Lucido by AnimalX

made by AnimalX for Ludum Dare 48 (COMPO)

This was my very first game jam, and decided to go in solo and participate in the compo! (The fact I need to be at work in a couple hours has nothing to do with it :D) I ended up with a finished game, but an unpolished one at that.Sounds are missing and I didn't have too much time left to set up the actual puzzle or balance all mechanics.

A quick overview of the game:

You are a lucid dreamer, so you can control your dreams. One day you find yourself locked inside your apartment and can't leave. Every time you go to sleep you get to explore the dream world. If you look closely you can find a way to unlock your door in real life! You'll just have to trigger a deeper, more lucid dream. You can achieve this by earning money by being inside the dream world and spending that money on items that increase your "lucidity". As you increase your lucidity you will see the world change. You'll have to control how lucid your dreams are and make use of the chest at the middle of the world to get the correct items in the correct dream states.

I really didn't have the time anymore to add clear indicators so solving the puzzle is probably going to take some time!

Spoilers ahead

* Don't read if you want to try and figure the first part out yourself! *

As the puzzle is still very rough I will give a short hint for the first part of the puzzle, which hopefully makes the concept a bit clearer: - With the lucid bar at 0 (top right), you should find a large rock with a circular hole in it that you can interact with (this gives you a hint what to look for next) - When you wake up, you should be able to buy a yoga mat, this allows you to increase your lucid state ( you need to go back to sleep, feel free to explore some more!) and will arrive the next morning - When your yoga mat arrives, interact with it and the meter in the top right will increase slightly - Go back into the dream world and you will find the world has changed ever so slightly and there will be a key on the rock in front of you when you spawn in - Try going back to the rock with the hole in it, this is now blocked off! - Put the key in the chest, you need to now reduce you lucid state so the blockade despawns again - you can do this by eating a burger - Hopefully the concept is clearer now; I wanted to add so many indicators but ran out of time :(

Win64 build, no sound is normal ;)	https://animalxstudio.itch.io/lucido-ludum-dare-48-entry
Built against UE4.16.2	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GDkt8HVYXFQxBHYJFvVTdRMSr-cTE8P9/view?usp=sharing
Not tested, let me know if it doesn't work.	https://animalxstudio.itch.io/lucido-ludum-dare-48-entry
Github repo	https://github.com/AnimalXStudio/Lucido
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/lucido

Ratings

Given

6🗳️

0🗨️

Feedback

IAAndrei

28. Apr 2021 · 20:03 UTC

I didn't really understand the game and the text flew by really fast. I'd say the game is alright for a first entry. Good work!

Killua

28. Apr 2021 · 20:10 UTC

I ate a burger, found a hole in a rock, but not sure if there was an item in the chest. I believe that the concept of the game was really good, maybe you should try it once more but then with a team.

LDJam user 212364

28. Apr 2021 · 20:18 UTC

That was a really cool puzzle game. It looked really great but I'm not sure I understand the connection between the amount in the lucid bar and what happens in the dream from a lore perspective. I get that things change in the level based on how full the bar was. Also it was a bit weird that the amount of money you had went up as you slept. I did run into two actual problems though, One was the hitbox on the key made it difficult to pick up. The other was that my mouse wasn't being captured correctly. Great game overall though.

_**Mouse issue info if you're interested:**_ I have a weird setup where I can use my mouse across multiple computers (not monitors, completely different computers via 'Mouse Without Borders') so it may just be a fairly rare issue. My mouse could move across computers when in your game but couldn't change what monitor it was on when focused on the computer actually playing the game. ~~This is just speculation but what it looked like your game was doing was locking the mouse to the specific monitor somehow but the mouse was just being hidden so when I moved the mouse to where it would move to my other computer, it would get screwed up. I also use unreal though and haven't seen this issue. I'm not sure what you're doing but what I do is set the input mode to 'Game Only' when not in a menu ('Set Input Mode Game Only' in Blueprints and UWidgetBlueprintLibrary::SetInputMode_GameOnly() in C++) and to 'Game and UI' when in a menu ('Set Input Mode Game And UI' in Blueprints and UWidgetBlueprintLibrary::SetInputMode_GameAndUIEx() in C++). I am fairly new to unreal though so this may not be the correct way to do things.~~

🎤 AnimalX

28. Apr 2021 · 20:33 UTC

@iaandrei Thanks! I know the puzzle is not too clear, I'll try to time manage better next time! Wanted to get too much done and didn't realize how short 48 hours actually is! Thanks for giving the game a go though!

@killua Tasty burger, huh? The hole in the rock is the first part of the puzzle! I've added a small clue section if you want to give it a go with that! Clarity for sure needs a lot of improvement. Thanks for checking it out :) I might just continue working on the game after the jam and see if I can make the puzzle better and clearer.

@jogy34 Woah, you finished the puzzle? That's awesome, well done. Wasn't expecting anyone to get to the end to be honest haha. Thanks for the feedback, I had planned to have a simple combat system where you would have to slay dream monsters to get money but I had to scratch that (one of many features I wanted to add) pretty early on. Not sure about the mouse capture issue, I'm using those nodes when switching between UI and the game. I would try to fix it but I don't have a setup like that

jj2oo2

28. Apr 2021 · 20:37 UTC

Hey. It took a while to get understand the mechanic but i got there but a semi-tutorial would probably help so players dont bounce off. I think this is a nice concept. But i found myself sleeping a lot to get reset the shop so i could get the lucidity down, then the oppositite to get it up (actually yoga mats were handy to collect for quicker management). But once I got the swing of it was enjoying working the puzzles. Sadly i tried to throw the key and lost it so that ended my playthrough :( Really great job and idea. thanks and well done

🎤 AnimalX

28. Apr 2021 · 20:45 UTC

@jj2oo2 Thanks! That's some follow through you have there, well done! Thanks for the feedback, a tutorial would for sure have been nice and I'll try to either add that for my next jam or spend more time on making the mechanics clearer. Sad to hear you lost the key, the physics in unreal can be a bit buggy sometimes, but you were pretty much done with the game, I'll count it as a victory ;)

LDJam user 212364

04. May 2021 · 20:01 UTC

**_Re: Mouse Issue:_** I was working on a new unreal project and apparently I'm an idiot and I've just never opened my own (or any one else's) UE projects in full screen while I was connected to another computer. Not perfect but the best solution I found was to check each tick if the mouse should be captured and that the game was actually focused then set the mouse position to the center of the screen. Probably a really rare issue that just isn't worth worrying about though.

LDJam user 269293

10. Oct 2021 · 18:32 UTC

Great Idea, very love it.
Hope you continue working.
Also stack in place with triange, is it like it shoild be?