itch.io

Always considering it and I do have some ideas but time is very limited unfortunately.

Thanks for the speedrun and your nice comment! I'm indeed still here :)

Thank you so much. NCD will still take a while though I'm afraid, development is on hold while I earn more experience with smaller games before I tackle that one. But it's coming! (Just might take a couple years...)

Announcement!
Thanks to everyone who commented their gameplay videos over the past year. I have taken down the old gamejam build for now and will upload a new demo soon that reflects the current state of the game better. I hope you will have fun playing it as well and I look forward to your valuable insights and feedback!

Yeah, I've planned more for sure, though the next few updates will probably be mostly bugfixes and smaller features until I have more time again. Thanks for the support! I appreciate it!

Ok I see, I'll let you know when I manage to get the game more optimized.
On Windows you can find your GPU if you open the Device Manager and check under Display adapters.

Hi, in its current state the game is still pretty demanding on hardware. Please let me also know what GPU you have, so I can make a note in my performance sheet. Have you tried changing the screen resolution in the options?

Hi, I just made an update and figured out a way to open the game on mac, at least I managed to do it on a MacBook Air which wasn't strong enough to play it, but at least I got it to open haha

Open Terminal and type "chmod -R 755 " and drag the .app into the window, which will bring the full path into Terminal. It will look like this:

chmod -R 755 Path\ to\ app\ file.app

Press Return. Then you can open the app file normally, but it will prompt the gatekeeper which can't verify the app. Instead right click on the app and choose Open, which will give you the Open option during the verify prompt. Alternatively you can go into "Security and Privacy" in "System Preferences" and then click to allow the app to open.

Let me know if that works for you!

Hmm sorry about that. I'll have a look and test it with some friends who have macbooks here when I have time again. Thanks for letting me know!

Thanks, it's always tricky to build game applications on a windows machine for mac OS because of the permission system mac has.

If possible you could try to change the permissions via terminal:

1.  Open Terminal
2. cd to the *.app folder
3. xattr -rc *.app
4. Double-click, it opens

Let me know if that works for you

Thanks for playing and your feedback! The jumping mechanic is set up that the jump charges by holding space and on releasing the key you jump. didn't have enough time for including proper explanations. Please try it, it's a lot of fun to jump around the town

Thanks, I'll fix that. Have to redo all colliders anyway to optimize for performance.

Thanks for your feedback. How did you get the mech up to the residential area without completing the trials though? He shouldn't be able to go the way you entered the area from when he can't jump yet 🙃

Yeah, I heard about that before that the mech pushed someone down from the ledge at the end. I need to check the navmesh there, and also add another respawn point after the draw bridge. 

Thank you for playing!

Wow nice shot you got there. Thanks for your feedback. May i know what bug you encountered in the beginning?

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster,
and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you
Nietzsche

Thanks, it was a lot of work :)

Thank you so much for playing . Happy to hear that you liked it!

Thanks. Yes! That's exactly what I was going for: Iron Giant meets The Last Guardian. I'm currently evaluating how much I will still add to the game. I have a couple of ideas, but it depends on how large the overall interest is.

Yeah, I also felt that the robot needed a sprint option latest when you get the jump ability, so definitely something I'll look into more for future updates. I've never attempted flying controls. I will try it out, but no guarantees. I've been thinking a bit more about the story of the game and if there is interest there might be a bit of an overhaul.

Thank you for playing!

Sorry about the glitches...  that made you reset the characters. I'll try to fix the ones i know about. But great that you could finish it and yes, jumping around on the rooftops is the highlight of the game for me.

Your "4k" and "true" 4k have the same resolution. ;) I only know 4k as 3840x2160, and that's 8.294.000...

my benchmark for ultrawide here is 5120x1440 which is below 4k. definitely gonna do some more optimization for the next update though.

Thank you. Yeah, the environmental design was really what I had the most fun with. Frame rate issues are definitely possible because I haven't actually optimized it much because it was so rushed during the jam... Thanks for playing :)

Thank you for playing. The time constraint during the jam and December being the busiest month workwise for me led to the current version being really short and not having too many features. I have already improved on a lot of things (Santa can kick the zombies now and they can actually hurt you) but just don't have the time to finalize the update. Hope it will be soon...

Thanks, happy to hear that, hoping to get the update out soon. The music was created by Kevin MacLeod.

Thanks for playing Kieran, it was a lot of fun watching your playthrough. You showed those sleepy Canadians who's boss!

Thanks for playing and uploading your footage. Also appreciate the 5 Star rating! I'm working on the postjam update at the moment to flesh the game out a little more.

Thank you for playing and making a detailed comment. Yeah, I'm actually thinking already about how to implement those Unreal Tournament shouts for headshots, kill chains, multi-kills. Also stats and achievements would be great at the end of the level, and challenges like pacifist or genocide runs could create some replayability. Just would need to think about what those can unlock except the satisfying feeling of having a checkmark on the level screen.

I already had different maps in mind for the jam version, but time was too tight. Different Zombie types can definitely work. Also different weapons like a flame thrower, machine gun or rocket launcher would be very fun. Melee attacks with the rifle in close range...

Definitely a lot of potential for more here

As usual with your games, the atmosphere is on point. I like the idea you had, but I feel like it stood itself in the way a bit. Unlike your other games, this one has absolutely no verticality or things to see from the distance. So searching for 20 keys is a lot. I do like what you did with the sound design to help finding them, that was really great. A suggestion that comes to mind is that it could have been a more enjoyable experience if there were either less keys, OR 20 keys in the maze, but you'd only need to find 10-15 of them to progress (the others disappear as soon as you have that amount, the player will never find out!) And then look for the other keys in the second level which looked way more fun to explore, and gives great opportunities for shining references.

Went a bit on a rant, hope that's ok :) 

I kinda wished the spawn point for the penguins would change. After spamming the big towers in front of it I didn't have to do anything anymore and the game would just play itself :) But good job overall to submit something!

I was hoping for a bit more storytelling after the setup in the future, but instead it was short and sweet. I liked how you guided the player to the points of interest. Well done!

Shooting zombies makes Santa go "Ho, ho, ho!"

Thanks for playing. Glad you enjoyed it. I still have a couple things to fix over the week, hope it will make it even better!

Good atmosphere and definitely upper case COLD! The fire guides were well arranged so that I would always feel that I know where to go next. I had the feeling though that the fires didn't always reset the freezing properly. But not sure if that freezing actually did anything more than just cover the screen and cause glowing particle effects ;)

Hi, thank you for your comment! Happy that you had a good time. I can't really take credit for the models though, they are purchased from the asset store :)

This game is excellent. The atmosphere is very immersive, sound effects and the voice-over are great. Actually it reminded me a lot of the side missions in the first Mass Effect game where you had to go through left behind bases on planets and found pieces of data here and there.
The game has a cool rerouting mechanic to explore the ship and piecing the story together through data fragments keeps you hooked. The environmental story telling is where this game excels once you get deeper into the ship. Very well done!

Haha thats great to hear that the story connected with you :) Feel free to rate the game if you got the time

Thank you for playing, really appreciate the feedback. I'm working on a UI that will guide the player a bit better and explain controls, but overall I want there to be the option of not following the obelisks and just be immersed into the desert world. But for that there need to be more things to do haha

Thanks for your feedback, you are right, the game is missing a UI to guide the player for the controls. I will work on that for the post-jam update. I also have an idea for death, which won't be the normal way. But let's see how that playtests first. I'm glad you had a good time overall. There might be more coming of this in the future (after the other game I'm working on :) )

Thanks for your detailed feedback. Let me answer to some of your points. A lot of it does actually come down to the time constraint.

You didn't see any other monsters because it's a lot of work to create an attack behavior that is responsive to the player and uses different attack animations according to distance. I actually have a humanoid enemy that I worked on during the jam time, and I took him out during the last half hour, because the way he was set up, fighting him was not fun and he bugged out on death and I didn't have enough time to work on him. Speaking of death animations, the crab monsters have them, but the problem is when the player keeps hitting the crab after the death animation triggers it gets interrupted and then just freezes eventually. I already fixed that for the post-jam update.

The direction of attacks is indeed dependent on the directional and not by view. It's a free moving camera, else you can't get panoramic viewpoints from the side hehe

If you only wandered around and fought the crab monsters, you missed the quest line of activating the obelisks. But it's ok, the theme was lost & found, and you explored the lost aspect of it :)

In the postjam update I plan to make an intro that sets up the story and controls a bit better. Also there might be more types of creatures and some other things to do, like driving around on a hover bike.