That Time I Was Held Hostage By Some Loop, So I Followed The Road And I Was Fine by Starlight Glimmer is best poney
It's a nice dream you've got. I'm sure it will end.
Just follow the road and you'll be fine.
Controls
Use WASD or arrows to move. Xbone D-Pad will also work.
There are no other controls.
Except for F1 (skip stage) if you're stuck/frustrated.
Requirements
Windows: (If you get a missing DLL error) Visual C++ Redistributable (Website, Direct link). If someone knows how to link VC++ Redist statically (NOT /MT), let me know.
Linux: SFML. Every serious distro and Arch Linux has it in its repos. sfml in Arch, libsfml-audio2.5 libsfml-graphics2.5 in Debian and derivatives. Also tmxlite, but serious distros don't have it so it's included (use run.sh).
I hate myself
I wrote this from scratch. Well, almost. I took the previous game's code and reduced it to a knee-high 2D display engine.
Yes, I also hate invisible walls. Yes, everything except invisible walls is intended and artistic. There are bonus lines if you stare at invisible walls for too long.
I will wear the < 3.0 overall rating as a badge of honor.
I made a tiny hotfix on 2020-10-06: corrected an oopsie in layer ordering I somehow hadn't noticed throughout the weekend, and I removed an unused 6MB placeholder file.
Ratings
| Overall | 315th | 3.423⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 425th | 3.038⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 331th | 3.25⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 195th | 3.846⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 304th | 3.423⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 72th | 3.769⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 36th | 3.865⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 31th | 4.019⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 12🗳️ | 31🗨️ |
The game does run fine on Wine under Linux by the way.
I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected, I gotta say! I unironically enjoyed the VO; maybe I'll have to include some next time... I have been inspired.
@caeonosphere Check the game directory! Glad to have inspired you. I wish more compo games had voice acting; it's fun.
Really great little game, well assembled and very polished for a weekend.
You already mentioned the invisible walls, so I won't have to. Some more environment variation with gradual more transitions would have been welcome of course.
My main points of critique are with the audio though. When the sound began escalating I had to take my headset off, as it just got very harsh-sounding. The other point is that the voiceover audio has a reverb on it that doesn't really match being in a forest. I don't know if that's your room's natural reverb or if you added it in post, but if it's the former then I advise recording your lines underneath a blanket next time. :grin:
I liked the audio very much, especially the voice acting. Also the atmosphere was on point, I actually got a little scared.
Not sure what else to say, for what the game is, it works really well. Maybe it was just too easy to get lost. That may have been the point though.
I also appreciate that you've written it from scratch, I don't see that often anymore.
Just to add some more critical feedback; I felt the invisible walls were a bit over done, it might have been nice to dynamically adjust the world to the players movement (So make the play area bit bigger but spawn the "continue token" based on where the player is). An asteroids style wrapping world might have worked well here as well
However I can't say that I knew what I was doing. Maybe I'm wrong on this and the game works differently, but it felt like some "target"-areas being more glitchy, which was a nice indication, but sometimes I had already been i these glithy areas and sometimes there wasn't much indication at all -- I think it would have been nice if the glitchyness would have been dynamically applied based on distance to the target. Maybe also glitch some of the grass and mushrooms when the player is on the right track.
As for the invisible walls in some places it might have worked well to just densify the forest a bit more, as there already is the forest setting.
Anyways respect for putting all this together from scratch. The voicing was fine and I think really added to stumbling through the forest.
- great atmosphere and mood
- well planned tension throughout the game
When playing LD games I usually have a moment where I stop to calculate if the game is still worth my time. I had no such thing with yours.
I really like how creepy the... illusions(?) are. And the colors... the colors are the scariest part. I also appreciate how the disturbing sounds and screen overlay get stronger the closer you are to the "exit".
Overall, great work.