itch.io

I came back to this game and finished it. The issue I had before did not happen on the downloaded version, which is good.

This game is surprisingly good at getting into your head while playing. Sound is used sparingly, so when there is audio it feels sufficiently out of place. The writing and visuals aren't quite as effective, but they get the job done. The writing is peppered with grammatical issues and misspellings, but looking past that it still contributes to the off-kilter vibe of the game. The visuals being stock RPG Maker assets detracts from the atmosphere a little bit, but the most was made out of them and the pervasive darkness helps to carry the tone. The change in Allan's portrait to convey his insomnia was a nice touch.

The Argane Mansion itself feels like a string of anomalies. A room that swallows sound, a room that bellows sound, gusts of wind penetrate the walls and windows lead to nowhere. It is a building that does not feel like a single place in a world, it's as though it exists in isolation.  The weirdness of the structure is probably the best part of the experience for me, I've always been fond of strange buildings like this.

 Tension builds for the entire run time, and it never goes away. I began to feel a bit like Allan, running throughout the entire house hoping to find a way to progress. I have seen every ending to the game, yet it still feels like it holds more. Another room, another anomaly, answers to the many questions I had. 

Just looking at this Itch page reinforces that feeling. There are three images, and yet two of them are of rooms that do not appear in the game. One looks sort of like the garden. It also looks sort of like the upside-down cross pattern seen at the crypt entrance. I like to imagine the other unexplained image is what is inside the crypt itself.

I have maybe written too much, but Halfway is an experience that asks for discussion.

You certainly lived up to your design goal

Learning to use any game engine can be a real struggle. You're making good progress

Just finished this game, I'm not quite sure how to process the ending.

The body-swapping time travel felt unique for sure. The puzzles with it weren't mind blowing but all made sense. The biggest complaint I have with the game has to do with performance, I had framerate issues in a few places even on low graphical settings which I imagine had to do with the frequent use of reflections (I could be wrong on this though, at the very least it was rarely detrimental).

This is neat

Man what did I just read

At least I have this certificate

One must imagine Sssisssyphusss happy.

Many, many hairs removed.

I've played shittier

I was expecting something of lower quality going in, but the gameplay here is pretty good for a 12-hour jam title. 

It lacks a grander goal or purpose, but flying around to random planets and hollowing them out was a nice time.

It was the web version I played. It stopped accepting input for some reason, I couldn't walk or open the menu. It happened in the kitchen area.

Although I couldn't get very far, I enjoyed what I played of this. The atmosphere was pretty effective overall.

I got stuck on the ticking puzzle and then the game crashed, which is unfortunate. After reading the walkthrough I can appreciate the larger picture of this work as a whole.

It's a shame that this has gone overlooked so far, this is a fun time!
I like the border around the screen, not many other submissions did that but it works well.

Ran around for a bit, found some floating people, then got crushed by some walls.

Good game!

Got stuck on the 1997 question and then got a "ran out of memory" error. Tried starting a new game in the drop-down menu and got the same thing.

I like these kind of games, but sadly I couldn't get very far. It's not especially fishy but at the very least I think "ghoti" was a unique thing to draw on for this jam.

This was an interesting experience.

I thought the visuals were alright, and the music, along with the concept of punching fish, were pretty funny.  It takes way too long to kill things though and that isn't helped by the clunky movement. I didn't make it past the nautilus, not sure how many other enemy types there are.

The .pck is missing for this, so the .exe can't be played. There should be an option when exporting to bake the .pck into the exported .exe

I didn't consider how threatening he might be up until I actually placed him in the scene. That's when I realized I could make the player expect him to attack.
There were plans to include more characters and have their dialogue matter more (such as it being needed to solve puzzles). I stripped it down to give me less to do before the jam ended, so while the shrimp originally would have spoken about the importance of words they instead speak of them being aimless.

Thank you, originally it was going to be less linear with more complex platforming. Unfortunately, on top of me working slowly anyway, the time I had left made me strip it down more.

It's a little difficult to get running as Google and Microsoft both thought it might've been a virus

The mechanics are difficult to understand. I think I get it, I managed to buy level 1 upgrades in the training menu but none of the tiles I placed seemed to affect much. The enemies would slowly drain HP and I couldn't figure out how to fight them.

Some of the art was alright and mechanically it seemed to function well, I just had difficulty understanding it.

The player character's movement is very fluid, and the mechanics are fairly intuitive. 

The lasers are too spaced together and difficult to see when pointed off-screen.

This has very good game feel, the particles and explosions give a crunchy texture. I don't know if that makes sense, but while playing I could "feel" the vibrations from it as though it were a controller, even though it's controlled with a mouse. It did feel a bit too zoomed in when I started playing, and while I got accustomed to it I still had issues with reacting to torpedos. Still a very fun and polished submission regardless.

This was good! I like the grimy, rusted aesthetic.

It took me a minute to figure out how to play, but once it clicked it became simple enough. An expanded version would definitely be cool.

I like the art style, it's a bit like what I tried except appealing

Finally got around to playing this.

I think it turned out alright, and although I didn't really participate it was fun to watch everyone on the server make stuff for it.

With the download. I don't think it's an issue on your end.

I tried a couple of times to download this but faced issues both times.

This looks neat, I'll have to come back later and see if I can get it to work.

I was browsing the most recent releases while waiting for something to upload. This was at the top of the list, and when I noticed it was your first-ever game I decided I should play through it.

For your first game, it's okay. I did wish I didn't have to start from the beginning on death, but it's very short so it wasn't a huge annoyance.

Nice work!

This demo is very, very interesting so far and I see a ton of potential in this. Obviously, this is just a demo featuring three shifts, but the possibilities for what this could be are expansive. 

I feel like most criticisms I have with it are ultimately just a product of it being a demo, which is a good thing. (Those mostly just include a desire for more content or variety in certain places, which is of course common in demos)

Although healing your party seems maybe too difficult, at least for an early section of the game. I know that's the point, it's meant to be a challenging game where you're frequently being beaten down.

The idea of downsides with the healing items is cool. Cigarettes damage you once but slowly heal after that, expired energy bars are the reverse. There's lunches which can be used as healing but also there's other uses you want to hold onto them for. Then there's breaks.

But taking damage from battles, as well as just from random chance from performing certain tasks during the shift is inevitable, but difficult to plan around. The cigarettes and bars never felt too useful, as the regen of cigarettes ends at the end of a battle and takes away health so using them when someone is already very low feels too risky. These items can only be used during battles when you also need to manage whether or not you want to risk escaping, attacking the enemies to limit the damage you receive as quickly as possible, etc. so finding a good chance to use them is rare. Replacing dying party members with new employees is a possible solution, but like with healing at breaks it's unpredictable.

Then again, it's likely that it is entirely intended for there to be such a steep level of challenge and I shouldn't really be making this criticism. The oppressive atmosphere is apparent here, and that's one of this game's biggest strengths, the extremely limited healing can be frustrating but it contributes to it. I hope in the future a balance could be achieved between having a health system that can be better planned around and not watering down the challenge and atmosphere too much.

I wish you luck on this! I think everyone involved with this game is on track to create an extremely unique experience.