If I had one word for this game… I’d say “ambitious.” It feels like you shot for the moon. I like arcade games in these jams, but I love when people go all out on narratives. In that regard, you don’t disappoint here.
I played this game in Linux through Wine, and I had two main bugs. For one, the Presences are rendered below the skybox layer in priority. Combined with short culling distances, the sky regularly clipped through them. I also had a bug where the gun model was invisible– not sure if that’s because of my setup or not. Otherwise, the game worked as intended.
I was pleasantly surprised by the locomotion and love that you incorporated a Soul Reaver style approach to death where you purchase a replacement body. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to do with either the ammo or coins and the amazing shopkeep voice had no real purpose in game. I felt that the bugs could use better reactions to bullets.
I also appreciated how the Presence view lacked any kind of view bobbing or anything. I got comfortable with that perspective thinking “Okay, locomotion is basic, just a jam game…” then BOOM, I’m using a locomotion system with accurate sway and can go third person? I loved the body shops with the bells and the sheer number of dialogue lines you crammed in there… it gives the world a lot more personality.
My biggest frustration with this game comes from the level design. In both cases with the trials, I completely missed the doors and checked every inch of the map as both a presence and in a body to find out where I was supposed to go. I wish there were more lights pointing in the right direction and better uses for the coins than “skip past this area.” This is obviously a ten day jam so issues are expected.
I really enjoyed my time with this game and wish there were a little more in it. More importantly, I think you could probably do a lot more with the ideas in it with more than ten days– but for now, this was a really interesting project that I enjoyed my time with. Awesome work on the submission!
Seeing the Continue button that is “not ready yet” might be the cheekiest way to tease a postjam version I’ve ever seen. If you do continue the project, I’d love to see it.