Smoldering Life by Pirate-Rob

made by Pirate-Rob for Ludum Dare 50 (COMPO)

A short horror game about finding 'herbs' to feed your addiction before you inevitably die from withdrawal. Under the influence of herbs, your vision is blurry, but you see far more than before.

I really wanted to make a horror game this time around, and I'm somewhat happy with the results, however I wasn't able to get as much done as I wanted. I'm also not used to creating games with non-randomly generated levels, so I didn't have a good workflow for that, which made creating the world super tedious :(

This is my first horror game, so I imagine it's not particularly scary, still however: Content Warning!!! The game is nothing grotesque outside of blood or anything too scary but I still don't recommend unless you don't mind horror games. It also obviously deals with the player having a, literally, life-dependent addiction to a fictional substance.

Gamemaker:S 1.4 Source	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vBKY91FuLNdTHYrHS6jYlE5GZFpvoi1/view
EXE	https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VBF8gG1YLblaHNS2im1siu4kTc0bqY9r/view
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/smoldering-life

Ratings

Overall	381^th	3.31⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Fun	344^th	3.262⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	329^th	3.25⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Theme	412^th	3.4⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	264^th	3.548⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Audio	170^th	3.526⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	413^th	2.342⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Mood	84^th	3.786⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Given		25🗳️	20🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 280189

04. Apr 2022 · 19:41 UTC

Nice game, I loved the horror vibe! I found the bubble popping sound of one of the enemies really satisfying to listen to :D. This is pretty good for a first horror game! I think you did a pretty good job.

Davide Rossetto

04. Apr 2022 · 19:47 UTC

The vibes are great! Nice game, probably you can speed up the swing a little, but the movements felt really good to explore. Good job! :v:

LDJam user 234567

04. Apr 2022 · 19:56 UTC

Great job! Nice to play. It missing ambient wind sound :wink:

Rember Resident Evil with zombies and herbs.

Olimarrex

05. Apr 2022 · 08:21 UTC

Great atmosphere.
Got a couple good scares out of me, especially that one "hey".
The torch hitbox didn't seem to connect 100% of the time, might've been something to do with trying to hit 'em from round a corner.

Evileptic

05. Apr 2022 · 08:55 UTC

Better than me! :v:

jitspoe

05. Apr 2022 · 11:21 UTC

Really dark take on the them -- nice, consistent mood. Quite a lot of functionality and variety for such a short dev period!

LDJam user 285197

08. Apr 2022 · 20:11 UTC

Gave off really spooky vibes, nice job. However the character felt a little to slow and there was no clear
indication when you hit an enemy (such as screen shake or health bar).

caudatecoder

09. Apr 2022 · 07:16 UTC

Very dark and a little scare at times... great job for a compo!

The first part of the game is really well done: level design, enemy placement is good for player to learn basics get hit a bit but continue going. Once I got to the 3rd emberly I wasn't really sure what to do next. No matter where I went there was a dead-end. There was one corridor that did not have objects closing it but I couldn't walk through it for some reason.

Nice job on the visuals and sounds -- set the mood pretty well. Overall a very nice job!

I was streaming and recording my playthrough of your game, here's a link in case you'd like to see it https://youtu.be/xAmitsB_F9k

Locke8

10. Apr 2022 · 17:49 UTC

Really solid entry, it heavily reminds me of Darkwood. the ambience and graphics do a good job of making you feel fairly spooked, the controls can feel a little slow but it fits the horror part of the game. I'm honestly always impressed by compo submissions which have this much content.

Psytron

12. Apr 2022 · 04:37 UTC

Hey nice work for trying something new! That’s what game jams are all about!

Lecloow7

19. Apr 2022 · 15:56 UTC

nice

TopperVideoGames

19. Apr 2022 · 20:49 UTC

I do get a bit scared when playing horror games, but I did like what I saw here! Being able to interact with objects in the environment was neat, and even finding healing items was really cool! The combat was slow and clunky, but for a horror game that adds to the frantic tension of a fight. The item interaction was surprising, having my club become a torch was helpful.

I am not sure how far I did manage to get, a long enemy killed me pretty consistently. The lighting system is always impressive to me. Good job on this game!

zimny11

19. Apr 2022 · 22:02 UTC

Awesome game atmosphere. And nice art style. There is quite a lot of content, especially for a Compo game. Great job!

Tomssuli

21. Apr 2022 · 17:54 UTC

Great mood and scary atmosphere. I don't know if I found all the herbs or not, of if something should happen if I fif, but I tried couple of times and in the last time I may have searched through the whole house and then just died.

The game didn't give much of direction so I just wandered around by myself. The red/blue meter was kinda unclear as one time the red was going down and another the blue. Health meter on the other hand though became clear quite fast. I liked the small enemies attack pattern, that you could go beat them up a little and then evade them when they aggroed and then again hit them. I couldn't beat the bigger enemies though.

Anyways it's cool game with nice line of sight system. Great job getting this done alone!