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I’m in awe of what you’ve accomplished here. Love the art style/effects, the battle music, the very funny dead party member text lines and inter-party dialogue, the way XP is earned through exploration, the creative aggro-centric combat-system…

Sometimes you get a set of rolls with inadequate block skills and feel somewhat screwed, but it’s casually fun with the replacement party member system. If there’s something I would want from this though, it would probably be more control over skill selection. (Incidentally, have you played Dicey Dungeons?)

That map navigation thing is an awesome touch. I recall seeing something similar (as well as some of your level design tricks) in Etrian Odyssey, but it wasn’t so conveniently point-and-click there. The map vision cone is cool too.

The sanity system feels a bit tacked on in its present incarnation, with the ability to go and restore it between battles. I like that battles are tactical rather than resource-based otherwise, so perhaps it should be another form of encounter damage instead, like an alternative health bar?

I’ve noticed a very strange bug that isn’t quite an exploit: Switching to the game tab sometimes causes the battle to (mostly) reset. I get new dice rolls, the enemies get their health back and so do I, unless my party member is dead, in which case they stay dead.

Oh wow, this is really good. Superbly imaginitive with the worlds within books. Kinda gives me a Borges’ Library of Babel vibe with the infinite auto-generated books, and that’s a favorite short story of mine. Having someone recognize you as a librarian rather than the warrior himself while you’re inside a book gets the gears in my head turning… kinda like, ah, what was that movie called? Source Code?

The world page with the “What have you found? What have you learned?” is very neat and I appreciate having it!

I would like to be able to hold down the forward movement key to queue up multiple moves, as there’s enough rapid W-pressing in this one to give me a repetitive stress injury. (Actually, I just started clicking the on-screen button instead.)

There might be some bugs not listed on the page – I found a treasure chest within a cave I couldn’t interact with, but perhaps I missed something.

I would have loved to play more of it if it went longer and had more spells to find. Well done.

Great all-around package! The first area is very well decorated (though I can guess you were more rushed for the second one). The shelves and other furnishings really do make a difference, compared to an empty maze.

Speaking to the Offerings is very creepy, well done there. I also love Pathways Into Darkness. :)

Movement is a bit slow but I didn’t mind that as much, as it feels suitable for underwater.

Some cabinets being decorative and others containing necessary items is potentially unintuitive; it wasn’t really a problem, but I found the unopenable ones first and then almost didn’t bother clicking the others.

Combat is trivial in any place where you can move side to side, and it would do well to have some visual feedback when you damaged something, even if it’s only a flash or blink.

I appreciate the feedback!

I did briefly try auto-interaction, and it’s something I want to experiment with more. But they aren’t really enemies until you attack them, and it made it a lot more annoying if you were trying to get around someone in a hallway, playing as a pacifist. I was also too rushed to add in a flee mechanic once combat had actually started, and never decided how that would affect dialogue states…

In my mind, the fixed-placement space suit guys haven’t received word that a cleaning bot is going around killing people, so they’re still non-aggressive until you get the first hit in, but the “revenge units” that automatically spawn are the ones that have. Ideally I’d have a lot more to communicate that – different unit types, hostile/terrified idle animations, some kind of more sophisticated reputation system, lore tweaks, etc.

But I agree, these details are a bit of a friction point as things stand now. Thanks for playing. :)

I enjoy Tactics games so the battle system is cool. (Though maybe not so dungeon-crawly in spirit…?)

I especially like the spending of energy to get an extra move or increase damage, but that could flow better, as someone else said… there’s not really any need to pre-commit, but once you take a normal move action, you could only be able to attack once.

It (currently) doesn’t require much thinking, thus feels slow relative to how much thinking you do. This could be a great starting place for a longer game though, with magic / zoning skills, ranged attacks, reactions… all the typical tactics combat stuff.

I also found it kinda frustrating with the rotation effect and the random battle failures in the green zone. But thanks for the accessibility/difficulty/panic settings, even if I did abuse the panic button just to get out of some pointless random encounters. You even put in a combat tutorial, which is impressive, speaking as someone who couldn’t be bothered to put even single lines of tutorial text about controls in their own game… thumbs up.

Love your intro. Neat game. Pathways Into Darkness vibes. Catching bugs to make portals is cool. Everything is really weird, but part of the charm of participating in a jam is finding really weird stuff. (What the heck is a crit-tick…?)

I have no idea what makes a good build but I took ten with me, and all got easily killed except for one lady who inexplicably blocked nearly all damage and healed herself, which is an interesting natural-selection style of party building. Otherwise, it doesn’t actually seem like taking more people with you is helpful, as you’re spreading out XP/gear, no? Reached a point where I couldn’t lose unless I got critted twice in a row, so I did win thanks to that, but it was a bit of a grind.

Combat auto-resolves too slow – a one minute fight could literally be resolved in a second and it wouldn’t have altered my strategy. Could use added complexity, and probably less dramatic swings with the crit values. I also think the sound effects are too much. I want to squash that smug talking bug…

Would be good to have an option to flee, at least to swap party members. The monsters also move really fast, to the point that it rarely feels like you have a choice in engaging.

Felt queasy with the wobbly art and text and didn’t make it all the way down, but I think this is a very mechanically deep entry. Props for the variety of enemy types, unique character classes and so on. I like the UI and control scheme / game feel otherwise.

I’m very fond of gameplay mechanics that keep you from taking common elements (like your automap) for granted, and the sacrifice system is great for that. Also good call that you can skip a sacrifice for each extra you’ve lost in combat.

Others have likely said anything else I would think to add. A few things really should be communicated better, like the presence of items and stairs. I was taking damage at some point on every step (on 3F I think?) and didn’t figure out why. Maybe my trap guy was dead and I didn’t notice, or maybe you have invisible enemies, or some kind of starvation system I wasn’t paying attention to…?

So yeah in a nutshell, great design but needs to communicate better visually.

This is a nice and simple game. It’s a pleasant change of pace to just dig walls for a while. I think you could lean into that. Let players sculpt shapes to their liking, sell them little boards to close up tunnels and markers to slap on walls to find their way. Have deeper areas or lower levels with a visual change, richer ore and tougher minigames… etc.

But it’s too much of a grind currently, and the upgrades I reached weren’t very dramatic. It would feel better if you were bringing back twice as much cash with an upgrade you could buy after bringing back a single full load of ore. But since you have to go further to find ore, it actually feels like your payout per minute is dropping… if you were trying to build a narrative around gold rush futility or something, that could be clever, but if you just want a casual “turn off your brain and have fun peacefully digging out walls and making numbers go up” game, definitely not.

The timing minigame also gets dull quickly. You’d need some other dimension to that if you wanted to make this game longer.

I also noticed the awkward delay on movement and realized you don’t actually move until you release the key, rather than when you press it down, which is very unusual.

I’m totally impressed by all the systems you’ve included in your engine here! This is far above average in sophistication, everything looks really cool, I like putting little points into attributes and skills, and you have some great writing (although there are some typos).

I think the combat system needs more thought. I’m putting aside that it’s trivially easy and that I’m not sure if proficiency skills do anything, as those are more matters of balance.

It could be good, but currently it’s a bit awkward to make changes on the fly. Maybe with skill hotkeys it would work better, like press 1 while the mouse is overlapping an enemy to use that skill? Left click always just being a basic attack for the weapon equipped? But the way it cycles through your characters also makes it more awkward to do ranged stuff, as you cycle to someone who’s still on melee and then can only step back in.

Also would like to see QE for turning. I’d like to implement an option for QE strafe in my own game for the people who like it though… maybe you would consider the same?

I couldn’t finish, got totally lost. It turns into a bit of an object hunt for the keys and keyholes. But I hope you keep iterating on this, as it’s a really good foundation.

Thank you, your stream commentary is very helpful. I’m pleased you got invested in my little story by the time of the cutoff point. I hope to put out a post-jam update to address some of the smaller issues and ideally to expand upon the simplistic combat.

I would actually like to take a step back and make a version of this game with no writing, just to see how much I can do to enhance the core gameplay.

As for extending the scenario to an actual ending, it’s something we have talked about, but only time will tell. I don’t expect it to get as much attention after the jam though… :)

Haha, didn’t expect to see a comment on this old one. But thank you!

There’s not currently any special reactivity for it, but killing everyone/no one is possible… sort of. If you anger someone into hitting you, currently you can only finish them off. But yeah, it would be fun to take that further. :)

Thank you for the extensive feedback. I appreciate the video as well.

• Yep, the plan was to limit gameplay based on a permission system/free will theme – the permission to break down certain walls of the ship, etc., with Mother unable to take them back once given, thus very reluctant to ever give you any of them until it’s absolutely necessary. But the pace of these permissions is a bit rushed in the jam and I couldn’t get to most of the ideas. It’s mostly a bit of flavor with the disabled dialogue options now.

• F for doors is definitely getting put in as a tutorial line as soon as possible after. I could have done that in thirty seconds had I thought of it, but it would have helped for a lot of people.

• Not too sure how to interpret the current text message thing. It does grey out older messages when new ones come in, or at least it’s supposed to. In some cases it sends multiple lines without greying out the previous, but perhaps I should just increase the contrast, you can tell me what you think if you like.

• The combat/pacing is what I most want to refine. The random encounter system was added in the last day, and only adds enemies to a random encounter pool when you kill others (spoiler), for lore reasons, with the intent of having pacifist/non-pacifist playthroughs be possible, kind of going for an Undertale approach. I also wanted Mother to encourage combat while the player was still trusting in her and incapable of speaking with the “bad guys”. But what it currently means is that players will blindly pick a few fights and flood the random encounter pool before they even learn they can heal. It’s tuned such that you should at least survive a couple battles but otherwise not intentional. Also didn’t have time for combat items, skills on level-up, etc.

Thanks again for playing!

Great graphics, lighting, torch effects. Gameplay is a bit basic, but I appreciate that you have to wait for the arrow/spike timing to sync rather than just tanking through.

I managed to win, but I usually took at least two hits of damage whenever I took any, so I would recommend adding a brief invulnerability and/or briefly locking input after getting knocked back by a trap.

Thank you!

Great UI aesthetic, great feel overall. Love the Etrian Odyssey influence with the automap and random encounter danger meter, those things are so so nice to have (getting tired of blindly navigating mazes without landmarks). I also think gaining stats from treasure chests is a clever way to keep the scope more focused for the jam.

The battle system seems really well fleshed out (I like the cooldown-based moves especially). Battles can take a while, but it makes those skills that lower defense and whatnot feel more calculative and useful. In many games I never actually use every skill I’m given, as some often seem to be in there just to make up the numbers, but I actually see some design intent here to make battles into more of an optimizable puzzle rather than a grind. It is on the easy side, so I could see not needing to use them effectively, but for a jam game I think the balance is right.

Some nitpicks/suggestions: Light up the art for the enemy the cursor is pointing at. (I noticed I was setting a visual order in my head and then selecting based on which one I saw my characters hitting in the previous round.) Could also be helpful to show active debuffs on an enemy (unless you want to force the player to track that themselves), as well as having a turn counter. Oh, and the screenshake when you bump a wall is a good touch but it shakes a bit too aggressively, haha.

Great game!

Nice mechanics! You have a lot of gameplay stuff coming together with the attack cooldowns, limited-use weapons, sanity system, etc.

I think the timing effect on sanity might rush things too much, I tend to want to spam attacks and run for it; stealth seems unreliable given that it makes you slower. The nature of loops, deaths, and repeated tries also encourages suicidal rushes a bit.

Initially I was going to say I would rather be able to click the three attack buttons than use JKL as I need the mouse for inventory anyway. But it looks like you can, it’s just a bit inconsistent/unresponsive, maybe because it triggers on release of the button rather than on press?

Pretty cool. I’ve heard of Godot’s RPG in a Box but didn’t know it could be used for things like this. More content than I expected with the different planet tilesets, story, etc. The extra ship layer of Dungeon Crawler flight in space was something I haven’t seen before.

Had some bugs, and combat would be better served by some form of progression, but thankfully it was tuned a bit on the easy side so it didn’t stop me from seeing what else the game had to offer. Definitely would’ve preferred faster movement. Oh, and QE strafe turn controls really confuse my brain (though you’re not at all alone on that choice) so I strafed into lava a bunch of times, haha.

I’m happy to see the text input, it’s a cool system. And I love the quirky vibe of it all.

It’s currently a struggle to do anything in this game though. Would love movement keys, accepted synonyms for common prompts like speak/talk, look/examine/x, and shorthands like “punch” if there’s only one target, or “attacks” instead of “description attacks”. Maybe a clickable UI element to show/hide a little cheat sheet.

Was initially stuck at the beginning not realizing I had opened the door already. Often seems like you are in range of stuff that the game reports doesn’t exist when you try to interact with them, like doors and the mannequin-like people scattered about. But I do of course know that all these things take time you may not have when you’re crunching to submit for a jam.

Thank you very much!

Thank you!

The scope is elegantly limited for a jam game. I like the recycle and reroll system. It’s fun to make numbers go up.

If you don’t want a piece of loot, you’re always going to recycle if you are out of rerolls, and since they can reroll into other slot types, you’ll always reroll if you have a recycle. So as it stands, they may as well be the same button. But the more core point is that it’s a little too random. I am also curious if loot properties scale with level or if you can get the best items from the start? In which case you would want to save up recycles for later…

It would be nice to be able to preview a fight or abort and run if it isn’t going your way, though it isn’t too necessary currently as combat is tuned a bit on the easy side, which is better for quick looks at the concept anyway.

Gives off older Fromsoft vibes which I like, though some of the core movement and feel could be improved. I also mistook my XP numbers for my health a couple times.

Great visuals. Especially liked the idea of finding a rarer type of cool guy to join your party, although I have no idea what their various abilities were, aside from the note on your main game page about engineers. Also curious if the flashlight attracts enemies or anything.

Some bugs and lack of sound, and I got extremely lost and didn’t manage to finish. I like the use of vents and multiple floors, but I do poorly enough navigating large similar-looking environments even when I’m not getting chased by monstrosities. Cool though.

Quite short, but very charming. Love the art style, and the little reminders that you’re on set, like when attempting to flee the boss. Like others, I also noticed the satisfying pace and feel of movement after just a single step.

On the other hand, the combat gameplay is a bit too simple (so is mine), and as I’m sure you know, there’s currently too little incentive to fight anything other than the boss. Could definitely be taken further.

As another said, I see this as not such an interesting game in itself but more impressive for the challenge of doing it in C++/Raylib, speaking as someone who is still daunted by the prospect of not having a modern GUI/editor taking care of certain things for me. And in being a first-time collab with just a little over a week, which can present its own challenges. In spite of all that the gameplay mechanics are about on par with what some other beginner projects have achieved while working in Unity, Unreal, Godot, &c. (and their games are 500mb downloads).

Some awkwardness with multiple characters “killing” the same enemy if targeted in a single turn, and simplistic in other regards, but you probably know all that better than I do.

Thanks for submitting!

Thank you!

Great visuals overall, pleasantly surprised by the transition to the separate RPG-like combat screen. Sound and presentation all feel quite polished.

I think it would feel better to increase turning and movement speed substantially. I’m guessing there’s no combat rewards and it’s better to avoid a fight if you can manage to?

Also had my run ended by the empty battle screen bug, unfortunately, but well done otherwise.

The visual presentation is great, the enemy design, lighting, shader effects are all very good.

My first experience was turning around at the start of the game and immediately clipping through the door and falling into a void.

The inventory icon difference between having and not having something is a bit subtle, at the start I assumed I started with all those items. I also hit an enemy with a bear trap, dynamite, and shotgun, and none of it seemed to affect it.

Thanks for submitting.

The blue textures / color palette give off a nice retro DOS game vibe.

A bit simple, the challenge is only in navigating without getting lost. The timer adds a sense of rush but is quite forgiving.

Initially I thought I had to put out the fire, but once I discovered I could heal, I was willing to just tank through it to get to the other side; the sense of what resources the player has can nonverbally encourage them to do such things, which is interesting.

Thank you!

Note to others that both the exe and pck files are necessary separate downloads.

The best thing this has going for it is a pretty fully implemented turn-based battle system with stat point allocation on level up, items and magic skills. I found a boss fight to be kind of a steep curve if I was supposed to win it at all (not exactly getting at the true essence of cosmic horror by shooting fireballs at Cthulhu).

I found the Z/X controls kind of unintuitive, and seemingly got locked into the items menu until I used an item, as none of the Z/X/Enter controls got me out of it. And while there is mouse support, the player needs to tap through with Z first if there are any pending messages in the battle log before the mouse will do anything. So I think the UI stuff is a priority.

Well done though and thanks for submitting.

Great little game! I never would have thought of this mix of a Breath of the Wild-like Dungeon Crawler, with weapons as consumables. The trade-off between breaking down walls and having higher damage in battle is also cool.

It seems like it’s a bad idea to wander too much, because enemies respawn but don’t drop weapons, so you only lose by fighting them, unless you are great at parry timing. I could never parry the slow golem swings, but I had no trouble blocking the boss sword, so I was able to win.

Thanks. Fun fact: If you type in the wrong prompt after getting the password from another character, the game “reminds” you what the password was. But you mostly just missed more reading, so don’t sweat it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Interesting, I actually thought the no attack cooldown after movement and splash were intentional, or at least could be. If you got more feedback and could see the enemies rounding a corner with a moving swing, it would be quite a nasty surprise for people expecting an easy cheese kill, haha. Likewise with the splash on fireballs, if it were only on some special attacks and telegraphed, I think it would be good to consider!

This is really cool! Cute enemies. Flipping around on walls is neat, though it does make it awfully easy to get lost. If you kept going with that idea, some more navigation help would be important.

The math system is great (coming from someone with a current Balatro addiction), though the choices are often too obvious (+1 vs +2) and it is tuned a bit easy. That is better than too hard when you don’t have time for rigorous balancing, but I killed “Infinity” in one hit, haha.

Perhaps a more fleshed out version would lock your choices into Attack or Defense when you pick them up, and forbid you from combining addition upgrades with multiplication ones. Maybe combination of two existing runes would instead be an option you have to take at the expense of another new one? The possibilities are limitless.

Thank you! Agreed that the combat needs tuning. The view angle thing is subtle feedback I haven’t heard yet so I appreciate that. I think it’s pointing at (EyeLevel / 2) when you aren’t facing a person, but which was originally set with the intention of leaving items on the ground, but now that you mention it, it’s quite unnecessary in its current state; I’ll have to do some A/B testing on that one.

Thank you! And yeah, enough people have had that problem that I should’ve called it “PRAXIS/PROVIDENCE -=- F_Opens_Doors”.

Thanks! Yeah, there’s definitely some Shodan DNA in there… lol.

Thank you! I wasted a lot of time on character name gags, like if you call yourself Mother or Father, and a few secret ones nobody will ever find. I was also going to make Mother cut you off if you made too many attempts to lengthen your name over the max, or do a haggling thing where you ask for more to settle on a more modest gains in name length, but then I thought… what the hell am I doing, I still need to make the rest of the game, lol.