The Curse of Chronos by Vaalen

[raw]
made by Vaalen for LD27 (JAM)
Use up down arrows and space bar in the main menu. Wait a bit because the loading can take 10-20 seconds.

Controls and tips :
Arrow keys : move.
Mouse : put it on a square to get informations about it.
Move in the direction of a npc to talk to him.

It's a kind of rogue-like in open-world. At least that was my plan at the beginning. Finally, I think it's a bit far of a rogue-like but it doesn't really matter. I hope you will enjoy it !

Post-compo version : It's the same game than the first version but I fix some minor bugs (mainly texts out of borders and some errors in dialogs.)

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 2.91 385
Audio(Jam) 2.60 357
Fun(Jam) 2.76 358
Graphics(Jam) 2.30 542
Humor(Jam) 2.39 296
Innovation(Jam) 2.82 351
Mood(Jam) 2.65 386
Theme(Jam) 2.87 403

Feedback

ENDESGA
27. Aug 2013 · 05:45 UTC
hahaha, very nice :)
cool game overall :D
-ENDESGA
tlasol
27. Aug 2013 · 10:14 UTC
Very nice. Bug: sometimes I lose when I still have 4-5 secs. And there is enougth of them to go to next "seconds" bottle
ShellfishGames
27. Aug 2013 · 10:23 UTC
Very cool and quite captivating. I like how you included the "quests" in form of simple dialog lines. And I have to admit it's quite funny at times. "There's not a lot of fish in this swamp", ha. :D
manabreak
27. Aug 2013 · 10:52 UTC
Cool concept. I really couldn't read the black text on the dark-blue background there...
RobotParking
27. Aug 2013 · 12:37 UTC
Love me some roguelike action.
ZYXer
28. Aug 2013 · 02:02 UTC
Great twist on the theme and a cool twist on the rogue-like genre. Background story, music and npc conversations create quite a nice atmosphere.
hbocao
28. Aug 2013 · 02:13 UTC
Solid use of the theme. CHRONOS! That's genius. And that's a lot a dialog! Fun game for sure.
MidCry
28. Aug 2013 · 13:33 UTC
Nice try ... looks better after some polishing .
you can check out our game , it's rouge-like too ..
Tainted_Code
28. Aug 2013 · 14:40 UTC
Cool game, I like the tiles :3
tripleVisionGames
28. Aug 2013 · 18:32 UTC
Cool game. I like the way you've used the theme and it's fun too!
truiton
29. Aug 2013 · 08:08 UTC
Nice game mechanics, I like it. :)
shohs
29. Aug 2013 · 17:15 UTC
I had fun playing this. I like your take on the theme, and the dialog and music were pretty good too. Overall nice job!
john_conder9
29. Aug 2013 · 22:13 UTC
I got kind of lucky because my first time in the world I found the dragon, but I only had 700 seconds when I approached him and died to him. Then, trying to be more careful the second time around I got there with 820 or so seconds, and "lifted" the curse. I then killed all the mobs and collected all of the vials, but, I couldn't figure out if the dragon was the end-goal challenge of the game. I'm guessing it was? Anyway, really cool. I like the concept, I played the original version so the text was annoying because it became very hard to read once I got that vialx2050500 or whatever.
Aslai
29. Aug 2013 · 22:19 UTC
Once I realized that time stepped only when I moved, it became more enjoyable.
Also Chronos ripped me off. I only got 20,000,000 seconds back for lifting the curse. That's only 8 months :(
Gabriel
29. Aug 2013 · 22:41 UTC
Very nice! I just *LOVE* this tiled visual and roguelike mechanics. I don't know what's wrong with me, I really love it! hahaha

Liked the twist on the theme as well - a opressive time limit that, in fact, isn't really a time limit but a movement limit. Clever! Liked the greek mythology approach and running against time as well, having to balance between the desire to explore and see new things, and the need to save time for whatever seems to be an essential path. Very interesting and even enlightening, considering I've been thinking a lot lately on how to make exploration interesting in a 2D topview openworld context. Awesome!

At some point, though, apparently I triggered a bug where the objects just wouldn't be destroyed - neither time vials or monsters. At first I thought it was specific to a certain part of the map, where I noticed that first (a part at the bottom right that has a narrow corridor filled with Goblins, with some Time Vials at the end - I could just keep walking over them and gaining massive amounts of time and they were not destroyed - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69894467/Time%20vial%20bug.jpg). Then I went on to explore the rest of the map and saw nothing else was being destroyed anymore either. I tried to identify what triggered the bug but was unable to. The only info that might serve as a clue is that I opened the game and started to play it, but then had to run a chore and was out for several hours, returning to the game after that - I *think* that stuff wasn't being destroyed after that. Maybe you have some sort of verification routine that is set to repeat a very large amount of time that is not infinite, so that a very long time away could trigger that? Let me know if I can help with debug ;)

Regardless, this is one of the entries I most enjoyed playing so far and my rating reflects that! Congrats man! Roguelikes rock! :D
🎤 Vaalen
30. Aug 2013 · 10:37 UTC
Thanks for all of your comments. I'm really happy that you enjoyed my game. And thanks for bug reports. I corrected most of them in the post-compo version.

@john_conder9 : The dragon is indeed the end goal challenge.

@Aslai : I would like to put 2 billions seconds and not just 20 millions. I just forgot some numbers and I haven't noticed that error. It's corrected and your character can now live almost 80 years.:)

@Gabriel : I tried to reproduce your bug. I launched the game and wait for an hour,but I haven't succeed. I check my code and I don't really know where it could come... It don't seems really a serious one but thanks for reporting and for your rating. :)
Arrow-x
30. Aug 2013 · 14:38 UTC
A bit bhgy but a very good use of the theme
gmaker
30. Aug 2013 · 14:39 UTC
cool game! =) i liked it! great job!
ratalaika
30. Aug 2013 · 16:59 UTC
good job
MuciojadPL
30. Aug 2013 · 18:29 UTC
Nice overall! I like this open world system. And moody music :) Great.
doonay21
30. Aug 2013 · 19:21 UTC
Fine concept. I love the music, it is really moody.
Kragnir
30. Aug 2013 · 19:32 UTC
Like the game, like the music, like the graphics. The gameplay was interesting at first but got a bit boring towards the end. Think the ending screen should be a bit more final.
Aslai
31. Aug 2013 · 09:18 UTC
Now I can live forever! Muahahaha!
Zammy
31. Aug 2013 · 09:18 UTC
Nice game! :)
Vile Smile
31. Aug 2013 · 15:53 UTC
Wow! This is very nice. The graphics were OK. The music and sound fx were quite good. The story was interesting, I wish there was more of it. I really liked the gameplay, it was a lot of fun. Very unique and innovative.
Jupiter_Hadley
05. Sep 2013 · 02:11 UTC
Nice use of the theme, the story was pretty cool. Good job! I featured it in my LD27 compilation video series, if you'd like to check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX5erHA1DPE
Antidote
06. Sep 2013 · 19:00 UTC
Not a fan of the spending-time mechanics ;[ Just my personal taste I guess.

Made a video while playing
http://www.twitch.tv/danielsnd/c/2882659
SnoringFrog
10. Sep 2013 · 03:24 UTC
Not very difficult on my 2nd run through (I found the dragon the first time, but couldn't kill him, then I died trying to find the southeast corner), but still quite enjoyable. Nice work.