than 1 hour left before the submission deadline which is why it's done poorly. Thanks for playing our game, we hope you enjoyed it!
The game is nice, sometimes sounds are too loud.. the monster was scary.. good job.
Indeed, we ended up doing the volume mixing with less than 1 hour left before the submission deadline, so the sounds are a bit all over the place! Thanks a lot for the kind words and playing our game, we hope you enjoyed the experience overall!
Also attention to the resolution of the screen. I have a big screen and I was able to see part of hidden game.
Good catch! We had thought of changing the camera resolution depending on the screen resolution, but hadn't extended the logic to tying the darkness to the screen resolution as well. Thanks for pointing it out!
Too scary for me, but very beautiful, and very good atmoshpere !
Thanks a lot! A lot of time of was into the art. On a future iteration we might bump the brightness up a little to make it a bit less scary and showcase the art a bit more!
You made some beautiful stylistic choices here. Was on the edge of my seat the entire time!
Thank you very much for the kind words! We hope you enjoyed the experience!
Sad but I actually can't move. I hear footsteps, but everything stays in place :(
It might be that you haven't pressed space to clear the dialogue window when the game starts! Sorry about that, the UI isn't entirely clear -- we should've made it so that the character isn't animated while a dialogue window is up to avoid this type of confusion. Let us know how you feel about the game if you give it another shot!
I got really scared when it got me lmao, I don’t know if there’s an ending and I’m too dumb to find it but it’s a cool scary environment and level design
Glad you enjoyed the experience! The ending is poorly implemented because we rushed it at the end of the game jam, you have to interact with the staircase in the station with the locked gate.
Great artstyle, Fantastic footstep audio.
Thank you, we're glad you enjoyed the experience!
I couldnt figure out what those random doors that spawns do. I press space infront of it and it just turns on the flash light.
Thanks for playing! If you're referring to the small doors that exist in the tunnels, they are used to hide from the monster, assuming it isn't already chasing you! The flashlight automatically turns off while you hide to visually indicate that you are hidden, and turns back on when you let go of space. Hope this helps!
I think its buggy because when i press space infront of those doors, it does nothing. It just turns on the flash light if its off and if the flash light is turned on previously it just remains on. It doesnt hide you .
We didn't have time to actually create a hide animation for the player, which is why only the flashlight changes! In terms of actually making the player invisible to the monster, it should work, assuming it isn't already chasing you down, in which case you have to make it into a subway to escape!
oh
In love with the art style, really well made.
Thanks! We hope you enjoyed the experience!
This is perfect art style for a horror game, and the asmr noise is very satifying. Nice work! But sometimes it just too loud like a sound jumpscare.
Thank you very much! We put a lot of effort in the art! Concerning the audio, we sadly had to rush the implementation an hour before the deadline closed so we didn't have time to mix it, which is why sometimes it's way too loud, and other times it's kinda quiet, sorry about that hahaha. We hope you still enjoyed the experience nonetheless!
I was drawn to the gothic style illustration! The footsteps and the eerie noise created tension and kept me focused on what was going to happen next.
Thank you, the art was a big focus for our team, so we're glad you enjoyed it! We hope you had fun walking through the empty (or not) subway tunnels!
Wow, the hand-drawn art in this is simply gorgeous! And exploring abandoned subway tunnels is very creepy. As others have noted, I'd recommend reimplementing the control scheme. Maybe using the mouse for the flashlight rather than the sluggish up and down keys? I also don't know if it is just my computer's settings, but the area outside of the flashlights beam is pitch black, and I think a slightly lighter, but still gloomy, visibility would help highlight the great art. But overall, really great work!
Thanks a lot for playing and for the kind words! We absolutely agree concerning the flashlight controls, they need to be revamped because right now it's a pain to use it. We also weren't sure about the level of brightness either, we kind of ended up picking one at the end of the jam without getting too much time to playtest. We hope you enjoyed the experience overall!
Nice exploration game! Like other players, I also found the lantern movement slow
This was great. I'd LOVE to see this continued, reminded me of games like Lone Survivor and Neverending Nightmares (which were both very successful games in their own right). It saddens me that this game jam (and tbh, none of the ones I've seen so far) don't have a ranking system for "Future Potential", because if they did, this game would score the highest possible marks. The mechanic of aiming your flashlight up and down is interesting and I'd love to see more done with it (maybe highlighting items that can be picked up?), the sound design was unnerving, the hand drawn art is brilliant especially for the allotted time (good job on picking the setting of train tunnels as it means you can easily reuse art assets ;-) ) - seriously, really good job.
Thank you so much! We're really thinking of doing a full game out of this. The idea of making the aiming of the flashlight something more is really good, we used it to help people find the items but leaning into it even more can add quite a bit, thanks for the idea! We're super happy to hear that you liked the game!
Good to hear you might continue develop something like it, this is great!
Very cool aesthetics and high in spookness
Genuinely the most stressful game I have played so far. Between the sound design and bleak environment this really is a scary game. I would love to see this one polished up to revisit.
Thank you so much! We're super happy to hear that you liked it! We're thinking of maybe making a full game in this style or maybe even expand this game into a full game! Thanks for the review and we're really glad you liked it!
Sound and monster design are peak. Very fun and creepy vibes! I couldn't really figure out how to beat the game though because the monster was blocking where I needed to go and space bar wasn't working to let me hide.
Thanks for the review! We're happy that you liked the monster and the sound! Sorry that the game messed up, we added a lot towards the end and some stuff broke sadly, the monster walks randomly so it can block you if you get unlucky (we wanted to give it a path but ran out of time) and I'm not sure why the hiding doesn't work. Still we hope you enjoyed the game despite the bug (sorry again hahaha) and not being able to finish it!