You nailed the mood. I like the simplistic pixel art style, the sound design is very good

Yeah, the mood and the audio are insanely good!

Incredible mood and audio. The graphics are also perfect for this type of game. What tools did you use to make the sounds?

Great art style and ambient noise. It might be nice if the text bubbles gave some sounds too. I liked the quick puzzle element of moving through the holes.

Liked the game. The simplicity and art-style were excellent. The story was compelling. I felt like I wanted to know more about the role of the keep. I felt a biology analogy in there was strong despite the minimalist graphics styling. Nice game.

Great mood and audio, especially the heart and breathing!

Excellent mood, great sound. Nice surreal story. The color transitions were great.

it's awesome to see metroidvania style here.. arts pretty good and audio really built up the mood. but i couldn't manage to win the game :smile: btw, good work.. cool entry here :thumbsup:

Great work!

I'm amazed you achieved this in 48hrs. And if you're curious why you got three comments in the span of ten minutes, it's because your game hit number one in the smart rating section.

This is a really great metroidvania experience. Well done.

Great atmosphere. Love the pixel art, sound design is also really great.

Amazing for a compo game! It really reminds me of rpgmaker xp horror games like Ib, the Witch's house, mad father, but less on the gory and more on the moody side, and with a really nice setting. Really elegant in its minimalism, having just the good stuff where it is needed, optimizing the workload like crazy (2f animations to give life almost everywhere, choosing a genre where you don't need music but good ambients, less mechanics and more level design, really cool!). I've got all 4 endings (nothing, dagger, elixir and dagger + elixir) and had a blast even though low-gameplay high-narrative games are not my cup of tea at all.
Here's some points that could've been improved/fixed:
- The terrace NPC, when giving advice, says North-East instead of North-West, so I looked around and didn't find anything (which wasn't helped by the vague room name), so I took the assumption that maybe the dev mistakenly inverted it and found the pass-through tile.
- Due to the high visual granularity and lack of points of attention (palette/patterns) in the teleporter room, I at first didn't notice the north and southwest exits and was very confused (the eastern one was very readable however). Was that deliberate? Using it to make teleporters blend in with the rest was a smart decision though.
- The one main gripe I have, is that as the game goes, movement really wears down on your fingers due to them working in a similar way as text input (single presses, or long delay after holding resulting in very fast strokes), this makes movement feel more clunky and tedious over time.
- It could have used one or two more good ideas in its mechanical level design, the gameplay in itself felt a tad bit lackluster, even for a game in this genre.

Congrats and good luck on the rankings, it has potential to easily reach top50 imo!

Thanks for the feedback so far! I'm glad folks are enjoying the writing and mood. I didn't expect to see people calling it a metroidvania! I originally had an idea for a much more Metroid-style platformer, but I scrapped it after not making much progress during day 1, and started over with Bitsy. I guess some of the metroidvania flavor bled into the final game. Here's some level design sketches from the original idea:

@james-beninger I used Audacity to create the background sounds. It's a single ~1 minute looping track. I started with some samples of breathing, heartbeats, wind noises, and mechanical sounds. I used a combination of pitch shift, Paulstretch, echo, and reverb filters to make the samples sound deeper and spookier, then chopped, sequenced, and layered it all together for the final track.

Ok, I must said that this is a really nostalgic game like what published on Atari. Even though I don't really enjoy the horror environment of it I still need to say great job. The atmosphere is super awesome( and that is why I cannot enjoy it because I feel scared). I love the audio and that is definitely a plus point.

As a combo work I think this is a pretty successful one. Even though maybe it is not that friendly for new gamer.

Very impressive gameplay. I liked the ambient audio that sounded like whistling. I saw an ending with elixir. As @talops mentioned I found a typo of North-East instead of North-West. or did I miss a secret room?? The mood is really great so I want to learn more about what's really going on there. Haha.

I also read your comment on my game. I am so joyful you understood my intention. It was my first time creating a game so it wasn't really easy to finish even the prototype. Your comment means to me a lot thanks.

Great mood and atmosphere! I get 3 of 4 endings. Is the game take place in a human body?

I've already responded to your comment on my game, but HOLY WOW the mood in your game... Fantastic! BGM is ON POINT. I grew up playing on Atari 2600 and NES consoles, so this takes me back to those days. Amazing entry! :D

wow, nice mood! Enjoyed playing, gj :thumbsup:

I don't even have to know the context or what is actually happening; the audio, colours, dialog and effects really set the mood here. Also, the main character looks like the reddit mascot.

It's a little nostalgic, but I'm kind of annoyed of the movement, mostly because of how it's bound to repeated key events. I'd prefer it smooth but still tile-aligned, which I think can be done without conflicting with the rest of the game's style.

At first it was hard to tell where to go, but it was actually fun to explore. I played through the dagger and elixir ending.

Incredible game!

The graphics are top notch, the mood is simply off the charts!
Love the writing, the audio is magnificent (and terrifying to be honest ^^') and I liked it so much I went after the 4 endings.
The atmosphere is great. The only gripe I have is that it is a bit hard to know where you can go and what is a "door".

Otherwise, an absolutely fantastic entry. Congrats, this is really one of my fave so far!

Really enjoyed the exploring! Artstyle was also very unique and interesting. Did 3 of the endings, and enjoyed the writing.

Thanks for all the feedback so far! Cool to hear that people have been finding the multiple endings.

The "North West" thing was a random mistake on my part. Or maybe the whole game takes place in a spooky mirror world? Feel free to imagine your own interpretations.

The movement stuff is a limitation of Bitsy. Being able to hold down a movement key would definitely be useful! If I make another Bitsy game, I might take a look at the source and see if I can hack it in.

The mood is excellent (suits perfectly both the writing and the audio) and the choice of colors beautiful. I played for all the endings (I think), I would like that the choice of the objects wasn't only in the last room, so the game feels less linear, my favorite part was actually hearing about the crack in the wall (despite the mistake) and finding it. Great job!

I kind of liked learning what i need to do in the game by exploring and checking every possible nook and cranny, but at the same time I felt kind of lost. I generally think that learning game by experience is the best possible solution of any good design, but also think even in the most mystical and enigmatic game it's cool to give player some kind of at least major aim.
Speaking about enigmatic and mystical game set a very very nice mood, ambient music also fit it perfectly.

Fantastic storytelling and Great atmosphere. It's a short game but probably just as well, with different endings.

You've probably already know about the North-East/West thing, but otherwise it's just fine.

This was sort of wierd even for a Bitsy game. And I mean that as a compliment.

The sound scape is especially eerie, as pointed out by others.

Interesting game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 46 compilation video series, if you want to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/U94ABx1ev3Y

Short but sweet. Reminded me a lot of some of the old games on 8-bit microcomputer during the 80s (but with obviously far superior sound than we had back then). Have to echo what others said about the movement feeling a bit clunky, but that was only really noticable when I started playing; didn't really register after I started getting into it. Would really like to see more of this.

I like this game a lot. The audio and graphics combine to create an eerie mood. I'm especially impressed by the audio. You have talent.

Good job, something so gripping with such simple tools! The soundscape does a lot, but I also like the imaginative scenes you created with the simple pixel art. Only after playing the game I found out there were multiple endings. It made me so curious I played the game until I found 3 endings. Maybe it's good to put this in the game's intro text. I'm still curious about the fourth!

I really love how this looks and feels like love, that impossible 8bit game. The choice of color combinations and the creepy vibe convey a very interesting dark mood to this one. This is a very neat bitsy game folks, one of my favorites in the mood category I gotta say.

Wow, 1st in Mood! Thanks for playing and rating, everyone!