A Small Hell by psychead

made by psychead for LD 38 (COMPO)

You are dead. Welcome to hell, your new home. A very small world.

You don't know what happened and how you ended up here, but you are not alone. Your fellow ~~Ludum Dare friends~~ NPC friends are with you in hell and they too want to find out how they died, hoping to find peace once and for all.

*How to play: * Move around hell with the arrow keys or a and d. Use your mouse to interact with NPC's. Find Satan, maybe you can trick him and leave hell once and for all.

The game was supposed to allow players to give each other hints, but due to server problems and the resulting time constraints I had to cut that feature (aswell as a proper menu!). Therefor the game might be harder than planned for some players. The game is over when you answer Satans final question. No end screen either. Sorry guys!

Download:

Windows Build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lh0gb40hc4pgod9/A%20Small%20Hell%20%28Windows%29.rar

WebGL Build https://psychead.itch.io/a-small-hell

~~Linux Build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/51gebzspmssy5f3/A%20Small%20Hell%20%28Linux%29.rar~~ Buggy for some users. Please use WebGL instead.

Mac Build: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qy1q772z0pvvu1y/A%20Small%20Hell%20%28Mac%29.rar

Source: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6d54bzoq2ach1m5/A%20Small%20Hell%20%28Source%29.rar

Original URL

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-hell

Ratings

Overall	229^th	3.419⭐	33🧑‍⚖️
Fun	357^th	2.935⭐	33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	131^th	3.548⭐	33🧑‍⚖️
Theme	231^th	3.516⭐	33🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	154^th	3.742⭐	33🧑‍⚖️
Audio	182^th	3.172⭐	31🧑‍⚖️
Humor	124^th	3.172⭐	31🧑‍⚖️
Mood	32^th	4⭐	33🧑‍⚖️
Given		27🗳️	38🗨️

Feedback

dennyrocketdev

01. May 2017 · 13:05 UTC

I really liked the mood but quit because I did not know what to do. I gave it another try after reading that you have to talk to satan - it was actually pretty good after I found that out. Neat little puzzle.

shiitman

01. May 2017 · 13:09 UTC

Good work. There could be a little more quests (not only the escape quest), and the could also be demons (not only Satan), but I like the game overall.

Bill Wheatley

01. May 2017 · 13:17 UTC

Like DennyRocketDev, i was in the same boat. Really good vibe though.

Firstdream

01. May 2017 · 13:19 UTC

Keeping that feature that could of been implemented, I think this game was planned really well. Its a little hard because of what you said earlier, but the graphics were nice and the game ran smoothly. Good job.

Florian van Strien

01. May 2017 · 13:20 UTC

I liked the idea of the game and enjoyed trying to figure out the puzzle!

The graphics and music are nice and set a nice mood! There could have been some (more) sound effects, though. Also, all ghosts you could talk to looked the same.

Some of the answers were really obvious, like the date and year you died. If you knew these, the puzzle seemed bruteforceable. However, I've not tried doing so (in fact, I haven't completed the puzzle at all yet, maybe I'll do so later)

The LD theme is used pretty well.

Minor points:
- I won't change any rating because of this, but a zip would be nice alongside the rar. I can open rars of course, but opening zips is integrated in Windows and thus a bit faster and nicer. This is especially nice for rating lots of Ludum Dare entries.
- I liked that there's a log.

Julien Foucher

01. May 2017 · 13:26 UTC

Nice mood ! I had trouble finding satan, but after clicking everywhere i found him. The place with the multiples eyes looking at you is cool !

Tommyflower

01. May 2017 · 13:50 UTC

One of my favourites games so far! Nice idea and mood! I loved the shape of the world, the dialogues and the athmosphere.

davidthelazar

01. May 2017 · 14:04 UTC

Nice little puzzle. There were a couple bits where I felt like I had to guess but I also didn't discover the journal until after I finished, which may have made it easier for me to figure it all out.

I genuinely laughed when I thought "what the hell is this?" and the camera panned to show Satan.

It would have been nice to have some visual indicator that let you know which ghosts you had already talked to.

Loved the art. The creepy eyes, and the over-dramatic words floating around were fun. Nice game!

Kroute

01. May 2017 · 14:07 UTC

Excellent game ! The graphics are beautiful and the audio creates and strange atmosphere that really fits the theme. You chose an original way to tell your story which is quite fun.

nervous-composers

01. May 2017 · 19:01 UTC

I liked the detective aspect of figuring out how you died. The first few answers were pretty easy, and I managed to guess the last answer. The only issue I had was finding Satan, which I only figured out because of a previous poster (it's the dripping tongue near the start). Otherwise, great game!

zondarg

01. May 2017 · 20:01 UTC

What a nice triangular hell :) liked the mood and collecting the clues. At first I did not really realize where to find Satan - but yes the dripping tongue. The muted audio fits well and goes with the mood nicely. Great stuff!

Shivur

01. May 2017 · 23:30 UTC

Excellent game!

piscythe

02. May 2017 · 05:08 UTC

I'll give you serious style points for the creepy words and I loved how the eyes on the eye tree followed me. However, I couldn't get mouse interaction on the Linux build to work with any consistency and couldn't open the journal at all. (I played on Linux Mint 18.1.) Mouse interaction worked properly on WINE, but I had even stranger issues there.

Edit: WebGL version works fine for me.

🎤 psychead

02. May 2017 · 08:41 UTC

Hello @piscythe

Thanks for your feedback! I made a quick google search and the problem you described seems to be a persistent Unity bug with some Linux distributions. Yikes! :see_no_evil:
I am afraid I don't plan to fix any bugs for this entry, however I uploaded a WebGL version which works fine for me on Fedora 22.
Please try that and tell me if it works better for you. Thanks!

drtizzle

02. May 2017 · 09:39 UTC

Well done! Really like the artstyle and the music. It is cute and creepy at the same time! It is well written and was fun to read. Too bad your original hint system didn't work out, I am curious how that would be. The scariest part of it all was the Comic Sans :scream: !!!

KCreanor

02. May 2017 · 12:49 UTC

Nice game! I like the art style and the kinda creepiness of it all, took me a while to find satan but once I figured out what was going on I had fun running around and talking to all my fellow deceased! nice concept, well executed and overall a great submission. Had to fullscreen on WebGL though as it was cutting off the dialogue/dialogue options when talking to Satan, other than that it worked great! Well done :smiley:

grena

02. May 2017 · 16:55 UTC

Yeah, I found how I died, what an investigation! :)
I like the atmosphere, I didn't notice the "notes" button at the top right at first, so I tried to remember what every ghost was saying haha

Dialogues were a bit cut on the edge, so sometimes it was a bit hard to read. Nice ambient music & story writing :)

PS: I laugh when I saw "Comic Sans" floating ^^

Frodewin

04. May 2017 · 23:24 UTC

Great! I have seen a lot of games with a small round world (including [my own one](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/little-mouse-planet)), so I am happy to see a triangular world implemented. I have not expected the hell to be a graveyard though, but since I have never been to hell I'm not qualified to judge this :-). The dialog on the bottom seemed to be a bit dislocated from the NPC that was asked, perhaps it would be possible to use a speechbubble.

huminaboz

05. May 2017 · 22:58 UTC

Clever mystery game. I could sort of guess my way through the answers, so maybe a system to prevent that, but that sounds too complex for a game jam. Enjoyed the triangle world.

CyManSAP

06. May 2017 · 02:50 UTC

I like the non fiery burny version of hell.

pkenney

06. May 2017 · 07:53 UTC

Awesome presentation. Along with the eerie soundscape you have a great mood feel going on here, I dug it.

Reconstructing the story was an intriguing idea, but playing it out maybe was a little too straightforward. I did like that you left a sense of mystery at the start rather than a tutorial. But the missing end was a bit of a letdown -- too bad the clock ran out!

If only we had all eternity to make our LD games...

Very nice spooky entry.

bobsleigh

06. May 2017 · 17:48 UTC

Ok, I figured it out! At first, I wasn't sure there were much to it, but after reading your How to play, I got it.

Nice short story. Music made the game feel very mysterious. I enjoyed it and got into the game quite fast. You should use a bigger font I think. I love the little ghost. Godd idea to make the world a triangle. It works well with the theme.

Good job!

ryte2byte

09. May 2017 · 06:15 UTC

When I first saw the screenshot, I was all "Oh, man, another platformer for me to suck at" but, then, BLAMMO, adventure game! Woot!

So, first off, I think the window for the web version on Itch is setup for the wrong resolution. It cut off the extreme left and right on my screen. Full screen button fixes it, but, ya know, FYI.

I thought this was a fun little adventure. I liked the investigative aspect of it as opposed to the usual inventory stuff. It was fun to try and keep all the details in my head (because I didn't find the journal button until after the game was over. Derp!)

Loved the look and feel of stuff as well. I know its a simple trick, but the eyeballs were my favorites. Speaking of simple tricks, I also got a chuckle out of the ghost that was afraid of ghosts. Also, kudos to getting a flickering/constantly shifting color effect going on without creating something seizure inducing!