Reverse Quest by kleinzach
The hero arrives at the final dungeon in their quest to discover true happiness. Upon completing the journey, the hero realizes that true happiness involves giving up all material possessions.
Return the bow and the sword to the blue and green temples and optionally all but 3 health upgrades to the 7 mini-dungeons in the world. Once you have no weapons, the hero can return to their home in the east by the sea to live out the rest of their life content.
Controls:
Wasd to move/left joystick
Left click to attack/a button
Right click to switch weapon/b button
Advice: -Some mini-dungeons (Just marked as entrances into mountains) require the weapons to complete. But be careful, completing these makes the game harder by reducing your max health.
-The two main temples can be completed in any order, but the second one will be harder because you will be missing a weapon.
-Your house is in the top right of the map. It is only accessible when you have no weapons. Entering will finish the game.
-The hardest dungeon to do at low health is the mini-dungeon in the bottom right, I would do that before the others if you are having trouble.
Created as a solo project. All art, music and code was created during the jam.
| Windows | https://kleinzach.itch.io/reversequest |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/reverse-quest |
Ratings
| Overall | 627th | 3.314⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 715th | 3⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 553th | 3.103⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 412th | 3.618⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 767th | 2.986⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 505th | 3.015⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 585th | 3.235⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 35🗨️ |
Awesone to do the dungeons in any order, so the player can set their own goals. I liked it
My biggest critiques, is the bow is shot by direction not mouse aim; which makes it hard to use.
graphism music and DA are really cool , special mention for the outdoor map
An entire adventure
impressive for a compo
maybe more outdoor and less dungeon
Downgrade fit the theme but i prefere upgrade systeme in adventure game
The movement felt a bit too floaty and the bow didn't behave the way I thought it would since you use the mouse to fire (I thought it would fire in the direction of my pointer so that was a bit weird at first).
Overall a great entry!
To ramble a moment, I think it's interesting how jams really seem to incentivize pushing for small experiences. A 2-minute, highly polished experience will earn higher marks than a game like this, that saw equal care divvied across a 30-minute adventure.
Fantastic work. Very nice to see someone attempt and do so well at creating a longform experience.
@sthor726 @limered I definately agree about the controls being a bit floaty. It got to a point in the middle of the jam where I just got used to it. Playtesting your own game turns out not to always be the best idea!
@odlog-oglog @egos Downgrading as a mechanic is certainly the more untested/experimental part of the game. I am a little more optimistic that It has potential though, I think especially if I add more items then just the two I think subtraction can end up being just as interesting as the addition of more powers.
For the time you had, your levels are amazing! I loved your Zelda 1 dungeon, and the crystal cave was very nice. Great job!
I have found that using really simple scripts and passing the data around with these scriptable objects has allowed for really fast iteration and has been really flexible to use.
I also have tons of tiny scripts which I call "relays" which turn code events, like changes in variables stored in those scriptable objects, into UnityEvent calls. Once I have a big library of these very simple modular scripts, I hook up as much as I can within the scene itself. Altogether, this means that my code has very few dependencies so I never run into the problem where changing a script in one location breaks something elsewhere.
Let me know if you want to know about anything more specific!
The gameplay itself was fine, but felt a bit sluggish in general. I feel like it would have been more fun traveling around to all of these different dungeons if the game was a bit more fast-paced. As is, it felt like more of a chore than anything. As other users have already commented, I'm not sure why there is so much inertia for the player movement; feels like it would have felt like a much tighter game with potentially much more interesting and dynamic combat if you didn't control like a fat rhino on ice. This would also make the arrow aiming a little more sensible, as right now it doesn't make sense to take the last-pressed direction because you need to float around so much. I'm sure some small tweaks could go a long way toward really showcasing the potential of your design.