itch.io

Hey, it evolved quite well since the last time I played! I had mentioned before, but really loved the aesthetics - including the intro audio and the general vibe. The smoke trail really helped too! Huge congrats on finishing it, and I look forward to see what you'll come up with next! <3

Huge congrats on finishing your first game! Not only that, but like others said, pretty awesome premise and vibe too!

Loved the game! I'm on an RTX 4080, so didn't stumble on any performance issues, so I believe I was able to experience the game as intended. Overall I had a lot of fun, and think this is a really, really interesting interpretation of the Ocean and Explore reference. Congrats, you made it so unique! I also LOVED the aesthetics. I don't think I ever played a game with visuals like this before, and I wish there was more of it. The part I really liked was the beautifully lit / colored rooms and the pink lava. It made it feel like the type of scenery one would find in a music video or an 80s-90s science fiction movie. It's also cool to realize how the game already manages to be fun, even with simple mechanics! I think a cute stylized character that better fit into this world's aesthetics would make for a better player character, and help focus the game's messaging. It would read as "play a game that looks like this", and would also help set the expectations for a precision platformer. Anyways, fantastic submission - huge congrats!

Fantastic idea and, as usual, incredible level design! The place really feels believable and inhabited. I also REALLY appreciated the lighthearted mood choice - stealth gameplay can easily become too tense, but the Fable-like vibe (greatly empowered by the music, but also by the relaxed / unrealistic interpretation of line of sight etc) made it appealing to me. I was also very curious about where the cult book would lead as soon as I saw it listed as an objective. Like: ok, the random objects robbery is just an initial layer of gameplay, but it's actually about uncovering some dark secrets and ending up in dark, creepy places! I can totally see this being developed into a commercial release. I had trouble with the tank controls too, especially because it doesn't feel like they added something specific to the gameplay and could be replaced by more traditional 8 directions control without losing anything - but this is the kind of stuff that is super easy to fix. At times I also had trouble with clarity of rules: can I go over a certain area, or does it count as being withing the torch's reach? In some other situation I thought I was stuck, having an object that appeared to be a key item within the radius of a torch, but hadn't been introduced yet to some way to handle that situation yet (probably easy to fix with an intermediary level design beat where I'm taught whether or not that can be handled with my current resources). Anyway, super cool idea and excellent vibe; I'd definitely play a refined version! Oh, also THANKS for the great feedback you left for other bootcampers - really appreciate it! <3

Dude, I LOVE the vibe you're going for! Had a lot of fun exploring the strange tower. Thought I had it, but got killed by a damn claw wizard midway across my ascent 😅

You tackled a pretty ambitious design with this project - both in terms of game design, content and graphic style. What you managed to build in such a short time is amazing - congrats! I particularly liked the world building - the themes, the texts, the encounters. I also really appreciated how, despite conveying a great atmosphere, the text is not verbose. Just a few lines of text to get the point and vibe across and it's done - which is cool because it also leaves room for imagination. Another super cool concept is navigating through a sidescroller view in a corridor, and most encounters being a room. Really makes you feel like exploring some sort of dark monastery.

The hiccups I had were all minor, and definitely the kind of stuff you could easily improve upon with some more time. Particularly, I wish there were navigation choices (like in Isaac, where you choose whether or not to enter a room making some sort of risk / reward calculation, etc). It would also feel more satisfying to control with more instant input recognition and faster travel time between cells.

I really like the idea and vibe. The darker tone and game genre is well aligned with Steam, if you keep improving on it. I would love to see this game keep evolving through the bootcamp! ❤️

Congrats, and thanks for the fun!

I had so much fun with this game! And I seem to be getting better times the second time around 🕺

This is one of my favorite "find the fun" examples in this bootcamp so far. You started with a game that had an interesting mechanic idea that was, nonetheless, not that fun. You made it predictable and controllable enough to make it less random, while the balancing of velocities makes a lot of second-to-second choices feel like mini-gambles, with some well-aimed shots allowing for major progress very quickly, while others leading to hilarious backtrack, in a way that kind of reminded me of the fun in games like Getting Over It or Jump King. I'm not sure if you'd like to expand on this game, but I definitely see the potential :)

Dude, the atmosphere is soooo good! I love the setting, the writing and the exploration. Also had one hell of a scare when I died after recklessly traversing back to a previously discovered spot while completely forgetting the zombie in there. hahaha
The main issue I had was with controlling the flashlight. I was using WASD for movement and the mouse for the flashlight, but couldn't seem to point it to where I wanted, so I would just slide the mouse left or right until it stopped kinda in the place I wanted and then rolled with it until the corridor changed direction. One specific issue is that it stopped computing mouse movement if the cursor went outside the game screen. I would personally prefer one of these alternative control schemes: seeing a stylized mouse cursor in game and the flashlight always pointing to it; or the flashlight always rotating counterclockwise or clockwise if I drag the mouse left or right, while ignoring vertical movement and working regardless of the (then invisible) cursor position (a bit quirkier, but one could get used to it and it could double down as a quirky, RE1-style car control gun aim), or even the flashlight always pointing to the character front, perhaps with some angle interpolation just for polish and extra suspense.
Ah, another minor hindrance was the floor and wall having such similar colors, making it a bit difficult to understand the collision boxes for the labyrinth.
These were literally the only problems I had, and I'm VERY curious to finish the game later and see the rest of the story! The ambiance is just fantastic! I can also definitely see the potential for a commercial release, if you want to expand on it :)

WOW, this is very well polished! Just out of curiosity, was this entirely developed within the bootcamp's timeline? It's not a competition, so there are no rules against starting from an existing project, but I'm just trying to gauge how much was done during the bootcamp's period, because the level of audiovisual polish here is insane! Congrats! I couldn't fully understand the rules, but I think that would be easy to solve with a guided first match if you want to release a commercial version and put some more time into it. I would also suggest making the game-affecting aspects of the cards more visible (ex. properties), while making flavor text more obviously optional, just to facilitate the understanding of what's going on. Still, once again, congrats dude, this is really astonishing, and I would love to see this built into a full commercial release!

Hey, man! This is a super cool idea! The mood and writing is spot on. The text snippets are just fantastic, to the point where if any of them were synopsis for a lovecraftian tale, I'd love to read it! The biggest difficulty I had was understanding how exactly I was affecting the game state, so that I could balance the options and make a bet on one of them. I was usually like "hmm ok, option 1 sounds intriguing! Option 2 sounds intriguing too. I'll just pick the one I find the most intriguing and would like to know more about". There are many cool ways this could be developed - the Reigns approach would be making the stats more easily readable (ex. a visual bar) and text consequences more directionally clear, even if the intensity was unknown (so that there is some gambling factor made possible from understanding the stakes and possibilities). Connecting previous choices to follow ups also sound rewarding! Anyways, I know you couldn't finish in the initial timeline due to stuff out of your control, but I really appreciate the effort and the fact that you submitted for others to try it. Cheers, mate!

Loved MonsterFarm when I played it last week! Congrats on not only finishing a game, but also making a fun one! For some reason, I can't make the currently uploaded version to display correctly - it shows a fully zoomed-in view even though it's only within Itch's non-maximized game window, and the maximize button isn't doing anything (tested on Chrome and Firefox). Hope you get that fixed soon - and congrats once again for your submission!