That is amazing! <3

To be honest this one is my favorite 4 quarters game so far(Even though I barely understood what is going on in this world)
Great job, guys.

This is actually amazing. These are kinds of indi games you wanna see nowadays.

# This comment will contain a lot of spoilers, so please beware.

*To do list* truly is an impressive feat, even aside from it being made in 72 hours. From the tone, I could already tell something was off about this character, but I wasn't exactly sure what. Then it came to the end and I was like, totally in shock. It was definitely unsettling, creepy and just the right kind of creepy.

To have music for each of the days, done within the time limit? That's amazing! I loved all the chiptune tracks; there was a very nice contrast between them for the different days, and the soundtrack contributed to this sort of distortion of reality as to what you're actually doing that this game needed. It did manage to get creepy at some parts when needed.

I suppose this game actually goes in reverse, and the ending is actually what you started with? Loved the hints of foreshadowing too. The glitchiness at the end freaked me out.

Here's a couple of issues I had:


- The game's hit (collision?) detection is a bit odd. When you have to interact with things, the character ends up at such a far distance from the actual object. I suppose this helps in knowing which items you can interact with, but it's a bit weird and initially made me think I wasn't supposed to interact with said object.
- The game's screen is taller than mine, and cuts off where the bottom of the screenshot is. I think it's worth knowing, but it wasn't such a huge deal that I couldn't play this game.
- It was super confusing, especially at the beginning, knowing what to do. I got stuck on the trash part because I had no idea that the white things (again, in the screenshot) were trash. I thought they were rocks!
- It would have been nice to be able to interact with key objects and have the character say something about the object with hints.

All in all, a great game with a chilling payoff.

@random-storykeeper hay, thanks for you big review, and feedback!

Lovely artwork and music. Really impressive entry. If you get a chance please check out our game https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/down-the-rabbit-hole

Just played your game. I love the art- but I assume this wasn't done by your team. :I Since you guys opted out.

As a game mechanic though... Hmm...

I feel like it was a bit difficult to know what objects were and what they were for. I understood that there was a To-Do List, but It was difficult to find out where to use these objects at and so-on.

I enjoyed the music and the art- and IT could have gotten tons better if there was more reception on selecting objects. :D

LDJam games are normally really small- and players don't often have the time to learn the the game too much- so its a lo easier if there was more feedback when using objects and so on. :D

I think I was almost done with the game but I got stuck on "deal with thomas" nothing was interacting and I walked around trying to grab an item or interact with pretty much anything.

I spent a lot of time just wandering around trying different things until I finally found the right combinations. I think if it wasn't as confusing as it is that it would have been more enjoyable.

I still think it was good and it is definitely an interesting game.

Awesome game, i relly enjoyed the style and the lenght of it :)

@theclinthennesy, thanks for the review! Art was done by our team, but the new site design confused the guy who uploaded the game, so he checked (or didn't uncheck) the graphics/audio/humor/mood checkboxes.

Wow, this artwork & music is absolutely brilliant! Fantastic work here. Great work!

I was really excited to play this, however the windows build I downloaded would not run, instead crashed with an error and deleted itself from my system. I attempted to install it three times, but had the same trouble each time. I'm incredibly sad to not be able to play this game as it looks incredible. I will abstain from rating it, but at least know that I love the art style.

The art is great! Very detailed and well executed graphics, very good palette and overall sense of design!
The music is also nice! (maybe too upbeat for the situation? The song is great though)

The controls, however, are very, very confusing. Before using an item correctly, I clicked it with the cursor, pressed Z, and dragged the icon of the item to the zone I wanted to interact with, instead of the intended "stand before the zone with the green outline and press the right mouse button with the right item". Even after checking the controls here, I only managed to fix the roof (I figured I needed to fill the watering can with water to make it work, but I can't interact with the bucket of water because it doesn't have a green outline)

I would recommend to ditch the mouse controls altogether and use only the keyboard, or in the other hand, to make the mouse the main way to interact with everything, highlighting zones/objects by clicking or hovering with the cursor.

It's a shame I got stuck, because it seemed like it had a interesting story...

Nice graphics. The music on the other hand killed the mood for me. I think that this techno sound didn't fit the game well. Other than that nice entry.

god.. *incredible* art and music. I love it so much I just want to stare and listen all day.

The story is super interesting and very unexpected. Unfortunately I accidentally skipped a lot of the dialog from pressing a button too many times trying to progress in the game. I may have to replay it to read everything, now that I know what I'm doing.
Yeah the controls are a bit weird, but I didn't mind them too much.

Amazing entry!

The graphics and music are phenomenal. Not to spoil anything for anyone but it started very cutesy but got very dark and interesting by the end. 100% recommend playing all the way through. It had a bit of the usual point-n-click adventure logical stretches about which items are supposed to be combined, but the small size of the world actually worked in your favor here by making there not be too many possibilities to try. Great work overall

Took me a while to get it working (thanks, AVG) but it was worth it. Great job!

Wow, this was the best one I checked yet! The graph made me curious about your game, and I loved it! I couldn't guess it would end like this, but it was a good surprise! Great work for a jam!

Funny game. The hero is hilarious (at first...). Everything is beautiful too.

Very often it didn't answer to my keyboard. I don't know why but it was very annoying and almost made me give up... but I wanted to see the end !

The evolution of the mood throughout the game is amazing in many ways. I especially like how it appears slowly in the first days. So we don't realize it immediately but just think "hey I think he didn't have the same naive happy expression last time I saw his face". Awesome.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get very far (that's just me). I did like the art style and music a lot though. Good job!

Oops, duplicate.

Holy crap, this is amazing. This inspires me to try so much harder in future LDs. *Greatjob* Four Quarters!

All 5 Stars!! Just like ~~Demonophobia~~ and ~~Song of Saya~~. This's the game for my taste!~ heheheheheheh


Some puzzles are really frustrated (hard to get the right combination), but I love the art and story so much so it's fine <3

Wow, that took a dark turn. Ha! That was a really fun and interesting game, even if it left me with nightmares. It was really well thought-out and polished. I can't believe you guys finished all of that art and audio from scratch! It's really good. Well done!

Fantastic!

Attention people, (small) spoilers ahead!
The pixel art is really fantastic, even though the portraits felt a bit separate from the rest. The length of the game is also extremely impressive, and the story was unexpected in a really good way.
The main problem with the game for me is the gameplay:
- the game would benefit greatly from pixel-by-pixel movement. Some items take very little space in their square and you'd think you could walk up to them but you can't. There are also some items you can walk on and that feels weird too.
- the mixing of mouse and keyboard controls doesn't work well in my opinion. I think you should pick one of them and stick with it.
- the dialogues should have a minimum time on screen before they can be skipped. I often skipped dialogues accidentally because I was mashing my space bar.
- the "minigames" (football, gardening) were quite underwhelming. The football kept getting stuck in my feet as I walked around and definitely didn't feel like a ball. The gardening thing just teleported you outside then back inside without transition.


I'm sorry for probably sounding too critical; I really loved this entry. This game is really an impressive feat for a Ludum Dare. Great job!


EDIT: I just realized that there was also a post-jam version, so ignore all the things I said that have already been fixed!

This was **super** dark. I loved it. Very good mood. It got under my skin. I think that the controls could've been a little bit better, and the end left me wondering if it was over or not. Adding some sort of game over screen would help with that. Either way, this was really really well done. The art and sound set the mood perfectly, and the gameplay was a great storytelling tool in it's own right. Great work.

Wow, I'm so incredibly glad I played through to the end. I got goosebumps towards the ending. What an incredibly well made game. I don't want to spoil anything for the people who haven't played through it, but for everyone: Please finish this game! I almost stopped after the first day because I thought the rest of the game would just be doing little errands. A few minor things first:

- The collision was a little buggy. I walked through the objects in the main char's room a bunch of times.
- The controls felt slippery. I often felt like I moved additional tiles even when only inputting one move command.

Other than that, it was incredible. Here are the specifics that I liked:
- I loved the changing music. It fit the mood changes throughout the game, and made the sinister nature of the main character so much more impactful.
- The main character art (during the dialogue specifically) was PHENOMENAL! Towards the end of the game, it was incredibly creepy and well done.
- The final image of the main character will be burned into my brain. I still don't feel like I have a great grasp of the story, but it was so impactful and creepy I can't get it out of my head.

Fantastic game!

It was an interesting idea, but overall I don't think I enjoyed this entry. I think trying to squeeze in a twist-based plot + a huge amount of detailed sprite work + a few minigames all in a single jam effort led to the story feeling a bit hamfisted. It might have been more successful if there was more content and time to build up to the ending, but it doesn't have much impact aside from a bit of shock as is.

A few more specific criticisms:
- The tile-based movement felt a bit awkward, and the control scheme in general is very confusing. I think you could have gotten away with using a single context-sensitive action button for everything instead.
- There's very little indication of what you actually have to do to progress. This, combined with the lack of any sort of hint structure and the non-obviousness of some of the puzzles made it really easy to get stuck. It would be a lot less frustrating to play if there were a bit more hand-holding (e.g. attempting to use an item incorrectly could trigger a line about what the character actually wants to use it for)
- the portrait artwork and the sprite artwork didn't feel cohesive and look as if they came from two completely different games

Having said that, the amount of work that has gone into this entry is impressive! The sprites in particular are quite nice.

The music was really good and the graphics are very enjoyable! The movement is kind of awkward because it is tile based and I got stuck at the trash part since I never found the trash.

The music was super good, the graphics too- though it was a quite confusing to know what to do next a few times, it was creepy, in the good way. Overall, good game, albeit pretty god damn weird.

This game is great!!! What a concept, good graphics and sound , great missions , great functionality. This is a kind of game which shoild be nominated in any way... I really enjoyed playing.

Simply stunning. This is exactly what I was hoping for from this challenge!

Oh my god.. Are you realy made it? I don't have enough words to say about that game. Great job!

Cool and interesting game!
Авторы PDTA не умеют делать плохие игры)

This was really well made. Fantastic graphics and a really solid premise. This was one of the most complete and polished feeling games that Ive played in Ludum Dare in a while.

This game I could certainly see being polished off or expanded a little bit and making for a great game to release on steam. The story is simple but very approachable by a wide audience and just let's you almost explore as you accomplish your daily tasks in a very limited and confined space.

Excellent work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shr5iGdQs3M

SPOILERS: THAT PIXEL ART! I love all the inventory icons. And the mood, oh my goodness. In terms of the story I couldn't really figure out what his descent into madness, or the reversed time symbolised (I don't know, was it just about killing his friend? what did the alien creatures symbolise? Were they symbolic even?) or if it was just intended to be unnerving, but I was definitely unnerved. The music was fantastic. I thought the first track didn't really fit the mood, it was a little too bouncy and arcadey for the setting, but then it ended up juxtaposing the eerie tracks quite nicely so I can see why you went with that style.

I don't know whether the "paint the roof blue" when you actually paint it red was deliberately misleading or a mistake, but I spent quite a while looking for a way to turn my red paint blue, and almost gave up at one point.

Pretty much full marks from me guys (apart from humor), nice job.

If you'd like to check out our game, that would be great! Cheers! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/e-at

"My favourite color... if it were green, of course". Golden :)

Well, this was a rollercoaster.

**[SPOILER! ...I think]** So surreal, so creepy, so eerie, I love it. Starts off Pretty happy and innocent if you ignore the floating island, but around painting the picture and the radio, the mood starts to set. Nice touches all the way throughout, especially when something you take for a simplistic game mechanic (like items resetting after sleep) actually looks like a part of the story. And the foreshadowings of what will come, with the axe for example. Good curve, It actually kept me interested all the way throughout. And I like the 'Salad Fingers' vibe it has (if you don't know it somehow, I think you'd like it - just search on Youtube :D ). Not that it copies it in any way, just the mood seems similar **[/SPOILER]**

Spot-on music, simple loops but not annoying, and they really compliment the mood.

** what could be improved**
Gameplay-wise it could use some clarifications in descriptions (day 7-6, regarding simple tasks), unless the slightly off descriptions were intended. Also, sometimes not being able to just turn in place without walking was slightly annoying. But that's about it :)

Great entry, good gameplay, graphics and music are fitting, good story / writing. Very, very well done in terms of game design. One of my favourites so far, actually :D

Leaving my rating, cheers!

This is amazing, it's a good story, great visuals, nice music/audio, and a interesting eerie story. Probably the most well-polished LD game I have seen in a while.

on the one hand: very nice art style and the music was also excellently handled (got better with every day)
Had fun playing it.
on the other hand : have any of you considered therapy? :D

no, seriously nice take on the theme and the gameplay was very smoothly without being shoved in your face.
You either knew where to go immediately or were able to figure it out in a short time.

This was amazing!

Incredible polish, graphics, art, game and atmosphere!

My only complaint is about the controls (combining stuff was quite hard), but the post jam version is already much better! :)

I think that's my favourite entry. Well polished, very, very nice atmosphere (the kind of things I dig a loottt)
I really love how there is a story and how this story goes incresingly creepy as the days go. A bit confusing at the end but pretty, pretty neat. Nice take on the theme, nice style, nice music.

A few things I had troubles with though:
Sometimes (especially at the beginning since you don't get the controls) it's a bit too... "hard" to figure out what to do. Probably has already been told but the controls were not very obvious from the start. I did read the controls before playing but... yeah it lacks intuitivity. I had to get back on the page to check the controls.
Also, I would have prefered if you were able to move a bit more freely as it doesn't feel... well... free.

Very good. If minecraft were like this, I would play

Отличные результаты, ребята! Очень рад за вас :smiley:

Hey, right at the top! Well deserved, this was a fantastic and straight up mental experience, cheers!

Could any explain what happened in the game?

it;s looks good but cant download petty

amazing,stroy