Loneliness by Saering

Loneliness is our entry for Ludum Dare #42 and our second Ludum Dare game. We were 4 working during the 72 hours.
Loneliness is a first person immersive game where you're walking through a motel. We were not really inspired by the theme to be honest, and because we didn't want to create a game with a basic idea, we decided to create a game from the idea that inspired us the most.
We eventually made a game that we like and that allowed each one of us to learn things and experiment (which is great since we are students and want to keep on learning and discovering things in our main skill areas). And after all, game jams are also made to have fun and learn, aren't they ? :D

/!\ Due to the short development time we did not really optimize the game and there are some issues with the web version. You can still experience it on your browser, it takes a few minutes to load but it works even if there are some shaders missing and other little problems like that, but don't hesitate to download it on your computer for a much better outcome ! :) Thanks for your understanding ! /!\
Hope you guys will like the game, feel free to tell us what you think and we will gladly try your games ! Cheers !
| Windows | https://www.dropbox.com/s/mkwp136s003ynyx/Loneliness_for_Windows64.zip?dl=0 |
| HTML5 (web) | https://saering.itch.io/loneliness |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/loneliness |
Ratings
| Overall | 593th | 3.387⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 968th | 2.842⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1180th | 2.411⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1251th | 2.128⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 210th | 4.059⭐ | 78🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 65th | 3.987⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 50th | 4.087⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 78🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
What do you mean by not being allowed to walk forwards ?
//Edit: Movement does not work on WebGL & Windows Build using WASD, only S and D Work. But arrow keys work.
Good Job!
Audio is a strong point of this game too, but I wish there would be more game in this.
@incinious @bredera @pacochan This will be fixed in a few moments, in case you were wondering this is because we use ZQSD controls in France haha
but the game overall is great
Anyway, despite having a grey hair now, I'm really enjoyed your entry. Impressive work on assets, keep it up!)
I'm still glad you both liked the atmosphere and had a great experience !
I had some random extreme slow downs when looking in certain direcitons. Forward rendering + many light sources perhaps?
@metju Did you play on the web version ? I got the feeling that the web version has a higher mouse sensitivity but I don't really know why (not used to Unity web builds :p). I'm happy you liked the game!
@cedric-fey Thanks for playing and your feedback !
@zephyrextreme Thanks a lot :)
I was using desktop version.
Good entry, but as you mentioned - i don't feel theme here and there are too much chromatic abberation effect for me, but i enjoyed it in the end :)
I really like the athmosphere, graphics are really nice)
I know it may seem that I'm being overly hard on the game, but I do feel there's a lot of untapped potential in here and I hope you explore this idea further.
We know the game is only a fear and walking simulator, however we didn't really had time to implement more gameplay. And I don't really think adding some objects to interact with or some storyline would have helped this much. It would've been better, but still, it would have been a slenderman-like.
We are probably not going to explore the Loneliness project, but we really want to create more horror games, with real gameplay features, interesting storyline... and of course more production time ! :p
Nevertheless the game was fun and interesting to play. Good job.
Was a really scary experience.
I really like these depressing corridors and that you not really know what's going on there.
At first I was happy when I found a new room, because I expected to find something game relevant.
But after a few rooms where nothing really happend I decided not to open more doors. But to the end of the game I started again to open the doors.
Keep in mind that the player always expect something important when he hears a knocking can open a door. But he never found anything interactable in the rooms. And that's not a huge enjoiable experience.
The jump scare were really well placed. Reminds me on P.T. and I not like so much these jump scares (<- every player is different) And so I have done the same thing like in P.T. I walked the most of the time with my face to the ground. xD
And I like the part when the wall behind the player appears so he has only one way and that guides him to the elevator. Was a good level design decision.
Fun fact: I played with headphones and when I heard the knocking I thought someones is knocking on my house door. :D
I'm glad the game gave you a great horror feeling and reminded you of P.T., it was one of the game we thought of while working on the idea ! The walls appearing were also a way to stick to the theme by reducing the size of the environment the player can walk through, but we mainly used this mechanic to indeed guide him !
And sorry that you couldn't interact with more objects than doors haha! That's the main mistake we did and we will take note of that for our future horror games :)
I was expecting there to be a bit more to it than just walking, good sound effects and jump scares, though. I feel like I was missing some background for the situation, or that there could have been some details that revealed themselves as I went along — definitely something to interact with, as people have said. All that happened was I wandered round for a while and found a lift to take me to a smaller room, did that a couple of times, then died(?).
Still, I couldn't come close to making something like that in 72 hours and it looks amazing, so great job!
Thank you for trying the game despite your fear, I appreciate this :p Hope your boyfriend will be brave enough to reach the end !
Despite making a scary game I really hate playing them, I can barely playtest my own game, but I don't trust you guys. I don't know what's going to happen and I really don't want to find out...
The models, lighting and materials look great. You seem to have put a lot of effort into the walls and furniture.
The walking "animation", or wiggling is really cool, makes it more immersive. The walking sound could use some work though, it has a very sudden start.
The audio that I heard otherwise was great. The knocking sounds so real!
Personally, I would want a toggle for motion blur because it makes me sick, but it was a jam game so it doesn't really matter.
Just FYI, I stopped playing when the light turned off in the first room. As I said, I don't trust you guys, you would have spooked me. Sorry for not being more detailed, but I just can't...
https://youtu.be/vuUp1EYEiuA (The video may be uploading for a little while. If so, check back after a day or so)
@koala-squad We will check that when this will be available :)
@dimlight Thanks !
@koala-squad Just watched the part where you play our game! Thanks for that. It's sad that the dropbox link was down just when you decided to play it and right after you read the warning about the webGL build. However, when we tried the web version of the game, it ran pretty smoothly (the problems are simply missing shaders and frame rate wasn't this low), the game isn't optimized but it's still a little game, so I don't really know what it is running terribly on your computer :( Anyway, that's not your fault but ours haha!
Thanks for playing and for sharing us the video though ! We appreciate that :)
but i had to check my back on real life! Great!
You've got a real mood going here. I do like this sort of æsthetic. Audio is great. You're able to do a lot with very few assets using this motel setting, which is clever!
I'm not prone to simulation sickness myself but I can't say I'm fond of motion blur when turning my head in a game either way, and I know some people who probably couldn't play at all because of it, alongside all the head bobbing, so it might still be worth pointing out. c:
I do like eerie but jumpscares are a tad cheap IMO. I'd prefer something else instead. But you did implement it well for whomever's into that sort of thing by planning out where and how to present it, in those particular doors. I did like the sudden elevator activation tho—that was great!
Overall really nicely done and I'm glad I played it. Content is always hard in a jam, so I won't fault you for not including it in this version, but if you were to keep working on this game post jam it would be really cool to have an entire story in there, with things to find in the rooms as clues to figure some mystery out, because this really is something solid. Great work!