LudumData

The Therapy by Mika314

[raw]
made by Mika314 for Ludum Dare 51 (JAM)

“Mind Your Mazes”

“The Therapy” is a collaborative effort of Team PP (Wichit Pritchett & Mika Pi) Play as a empath therapist in the minds of their clients. Navigate the constantly changing cube labyrinth, collect the last bits of hope and escape before your patients intrusive thoughts get you.

Theme implementation -

Every 10 seconds the maze regenerates (timer is indicated in top left corner) after 20 seconds the monster will spawn.

Goal-

Move the player to find the hope hearts. There is one heart per plane, and 6 planes per cube/level. Use the colored lights to help find the heart and get to the exit of the plane. Controls- Pure mouse control: Left Click anywhere in the maze to move your character, hold and drag Right mouse to rotate the camera.

Credits-

MikaPi: Code Developers and Musician ( https://www.twitch.tv/mika314 ) - Wichit: Art Lead ( https://www.twitch.tv/wichitpritchett )

Thank you to the wonderful voices of Mohjiibat ( https://twitch.tv/mohjiibat ), ValeofHearts ( https://twitch.tv/valeofhearts ), Electric6orange & Kaho ( https://twitch.tv/electric6orange & https://twitch.tv/kahoxn ).

Initial base Stone and crystal textures where generated in Stable diffusion and were further edited by hand in Substance painter & ClipStudioPaint.

Monster Animation was done by hand in Blender. Character’s Idle, Walk and Hop were made in Mixamo.

“The Therapy” has 4 video/quailty settings.

Update-

Fix the very awkward controls which were stilling a lot of fun from the gameplay:

  • allow clicking directly on the floor through the walls,
  • make walls visibility dynamic depending on the camera angle, and
  • allow spam click.

Gameplay:

https://youtu.be/f-i-bFhMShI

Itch.io for Windows https://wichit.itch.io/thetherapy

Link https://github.com/team-pp-wichit-mika/TheTherapy
Windows Via itch.io https://wichit.itch.io/thetherapy
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/the-therapy

Ratings

Overall 589th 3.5⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Fun 775th 3.167⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 514th 3.396⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Theme 585th 3.646⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 511th 3.729⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Audio 432th 3.417⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Humor 918th 2.152⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 474th 3.563⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Given 18🗳️ 24🗨️

Feedback

tlatitude
03. Oct 2022 · 22:25 UTC
Hi, I played a few level - it took three tries to beat the first round. Thanks for the game.
Vulpez
04. Oct 2022 · 03:20 UTC
Took me a while to understand the movement and the camera control, I was stuck in the first level for a while, but it got me curious about the progress. Great idea for a game, just a little hard to control the character. Loved the design and sounds, good job!
Ayelen Maldonado
04. Oct 2022 · 14:03 UTC
It's a great idea, it's hard to control the camera and the movementwith the mouse and the walls.
LDJam user 299757
05. Oct 2022 · 00:52 UTC
Fun game with a great concept
Steve7411
06. Oct 2022 · 04:08 UTC
This is a really interesting game. I like the whole metaphor. Nice animations, too.
Faust_Mi
06. Oct 2022 · 05:41 UTC
Very pleasant atmosphere! Ambient sound and notification work great! Wonderful job!
Paul Avallone
06. Oct 2022 · 05:48 UTC
Amazing art and animation. The sound design and music are perfect for it and really set the mood. Small bug: the monster spawned but got stuck behind a heart that spawned right in front of the exit and there was nothing I could do except die trying to get the heart. The pathfinding on the character is really well done and it's neat to see her weave through the maze but it made the game incredibly easy and took away from a more interesting challenge than if you controlled her with arrow keys. Still enjoyed it and think it's wonderfully made. I would love to see this expanded with more mechanics, levels, and enemy types. Great job!
LDJam user 148430
06. Oct 2022 · 09:11 UTC
I really like the character design and the intro was very cinematic :)
Sk Katea
06. Oct 2022 · 15:01 UTC
I like the concept and the graphics, truly beautiful
Geosjobbydo
06. Oct 2022 · 18:51 UTC
Very Cool Game Concept which was very cool to play with! I give this a 9/10!
LoneWolfDev
06. Oct 2022 · 22:12 UTC
Nice game. The effect of changing from side to side of the labyrinth is so cool!!!
RTDMFN
07. Oct 2022 · 04:41 UTC
Well that was an interesting experience. I was lured in by the cute cover art and the interesting game description. Loaded up the game and got shown a cute little therapist model and then was greeted by some creepy monster and a bunch of whispers in my ears. So that thoroughly freaked me out and made me play like a madman to not get caught lol. Really cool game!

My only complaint would be that the camera and movement needs a lot of refining. Other than that the game plays really well and the concept is super interesting!

Great job friends :)
AriPizE
07. Oct 2022 · 11:21 UTC
I really like the main character and the concept, it looks great
Yword
08. Oct 2022 · 16:58 UTC
Interesting concept, with cute character and nice ambience too! Well done! Maybe it will be easier to move the character with directional keys.
xsangyhix
08. Oct 2022 · 20:24 UTC
Nice looking game. Audio and visuals played well together. I do think that having point and click navigation with pathfinding defeats the point of a "solve a maze" type of game. Additionally while you've had the theme implemented, it did not add much to the gameplay.
zazz0000
09. Oct 2022 · 18:02 UTC
Really cool, I f**n love the transition between stages! Great use of theme. If I had any criticism, it would be that I would have liked WASD movement. Feels like click-to-move, with coupled with the pathfinder, makes it a bit less of a "maze". Great work!
fosf0
09. Oct 2022 · 18:05 UTC
The narrative background is original. But at the same time the art direction and the narrative purpose do not fit well.
Another comment is that keyboard controls would make the game more fun rather than mouse control.

Good job! :)
natpat
10. Oct 2022 · 01:25 UTC
I liked the story and setting behind the game, and the enemy was an interesting realisation of that. It was quite a simple game, and I didn't find it very challenging - hiding from the enemy was fine and usually I just had a straight shot to the end of the maze. The controls were a little janky as well, arrow keys or being able to move the mouse while clicking woudl improve things. Good job!
caeonosphere
10. Oct 2022 · 01:31 UTC
Obligatory victory screenshot:

![ss.jpg](///raw/8d0/41/z/52f8b.jpg)

I really liked the transitions between mazes and the speedy movement on the player character. Look at that grandma go! I agree with other commenters that the automatic pathfinding did make it rather easy — the hardest part of each maze was finding the heart hidden by the camera angle. A lot to like here either way.
LDJam user 245646
10. Oct 2022 · 02:55 UTC
This game is pretty dope! The atmosphere with the slow chasing intrusive thought, the background voices, and the changing maze create this really tense mood throughout the game. The grandma is also really cute! The hearts were a little hard to find with the camera angles and sometimes the maze would change, making you in a dead-end with the intrusive thought surrounding you (Though one could argue that it's like real life haha). The auto pathfinding of the character was also pretty fun, watchin the grandma run around is pretty neat!
Wichit
10. Oct 2022 · 11:24 UTC
Thank you again to everyone who’s commented on our game again! We really appreciate it!
Your local empath therapist grandma thanks you deeply.
Team PP is also reviewing the feedback for future updates to the game!
PROJECTaroid
13. Oct 2022 · 22:43 UTC
Cool game. I like your approach to the jam's theme. The game looks, sounds, and plays great. Nice work!
Uraffululz
16. Oct 2022 · 03:47 UTC
Very cool concept and execution, but the click-movement is frustrating, and it begs to have WASD controls.
Excellent artwork and animations, too, and the camera transitions were very cool!
Geo3D
17. Oct 2022 · 14:28 UTC
This game is very well made.
Graphics, audio, controls are very solid.
Very cool work.