I really enjoyed the puzzle mechanics on display here. Awesome work.
Visuals are excellent and sound, while minimal, is nice.
To be honest, the story was a little more than I needed. It seemed well written but it just wasn’t what I wanted in my puzzle experience. It would have been completely fine if I could’ve skipped the dialogue faster.
The puzzles are fun and the grid-based movement feels snappy. Very satisfying. Overall this is one of my favorite entries!
Enjoyed the puzzling, the box placement is a cool mechanic. I think the placement needed some polish though, as I had a hard time placing the boxes accurately to scale the wall to the third door. They always seemed to get placed in some orientation other than what I would expect. I wasn’t able to get to the third door because the boxes were not placing at the desired elevation, they seemed “locked” at a higher one than I wanted and I couldn’t maneuver myself into the door.
I also wanted to add, regarding puzzle confusion - I think there’s an element of targeting your audience here. Some folks like puzzle games that let you figure everything out and do not hold your hand. Cultist Simulator has some of that energy.
Other folks are going to want a more streamlined puzzle experience. So at a certain point you just have to ask yourself - what kind of game do I want to make?
I’m fixing some UI stuff in my own game, take that for what you will. I’m less concerned about winning than I am about making something good - this is after all the time that the most people will probably be playing my game.
Sometimes I wish jams included a feedback & update period. Like 1 week of dev, 1 week of feedback and updating.
This is a great puzzle game! I loved the art and music. This game oozes style.
I experienced some jank when selecting the rune “pages” in the bottom left corner. You can click to summon the page multiple times, with each click summoning a new page (that needed to be dismissed with another click) in front of the last, and the screen getting dimmer each time. I was also able to click to activate doors even when they were behind the pages. I would’ve really preferred to be able to click the page in the corner again to dismiss it.
I also didn’t like that the blown-up guide pages would cover the symbols over the middle door and on the sign in front, but not the doors on the sides. I think you should cover all the doors (to make it clearly a design choice that you can’t see the reference and the choices at the same time), or make them all visible.
I actually pulled out a pen and paper to take notes on the symbols, which was awesome. I felt like an arcane detective even though I was just doing simple transformations.
I think you should do a little more to highlight the rune guide. Maybe a glowing outline or something. It’s easy to miss because it’s not in the center of the screen. Similarly, I think the note pages could have a glow or some other indicator to them.
The puzzle mechanics were great. I loved how they were simple but strung together to create increasing complexity. At first I didn’t like the health system because I kept having to restart, but I played for a bit more and started to develop a more intuitive feel for reading the symbols (taking notes helped), so it got faster and more rewarding. Good design choice.
This is the only game I’ve played this jam that left me perfectly satisfied and with a sense of mastery.
The duck ending was cute!
Easily the best game I’ve seen in this jam, and the only one I’ve given 5 stars across the board. I’m recommending this game to friends who aren’t even participants, that’s how good it is.
I didn’t really get the game. I peeked and walked through some doors (peeking was a cool mechanic, well done), I shot one monster, then I walked through another door and won.
I was able to spam F on “Upgrade Magazine” indefinitely in the beginning, as far as I could tell. I gave up around 100.
I assume the intent was that I might decide not to go through a door after seeing what was behind it, but that didn’t happen for me.
Overall, cool atmosphere, good moving & aiming controls. Would’ve liked to have more game to play/not win so easily. Good effort from everyone involved!
This was a really novel idea for a game. The visuals and audio are great, especially the soundtrack. The lighting effects are nice, too.
A two-button input or a confirmation requirement for opening the door might be a good idea. I kept accidentally hitting F and opening the door, maybe because I would walk away and the prompt would go back to Open instead of staying on Talk.
I would’ve liked to interrogate each visitor with a few questions. That would have been more engaging than just reading one or two lines of dialogue. Even just the option to tell the murderer to get lost or something like that would’ve been fun.
The gameplay is mostly waiting. It would be great to have some other activity in between visitors. The waiting is especially painful when you die and have to replay it.
Overall, a cool idea and a good effort! Congrats to the team!
Great visuals and music! I love a retro look and you did a good job with it. I would have welcomed an echo-y footstep sound.
The game got progressively spookier, which I enjoyed.
Collecting flowers is a nice contrast to the spooky setting.
I was not happy restarting completely after dying on the third floor. Because your gameplay is just slow walking, losing a few minutes of progress like that feels really really bad. Doubly so because I wasn’t really aware that I was in danger when the walls started moving (I had not been in danger yet in the game), and by the time I realized it was too late to make up for the lost time. I did not finish the game because I didn’t want to replay the first two floors. Honestly I think just a basic sprint would have alleviated this, though it might’ve messed with your pacing.
Mouse sensitivity seemed kinda low, a slider would have been welcome. Also, I lost mouse control after dying.
This was cool, I really liked all the art and sounds. Theme interpretation is great.
Memory matching is a classic game mechanic, not much to say about it. I don’t really think you innovated much in terms of gameplay; I read in the tutorial that different items added or subtracted attack, but it never seemed to matter? I was just playing memory matching.
I did not enjoy multi-clicking doors, I found it tedious and a bit taxing on the ol’ pointer finger, especially as time ran out and I got more frantic in my clicking… but then I ran out of time and didn’t lose, not sure what was going on there. I think that a sound effect or a visual indicator (shake of some kind?) when clicking doors would make it much more satisfying.
One thing that was unclear to me was why some items required clicking to get rid of (i.e. rocks and bones), but some did not, such as cobwebs. Unless cobwebs were just art variety for empty tiles?
I think we had similar takes on the theme! The similarity was what initially attracted me to your submission. I love the name.
Overall I enjoyed the game, mostly the atmosphere and aesthetic. Nice job.
The combat was simple but had enough difficulty to feel rewarding. Archer skeletons can shoot through walls, which felt a little unfair.
The theme interpretation is really creative, placing doors to apply some effect to the next room is a clever mechanic. The door placement was a little janky. Using the same button to activate placement, place, and go through doors was a terrible idea lol. I kept having an issue in which the open door prompt would not appear (and I couldn’t go through the door), I think because I was too close. I would back away and re-approach and that would fix it.
It also wasn’t clear that I was in “door mode” unless I moused over a wall. Some sort of indicator would have been nice.
It wasn’t too hard to reach the boss, but it was unclear that I couldn’t place a door to the boss room at first. This was also disappointing, because I wanted to use one of the special doors against the boss. Ultimately I didn’t beat the boss because I didn’t feel like running the dungeon again to get to him for a 4th try. I guess the gameplay variety wasn’t quite there for me to keep running it.
I know exactly what you mean. As a rule I try not to work on game concept that’s directly inspired by anything I just played for that reason. Recently I wanted to make a platformer and played Celeste for inspiration, found myself making Celeste. So I can definitely relate.
As an exercise in making an HK-style combat loop I think this game is a huge success, seriously. Good luck in your future efforts!
The gameplay & combat are excellent, attacks are fast and snappy, dodging feels good, having a ranged option is nice.
Visuals and atmosphere are lovely as well.
Sound design is good.
The boss fight was awesome, that’s the most fun I’ve had in game so far for this jam! Great job to the encounter designer!
The game is clearly inspired heavily by Hollow Knight. There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from good games; however, I think this has to be the first jam game I’ve seen where the level of imitation going on is almost… cheap-feeling. The attack timing, animation, and sound are almost identical to HK. So is the mana/health regen system, plus the display is almost identical. The boss death particles are basically the same as well.
All in all this is a really strong effort that I had a blast playing. I just would’ve liked to see some more originality.
Thanks for the feedback! I can understand your point about it not being clear when/how to attack - perhaps a clear turn indicator or a message telling you to select an item would be an improvement.
I don’t really understand your second point (and I’m trying). There is an attack animation, floating damage number, and sound for both the player and the enemy. Could you elaborate on it being unclear whether the attack happened at all?
When the question about color came up I got interested, I was thinking it was going to become a more surreal experience of trying to please an insane show host or something. Then the next question about apples reinforced that idea by being simple and wrong lol.
And then the game was over, pretty much right as you piqued my interest!
The ending was a bit shocking, kudos for that. But then I wasn’t clear that the game had ended. Had to come here to the feedback to see that I could turn around.
I think a better ending might have been to attach the camera to the guy in the chair so that he’d be looking at the audience, then fade in credits after the kill. Or at least, something to clearly indicate that the game was over.
Graphics and audio were knocked out of the park! I really liked the intro door-opening animation as well. Even if most of the assets were purchased or generated, bringing them together cohesively like this is an achievement.
Gameplay was briefly confusing, then neat as I understood, then stale when I realized the only mechanics were numbers and canceling. But that’s also right about when I finished the game, so the length is right.
I love this idea, I think with some more card types (for the player and the child) as well as deck building and more levels, this could really hold my attention over a longer play time.