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The Wailing Well's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of Theme - How well the game incorporated the given theme. | #2 | 4.611 | 4.611 |
| Concept - How interesting or unique the game is. | #2 | 4.444 | 4.444 |
| Overall | #3 | 4.236 | 4.236 |
| Presentation - How well executed the game is. | #6 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Enjoyment - How much you enjoyed playing this game. | #9 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What external assets did you use in this jam?
VRIF, FreeNightSky, EasyColliderEditor, SimpleInteractive Water, Clayxels
********* Because no one reads the actual game page ***********
Make sure your floor height is correctly calibrated, and experiment using the environment to your advantage!
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What was your favorite part of this jam?
Keeping the scope small
What was the hardest part of this jam for you?
Working within a genre rather than a theme.
What resources/tutorials do you wish you had when making this game?
How to build the project and for it not to take an hour! When the shaders started compiling I almost lost my mind.
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Comments
This was a cool mini game! I really liked the polished environment, nice tutorial and menus and the creepy thing watching above was the cherry on top haha
Unfortunately wasn't able to figure out a good setup to be able to get all the keys ):
First I couldn't reach my feet, then I kept leaving by boundary to be able to reach the keys around me.
I'll try again another time, though!
Congrats on this submission!!
Thanks for playing! Yes, we heard about the feet and the floor level. The only way to remedy this is to make sure your floor is set correctly within the oculus settings. A simple recalibration of your guardian should do the trick. The better news is that we have come up with a good way to resolve this issue and allow the player to set the floor height and added a short range remote grab to the keys. As for reaching the keys around you, you need to use the environment in the well, I suggest the leg as the easiest to reach the keys and throwing skulls at the bucket will knock it down and let you grab the key inside.
Nice little game for a 72-hour jam. Wasn't overly complex to win, but had some nice mechanics and felt complete with the tutorial and menus. Well done!
thanks so much for playing! We had some ambitious plans on our "scope creep" Trello board that would have added some more interesting mechanics and replayability. A deeper well with ledges to climb, full body IK and different wells to escape. In the end we decided to make as good experience as we could for the single well and try and refine that.
I actually missed unlocking the legs, thought the last key would be used up above.
As mentioned by a few others the floor was a little problematic, so I went and recalibrated .. could just fake the floor being a little higher to get round this issue as I find most people don't have accurate floors (people be lazy).
Water was nice .. tried to catch it in the bucket at one point, but thats more down to the water mechanics looking good.
Good tutorial .. glad to see that added its often missed.
A few notes:
- Hands were a little jittery in place .. I would lock the root and then the wrist and only motion the other joints to give the impression of being locked in place.
- A little more indication on the legs .. mixed in with the other bones they get a little lost.
- I would add a button to skip the intro (black screen) after the first playthrough. Though I like to mess with mechanics so I can give feedback so maybe I play a little more than others.
Well thought out escape room .. good job!
Originally I had the idea to lock the grate on top and you would have to climb a variety of ledges to climb out and unlock the grate. That was a little too ambitious for a 72hr game jam so we just went for the legs and arms.
We totally should have locked the root on the wrist! Great catch! Didn't even think of doing that.
The legs and arms were actually going to be fullbody IK. Obviously, we didn't have enough time for that otherwise that would have been a cool way to increase immersion and you would have definitely noticed your legs were locked. If we can restore the game after I messed up the github we might get a chance to update it.
A skip would be a good idea too. We figured there were a lot of games to play so we didn't go for replayability. There were some ideas thrown around about procedurally generating the key locations or dropping the keys from the top of the grate into the well using physics for variety. Thanks for playing!
Really unique take on the escape room theme. i scare easily but this wasn't too bad. the keys, especially the red one, get getting stuck in weird places or falling into the floors and walls so i had to restart a few times even though i knew where they were, or just cheat and stand up. was a really fun experience.
The red one is actually using a fixed joint to keep it in the bucket unless its knocked really hard. Are you playing on the Quest 2 version of the PC version? The PC version is every so slightly different as I added 3 colliders at the bottom of the well to keep the key from falling too close to the edge and away from the player. The Quest2 version I couldn't be assed to compile the build again with those changes so there is a chance on that version the key falls a little bit through the mesh so you can't see it anymore.
We decided to purposely let the player stand up and cheat a little, we figured they could probably still stand up a little bit anyway if their legs and hands were bound but not their waist.
I've since updated the game on my end but I'm going to add a few more bells and whistles and update that version after the jam ends. Thanks for playing!
yeah, I'm playing on a quest 2 and I knocked the bucket pretty hard with the skeleton leg 😂
Ahh yes, then the issue is the additional side colliders I added in the PC version but not the q2 version, haha sorry about that. I would update the game again, but since I suck at Git, I've gone and bungled all the versions. Hopefully, my teammate can salvage my github atrocities.
Great Game! its well polished and has a little of all the elements of a game, well done. it took a second to figure out how not to drowned. lol but I got that last key. first game i played that played all the way threw without any bugs. impressively polished and functioning!
You scared the *** out of me at the start, just after the cutscene-sound, I just teleported instantly, and my heart did bounce, also the creature at the top of the well is very disturbing, but that's some good stuff, it was your intention. I am fond of the intro, it is just so clever to put a mini-cutscene because you can explain the rules, like the first hand with then key and lock. I felt a more mature VR experience since the last game I played from you (VR Game Jam 2021), the mechanics were very VR related, everything was well thought, especially the water raising (I had an "Oh...the water is raising... "moment when I realized). The fact that you coded the underwater camera is amazing, that's great because it really adds to the immersion.
I had issue reaching the keys, and I managed to climb the chain without unlocking my feet.
Great atmosphere, great attention to details.
Bravo kokutouchichi and oonej !
Glad you enjoyed it!
Yeah we've heard that the floor issue many times. not sure how to avoid that with the floor calibration. Maybe adding in a height adjuster of some kind to help.
Thanks for the kind words! :)
Thank you for the kind words! Yes, the last VR game I put out was the jam last year, finally got back into my groove and i'm glad I was able to participate this year. Yeah the floor issue is due to the floor height set in your oculus not being exactly level at start. It's come up a number of times, I think we will definitely think about adding a height adjustment in the game to make sure you can reach items on the floor. The keys are best reached using the skeleton leg and throwing the skulls at the bucket to knock it down. We purposely let the players stand up if they want too to reach some of the items, but not enough time to code in not letting them climb the chain till the feet were unlocked as well. Definitely, address that in a future update! Thank you for the valuable feedback!
The game had a great atmosphere and amazing visuals. I loved the water effects and the creepy thing above the well. I personally had to restart a few times because the keys disappeared or because they were simply too low on the ground (Bellow my reach because of my physical floor). This also made it hard to unlock my feet and forced me to drop the key in the right spot or drag them to the lock with another object. A positive consequence of this was that it forced me to use other objects to reach the keys while they were on the floor which actually made the game feel more immersive.
Congrats on creating a beautiful game in 3 days!
Thanks for playing! I had a similar issue with the floor, but its due to the floor not being calibrated correctly on your quest. Just gotta adjust that gaurdian once before you place and you should have no problem grabbing the keys. Quest gets a little finicky about floor height once you put it on and take it off a few times. Were you able to climb out the well? I think if we update the game we will give an option to set the floor height or seat height to take in account problems that occur with misaligned floor heights. Thanks for the feedback!
Yea I was able to beat the game. I tried resetting the view but that didn't fix the floor issue. I didn't try adjusting the floor height. I definitely think having an in-game way to adjust it would make it easier for the player.
Visuals and audio are well polished and put together. The concept for the game is also great for an escape room. The creature watching up top is amazing!
It may sound stupid, but I'm a fan of the menus and intro tutorial too. It just gives it a few more degrees of polish that you love to see in a game jam game.
I did struggle with trying to unlock my feet. I don't know if I got the puzzle wrong and should have hooked the key onto something to reach that low, but I was never able to unhook my feet when I acquired the right key.
Congrats on a great entry!!!
There are 4 keys in the map and are color coated to match the lock. It may be a little dark to match. If you put the correct key up to the lock, it should unlock. Give it another go. Use the things around you to snag the keys or knock the key off (hint hint)...
Thanks for your kind words! :)
Thank you for the kind words! Yes that intro was crucial for us to get right. I didn't want to bombard the player with tutorials once the game started. I wanted you to know how to play by practicing the mechanics in the intro so that you know what to do once the game starts. I also had planned a voice line telling the player to use the environment and another one telling them to stand up and grab the chain. But time constraints.
Game was pretty fun. I really liked the guy at the top of the well. Had to stand some but maybe that was because I was sitting on the couch instead of an actual chair.
Thanks for playing. We decided to let the player stand a bit if they wanted to. If you use the leg its much easier to get all the keys. Also tossing the skulls at the bucket is one of the easier ways to knock it down. I'm glad you liked my guy at the top of the well, I knocked him out in about 20 min with just a little bit of time before the deadline lol, glad it seems like it was worth it!
pretty good game! sometimes i was unable to reach certain things so i had to stand up out of my chair
but all in all really well made!
feel free to check out my game!
which part was out of reach? (excluding the exit)
Thanks for playing!
mainly some of the keys because they were to high when i was sitting
You were supposed to use the things around you to get them :)
oh lol
Hey Kou! Max here from Through the Lens, thanks for the lovely comment about the game you left!
I just tried the Oculus Quest 2 version of the game and it looks phenomenal. As a fan of the Zero Escape series which is Horror-esque with Escape Room focus, was delighted to try this.
Visual wise, game looks great, the concept playable wise is also real interesting. My only issues (if you can really call them issues) would be the following:
Due to my height (or my chair setup) I couldnt properly lower myself enough to pick the objects on the actual well and I had to reorient myself a bit with the reset button (B). Also, talking about the reset button, if you press it when your vision is blacked out, it will actually reload the initial scene of the tutorial (or just remove the black screen) and you will be able to see the next level load.
Also, I actually picked the key on the well twice and tried to insert it on the right keyhole, but it wouldn't activate.
Regardless of my senseless nitpicking, lovely game! Congrats!
UPDATE #1: Okay, I just gave it a replay because I wanted to properly beat and I had not seen the other keys (oops) , I had only seen one of them and I tried to reach them, but it's a bit hard. The femur is clearly best strat IMHO.
Thanks for playing! Yeah the floor height needs to be set correctly on your quest otherwise you will have trouble grabbing the objects on the floor. I think in the future adding an option to reorient the seat height regardless if your floor height is set correctly or not could be a solution. I played the game so many times during development I can get all the keys in under 20 seconds. I wanted to add some more VO where he says stuff like, "Maybe I should use these bones to knock the keys free" or something like that. As well as something to tell the player to stand up and climb the chain to get out.
Femur for the win!
Cool game. Looks pretty and nice intro. The water rise is a good idea.
I couldn't get the blue key. The play space I test at is small and kept hitting a wall with my hand haha.
I think the reason the game isn't working on non oculus devices is you did not set OpenXR on build. Only Oculus. I had that problem before.
Thanks! You could have thrown a skull at the key and gotten lucky? :) maybe...
Maybe your right. I did first get the water one with the arm bone. Guessing I played it wrong. Will retry.
Also turned off the fade out box if you stand up and cheat a bit. We decided to let people cheat a little if they wanted too, as you could probably stand up somewhat in that situation. I recommend using the leg to knock the bucket down and the leg to knock the blue key to yourself.
This is a very polished entry. Seriously I don't know how you got this looking so good so fast but consider me blown away!
The atmosphere is well designed and the gameplay is brief but compelling. It's creepy and cramped and I applaud you for your use of the small play space and seated gameplay! Being locked to your chair is a wonderfully clever use of the medium and I found the time pressure of the rising water to be a perfect complement to the experience. Additionally, it's metaphorically quite sound: you sit in your chair and trap yourself in the headset (in my case locking myself to the desk that I've been locked in to for the past 72 house game jamming) then you escape the well and "escape" the headset.
This game is a solid idea executed beautifully. I'm glad I got to play it and I'm excited to see what ya'll go on to make next!
Thanks for your kind words! :) We had fun developing this!
We also had the idea, although the demo is 'limited' , is having different wells to try with different levels of difficulty. sadly we didn't have time to make more than 1 well.
Sadly the Game wound not display correctly on my Headset.
(SteamVR - Valve)
Would have liked to test it out !
Your Medieval Castle Theme reminds me of my Game ;D
I will see if there is a solution on our end so we can get this resolved for you. Sorry for the inconvenience!
(P.S. its not a castle in our game, you are at the bottom of a well) :)