When Nothing Came by velvetlobster
- point and click mechanics (move with arrows and click to interact with words and objects)
- the story is short but there are lots of hidden things (THERE IS AN END and its like 5 min from the start if you just ignore most stuff)
Sometimes a deep sadness comes from nowhere, it starts from nothing ... she looks and searches every part of us .. This is a prototype of interactive poetry ... and also a very personal approach to the LD45 theme.
I always like being part of this awesome event that is Ludum Dare this time though the theme became quite personal ...
we always struggle with the time available and the need to create something ... entertaining .. however, after lots of game jams I think perhaps ... just perhaps ... entertaining is just not my thing ... ... so this is possibly a "not-a-game" depending on your definition on that
The idea here was to create a sorta interactive poetry something we have been trying to explore for a while Although its not polished as intended, nor dynamic as intended it is a rough prototype of what we were trying to convey
Art by https://www.instagram.com/nataliarrubio/ Music and sound by https://soundcloud.com/janyork Overall workaround by Velvetlobster
btw ... the colors are a reference for the Yellow September
I would love to know what you think of this


| Youtube | https://velvetlobster.itch.io/when-nothing-came |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/when-nothing-came |
Ratings
| Overall | 126th | 3.96⭐ | 178🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 583th | 3.224⭐ | 176🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 59th | 4.091⭐ | 178🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 322th | 3.664⭐ | 179🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 145th | 4.191⭐ | 180🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 21th | 4.218⭐ | 176🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 12th | 4.404⭐ | 179🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 136🗳️ | 251🗨️ |
This is my favorite jam game so far, thanks for making it!
1. click plight amd he shore ... click key by the car ... enter the house
2. in house ignore everything and go to the end ... click on kind
3. go back to the outside
and go to the shore again
click on the earth, art and then the end
Sets the mood so well and so many things to do. Deffinitely going back and playing again soon, I want to see all of it. :)
This is perfect, good job!
Great job to all the team for this amazing experience !
by the way i enjoyed it and found it really cute, it has a nice concept and art, i like how you arranged the text.
thank you for creating it!
The use of text is creative, it was fun to interact with words and letters.
Well done!
"silence can be itself an art"
Aside from being a bit confused on what to do at first, I didn't really find much to criticize. It felt super polished. The word placement was such a nice touch, it gave me mega Shel Silverstein vibes.
When I entered the house I thought I was still outside and I clicked the door believing it would let me enter. I was stuck few minutes trying to click everywhere.
You should be very proud of this game. Great job!
My creation process was something I usually do at Jams, set an instrument limit and let the imagination flow just by using them, most of the instruments are from LABS Spitifire and Addictive Keys, I just love their sound ...
I also opted not to follow a fixed BPM, I think this helped to connect with the movement of the animations ...
* The changes in music and poetry with changes in directionality – made it feel richer and deeper than a small 5-min puzzle game. I wanted to explore every possible back and forth combo!
* The hidden clickable words in the poetry were subtle, just hard enough to discover to be satisfying without being too esoteric/frustrating.
* Gorgeous animation. Clean and simple, with great use of color for added emphasis/flourish.
Amazing job, team!!
Very nice work! Keep it up!
Oh, is it a walking flower, or someone holding a flower? I am not sure what I can click on, so I just click on everything.
Woah! Going backwards spooked me. The sound is a bit loud. But at least you can "travel" back fast.
The music is unsettling, but it fits the mood. It feels tragic. The second musical track feels more... sentimental? A bit hopeful.
I am not sure where the key was, but I suddenly had it. I also reached the "end" but it was mostly accidental, I believe. It was interesting, the way certain words behaved when you clicked them.
Overall it was a very interesting experience, memorable. :) I hope you will create more things in this "genre" in future, if it's something that interests you.
Anyway realy realy cool
The music was also very fitting and empowered the atmosphere really well.
So, that was an amazing little experience, but the only thing that kinda bothered me is the very abrupt reverse movement. I wish it had a bit of a slow startup and some acceleration to the full speed.
Really innovative way of telling a story, but would help if there was more hints that I had to go our of the house near the end, I was stuck in the house for awhile until I read some of the comments
Really though this was well done. An interesting idea with decent execution. Nice work!
Thank you so much for this! It was really really moving, and I was nearly crying by the end! The aesthetics really worked, and I love the attention to detail in the animations for the objects that appear.
Now that I'm emotionally recovered, I'll try to give a little bit of nitpicky feedback:
I felt like the visual feedback for unlocking new stuff when you click on words was a little too subtle, and there could be some change in how the words look after you click on them (like fading them out a little bit)
Also, it would probably be good to have less draggable words. They let me a bit confused.
In general I thought the narrative and emotional experience were amazing, and would try to make the puzzle mechanics a little more intuitive and straightforward to lead the player more smoothly through the game.
Keep making games please!
I just wish it were clearer what to do. I did manage to get to the end of the game but I couldn't tell exactly how I did it. Are you meant to reassemble some of the phrases? If so that's really cool but I think could be accentuated with some animation and sound effects so you know you did it right. Something like a piano arpeggio to fit with the rest of the sound.
Anyways, great job.
Side-note, thanks for pointing the mistake we made on our page with the disabled Graphics rating, it's now corrected!
Still, at the end I had the feeling,y'know, that you get after finishing a very good book. That sense of loss after a profound experience. Thank you for making this.
We are very honored to have so many people playing our game, it shows to us that perhaps this is a style we should continue working on.
@pranjalbisht that is exactly the feeling we wanted to convey in the end, glad you could feel that, we sure need to make it less confusing though, you are right about that
@dib you are right about the volume in the backward music, I thought maybe I should have made it half the volume but forgot to check that in the end
Great work!
Thank you for this experience.
Took a while to figure the different interactivites and having to go back and forth again.
It was _almost_ not bothersome, so just a wee bit of tweaking will make it magic.
Loved the entire idea and execution. Again - beautiful! 🙂
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494759258?t=00h24m51s
https://youtu.be/X-kqFvdE4Qs
Oh and first time I run the game, before refresh, the lower half of the screen is black too. If I refresh or change tabs, the blackness disappears. Mac Chrome if that helps...
**edit:** Tried Firefox, can see the flower idle/walking animation at least. Some progress...
**edit 2:** Oh, even the left arrow works here. It actually might be working... :triumph:
---
Ohh right! Thank god I got to play it, that was brilliant. I don't think I really got everything or even the most of it (the story that is) but the ending gave me shivers.
First I thought it would be some kind of Undertale homage. With the personified sunflower there and the cover pic room kinda looks similar to Toriel's living room and the Deltarune living room blended together.
The music was nice, really reminded me of Professor Layton (which is a super good thing). The art was pretty much perfect. Nice hand drawn feel with awesome simple animations like bringing in/out the stage pieces and the squiggliness of the texts. Really made the game feel alive and not be static.
Sure, it was kind of a non-game but it was interactive enough to keep me entertained at least. It's the small things that count. All the extra lore nuggets that you could find and the small interactivities that didn't even (to my knowledge) serve any purpose at all. It game the player (or me at least) something to do while, well, figuring out what to do. :blush: It was even fun to fiddle around arranging words and letters. At first I thought that might be some puzzle. And dunno, maybe it even was and I just couldn't figure it out. You did say there are loads of secrets there. My biggest goal was to get the car started, but alas, I couldn't manage to do it. If there is a way to do it, you get a big :thumbsup: from me.
The clickable words that the flower just repeated started of nice but got kinda repetitive and predictable. Could have given a bit more insight on those the further along it got or something. But then there was the dinner = :bird: thing that still haunts me.. :scream:
That's pretty much all I can say about it. There wasn't much gameplay elements, my usual main focus on critique, to feedback on. And what was there was working very much :ok_hand:
Awesome job! :heart::heart:
I am very happy you were able to enjoy and find the messages besides all the bugs and crashes, happy you gave it a chance.
Some people reported similar issues, but never seen the trees breaking ... sadly it seems that most of the problems are related to the engine we chose, which gives us a very frustrating feeling ...
About the interaction, most of them were planned, some of these worked, but a lot of those ended up incomplete
among the incomplete ones are those related to continuation of the verses ... there were supposed to be clues as to the sequence of the verses and that would make the story more clear as each part of the house was being searched. There would also be drag and drop mechanics where you would have to move words to form rhyming verses ...
also objects would react to the words being dragged into then, like the clouds that were supposed to rain or snow and plants would grow on the floor depending on the words you placed nearby ...
we also were planning on a scene where the girl would ride with the flower in the lake in a boat, a symbol of how she had learned to cope with her sadness after the end ...
less than 1 hour before the deadline we just decided to pack everything together and just guarantee that at least players would be able to reach the end, even if it was a simple end, so lots of the exploration options ended up incomplete
yes that was supposed to be a kinda of exploration instead of a challenge ...
but the intention was also to offer clues about the story, which although is not linear, the poetry it forms overall kinda has different possible sequences.
yes the exploration gets quite repetitive with elements being so static (that really was not the intention) but I feel that after each Ludum Dare we get more and more prepared to do a better thing in the next one.
Overall thank you for such a detailed feedback and bug reports, that means a lot to us
We will make sure to play your game right next and do our bests to provide a productive feedback
=)
<3 <3 <3
:point_right: Things I really liked and stood out for me:
- The soundtrack fits perfectly
- The rewind capability impressed me
- Overall mood (wind blowing through the trees)
Really nice demo and I'm looking forward to more.
I couldnt really tell which of the actions that I did were relevant. I was basically clicking and dragging things around at random to see what would happen, and going back to places I had been before when I reached a dead end. I tried rearranging words and letters a bit to try to spell sentences, but it seems that clicking on everything was sufficient. I did eventually reach the end of the game, but I think there could have been more feedback when something significant happened.
As an aside, I would have appreciated being able to use WASD to move, since the arrow keys are awkward for me left hand to reach.