itch.io

This was a cool entry. It took me longer than I think it should have to figure out the lantern mechanic as the explanation was kinda vague in-game before the update, but I appreciate wanting the player to figure some things out on their own. Even after the update it's still not 100% explicitly stated, but I like that it doesn't break immersion and the implications are a lot stronger and clearer now (unless that explanation from Azariah was there originally and I just missed it somehow). I especially liked how you only take mental damage when the enemy sprites are in your lantern's vignette, which makes perfect sense for a world with Lovecraft lore! And it created an interesting dilemma to try and figure out if taking another step with the lantern on was worth the risk, not knowing if another enemy sprite would hurt my sanity.

I really liked the banter and teasing between Younah and Fran, it was cute and made me laugh a few times! Character art looks a lot more polished now after the update, and I enjoyed the enemy designs! As for the music, I thought it was subtle but well-implemented. My favourite track was the one at the very beginning... I do love a good drone.

My only big criticism is that it was unclear to me as to where to go after talking to Azariah after he saves you (unless I missed something in the dialogue?), so I wandered for a bit wondering what to do next.

Great work! And I agree with Younah, Genesis IS hilarious! XD

Too short! XD But definitely intriguing. I also feel like the main Path of Light theme could have been implemented a little more throughout the game somehow, although I easily picked up on the Bonus ones!

Really liked the character designs and puzzles (the final one tripped me up a bit!), and the music choice was spot on too! I can tell this is more of a prologue as you mention in the description, so I hope you continue the story if you want to.

Thank you for playing, I'm so glad you enjoyed the game! That's a cool detail about Amnesia, I didn't know that. I've heard good things about the series, but I don't handle first-person jump scares very well haha, so I tend to stick to top-down and side-scrolling horror games. The whole no-battles idea actually came from the first Fear and Hunger game (a very disturbing RPG Maker horror game, so tread lightly if needed), where you're encouraged to avoid most of the enemies and don't have to fight the large majority of them! I also think leaving everything in the top-down perspective gives the player's imagination more room to fill in the gaps of what the enemies look like.

Letting Xander out doesn't bar you from any endings, but it does make one of the endings in the final Cave area more difficult to reach as he'll chase you from it. That's great you were able to get at least half of the endings though--I didn't want it to be TOO big of a challenge to get more than one in a sitting.

And I'm happy to read you found the story engaging and the music spoopy, those were my main goals :D Thanks for your comment!

No need to apologize, that's completely understandable!

In that case, if you're still interested in playing Chippy, I'll respond to your comment again once I figure out butler and use it to push the build for this game; I should have that done by the end of the year. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

I'm sorry you've run into this issue, I've looked into it and it appears the problem is on my end because I didn't use butler to upload the game. I've tried using butler in the past but ran into trouble and haven't used it since, so this is a good reminder for me to re-visit the issue so I can use it for future game uploads and avoid having app users run into this problem!

Are you able to download this game from the itch site? (As opposed to using the app) If not, try this Google Drive link that should allow you to download the zip file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xC1HgfjYSBxll8m9qQM0JRed30930N_l/view?usp=shari...

Apologies again, hopefully using the site or Drive link will allow you to download the game! Let me know how it goes.

Loved the aesthetic, this game is gorgeous (in it's own spooky way). I also got stuck at the fisherman, then unintentionally broke the game by wall-jumping up the far left wall and moving off the map, which allowed me to move to the right under the level and see the rest of the area! Probably not what was intended though XD. The mechanics were interesting but could have been better explained/more fleshed out. Overall this felt more like a prototype, but was visually awesome and has potential! Music was great too, really kept me on edge the whole time despite not running into enemies.

I legit had trouble sleeping after playing this lol. The implied story was intriguing and the music/ambient sound design was on point! I was super tense the whole time while playing, always a good symptom of atmospheric horror.

This was so cute and fun! Definitely more cutesy than horror-y, but I did notice and like the Halloween decorations and color scheme. I along with others was really bummed by how short it was, if you're passionate about this you should definitely continue! Great work so far.

Thank you! Glad you had fun playing it :)

Thank you so much, glad you liked it! :D

Indeed, I'm still a beginner at pixel art so I tried to embrace the simplicity throughout making this game. Thanks so much for your comment! :)

This is now closed, thanks to everyone who reached out!

Greetings, we're a team of currently 5 trying to round out our team for the jam. We're looking for:

- a pixel artist! Please keep in mind that you'll be working with at least one other artist on our team, so make sure you're ok with that. The idea is to split up the workload and help each other out!

If you're interested, you can DM me on Discord: REDACTED

I am determined to beat this one day as I did enjoy what I've been able to play so far, but I wanted to post a comment before voting ends. The first area, the ice area, is giving me quite a hard time. I'm not sure if it's just that I'm bad at the game or what, but I find those ice chuchu-like enemies to be very difficult to beat, I think mainly because the standard attack animation is a bit long and I can't really rapid-fire. I also found a bug where some doors shot up, preventing me from leaving a room, and even after beating all of the enemies that spawned I still couldn't leave and had to restart.

BUT other than those things, I actually quite like this entry! Atmosphere is on point, I like the distinct visuals of each area, and the music implementation is fantastic. Overall audio design is quite good, in fact. Like I said, I'm determined to keep at it so I can get to the other elemental areas, I'm just finding it overly difficult for just the starting section. Otherwise, great work!

Overall game design is very good. I found myself constantly going, "Wait, where does THAT lead to, what's over THERE?" and running around and backtracking a lot, which is exactly what you want in a Metroidvania. It never got old or felt too tedious to me. Visually it looks good too, loved the backgrounds especially!

Also really liked the music, but sometimes it would clip/become distorted, and I don't think it was due to my speakers. I think the music may have been exported at too high a volume.

As much as I enjoyed exploring, I think the combat mechanics could use some tweaking. The sword strike doesn't seem to work, and the animation is a bit long for a standard melee attack. I found myself using the bow all the time and thankfully the enemies never charged at me, so that made it much easier. Maybe a little TOO easy haha.

Finally, I did find one game-breaking bug: I tried rolling through a narrow lower passage but lifted the button too soon before getting to the end of that tunnel, and my poor elf man got stuck in a perpetual falling animation. 

This has some potential though; curious to see how it evolves!

Loved the overall aesthetic and arcade feel. I've also always enjoyed the "you can only see what your 'flashlight' shines on" mechanic in games and thought that was used well here. Sound design is solid, and I really liked the main menu music! And thank you for allowing the player to turn off the VHS effect, nice little accessibility setting I appreciated.

My main critiques are similar to guydoesthings's comment so I won't entirely reiterate them. As an example for what I experienced, it took me a while to figure out what holding down the left mouse button did since it doesn't seem to do anything until you encounter enemies with their HP values floating above them. I was also confused about what I now understand is a mouse symbol on the floor when you first encounter one of those enemies. I didn't figure that out until AFTER I defeated it! I thought it was a cool cryptic mural thing instead of instructions haha, I think it would've been clearer  if there was a pop-up instead of the symbol already being part of the environment.

Indeed, Poipul is Best Square in all our hearts XD

Thanks for your comment! Glad it encouraged you to explore, as per my goals for this game.

Glad you enjoyed it! :D And thanks for your feedback about the inventory controls, the controls in general will probably look a bit different as development continues so it's good to get feedback about them early on. Controller support is also something I'll look into as I work on the main game!

xD Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the visuals have a ways to go and I like your suggestion regarding the backgrounds.

And that's a fair point about the dialogue controls too--I think I was overly concerned about the player accidentally re-initiating a longer sequence after one ends, but there are ways to work around that.

Thank you! Yeah but I totally get where you're coming from about the theme, it was tough for me trying to connect it to Runaway haha. Glad I challenged myself though, and that you found the SFX effective!

Thanks for listening to it!

I love how you implemented the main melody so seamlessly! And for whatever reason, the more ambient synth you used in the second track reminded me of Lone Survivor, if you've ever heard of it (it's a psychological survivor horror game). There's this creepy ambient sound they use when you explore an apartment with zombie-like creatures everywhere. Your second track gave off a similar vibe of constant danger and feeling vulnerable/out in the open.

Also I'm glad you were able to get things working again, tech issues are the worst -_-

Thank you for giving it a listen!

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah it was fun to explore what sounds felt "woodsy" to me haha.

Thank you for giving it a listen! I was afraid the Memories track felt too vague, so I'm glad I was able to pull it together with the piano section.

Interestingly enough, I feel like the main theme is my weakest track here haha, but it allowed me to make a main melody to use for everything else. And yeah, the Exploration track was my favourite to make! I really enjoy starting with a simple idea and adding layers to it. Thanks for giving it a listen!

Thanks for listening to it!