Lost Light by DrewG8
You were sent to an out of the way part of the empire to restore the ancient Communication Hub. Brave the dangers of failing electronics and a dangerous infestation as you work towards the Central Power Cell and discover the significance of the structure along the way. Features a turn-based movement system and a unique mechanic based on the theme of "Running Out of Power." Made in the lite version of GameMaker 8.
Art and Programming by Drew Genel
Music by Matt Eyles
Some sounds from royalty free sites
| Windows | https://drewg8.itch.io/lost-light |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lost-light-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 567th | 3.138⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 671th | 2.759⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 681th | 2.586⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 623th | 3.172⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 438th | 3.483⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 176th | 3.586⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 418th | 2.407⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 543th | 2.964⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 28🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
The game is fun and well designed. The biggest suggestion I would give is to extend the size of the window a little bit so that scrolling isn't needed. as I needed to walk to each edge to see if there was a door. Is suppose this wouldn't work in the last room as it is bigger than the other rooms, but for everything else this would be a big help.
Finally, the sound was catchy enough that I did actually sing the monitor text boxes along with the music. Good job there.
A bit unintuitive with the process of triggering those core things, but overall, good job!
Besides that I enjoyed it! :thumbsup:
Keep on the good work!
All in all a really solid entry though. Good job! :)
The biggest problem was the small window size which combined with the game maker logo sometimes made it hard to see some places. The small window size also brought the disadvantage of having every room have a scrolling camera so you can't see all of the exits even thought the game is split in those rooms anyways and the rooms are a lot bigger than the window. All this made the scrolling seem like just an inconvenience (except of course in the last room).
The music even though I really liked it got repetitive over the course of this rather long game.
The layout of the rooms seemed really simple with just 4 main path where only single rooms branch of which means that little actual navigation was required. On that note I think it would have been annoying to get to the gate you open at the end of the end before getting to all the orbs and having to backtrack the whole way but luckily that didn't happen to me.
The design of the individual rooms could be improved too. The puzzles were never really challenging and if you got green plates in awkward positions some rooms required you dying a few times to get them to a usable position again. It seems to me like some of the rooms were designed without considering that the player can trigger purple plates as well without using green ones (maybe this was changed halfway through development?) but that's hardly a real problem.
Generally the game felt to slow: The player should run in a direction if he presses an arrow key longer; especially if your map is this large. Also the dialog should have appeared faster. While the current speed is close to the speed of actual talking, if you don't have voice acting you should have the dialog scroll faster; again especially because there is quite a lot of it.
Edit: I forgot to mention that that the light mechanic felt quite inconsequential when you could have easily completely removed any light except the flashlight at the end of the game to really increase the challenge of a few select levels.
Again sorry for writing such a long list of just problems. I honestly quite liked the game.