Trauma by AdamCYounis
Play as Amy, a troubled young woman traversing her inner psyche during therapy sessions. Delve into Amy's past as she uses traumatic memories to vault through the overgrown and neglected world within, searching for a resolution.
Version Updates:
1.0.0 - Initial Release
1.0.3 - Bug Fix relating to missing audio clips, which would break the physics when encountered
1.0.5 - Bug fix relating to dialogue appearing in full before revealing letter-by-letter. Also adds a small menu option for title screen, level select and quit.

| Link | https://uppon-hill.itch.io/trauma |
| Link | https://uppon-hill.itch.io/trauma |
| Link | https://uppon-hill.itch.io/trauma |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/trauma |
Ratings
| Overall | 6th | 4.27⭐ | 161🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 80th | 3.845⭐ | 160🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 25th | 4.189⭐ | 161🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 159th | 3.899⭐ | 160🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 7th | 4.585⭐ | 161🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 53th | 3.894⭐ | 158🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 10th | 4.323⭐ | 160🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 55🗨️ |
I really love the color choices you did for the art, it is consistant and fitting.
I also really love the gameplay and mechanics the fact you have to collect cards to do moves other than move left and right is really nice. You can re-arrange the cards giving it that strategic feel even though it is not.
I liked the fact that cards become unlocked as we are questioning player's feelings: it's both gameplay & narrative progression.
A lot of inspirations took from this! Congrats again! :smile:
Congrats!
Also, after completion and dropping down again from the title screen, the menu selection was centered with text "New text" (or similar).
The game froze at a certain point of the 4th session :( will resume later :)
I which there would have been another button to choose and to trigger the powers it was sometimes confusing when trying to choose a power standing on a mark.
Also I got a crash after accidentally choosing level 1 after 3rd level and trying to change level with escape (which I think you can't ?)
Stumpled upon this from the search... and noticed the "Ratings given" versus the received... Then noticed your profile name (so thank you very much for you YT content) I really hope that you will do some ratings aswell.
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
Sometimes we are all unstable...
The idea of using traumatic experiences to go through the levels is a really nice thematic idea. I find them gained a little too easy. I think a mini game around processing memories would make a good addition, make it a challenge to work off those traumatic experiences and then use them.
Honestly don't know what else to say, loved it :thumbsup:
I was positively surprised by the mechanics. I thought i had a standard metroidvania coming up, but the sorting of the movement cards was really cool. The story was intriguing and well paced, much more so since it was well connected to the gameplay.
What could be improved is UI feedback. It took me some time to figure out the card mechanics, i think mainly because the bottom button wasn't showing well that it is focussed. The "hot spots" on the ground could also display that they are active, especially since this is gameplay relevant with switching the cards. Sometimes you want them to be not active, but still need to be close, or contrary, want to start the jump but open the cards by accident.
On ultra wide it also has some unintended graphics, i think

Pixel art is of course great and the levels very moody. Only the pointy edges stood out a bit, that could be nicer.
Congrats on the entry, it was a really good experience and i happily player through it all, while being engaged all the time. That is top league for jam games, much more so considering you did this for compo :)
PS: i really appreciated the elegant control intro, of having to start the level by applying the displayed controls!
I don't have any problems about your game, potentially to be a one of the best that I've played.
Only found one incredibly minor nitpick in that the text would flash the full string before animating, but that didn't even really distract from how awesome this turned out.
I won't even talk about art...
the script is very well done. It has an exceptional delicacy. Gameplay is also very good (with a few hitbox issues). To be an A+ game only lacked music during gameplay. It could even be the same as the title screen. The ear is crying out for something at the level of what the eyes are seeing.
Congratulations!
The gameplay and puzzles were both simple, but I don't think that's a bad thing in this case. The game wasn't about solving puzzles or platforming per se, it was just to follow Amy around and experience her story.
That being said, I just wished there was a little bit more. Either more story, more dialog, more details about what happened; or go the other way and leave the story somewhat vague as it is, and introduce more puzzle elements. Though I think a deeper story would be the right call here. Either way, this is a small nitpick, I understand the game was made in 48h and there's only so much we can expect haha. I also think that choosing a story-based game to make in a jam is a very ballsy move.
Another small nitpick is that I wish opening up the menu was a different button from activating the trauma rhombi. Even though I totally get the minimalist vibe the game is going for.
Other than that, I think this is a near perfect jam game.
Спасибо за игру!
The one complaint I have is with the control scheme for rearranging the cards. Using any other key to initiate the shuffling would be an improvement, just to eliminate situations such as “damn, I just wanted to try this chain while standing a little bit further, I didn't want to rearrange the cards”. Kinda yanks you out. Maybe even tying left/right/select to Q/E/W so the player can edit the chain at any moment without a dedicated screen by just shifting their fingers one row of keys up? The card descriptions could show up in the corner, for example.
Overall, the game was beautiful. Thank you for this, it really struck a chord. Now I'm off to watch your recorded Twitch stream to see the process :)
Trauma is beautiful and does a good job of handling the subject matter respectfully. I was worried that we'd see a lot of takes on 'unstable' that would make light of mental instability and wellness. So thank you.
I really appreciate the very simple controls for better and for worse. Only needing three keys feels like a smart choice for a jam game. It was a little unintuitive at first to be able to swap card positions while *not* on an action space. Needing to move off a space to be able to rearrange your cards felt weird. I'm not sure how else you could solve for that though without ruining the pacing of the game (choosing an order every time you use a space, for example). If you developed beyond the jam, you might be able to come up with something that keeps with the simplicity. Maybe holding space then pressing the arrow keys lets you move the first card to a new position? It would be fewer keystrokes than hitting space each time to open the menu and select a piece, but it might not be as intuitive.
I'm happy to see you continuing to improve and enter jams. Well done and keep up the good work!
I've seen a couple of your YouTube videos here and there but this is the first game of yours that I've played. I can see why you're a professional, this is absolutely amazing. Really really well done and you deserve very high rankings for it.
All that said, I'm really happy with how this game turned out, and I'm confident I can do even better next time. The fact that others can appreciate what's here is really uplifting. I want to continue to impress and continue to improve, and to share everything I can about what I'm learning.
I also found the mechanic of changing your ONE Button really interesting, even if it was a little finicky. you should definitely develop that
This was really interesting and well-executed. There were a couple of visual bugs here and there, but nothing that broke the game for me.
The main gameplay mechanic is super interesting, and I can definitely imagine it being fleshed out into a full experience.
I think it was brave to go with mental instability as the driving story element. There are many ways that could've gone wrong, but to me it was handled deftly.
Overall a really interesting entry. Nice work!
I would have liked more music, I understand it may have been a design choice given the subject matter, but it felt very sparse and... sort of lacking energy?
A very good entry though, well done.