The Signal by joewan


A short atmospheric exploration game set in an abandoned space station.
Controls:
move - WASD
look around - MOUSE
the rest is explained ingame
Ratings
| Overall | 339th | 3.676⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 381th | 3.453⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 576th | 3.047⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 652th | 3.258⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 489th | 3.545⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 688th | 1.94⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 16th | 4.456⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 1🗳️ | 0🗨️ |
But maybe I could give you some suggestions I guess. I encountered an enemy at an end of aisle and I only can get back to the start point to play again, maybe you can add some checkpoints? Like near the gun lockers or the first gate with lv.1 key. Besides , maybe add a key (Like L_Shift) to boost is a good idea, current player move speed I think is a little bit low!
Overall, this game is fantastic, maybe one day It can be hot sale on steam!
how do you get that light effect? is it just with normals ?
Only downside is I found it hard to play as the character moved a little too slow for my taste. I got sent right back to the start after dying and didn't have the patience to walk back to where I was. :sweat_smile:
Some really minor technical feedback:
1) there's a "clip" sound when the atmosphere background SFX loops (pretty common), so it would've been better to make that loop longer to avoid how frequent that "clip" artifact happens (a "better" solution would be to fade out the sound in the loop so when it restarts, it would end up fading in instead of starting the sample at a high amplitude, which causes that 'clip').
2) when the first enemy spawns, there's a hitch for loading resources. Could be because the audio asset is being loaded on demand - should having settings to have it Preload to reduce that hitch.
Great job!!
The walking was a little slow, which isn't an issue ... until you get killed by the first monster, and you have to redo all over again. (Maybe it's supposed to contribute to the fear of getting killed?)
The sounds are creepy and the art is simple but clear, I wish there were more levels, I'd totally play this if you do a full release, 5/5 mood.
The only thing that could be nicer is to make the character walk a little faster but else it is very nice.
It's funy because we also made some kind of horror game playing with the lights, if you feel like checking it out.
However, there are few gameplay points that I would like to note:
- Game would benefit from checkpoints. It is quite frustrating to die rather late on the level, just to replay.
- Also if you happen to fire too many bullets, then you know you are out of luck, but technically not lost yet.
- The character feels too slow to move, making it a bit frustrating. The move speed compared to the level size is not ideal.
Very nice atmosphere. I hope you're expanding on this in a post-jam version!