Charly's Psyche by Nizar89
Welcome to the mind of Charly.
In this game, you control the Unconsciousness of Charly on its journey though his Ego, Super-ego to the ID while Charly s conscience is inactive as he is in a trance state or in a deep dream.
You start on the Ego s spherical surface that continuously decreases its size. There are various objects within Charly s mind coming out from the centre of the sphere, his ID. These items represent the thought, memories of events, blockage, and emotions that are stored deep within Charly s mind.
Naturally, the Unconsciousness slowly loses its light source. It can regain its intensity by passing through objects to keep itself active. If the character loses its light completely, Charly s consciousness will replace him as Charly wakes up.
Who knows what could happen to Charly once he is back in control of his mind and body?
Credits:
MA Rohard - Graphic Artist
Adrien Wattier - Graphic Artist
Swit Khomapat - Graphic Artist
Nizar Azaiez - Game Programmer
Tom Guiraud - Game Programmer
Sources : Some elements (in the music, and the "secret video") come from internet. We don't have rights for those elements. We can change them if it is necessary.
Video : News Report - Serial Killer Script - INDUSTRY the Series (produced, directed, edited, written by Robert Resendez from GX2G Media Inc).
The mix of the music is procedurally generated with music founded on Youtube and Newground.
In this game, you control the Unconsciousness of Charly on its journey though his Ego, Super-ego to the ID while Charly s conscience is inactive as he is in a trance state or in a deep dream.
You start on the Ego s spherical surface that continuously decreases its size. There are various objects within Charly s mind coming out from the centre of the sphere, his ID. These items represent the thought, memories of events, blockage, and emotions that are stored deep within Charly s mind.
Naturally, the Unconsciousness slowly loses its light source. It can regain its intensity by passing through objects to keep itself active. If the character loses its light completely, Charly s consciousness will replace him as Charly wakes up.
Who knows what could happen to Charly once he is back in control of his mind and body?
Credits:
MA Rohard - Graphic Artist
Adrien Wattier - Graphic Artist
Swit Khomapat - Graphic Artist
Nizar Azaiez - Game Programmer
Tom Guiraud - Game Programmer
Sources : Some elements (in the music, and the "secret video") come from internet. We don't have rights for those elements. We can change them if it is necessary.
Video : News Report - Serial Killer Script - INDUSTRY the Series (produced, directed, edited, written by Robert Resendez from GX2G Media Inc).
The mix of the music is procedurally generated with music founded on Youtube and Newground.
Ratings
| Coolness | 45% | 1547 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.05 | 469 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.24 | 284 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.31 | 662 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 3.89 | 172 |
| Humor(Jam) | 1.71 | 637 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.25 | 268 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.46 | 196 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.09 | 407 |
The music is fantastic, the visuals amazing.
But it's lacking some fundamental things from the gameplay: Challenge, and motivation! I have no idea what I'm doing there, the description in fact sounds like you want Charly to wake up. Which is to lose the game. Huh?
The ghostless pacman mechanic meant I could basically hold down the forward button mostly and never die. Forever. There are walls yes, but they're not really important to the gameplay.
I did find a thing for "Catherine", but I didn't know what/if it meant something.
Great art, like fantastic.
Nice graphics. THX ++
But the idea is very interesting and the gfx are amazing.
The web version was a little laggy.
Turning the character is a bit fiddly. Like others have said, I didn't get what to do. :)
Liked the visual feedback when colliding the objects and how they broke apart.
As for creating more complex goals, maybe you could have the light of the character change signaling that you need to find objects of a particular type to collide with instead of any object.
So often LD reviewers play for 1 minute just to give a knee jerk reaction so their game can get more reviews. Sometimes even I am guilty of this for really dull games. However this game was strangely compelling and didn't hold my hand and tell me how to play. Once I figured it out I had to keep playing until I beat it, and once I beat it I was quite surprised.
Do not be discouraged by the drive-by reviewers, anybody who has only played this game for a minute isn't going to appreciate it. Personally I think it was clever all around.
So far Audio is the best of any game I've played in this LD. And the mood is quite good too, clearly effort went into this. The writing could be slightly better, and the "thoughts" could be more ominous if they were read well audio files (as opposed to text covering some of the screen).
Standard players are going to take issue with the colliders on large objects, so maybe if you gave them some different texture/opacity it wouldn't feel like a bug. But these are minor complaints.
Very creative idea, plus you executed your idea well.
PS: Did you have permission to use the thing from at the very end? (I won't be more specific because I don't want to spoil it for others)
Thanks for playing the game and congratulations for being the first to finish it. We are very happy you liked it.
We agree that many elements in the game can be improved. We like your idea of giving different opacity for giant objects, it surely would improve the atmosphere of the game
Many people complained about the controls and that's a point we identified early at the beginning of the jam: we worked during the first 24h to create a fine moving feeling but we faced many problems (rotations or physics) linked with the spherical environment.
The level design is kind of tricky but you’ve played very well and managed to unlock the "secret end". This assures us that the game is playable and not too difficult to finish. The video at the end was found on YouTube (since we didn’t have time or tools to do it ourselves). We probably do not have permission to use it. If the rules are broken, we are totally disposed to make the version of the game without it (even if it will completely ruin the ending).
Thank you very much for your comment.