I loved every second of this game. I like everything. The music and the artwork were perfect. Controls and UI were simple. The puzzles were fairly simple yet not overly easy. Clues were vague enough to keep things interesting. I loved the exploration and seeing what came next. If you enjoy indie games. I recently discovered the dev's work through Armor Games by accident looking for an old favorite and loved everything I came across. I especially liked the Cursed Travels series and in particular, I really liked Below the Factory. All of them had a certain uniqueness that really stood out even among his other games, which each stood out as well. (Such as Temple of the Four Serpents and Cataractae.) I really hope to see more and maybe even some larger projects. Thank you for some very memorable times. I really enjoyed the trips through your worlds.
Tyro : Male H-Orc Knight
Recent community posts
Great start! Glad to see a game of this type be more than just collecting pages. There's some actual gameplay here! I'd love to see even more added to it, but it works really well as a short experience as well.
Notes on what I liked:
- Good title/intro sequence. I like the music. That's a tough one to get right.
- Nice aesthetic. I really like the look of it with the slightly blurry VHS look. Not overdone.
- The lighting and fog are done very well to still allow you to see while helping to disorient the player.
- The ambient sounds are great. I especially like the driving sequence at the beginning.
- The rifle. Like a security blanket that doesn't quite make you feel safe enough. Love it. I saw some people suggest letting you use the scope & I thought even a reticle might be nice, but I later thought haphazardly pointing in the right direction really adds a layer of panic, so its great as is to me.
Some suggestions/creative criticism:
- I'd like to hear the player's character voiced for the intro and directives as there's other voice work done.
- Regular forest noises before the camp sequence would provide a nice contrast to the 'spooky' noises in the later game. (owls, deer running, etc) You can mix them together afterwards as well. Space them out, have some silence in between. Make the players jump.
- You could literally make them jump at shadows as well. Draw things out, make Sirenhead appear less frequently maybe and have the player shooting at the moving shadows of the forest as they become more & more panicked.
*You did a great job setting the tone with the sounds and visuals, but I think you can really ramp it up with some more tweaking.*
- As the 'Frame Rate' setting showed settings in Hz I'm assuming those are Refresh Rate settings.
- The pop up directions really take the player out of the action. A short overlay at the bottom like 'Press C to crouch' without pausing would work. Let the player figure it out & sweat a little.
- Checkpoints. Same as above. If you have to replay from the start, it desensitizes you to the experience. 1st one right before grabbing the rifle. Get the player right back into the action.
- No view of the ping if you're facing the wrong direction. Maybe an arrow pointing to the side you need to turn to see it. (Though personally I think making the player wander around a little isn't a bad thing in this setting. Getting a little lost adds to the fear as long as the player doesn't get frustrated.)
Hope the feedback helps. Good luck! I hope to see more from you!
I really like it but your world gen needs some tweaking. For the first few games the map built preventing me from reaching several buildings and shops. I've had buildings, doors, and entire areas blocked by world gen putting impassible objects/walls in the way. In later games, I got shop buildings with 2 or 3 of the same type of shop. Not sure I understand why each item type has their own vendor especially when you won't necessarily get shops to sell to. I don't quite understand the coin system either. (Also should be able to stack certain items like coins) I also had dead-end dungeons & areas I couldn't reach many times. What really irked me is the massive amount of "Tool" items I had but I still haven't seen a shop for them in 5 or 6 plays. Considering you can't talk to NPC's I'm not sure why you can attack them. Several games ended because I accidentally walked into one. Why even make them attackable? Just for a random death early game? I'm fairly certain you can't attack them, but after every bookcase in the game described poison and remedy potions to me 3 games in a row I finally found a book that told me K is to view skills. Which is not all that useful considering the chance of finding items or using shops at all. (I did sell a couple poison potions once but other than that, the shops have been completely useless if I can even get to them.) Otherwise I like the art, music, and general mechanics.
Also:
* The music isn't bad but as I sit here typing and the game is still running, it is extremely repetitive. Add more tracks or lengthen and spruce up the existing track.
* You need to be able to equip items and drink potions out of combat. I've died way too many times trying to equip a weapon.
* Resting should be made available out of combat at all times. Maybe have the possibility of a random encounter (low to no chance early levels, increasing chance as you level)
* Weapon and spell stats please.
* Armor for some damage mitigation, especially considering you can start runs with negative stats and no way to improve them.
* Possible stat improving items. Amulets, rings, cloaks... anything. Could be extremely rare and could be made to be kept after a run so you can actually improve your chances as you play.
* Would be nice to see the encounter cards be something a bit more substantial than Trap or Item roulette against your RNG. Perhaps have some choices, have traps be possible obstacles to retrieving items. (especially say for the aforementioned stat improving items)
I know this was made for a jam and I'm being overly critical but I really like what you've got here and would love to see it in a more fleshed out form. Good work and good luck to you. I hope to see more from you in the future.
I like it but it would be nice if weapons and spells had some stats to show. The PC stats changing every run is rough, as well as starting from scratch every time. Generally in a rogue style game each run should end you with even a slight
advantage for the next or at least a chance of an advantage but this game just resets every time making the results of each run completely random with nothing to increase
your odds each run. Kind of takes the fun out of it, but good art, music, base execution and foundation. It just seems sort of incomplete to me.
This game takes inspiration from other games, but it is by no means a rip-off or a clone. I'd also like to point out that some of the best games (most if not all) came about by being improved versions of certain game styles and mechanics.
For example, look at Diablo. If you go back far enough you see similarities to Gauntlet. Yet Diablo took that style of game and its mechanics, made them its own and improved on them dramatically to make a fantastic game. Then you have games like Path of Exile and Grim Dawn (built in the Titan Quest engine, so the same could be said of that one) that are still action RPGs in the same style as Diablo but with different skill systems that make them unique and strong games in their own right.
RPGs in general are always going to be based on a previous system and are the easiest to identify how they've progressed over the years, but you see this progression in many other genres as well.
You can teleport around by opening the build menu, selecting the move or destroy option, moving the cursor/selection tile to where you want to teleport and then backing out of the menus. Even without making any changes, this mechanic will still teleport you to the last place you had the selection tile.
Oh yeah, I will say that I wish there was a way, at a glance, to see how many resources you have available. Maybe something like a classic RTS would show them at the top/bottom of the screen. The game Foundation does things nicely in this respect with all informational screens being in moveable windows.
That would also be a neat addition to the game; allowing assignment of NPCs to jobs. Ash seems to be a simplified version of a harvester/miner but that's just triggered by having the Quarry so I'd imagine that the 'auto-mining' is a mechanic of the Quarry and not the NPC.
I've seen several people commenting on difficulties with character movement but I haven't noticed any issues. I'm playing the Steam version, so I'm not sure if maybe it was revamped for that one.
The nice thing about that mechanic is it allows you to teleport out of those situations or to high/low spots on the map that would otherwise take a long time to walk to. Just open build mode, select the move or destroy option, move the selection tile to where you want to teleport, then back out of the menus. Boom, you're there!
The only thing I've found that rotates are chairs in the houses, and really it just flips them horizontally. After you pick the item up and it is in-'hand' press R to flip/rotate the item. Since it is a mechanic, I'd recommend trying it on different things and try them again after updates. (I was disappointed I couldn't rotate beds but I'll be happy with chairs facing tables for now.)
The one that really got me was that you can only place dirt road stairs up cliffs on the south side. I was going nuts trying to place one on the north side of a raised area for a while. Speaking of which, does anyone know if you can craft new dirt roads or is that a chest/reward item only? (Same goes for tilled soil)
Thanks for the reply. I completely understand. Development takes a lot of work, especially if you're the primary or only dev, and life comes first. I just discovered your game through a recommendation from the dev Lum here and really like it. It's got some issues as is of course, but overall it's got so much potential to be a favorite.
I did a fairly lengthy write-up in my rating/review, so if/when you return to it I listed a few things that could be addressed. Sorry if it's not very organized, I just got done playing and wanted to just get everything down.
I'd be happy to provide more input should you come back to it so feel free to message me if you want any assistance with feedback or testing.
You've done a wonderful job so far, and I hope to see more from you in the future. Thank you for sharing your work here. Good luck with your projects and with your irl issues. I hope everything works out for you.
Forum/site is down. Granted this is three years ago, but I was enjoying the game, though there's obviously still work to be done on it and it seems it may have just been abandoned. I'm stuck on this part too, sailing around aimlessly trying to find a shipwreck like a needle in a haystack. Otherwise, once I got the hang of the UI/Mechanics, this game is really unique and fun to explore. I did realize in an earlier attempt that bows are useless without also taking a melee weapon/skill as once an animal has engaged you, you cannot run away or put distance between you to continue using your bow. If you return to development, it might be good to allow the bow skill to include dagger skill with it or at least allow you to get away from an animal if it's your only weapon.
This game is amazing. The artwork and music are top notch. Loved the opening city shot. The music is appropriate and used really well. The animation is great. I love the details in both the animation and artwork. The mechanics are solid. I hope they get a little more complex though. Only thing I really wished for was a dash key. The story is simple yet very effective. The tension in heaven and the trap sequence were better than anything I've seen in any game, indie or AAA in a long time. I was yelling out loud to cheer on Lance and Verm. Beautiful work. Top notch. Can't wait to see more.
I love this game. A lot of fun. Challenging without being too easy or too hard. Good mechanics, great sound and music. Cool aesthetic. Only problem, and maybe I'm just missing something, but there doesn't seem to be a way to Quit the game, not even by hitting Esc. I just alt-F4 it so I mean it's not a major issue but still seems a strange thing to omit.
I like the artwork and the concept. Character movement needs some refinement. I found all of them frustrating to control. There seem to be many ways to get them stuck in places with no way out. I don't know if I didn't hit a checkpoint but G wasn't bringing them anywhere. I could see this being pretty enjoyable with some more polish.
A lot of fun to play. I'm really enjoying it. Just a couple of my own critiques: 1) Right mouse button to attack gets a bit rough with it being the primary button used. 2) Enemies spawn a bit quickly. I'll still be fighting and get swarmed just from new spawns. Other than that, it's looking good! With all the odds and ends type loot a light crafting system might be cool to see for potions and maybe some weapons/armor. Nice work!
I really wish I could say more, but this game is just perfect. I loved the music, the art, the sounds, the puzzles, the interface... it's literally perfect.
The only complaint is that you don't have more of these to play. I wouldn't have minded if this one was longer and with some slightly more involved puzzles. It was really a treat to play.
This is a top notch example on how to make a game in the same/similar style or genre.
I would love to see you make more just like this as well as higher resolution versions with the same/similar interface. (updated/improved versions of this style) and with different story genres. Keep up the amazing work. I look forward to seeing more from you! Thank you for letting us play!