cant wait to play it!! gonna get some rest 1st though, if you dont mind, check my game please

here ==> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/anemia

This game is really nice. I felt like the things I do in life are important in the game in life and that without memories, what are you really? If you can't remember, then learning, experiences, and things that hold such value aren't as important. I made sure i got all three endings and was happy that i nailed all three! :D Loved the music, feel, and mood.

Those feels! The emotion waves.. the mood and setting, and the memories that you either keep or slip from your grasp.. the art and story (loved the end graphic of your loved one).. amazingly done! I think it fits the theme quite well, and was a beautiful adventure.. I did all 3 endings, and they each were worth the time.. oh, and the music/sound! A+

What an amazing work, Phil! The music, the sound effects, the graphics, the atmosphere. Loved every part of it. And managed to get the 3 endings.

Beautiful game! The artstyle is nicely pulled off (loved the last screen), the audio supports the mood perfectly, and the story is simple but touching (for me, the good ending was the most beautiful one). Gameplay-wise it's not too exciting but I couldn't care less if everything else is so compelling. Still, the bad path was pretty boring, some differences in the writing would've been nice. Also, it was quite hard to read which memories were lost, as they disappeared so quickly.
An amazing game overall though and good use of the theme. It's the first game I played this LD, how are the other games supposed to keep up with this level of awesomeness? :)

Love the art and athmosphere here!

Regarding the art, everything is relativily so simplistic, yet so good. The monochrome art, the plot, and the music fits perfectly together.
I enjoyed the gameplay, nice little puzzles there :slight_smile:

Sadly I could unveil only 2 endings, because even if I could reach halfway without errors (which was harder and harder because I got more and more impatient :laughing:), there was a level (the one where you are "facing" only one "aiming castle" at the beginning) where I always got stuck for a second at the edge of a block, and the aiming castle got me :confused:

Of course it's not impossible, but after each retry it took more and more time to get to that level, and after 5 tries, I gave up.

Anyways, nice work, as always! :slight_smile:

@luma: Thanks for being the first to comment! Hope you enjoy it when you get to it. I put your game on my list for an upcoming Phil Plays video :)

@commanderstitch I'm glad you get the message (well, it's hard to miss) and for playing it such soon!

@redhermit Aww, thank you! And congrats on doing all the endings, I have yet to get the best one myself. But now at least I know that they all work ;)

@splitpainter Thanks for playing and congrats on also getting all the endings. I wonder how many attempts it took you.

@erkberg Thank you for playing and your kind feedback! Yes, the "bad" part was just implemented enough that it worked, I wanted to do more writing and add a little story arc but that all fell by the wayside as I wrestled with my audio driver for 2 hours. That the lost memories wouldn't stay on screen for longer was intentional so that you would only get a last brief look at them. But that they overlap was, well, not as intentional ;)

@philippem Thank you very much! :)

@tudvari Glad you enjoyed it! So far I haven’t managed to get the best ending myself because I also mess up somewhere along the way and also after around 6 or 7 attempts I gave up. But here's a hint for the level you mentioned: Move up and bait the rook, then move down under the block so the rook gets stuck and isn't as threatening any longer. I'll record a playthrough this week.

Thanks so much!!! I'll play your game after school! @philstrahl

Almost got the best ending, but I lost a few memories at the second last stage :( Great game though! Engimatic graphics and music, and the difficulty increased at steady pace. Keep up the good work!

Great story(telling), game felt balanced and was very enjoyable to play. Mood is unbeatable, music makes everything come together and is just perfect! A great game, fitting the theme!
Watching your postmortems really inspired me to participate in this Ludum Dare and create my first solo game ever so thanks for that!
Grüße aus München! Mach's gut!

Wow, In my opinion this is your best game for LD's so far. What a good story|music|gameplay combo.
Hat's off for this one sir!
Got the ending 2/3. Tried to get out of fullscreen to take a screenshot but I hit esc and that quitted the game xD.

PD: The level where all the rooks come at you without mercy was really funny

Hi! I played your game on stream today, here is the link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/418104572?t=01h19m42s

Really nice storytelling and a very interesting artstyle. Very fancy entry!

@rombus Oh wow, thank you very much! There was so much that I would have liked to add / change but at least the level design worked ;)

@syrapt0r Thank you so much for playing and your comments! It was very helpful watching someone experience the game for the first time. And I agree, 17 memories are not much but I only had time for ~10 levels. I'm glad you like the music also!

Solid game with some good mood. The text in the start is a little hard to read because of low quality. And when you lose memories the memories coud be there in a little longer, its hard to read 3 memories in 4 seconds(or what it takes to go away)But a solid game :smiley:

The sounds really fits the mood. The levels felt almost infinite/repeating (because of the end dialog beeing the same), which made me spend some lives because I hope that would change something. It didn't and it just cost me a happy ending.

Good work!

Everything is amazingly perfect! You are not a only game developer you are also a very talented storyteller. Very well-made game. Congratulations!

Great Game @philstrahl - i played it through in the first try :) But i really loved the mood and the gameplay.

Excellent game! Very thematically appropriate, consistent, and dark. There isn't much more to say. It's just great (and so much better than Zoccer).

Okay, since you started doing text-based games your LD games have improved so much. This was definetly the best game I've played from you so far. Super interesting and the mood is amazing.

The mood was very very good and set by the music.

Oh, this was emotional. This music, 1 bit black and white art style, little touches, such as descriptions of lost reminiscences. So deep. Wow!

The only thing missing is the ability to play a game using keyboard only. You could bind answers to number keys as it's made in SW KotOR (and many other RPGs, I guess =) ). But it's just a silly complain. =)

Great game, the best take on the theme I've seen.

i really enjoyed playing your game it was really fun for me. i found a easy way to get all the waves in the easiest way which is don't wait for the enemies to load and start attacking as soon as the level loads just start running towards the gate. Anyways its a nice game :)

@philstrahl im sorry it took so long to get back to you but i played it and it was awesome!! it was a hard to read the red words because i focused on not getting hit. i love the style you chose, great story, and that level where there was no room to dodge unless you ran was a great tool for the story! cant wait for your next one!!

@centauri Ah, yes, sorry about that. I switched off pixel filtering so the gameplay would look nice, but probably on resolutions below 1920×1080 the text rendering is bad. As for the memories, that's intentional, so you would really feel “damn, I didn’t get that” which is the point of losing a memory ;)

@banzi Thank you for playing! I see what you mean by the game feeling overly repetitive. I wanted to have more flavor text after each stage that shows that players are progressing in their quest but I remembered that too late in the jam. :sweat_smile:

@omercanbalandi Thank you, Omer! I trying my best to hone my writing skills and I am glad that it's bearing fruit ;)

@WFMG Thank you! But to be fair, it's not hard making a game better than *Zoccer* ;)

@nanda Apparently text-based jam-games became kinda my thing :sweat_smile: but at least I manage to put in an actual game with mechanics this time. Glad you enjoyed it that much!

@preda Thank you for playing, Préda! Glad you liked it :)

@yngvarr Thank you very much! And thanks for the feedback, it shouldn't be too hard to make it possible to play the entire game via keyboard only (at least it's an easy thing to say).

@nexusviper Thank you for playing! And the easy way is actually intentional, as sometimes in life it's best to just make a run for something while taking your time on other occasions.

@luma No worries, Luma! I'm glad you still found time to give it a shot. That you can't read the memories you lose in the heat of the game is intentional but I get that it can feel more frustrating than interesting. Hope my next game can keep up with this one ;)

really enjoyed the whole experience of the game, the writing fit the feel of the game very well, almost lovecraftian... the music worked really well in setting the mood of the game and the graphics added to that. the whole thing was a wonderful game.

Awesome stuff! I'd say your best work so far. The style is great, and the bleak environments carried an amazing atmosphere. The first few levels did a very good job at *priming*, where the threat was introduced as you entered the level. The last few though, I wandered into the level and lost heaps of memories, in a way that feels unfair. Otherwise though, an incredible submission!

Good game! Managed to get the best ending without too much trouble. I look forward to watching the Post Mortem on this one.

@pabricka Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed the experience and the difficulty level. Will do! :)

@mrtnldm Thank you for such a favorable comment of the game! Glad I could inspire you to join the jammers! Alles Gute nach München und bis zum nächsten Jam! :)

@matthew-hrehirchuk Oh wow, that's a big compliment about my writing, thank you! Glad you liked also the game around it!

@justcamh Thank you so much for playing and your feedback. I agree, my level design philosophies got a bit muddled: I wanted to always start the player in a safe spot where they could observe the enemy behavior first because I didn't do different chess pieces as I was running out of time. But then I broke up with that in the "ambush" level. I can talk about how intentional that was that sometimes in life you gotta make a run for it, but if it feels unfair then, well, it feels unfair, no matter how high-brow the concept behind is :sweat_smile:

@mashupgames Thank you for playing. I already started on the first draft of the script as right know I still know what happened in what order ;)

Well done!

Great Graphics, good Gameplay and a really good story.

But I somehow don't feel any need to sacrifice any memories.
Because when I sacrifice a memomory I sacrifice a level, too.

But overall a great entry!

A *very* nice game. Music, graphics, and story work well together to set the mood.

For those wondering about non-windows: it worked perfectly with wine for me.

The Mood is really awesome. The recommendation with the Sound is really necessary.
Cool game, awesome mood, interesting concept.

Liked the mix of "classic" 2D Game and Textwalls like in a textadventure.

Overall a pretty nice awesome game, even if its so dark.

Well Done

@gassi-games Thanks for playing. The initial idea was that the memory merchants would tell you a little bit about the level (for a price), how hard it would be, how many enemies to expect, so that you could skip it, if it sounded too harsh. But right now it just lets you skip content, true :sweat_smile:

@frank-gevaerts Thank you so much, Frank! Also for confirming Linux compatibility :thumbsup:

@deathstorm Thanks for playing and streaming, DeathStorm! I hope it wasn't too dark to see ;) Glad you enjoyed it!

Great mood & visuals! I love the white & red color scheme, very fitting. Any specific reason for the 'chess' pieces look?
The deal of trading memories for passage seems interesting - initially I thought it was for story purposes, but afterwards (I only traded once) I realized it is for people who want to skip a level.

The gameplay itself was timing and dashing - which I am usually quite crappy at. So i was pretty surprised I made it all in one go with only one or two hits. :D
It was somewhat jarring to get 'stuck' on a wall here and there - sliding along the wall when two directions are being pressed feels better I would think.
One or two extra mechanics would have been nice, but I know there is not much time in the compo :)

Nicely done!

Loved the mood, the music, the dithered art. A very nice one-man entry!

Some minor criticism: a few levels towards the end can be completed by pressing D forever and may be easier than expected. Also when you sell memories, they disappear too quickly and I did not have the time to read all of them. I did all three endings and thought they were very well written, but when playing for the bad one I felt like I was missing out.

Charming art, great music and the overal mood! Another game built on a story.. it's becoming a nice tradition :) Overal it was very pleasant experience!