This is not a normal village... by rohezal

You are in a small village in the center of a forest. You don’t know how you got there. You just know, the more time you have spend there, the worse it gets… for you. And there is something else, what makes it worse, when you got more of it...
This is a story driven puzzle and logic game using the Unreal Engine 4 with a narrator, guiding you through the game. The assets were partly created by myself and I am using house tiles and trees from UE4 market place. The houses were build be me using the tiles in a minecraft like manner. The textures are from UE4 and from the market place items. The narrator audio was generated, the texts were written by myself.
The game logic were done by myself in blueprints, the item system is using JC Inventory from the UE market place.






Assets used:
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/jcinventory?prox=1
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/item/ea0337a9bdea402ba114cf8e647f9fc9
https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/item/2de598667565498ebda37616f9edaf34
Also some items from the starten content und infinity blades effects where used.
I want to thank the Next Level 3D to export the house tiles to UE 4.15 so I can use them with JC Inventory. JC Inventory has a bug, where crafted items will disappear, when during the time of crafting the top left item slot is occupied by an item, which is not used for crafting. Going to work around this bug in a future release.
Post Jam fixes: There was an error during building the lights. Had to restart the build process and fix a few things. Now the lights are working properly.
There was a possibly game breaking bug in a third party library, which could delete a crafted item from the player inventory if the first slot was occupied with an other item. Fixed this bug.
| HTML5 (web) | http://104.129.2.56/ |
| Windows | http://104.129.2.56/ |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/this-is-not-a-normal-village |
Ratings
| Overall | 1132th | 2.477⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 979th | 2.762⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 877th | 2.825⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1066th | 2.579⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 845th | 2.316⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 855th | 2.905⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
After that: `Looks like the game needs more than the allocated 1073741824 bytes, please edit HTML5Engine.ini and repackage`
It is difficult to see witch object you can do somethings with, and I know have I collected stuff that never got into my inventory. And the stuff I got in my inventory, I never found anything to use them for.
Thank you, this is the intention :).
"The part of the story I heard was super strange, and it did not make much sense."
In my play tests, after 5 minutes the players found out what is going on (not all details but the general story). But my test players were my friends. Maybe this is the problem, they know me for too long and know how I think.
The idea is: You have to guess who or better what you are and for who you work. Like the title says, this is not a normal village ;)
"There are clearly something interesting and mysterious about this game"
Thank you
"I would have preferred a smaller and more polished game."
In my opinion you need a certain size of the game to make it fun. If everything is in one house, it is boring because you can find everything too easy. There is more audio and text then used in this game, I would have prefered a bit bigger, but time limits are time limits.
"I know have I collected stuff that never got into my inventory."
This is a real bug. Did you craft anything? What OS are you using? There is a bug in a third party lib which is mentioned in the tutorial, when you craft something and the first item slot is full. But this bug was fixed in the latest version, which I will upload tomorrow (I hope fixing bugs in third party libs is not against the rules).
"And the stuff I got in my inventory, I never found anything to use them for."
Maybe it is because my friends love games like heavy rain, monkey island and deponia, but they sometimes even guessed which items they would need to solve a problem, even before they found this items.
What kinds of game do you play? Would it help if useable items would be highlighted like pickup items?
And thank you for your feedback, it is realy appreciated.
"Did you craft anything?" Not really, but I tried to saw something, but it did not seem to do anything, but to be honest I probably did it wrong.
"Would it help if useable items would be highlighted like pickup items?" YES.
"What kinds of game do you play?" just like your friends i love games heavy rain, and monkey island, and then I love weird indie games, strategy games and a lot of other kind of games.
Okay than the difficulty is too hard, even for point and click players. Maybe the outlines of stationary items will help.
"It was well written though, so it was fine." @notpresident35
Thank you a lot :).
"the random teleportation thing, but that happens periodically, not based upon whether you have more"
The teleporting and blurring depends how much time you have spend in the game. And time works different here. There more choices you have influenced, the more time has gone (+ normal flow of time).
"I would have preferred the game if it got steadily brighter and brighter, instead of turning it super bright and then back to normal periodically."
This was one idea, including slowing the player down with time, but I thought there would be too many problems with the game play if you can't see properly. Maybe I could have other things like putting items back where they were found, do some damage to the player which he has to heal or be slowed or something. I agree with you that the theme was implemented not visible enough in the game. Spending more time and affecting choices should have harder consequences. But I tried to scare the player and at least for my friends it worked.
By the way there are bad endings, which happen after 30 minutes (of our real time). Thank you for your feedback :).
BTW, what is the special flag you're talking about when compiling FF? Is it related to WebAssembly?
http://104.129.2.56/download/web/HTML5/
I think object highlighting could be improved. Maybe highlight objects by proximity, so the player knows what items can be interacted with. Also maybe add a cross-hair (could be just a subtle point in the center of the screen) to make picking up objects easier.
Keep it up! :thumbsup:
Anyways I liked it, keep up the good work!
@furet The well is a red hering. One way to solve this game is to rescue people (the other is to do nothing). To rescue people you have to listen to the hints. The fishing rod with the magnet helps you to get the key to house with the child in front of the door. Try to use it on the second floor. The fake poison can be used to save Richard. Have you found to the piece of wood needed to repair the crib? The screenshots are designed to show items, which are not in the game, or at least not at the place showed :D.
I like the environment, the writing and the theme is good too. I wish the narration wouldn't slow me down so much, though.
@lucas-ferrantelli
Thank you, but the game is not polished enough. There will be a version 2.0 which will be way nicer :).