itch.io

I feel this is definitely the best game I've made thus far, in part because, somewhat ironically, I wasn't being very ambitious. This gave me more time to polish the game and add more content. The staff durability system in general was absolutely a weak point of the game; in my opinion, it was the weakest.

Thank you so much for the extensive review and your kind words. 

I worked hard on the audio, thanks. And thanks for playing.

I got stuck on the very first round looking for the item for a while. On future rounds, it wasn't so hard though. At least it didn't feel like such a long time on following rounds, I feel because I had more items to look for and might stumble upon multiple in one run around the place, that I can then come back to.

I made it to the 4 item collection round, got 2/4, but got stuck looking for the rest. I ran up the slide/hallway thing that takes you high up and found BOTH the items I had remaining. Just as I grab the first one I hear the goddamn bell tolling for the first time. I peered over down below but couldn't see much then I got jumpscared with the loud stinger cue and perceived to run down the slide to deposit one of the items. I ran around to try and loop back for the other while being chased but got lost and partway through that the clown stopped following behind me. I figured he went docile again because I deposited one of the items. Then he run into into me from the front which scared the shit out of me again. I finally, made it back up to the second item but realized the clown wasn't following me and decided to wait at the top to see which way he would come from. I waited for like 10 seconds before getting fucking murdered from behind for that godforsaken chuckling jumpscare. I saw you had a red door but I couldn't figure out how to get past it.

Scary game. Fun game.

Nice game.

The top-down cutesy-casual visuals remind me of Overcooked, which I love. Fun Disney-esque animal style and I like the Japanese setting.

The music was good and fit the environment well. Most of the SFX have a fun sound to them. I especially like the dialogue sounds. I felt there needed to be a few more foley sounds for things; the place had a lot of activity but didn't sound that active (maybe it was a lack of ambient group sounds?).

The controls took some getting used to, having a floating mouse like that felt rather weird to me. In other games that have the mouse used for both clicking and for rotating the camera, I find they tend to have the mouse hidden and in control of the camera by default, then you hold alt or tab or something to reveal it for interacting with objects. Also, it feels weird to hover over an object just to press E, left-click would be more natural.

That being said, I did get used to the controls after a bit and didn't think too much about them after that.

The gameplay was rather unique. I didn't really get it at first but got into a bit of a groove and found it quite enjoyable. Exploring the map was fun in general, as well.

Your use of the theme was well done.

I can tell you put a lot of love into the game. Overall, a great submission.

PS

I managed to get stuck behind the dressing divider in one of the rooms by the start you can enter where the camera pans to a more downward-angled view; the one furthest to the right. I went behind the divider and couldn't escape and had to restart.

Thank you for playing. I'm glad you liked it.

Cool game. I haven't seen one like it before. The deer section was a bit tough at first, but the guide on the game page helped.

The animals look neat and I like the 2.5D style. The music was nice and set an interesting, almost "curious", mood.

Good submission.

To be honest I was just a bit lazy with the web version :/

Thanks for the review and thank you for the compliments, it means a lot. I'm glad you enjoyed the game so much.

I agree with your feedback on the visuals; I added outlines to a number of things much later in development as it was hard to see things. Still, especially in the winter area, visibility can be an issue.

Thank you so much for the review.

Thanks for the kind words.

Thank you.

Spooky gameplay.

The moment-to-moment searching in the dark just to run into the monster and get jumpscared and have to hide felt nicely made. One caveat would be that while hiding the monster takes a while to actually leave you alone again. It quickly goes from scary to a bit boring sitting under a bed or in a closet; if he just wandered off a bit quicker/sooner it'd help a lot.

I could not for the life of me find more than a single key fragment. I'm not sure where all the keys were to the rooms either; I found 1 in the basement and that's it.

The audio was nice. The music was nice and ambient and the SFX (especially the singer cue when you run into the monster) worked well. The characters were neat (JUSTICE FOR NESTER) and I liked the overall story.

Nice game. Proper horror.

Cool idea for a game; you definitely did something more interesting with the theme than me. I never fully understood the rules and simply assumed I was trying to make the best poker hand I could; this got me fairly far. The music and visual style of everything blends nicely. I like the vibe it sets.

Nice submission.

Thanks. I'm happy you enjoyed it.

PS PS

The SFX were nice, although the writing sound could have used some more pitch randomness.

The music is nice, I really enjoyed it and the death screen homage to Funeral March was not lost.

PS

I'm genuinely surprised this has garnered such little attention so far. The game is fun and the screenshots and cover art look visually attractive.

I hope more people see it soon.

Fantastic entry.

First off, the visuals are really nice. Animation is fluid. Even though the character can only attack left and right, with all the other FX going when while attacking during an actual fight, I don't ever notice it; it feels right.

The dialogue write speed could have been faster and I would have liked a way to skip the Desmond cutscene after the first time seeing it. Although, it is nice that you can skip the dialogue with the old man after seeing it the first time.

Gameplay felt smooth. Going room to room and attacking things felt nice. The ranged and tank enemies add some nice variety to combat; mainly the ranged enemy who forces you to dodge more.

I'm playing on a 2K monitor so the screen was rather tiny for me and fullscreen didn't have a 2k resolution option and 1080p looked too blurry on it.

It's ludicrous that this was made with Unreal Engine. I didn't realize a 2D game like this was realistically possible with Unreal. Kudos.

My playthrough went something like the following:

1. When through intro
2. Explored a few rooms then got stuck in the pit trap room
3. Restarted, went through the intro again
4. Explored a few rooms, found the invincibility cheat
5. Found the bat room and couldn't get past it
6. Restarted again, went through the intro again again
7. Explored a few rooms got stuck on the bat again
8. Restarted, explored several rooms, found the pit trap again and abused the invincibility cheat to figure out how to get past the pit
9. Explored a couple more rooms
10. Went into a long outdoors hallway after a boss room
11. Found ANOTHER BAT and got stuck again
12. Turned off invincibility and backtracked to the pit trap room to kill my self and update my score on the scoreboard

The bat room was frustrating because the only solution I knew to it was to restart. I'm not sure if I missed something or if it was just unlucky RNG.

Regardless of the bat, fantastic game. Simple but smooth and fun combat. Fun running from room to room, cutting down enemies or solving quick little puzzles. Finding gold was fun too, I broke every single vase I saw. Cool that you added a story too.

I worked a lot on the game feel. Thanks for playing and for the kind words.

Thanks for playing. Glad you enjoyed it.  Enter the Gungeon was definitely a relevant inspiration.

I was really unsure if people would be hesitant with the healing pool's color. A different look would definitely be a good idea; I was iffy about green because the hearts are red and I thought it might be itself a tad confusing.

Thank you so much for the kind words and feedback. I'm glad you enjoyed the game.

Very, very nice art. The story was neat, although I didn't fully understand it. The leitmotifs for the blue guy was cool.

Nice submission.

First off, the visuals were fantastic. Secondly, I DIDN'T NEED A CHEAT CODE GOD DAMMIT; but the temptation was too strong...

The writing sound got a bit repetitive, maybe some more variation to it or more randomization of the pitch or something. The music was nice and set the tone well.

I would have liked to been able to skip the writing sequence (especially when redoing a level after losing). A common control scheme I like is when the user presses the button to go to the next message but the dialogue is still being written out, you just instantly write out all the dialogue instead. It would make replaying a level a lot nicer since I can work back to where I was easier.

I liked the character designs and how each had their own unique personality that, seemed, to affect what types of answers they'd accept. The last guy with the face changing when the hands on his shoulder left and returned was a really cool design.

Very cool game.

Curious why the calendar was in 2020.

The walking animations didn't play when moving diagonally and they wouldn't stop immediately when I stopped moving. That being said, the visuals were cool. I like the black & white look and the mixing of stylistic art and real photos was very eerie.

The ambient sounds were nice, although the rain didn't loop properly, unfortunately.

The flashlight was cool. I realized I had a red variant, but I'm not sure what I was meant to do with it.

Neat submission.

Neat platformer. I didn't find the debug option, unfortunately.

I will say, the movement felt a bit difficult (for me at least). Not entirely sure what is was, perhaps the character moved too fast considering the small distance between spikes? It might have been the static camera. I like the look of seeing the whole level how you have it, but a follow camera with smoothing always feels more intuitive to control (imo).

The SFX were nice and retro. The addition of a checkpoint system was very nice; and well implemented too. The music was good as well.

The visuals were nice and you did the color palette limit well.

Nice game.

Great use of the theme. The graphics are simplistic but coherent and visually appealing. The SFX are nice and the music is real good.

Nice submission.

Thank you.

Fantastic visuals (the screenshots don't do them justice). Fantastic audio; the voice-sfx were quite and the jazz music made for a very nice vibe. Fantastic use of the theme. Fantastic gameplay.

I would have liked to been able to left click to mark innocent and right click to mark guilty (instead of the double clicking, which felt weird to me) but other than that the controls were good.

It took me something like 10 seconds to understand how the game actually worked. The little hints on the right were just enough for me to understand what to do; kudos.

Again, the music was great. I love the jazz feel with the casual-esque art style. The basic mechanic of deduction was really fun.

Genuinely fun game.

Thanks for playing and I'm glad you liked it so much.

I really love the visual style. It's got that PS1 horror look to it but without some of the more grating additions (such as intense pixelation making it strenuous to see far).

The controls felt nice and intuitive. Although, dropping items to make room for keys wasn't super obvious; I'm fine with G as the control, but I didn't realize dropping was even allowed for a while I just got desperate enough to try and spam all the buttons on my keyboard.

The pacing is perfect for a full release of a game, but it's a bit slow for a game jam game. Audio was good. I also like the UI. The dialogue could have been written faster but overall the UI was neat; especially the little circles over items I can interact with, that's cool.

Good game.

Also, justice for Neil!

I'll check it out again.

The character art was nice and the overall PS1-style game graphics had a nice spooky atmosphere. The sword gameplay was nice. I was hoping I could parry but it didn't seem possible.

I found the puzzle aspect a bit unclear; although that may just be me.

The music was cool. Real, atmospheric and I liked how it changed dynamically for different scenarios.

Nice submission.

For this style of game, I wouldn't mind some kinda synth music.

Just as a suggestion, Brackey's has made tutorials on a free program called Bosca Ceoil. It's made for making simple synth music; if you're interested.

Some music or ambient sounds would have been nice. Still, it's a cool game. I like the SFX, too.

Interesting. Thanks.

Pun not intended.

Thanks for the input. Very helpful.

Hi,

I find people in game jams to have fairly different ideas of what a proper control scheme is for a game. To that end, I wanted to conduct a survey.

I'm currently developing a top-down 2D shooter game where you move a crosshair around the screen and press buttons to fire or alternative fire; You can freely aim wherever. Also, you can press a button to dash.

With that fairly vague description, what comes to mind in terms of controls? This would be on a keyboard and mouse.

I'm not keen on adding a full keybinding solution, but I thought if there were common similarities in what people expect, I could make multiple alternate control schemes you can select from at the start of the game.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

One of the scariest games I've played this jam. The scares being tied to urgent gameplay definitely helps with that. I didn't pay attention initially and kept playing my game and fuckin' launched out my seat when the knocking turned into something barging in.

Nice submission.

Thanks for playing. I'm glad you enjoyed the UI, I worked a lot on the UX.

The settings menu having the fill be black confused the hell out of me at first, I thought you were sliding from right to left instead of the left to right.

The text scroll was a bit slow. I know you can skip it but generally I prefer it when it simply prints out at about the speed I'm going to read it at (a bit faster really). According to google, the average reader processes about 200 words per minute and the average word is about 5 letters long. This is all in reference to the opening btw, the ingame dialogue was fine.

The UX is over all very nice. The UI feels good to move, the sounds it makes when you press it fix perfectly. The ingame waypoints look really neat. The movement and interaction controls feel good too.

The dialogue was funny. The character had personality to them and I enjoy the slowing down or speed up to emphasize things. The sound that plays as the text appears also sounds nice; not to loud, but still audible.

The little homey stuff I had to do was nice. The waypoint didn't feel intrusive and the mini tasks I had to do felt satisfying.

The robot voice sounded cool. Reminded me of the robot voice from the jet from the Incredibles, lol.

The dynamic day night was cool. I knew it was getting dark but didn't even realize how synced it was with events until the character literally mentioned it getting dark; which was fine to do, btw.

The art was fantastic looking. Really gorgeous for this retro style. Also, the glass looked really good. There were so many SFX it was really nice to have. Some of the jump sounds seemed to get cut off a bit but other than that the SFX were perfect.

Also, apparently I'm Jesus because I can walk on water, lol.

The music was great. I didn't even fully realize it was there initially. That is I realized I was vibin' to it before I realized it was even there.

Small nitpick but shadows should have been disabled on objects I'm holding so I don't see their shadows floating.

I had no clue where to go for the soil sample for several minutes. I just happened upon the dirt mound and once in range it was highlighted for me.

Thinking about it now, the background was impressive for a game jam game. The water tower and the clouds and the dense forest going up a hill, the birds flying by. The background looked interesting and made things feel very grounded.

Also the light-switch in the cabin was very satisfying to press.

The invisible walls were a bit unpleasant. I would have much preferred natural barriers such as rocks or hills, etc. Diagonal movement seemed to be faster.

The stormy sequence was fantastic. I liked the rain drops in the dark hitting the ground, they made the dark moments between blinks less hard to look at. The sound design was very scary. Calling dispatch, I liked how the 1 for danger was setup Chekhov's gun style the previous day. It was cool that the lights didn't automatically turn on, I remembered about the switch and looked for it and turned it on after waking up in a panic. Also, the lighting had me desperately looking around to see if anything was coming at me.

Going to bed so quickly after getting up the second time around was a bit weird. The first time felt fine because I didn't know how long I had been up before the game started. That being said the going to sleep just to wake up with some issue motif was cool.

I take it you ran out of time for the latter half of the game. If I assume the text adventure that followed was a pitch for what could have been provided you had more time, then let me just say its crying shame you didn't get that time. Still it's amazing what you made in 1 week with predominantly 3-4 people.

Great game. Great submission.

Neat sidescroller.

The visuals look good and the music was a nice choice. The sound is decent also the slashing gets a bit repetitive.

I feel the attack should have been a bit quicker. Also, I understand not moving while attacking on the ground, but it felt weird to be stopped from strafing forward in mid-air because I attacked.

Variably timed jumping would have been nice too; that is it would have been nice to be able to stop jumping up early, feels "tighter" that way imo.

The slimes were cute. Two characters to choose from was cool, don't see that a lot in game jams. It's nice of you to have a controls tutorial in the actual game.

Cool submission.