Play on itch.io

This game has a great atmosphere! Good job.

This was a great mini RPG experience! I second the comment about the atmosphere, very well done!

atmospheric, loved the art and story, short and sweet.

Wow! That was a great experience. The story was very solid and self-contained. I enjoyed discovering it. The puzzles fit the atmosphere, and having learned their mechanics helped the story at the end. I also enjoyed the humor. :smile:

I didn't expect to play for as long as I did - great job on finishing it. Very nice experience from start to finish. I thought the theme was a pretty good fit with how it starts out, but the ending made it fit even better. I especially like that you didn't overuse any mechanics at all - everything felt like it had it's place.

Nice one, good ending, great atmosphere and simple mechanics.

Really great story and writing, also visually nice. The little sounds they would do was too faint, but it still was a very enjoyable experience!

This is really great. The story sucked me in and kept me playing until the end. The puzzles were really well done. The graphics and music really served the theme too.

The one complaint I have is the controls - I found it a bit annoying that my character moved when I released the key as opposed to when I press it. It made it feel like there was input lag.

Great game overall!

I enjoyed it, read everything and your story is wicked and I like it very much :D Too bad we can't open chests hehe ;). Movement may be a little bit more responsive. But overall it was great experience! :D

I like the idea and the concept. Graphics are good, maybe you can work some things about code out, but this is a very good game.

Wow, that's meta.
I hated the first ten minutes of the game. I wandered in the town aimlessly. The lack of direction is fine, but not when it's required to talk to every NPC several times. But finally I finished the game, and it was a nice experience, quite interesting. The graphics and sound are fine, the controls are a bit weird but I'm okay with this style of old top-view adventure game. I hoped for more puzzle, but it's a good game overall. Good job !

Great game ! The writing is really good, I really enjoyed the humor in the dialogues. The mood is great, the audio really brings something to the game. Nice entry, good work !

Thank you everyone for the feedback!

@toulou @spaceman, there should be no problems with the controls. Can you tell me what operating system and browser you are using? Also if you were using the arrow keys or WASD? Thanks!

OMG I NEED MORE! Took a while to get into but stuck it out as I loved the style and simplicity. Couple of nice little puzzles and well thought out story. Hope I see more! Great job :slight_smile:

Mostly loved it, I noticed the input lag too, but I think the problem is you don't buffer the inputs. Say I press up then up immediately, it'll only move up once as it has to wait until you complete the first up movement. I had the same issue in my game but fixed it by queuing every keypress and then dequeuing them when i'm ready for another input, so pressing up twice will move up, then move up again.
The calling people "Wife" thing annoyed me though and stereotypical gender roles in the town.
Artwork was lovely, especially loved the overworld map and loved the "edge" effect. Having to be side on to people to talk to them was odd but I got used to it.
Music was great.
Sad I didn't get to explore the edge myself in the ending though.

This was mindblowing! Amazing!
How did you manage to pull this off in so little time!?

Really great story and design :D

The little books and messages added in added to the experience nicely. I was refreshed to find the block room a great example of a solid puzzle. I thought talking on the side was strange but it wasn't a big deal. The atmosphere was just great, I'm glad to have played it! Awesome job.

The story was very interesting! The music was simple, but it didn't get annoying. The pixel art was pretty good. The way you had to talk to people felt a bit weird. It made me start thinking of The Edge Chronicles at first. xD

I think I might have done a few things out of order, for example, I didn't talk to the people at the bridge and I also didn't eat breakfast until after I spoke to the wise man. In the case of the bridge, it was kind of weird how he recognized me even though I had never met him. :P

Anyway, this is a great entry! :slight_smile:

this is a very nice, calm, laid back sort of game. its interesting you didn't make anything super obvious to the player, like how to move or interact, but allowed the player to discover what to do instead. very cool :D

Wow you really captured the 8Bit feel with this game! Really cool story, the atmosphere drew you in and it was very engaging. The sound was kinda low though, I don't use headphones. Other then that I really enjoyed playing this game to its conclusion. Well Done!

Very meta. I loved the artwork, particularly the overworld tiles!

Although I though the beginning was a bit unguided, the simple humor kept me going until a path showed itself.

Glad I was able to get the whole way through. I honestly didn't know what to expect with each next room. Quite an interesting and one-of-a-kind experience for me. Great job!

very solid game - agree with others on the buffering of movement - story was short but sweet - one of my favorites so far

Awesome man! This is a wonderful game! Excellent storytelling, I just wanted to continue this journey! I liked it so much! I think the moral of the story is that it's stupid to seatch outside, like in the space, the meaning of life, because it is in simple life and inside us, like in family and in good sentiments. Very nice work, Bravo!

Wow, I can't believe you finished this in 72 hours! Such fleshed-out storytelling, atmosphere, character movements, even a nice little puzzle section. Well done! :smile:

It got really interesting, I actually wanted to play more. Good job :upside_down:

Amazing. Just amazing. I gave it at least 4/5 in every category (except humor). Great job!

Very atmospheric and creepy, I especially liked the feeling when the wise man tells the player how he never tried pushing someone to "the edge" while slowly creeping behind. The end is also very cool, but don't want to spoil it, props on this submission!

Artwork is great, and the feel of the game is nice. ~~But I got stuck after talking to the old man and couldn't find a way to progress further.~~ I figured out that I had to talk to a few people a few times in order to get things moving again. EXCELLENT ending! Worth playing until the end. Great job!

I like this game very much.
Amazing story, and atmosphere.
Maybe some sound during actions would be great.
Also loved the puzzles. Such a nice experience for mini RPG.

Really lovely game that had a good mix of story and simple mechanics. Very much enjoyed it!

I like this game, great graphics and good humor. I liked the two angry neighbors.

Great entry! Interesting to see a good narrative game. One of my favorites!

I liked the story and such. However, the controls were really clumsy. :(

This is fantastic, especially the art style is amazing. I would have liked a few additional puzzles in the cave, but even still, extremely well done. @fanatrick is right, the bit with the old man on the Edge is pretty fantastic.

The audio was so quiet I didn't realize there _was_ any until I saw the sound icon on my Chrome tab halfway through. I had to turn the volume on my computer to maximum to really hear it.

Personally, I did _not_ notice any input lag like some others did. That said, something I'm experimenting with in my own game (post jam, not uploaded yet) is, if the player has input while animating from one state to the next, just skip to the end of the animation rather than queueing the input for later. That way, if the player really wants to, they can move as fast as they're pressing keys, but if they take things at a more 'normal' pace, they still animated smoothly between squares. If a lot of people complain about input lag for you, it's a method worth considering.

Anyway, that's a sidetrack; the main thing is, this game is super rad and I like it a lot.

Oooh really nice and intriguing.
Kept me playing to see how it ends

It just feels a bit easy to solve :-), the puzzles are good but too few

superb, very well scoped, very polished, well formatted and measured. high marks, thumbs up. thou art a master jammer!

Great atmosphere, great adherence to theme, fun story (and yeah, I read the pillars and got the joke :P) Really well done!

EXCELLENT!
like others already mentioned, the controls are the only weak point.
With some polishing this could easily be the art game of 2017!
Maybe you can link from your itch-site to the ld-site. It was not easy to find the entry for rating it.

I love how unexpected everything was in this game, reminds me a little of undertale. You just did so many things right in this game to setup this haunting/somethings-not-quite-right atmosphere: the music, the ordinary yet heartfelt sorrow in the characters' dialogue, and even the graphics look a little washed out, which helps to give that eerie tone. I felt unedge, which means you did a great job! Love the story as well. I think only nitpick is similar to what many other people said: controls were a bit awkward, and I think the characters could have benefited from having 2 more directions art-wise. But the game's already really impressive for a 72 hour jam. Overall, amazing entry!

Good story, good atmosphere and good experience. I enjoyed it alot since the beginning. Talking with all the people and discovering some on the pieces behind the story. The graphics are great and the sounds make the game very immersive. This is a short game really enjoyable and really good in every way. You only could improve it with better controls (aren't so bad anyway), but nothing more. Even if you made it longer it could be worse, so congrats for this amazing job.

great job. got stuck in the castle but that's OK. now I'm off to try to beat the game...

I loved this. The story, the setting, the sound, the tease when I was sure that the man by the edge was going to... (no spoilers!).

The ending was pretty awesome, a sort of full-circle type of thing. (I'm being so careful not to post spoilers). If i had to give one suggestion (and im stretching to do it) I'd want the puzzle in the castle to be a bit more tricky. It was pretty self explanatory as it is now, if there were some buttons that you were not supposed to press just to add some confusion, it would have been a stronger puzzle. But that's minor, so feel free to ignore it.

Just the fact that you took the time to add flavor characters to the town to push your story further was great. This is a really cool entry.

Interesting game.

Very atmospheric, the story was interesting and I liked the way you used the theme. Had some trouble with the controls though, and navigating was difficult due to a lot of invisible walls and it not being clear what I could and could not interact with. The graphics and sounds worked well to create an interesting mood, and overall I would consider this a good effort for a game made in three days. It would interesting to see where this would go if you had more time to work on it.

I love self-fulling/cyclic/meta kind of stories so this was a great experience. Input "floatiness" is definitely bad but otherwise I have nothing to criticize. Great atmosphere, above average story and reasonable graphics. All of them in a jam = thumbs up.

Great stuff - really creative! Didn't get stuck once and the puzzles were challenging and I like how you entice the player to quest and solve problems. Solid entry!

This is a really cool entry. It's rare to see Ludum Dare entries that rely this heavily on story. It's even more rare to see LD entries with writing this good. Your dialog and lore text never feels stilted and dumb like in a lot of other games.

I didn't have any issues with the controls like other people seemed to. I do feel like having to talk to some people multiple times in the first area was nonintuitive and made me feel like I was missing something until I figured it out.

I liked the "secret" area with the stranger, though I wish there was a bit more of a payoff with him (unless there was, and I just didn't figure it out).

I'm glad I stuck through it though, the ending and storytelling was really neat!

A loooooot of content! Great dialogs, great mood, touchy :)

I would appreciate controls description and some end-screen. But the black screen works as well I guess, for the mood :)

You can watch me playing the game here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5x4fRX8yrw

Your story was very emotional for an indie game. Good writing!

Top notch atmosphere, with an interesting story; it was a fun few minutes

Game had a great atmosphere and story, I love games like this where the plot loops forever. Reminds me a little of Moirai. Great job here, would love to see more puzzles and more things on the gameplay side. Great job!

Very polished and storyline works well! The worldmap as transition is quite rare in ldjam games, good work! Also music fits and is not too aggressive! :)

Great little experience. Scoped well, but would have have liked to see more... was just getting into the story and atmosphere and it was over.

Amazing what you were able to produce in just three days. This feels more like a polished flash game than a game jam entry.

Graphics fit the game perfectly, music did a lot for the mood and the story was captivating and littered with little jokes (The red adventurer: "I'll get another job, maybe farmer")

Really enjoyed this, I think you could use it as a perfect base for a lot of story driven fantasy games. If you decide to do something like that, please let me know, I'd love to play through a longer story :smiley:

great game
like art
eerie score

good story


:thumbsup:

Great minimalist meta RPG. The story was intriguing. Can't wait to see it to be elaborated and expanded to a longer game.
I like that the puzzle mechanism is also part of the plot.

Interesting game, I really loved the atmosphere and I want to know more about the void especially. The audio was nice and the graphics were pretty cool too, I didn't mind how the characters could only face left/right, but it was kinda annoying to try and talk to characters sometimes.

So I guess the cycle is repeating itself each day? People must grow up quite fast then. I'd like it if it was a little more obvious for me :) not sure I totally understand what happened at the end.

First LD entry that has given me shivers.

This was sooo well done! It had great graphics, a compelling story, and eerie music to back it up. Lots of polish as well. Great job!

Ha, a pretty clever little story. It's very meta in many intriguing ways, and it's to me personally also one of the most fitting and interesting takes on the theme "A Small World" that I've come across. I don't necessarily like how the interaction only works sideways, it feels clumsy, but since it is also part of the lore itself it has its purpose.

The graphics and audio were fitting, but the mainstay was certainly the story. Very well done!

Nice little adventure and very atmospheric too. But man, do this 3-pixel font made my eyes bleed.

Hey, we played your game on our stream for a bit. Only got a little bite of it, but what we saw was great. Gonna go back to it and finish it so I can give you a proper rating. Really impressive work, the world you created so quickly is really intriguing. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/141167557

GREAT execution. Moody and meta story, more adventure than RPG-esque, but that's not an issue - though people migh be misled given the general design you chose :)

This game is very well designed. It manages to tell a very surreal and atmospheric tale in an entertaining, and I must say, a bit creepy way. Very clever catch with the title itself, and all the elements that come together in the end. I really thoroughly enjoyed the cryptic messages and hints all over the place. Very well done.


**[SPOILER]**
I even got the secret message[s] (you know which ones :) nice work with hinting at it in the library!), though I admit I failed to decipher it, and had to look into the code to read it in the end. I even tried bruteforcing it using full ASCII table, and came up with nothing. Though I'm unsure If I tried correctly, since some characters are hard to make out in that case. I'd like to know what cypher you've used :D
**[/SPOILER]**

I didn't find any bugs I could direct your attention to - it's very solid on this front, at least in my playthroughs.

So - great entry! I kinda wish it could be longer and with more hidden things you could miss. And that's a good thing :) I'm leaving my rating, cheers and stay awesome!

This is a superbly written, well polished, complete game. The graphics are excellent and I commend you on your grammar! The atmospheric audio is understated and effective - the swell at the end is particularly good.

There's not a great deal of game-play involved but given the time constraints that's not surprising. Out of curiosity - is this your own engine?

@richard-michael-smith It's in Game Maker. And thanks for the feedback! It definitely lacks in mechanics.

A well crafted and uncompromisingly sad story. The Atmosphere and subtle world building is superb.

Very atmospheric! Loved the music and the art style. Cool story too! Pretty awesome job. Keep rocking!

Excellent game! The story is very interesting and deep, it creates really nice atmosphere and you can almost feel how the people that live in this world feels. Art is just amazing and music is well fitting and overall is one of the best story games I played so far on this LD. Great job!

Great atmospheric game! I really enjoyed the music and a combination of storytelling and puzzle solving mechanics, well done!

Nice working with minimal resources. The little audio fit the mood well and the simple art style was consistent and well-done. The story was naturally a bit short, but still interesting enough to keep me playing to the end. I feel like it would make a great "chapter 1" of a larger game.

Good little game. The fact is was more of a 'walking simulator' (no disrespect intended) than an RPG was a fun surprise and played against my expectations. You sure produced a ton of art in a short time! Kudos! Humor was good throughout and the ending is great. Also enjoyed the fact that there was so much movement amongst the characters during conversations. It really helps sell the scene. The one puzzle area was expertly crafted!

Movement controls really frustrated me. They felt far too sensitive.

Your game is very atmospheric, the sounds do a very good job, and the story is interesting. Good job!

I really liked your game. It got me directly hooked and I played it until the end. The dialogues were really entertaining and the puzzle had a classic adventure vipe. Great Game!

Fantastic game. Really impressive; great graphics (especially in the overworld), fascinating lore. Even though the game didn't hold my hand, I was never bored or wondering what I had to do next. The audio was subtle but really help set the mood.
Despite everything being so well done, there was still a lot of content and even a puzzle...
Thank you for making this game!

Great entry. It lacks mechanics, but it has a lot of dialogue/text, "cut-scenes" and it's very atmospheric (the ominous music helps).

Maybe it was the plan to make it an RPG (time constraints?!)? It's a very awesome little adventure nonetheless.

I played this on Livestream Today at the request of the Developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zCqO_O0iIo

I also was asked to voice act for it. I apologize to everyone who is forced to listen to it!
Very solid story, a great take on an RPG Classic Trope and a really good mood. Great job!

Wow one of the best games I have played this LD... I loved the librarian that did nothing but shhh me lol. I would change NOTHING EXCELLENT GAME!!

I would love it if you could take the time to rate my game [Not So Small (HTML5)](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/not-so-small) thanks.

This felt like one of the most complete entries I've played so far this LD. There was actually an arc to the story, which rarely happens with something this brief. This really nailed the tone of an old-school RPG (great art and music). I liked the puzzle elements and the way it really served the story in the last room. With how the pieces work you could see just what you were about to walk into, but had to do it anyways.

REALLY good job.

A classic game, very well done in so few days. I liked the pixel art and the background of the story. I missed something surprising, or something that had to be discovered because it was hidden, as an alternative end. Anyway, very well, the atmosphere is very well done.

Wow, that was cool! You really have a knack for storytelling. My favorite part was where the old man deliberated pushing you off the cliff. You set this up masterfully by having him startle you seconds before in the room and then repeating the same motion later outside. You know exactly what he is thinking before he even mentions it. If the story was longer and I was more invested in the character, that scene might have given me goosebumps.

The missing music and sound effects are a shame though. The ambient sounds you added towards the end were quite effective due to the long silence that preceded them but I still think some music throughout the game would have been worked better. Even if not, the missing sound effects hurt your game the most.

Other than that, there were no bugs or unclear parts, you told the story very well, which I think was your main concern, so overall it was a very nice experience, thank you!

This was so cool, love the story, the graphics (and the way there was the minimap and also the full map), nice ambient music, there were also some jokes and really cool twist at the end! Good job!

This was really good! Loved the story, the way it's told and the way you progress through it. Ordinarily i'd say i'd like to see it expanded, but this feels exactly the right length. Great job!

Fantastic job, loved every minute of it. The story telling achieved here is incredible for something made in 72 hours, everything fit together so well to create a fantastic atmosphere and general feeling of mystery. You've inspired me to aim for greater heights next LD.


I have nothing to add, sorry. :smile:
I love this entry.

This is a fantastic entry. The movement feels a bit clunky and the game could have used more in the way of sound effects, but I absolutely love the setting and story you've created here, and I think it's a really neat take on the theme!

There's a certain mood going on in this game that I like. It isn't fully developed, but parts of your game continued to keep my interested. Some of the assets are very nice and I would like to see this further developed as it has the makings for what could be a great rpg-esque experience. Keep it up!

nice game! I'm a sucker for pixel art, and yours is awesome hahaha I really like the rpg vibe to the game and the interaction with NPCs. Congratulations :smile:

hey!! Incredible game, art, music, atmosphere, anyway. Congratulations! I couldn't continue playing because of a bug. I couldn't move the character next to the bridge, in that part with two guys fighting. But I could enjoy a lot the story, the visuals, the mood and this awesome music. I'll play again, i'm curious about this game.

The story was solid, but I made a few tests and realized that thanks to the arrows that appear over the characters'heads, it's possible to skip through most of the game without paying much attention to the story, just going where you "need to be", something I believe to be a bit detrimental to the narrative you've created. I know it's a bit weird to suggest removing something from a game here, but...

The ambients were quite nice though. Very RPG-like. I don't know if you'll want to keep developing this game, butI'd certainly love to see it.

Nice job!

I really enjoyed the meta vibe and the philosophy behind this (also well written). Mood was nice! Somehow, since shingeki no kyojin walls have become much more interesting :D

Oops. Deadlock.

The point of this game is: "you should've listened to your wife."

Well done. It's rather linear, but it tells the story great. And I really liked the puzzle with walls, stones and pressure plates.

You did a really great job.

Lovely graphics, interesting game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKbr96NdjUs

I also included your game in an article of my favorites here: http://fireside.gamejolt.com/post/jam-favorites-ludum-dare-38-vepwgamy