The controls are not really good. I think statics screens would be better, and clicking is not responsive at all.
But I'm into the graphics and the peaceful yet unsettling atmosphere of the game. It's weird but kind of charming. We see a lot of effort overall, I like it !

I really like the art direction in this game. There is a big focus on story and puzzles. However, the control were not great and probably need a bit of work. Moving around was a bit "jaggy".

(You can see me playing this game for the first time on the vod
https://youtu.be/34z-nBWKdEw?t=1h5m28s )

Nice. It's impressive that you created a multi-room space (and all of this BGM) for the compo. Great work.

I'm going to echo a bit of the frustration about the controls that the people above did, but it's not a huge problem. I guess the thing is, for short games like a lot of Ludum Dare entries (mine included), the less we have to "learn" the controls the better.

Keep up the good work!

Nice little point and click, nice atmosphere. Would have preferred a simple yes/no prompt though.

Agreed, yes/no prompt would be nice and the art is nice as well, but the controls are a bit wonky with the clicks. It took me a while just to fugure out how to move lol

really nice job with the intro sequence! the piano and the text built an immersive mood. i like the minimal art style and you did a great job creating an atmosphere. the controls were janky like others have said. also, i spent like 3 days (in game) trying to figure out what to do in the lighthouse to no avail. i went back to every single interactable item multiple times and nothing seemed to work. this was frustrating as i was interested to see where the game would go. i really like the mystery and confusion that this game brings though. overall i think that this game was pretty good has a lot of potential. it needs a few tweaks to be a bit more accessible though.

@xxdoombox thanks! yes... as a player I admit that there's a lot of room to improve,
especially in terms of gameplay.

I will tweak the game once the evaluation process is over, so if you want, try then again.

Thanks for playing it!

Amazing music! The mood was fantastic! I really enjoyed this game, it felt like it had emotion and character. I played it twice so I could get the good end (I was so close the first time!)

I liked the puzzles, they *actually made sense to me* for the most part, unlike many point-and-clicks.

I know you've heard it a thousand times, but this game could really work with better controls. You need to be able to skip, and either a) don't center the character or b) use keyboard controls. You can't have a centered character with mouse(*/e) controls.

@cosine thanks for playing it! (and thanks for your feedback!)

Nice experience! I like the minimalistic pixel art and the atmosphere is damn great!
The audio is well choosen and gives the special mood right from the beginning. :smile:
I really liked the telescope idea in the tower but as Togis said the movement is a bit "jaggy"^^

Congratulations this is a pretty good Ludum Dare entry :)

Very nice atmosphere, but controls made me lose interest. Music was great!

thanks for your feedback! @myko @samurai-spark!

I'm already working on another version with better controls and more information about what to do.

I liked the art and music in this game, gave me an Undertale vibe. As everyone else has said, controls are a little wonky, took me a second to realize that right clicking only depended on where my character was and my mouse position didn't matter at all. The puzzles were cool until I got stumped/frustrated, turned on the lighthouse then looked through the telescope but couldn't figure out how to use that information. Really cool game though, loved the mood.

@maggardjosh thanks for playing it!

The atmosphere of this game really had me hooked. I loved the environment that the audio and simple graphics created. I do share most of my criticisms with the rest of the commenters here. The controls and movement could use some polish, but otherwise this game is beautiful.

@joseph-benton thanks for playing my game and for your kind words!

I have no idea what I just played, but I stuck with it to the end, so I guess that says something :thumbsup:. At least I think it was the end? It did say: "The End." and then it said "There's something weird about this box." and then the game froze on me?

I enjoyed the mood and atmosphere, but except for the keys that I found, I never figured out what I did to progress. I just kept clicking everything, going to bed and then repeating that process. At some point my character decided to just put codes into things and solve the puzzles for me. I had so many questions after finishing the game. Did I actually finish it? Where did the codes come from? Does the telescope do anything?

Also: "A human head. You almost threw up when you saw it, but it could be useful" :rofl:

Good job.

@for-science I laughed a lot with your comment hahaha!

Yes, there are 2 ends that say: "The end". If you got one, you made it to the end of the game. The message that you obtained after finishing it could be a bug.

Thanks a lot for your feedback and for playing!

I really liked this one! The music and the fragments of text really sets the mood.

I got a bug a couple of times where the text of one object kept coming back regardless of what I clicked. But it went away after the day was over.

One thing I especially appreciated was the passage of time. In a way you're in a vacuum, but the hours keep ticking away giving it a sense of urgency even if everything is still. Some things just takes time, so it's nice that the game has things that just wont do anything until you go to bed and come back in the morning! I don't know if the time actually was important, I finished with a couple of days to spare, but either way it was great with the theme of contemplating life and death.

@picapica Wow you really got it, that makes me so happy.

I will check about that bug, to be honest I'm not sure what could be.

Thank you!

I really liked the mood and the music. The simple 1-bit art style suits the game very well too. The controls on the original build were a bit rough but are much improved now :)
I wasn't really sure how I passed the vending machine code puzzle, I just kind of lucked out on it. The telescope puzzle was clearer, although I also think I lucked out on the last number since it wasn't very legible.

Overall I enjoyed it, and it's pretty nice for such a short time frame. Good work!

@earthcollapse thanks for playing!!

Great game! The music and instrumentation were very fitting and great (especially the house theme), and the whole experience vaguely reminded me of Undertale. Sometimes I had to blindly walk around and press things to solve puzzles, but nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The environment fit together so perfectly to where I felt the need to keep playing. Sometimes the resolution of the pixel-art felt uneven between areas, or even at a single place (the top of the lighthouse's light was lower than the bottom half), and I feel the need to bring up the controls, which generally felt choppy, and even inaccurate sometimes. This game's strongest assets were its music and atmosphere, which fit the game perfectly. Great job and thanks! I loved this!

EDIT: I meant the lighthouse theme, in case it wasn't obvious.

@chaseplays I pretty much agree with all what you said, and I will do it better next time. For now I'm happy with the good parts!

Thanks for your awesome feedback!

I'm going to start with the stuff I didn't really like, because I really really liked this submission, but there's just a few things that I think could have been done a bit better which prevented me from loving it:

- The controls were a bit rough at first. There were many situations were I would accidentally read a note multiple times because I kept thinking LMB was move. More on this later.

- The camera movement was also disorienting and I feel like it may have worked better if we were just given an overview of the entire area we were in, instead of a close up with the camera following the player around.

- Also, I couldn't really use the telescope because the game didn't lock my mouse cursor (web).

- @chaseplays mentioned that the inconsistencies in sprite scale, and I fully agree, it made it a bit difficult to tell what was going on sometimes.

- The text could really do with an outline- half of the time you can't read it because it's white on white! :(

- I also didn't really understand how the mailbox puzzle worked. I just sort of clicked LMB and RMB until it gave me the key. It seemed like prompts were missing on about half the popups.

But now, the stuff I liked:

- The music, it's perfect.

- The art style isn't overly complex. It's very utilitarian, and that works well.

- Both of those add up to create a great atmosphere. I was nearly fully immersed in the world you had created.

- There's so much content for 48 hours, I'm seriously impressed.

- The story is simple, but engaging. It kept me playing for much longer than most of the other LD entries I've tried so far (definitely the first one I've felt compelled to finish).

All in all this is a fantastic entry to LD38, and I would really like to see it expanded upon and given the small fixes that would push this game from good to great! :)

@slimabob wow... spectacular feedback, you are awesome! thank you!

I honestly agree with all your negative points.
Finishing this game was very complicated because I spent too much time working on things that I didn't even use in the end, so a big part of the gameplay was made in the last hours and that's why may seem a bit rushed.

I will learn from this experience to work better in the future. (promise).

I'm really happy to hear (read) that you felt engaged with the mood of the game, because that was my main focus.
That's a victory in my eyes!

Again, thank you n_n!

Incredible atmosphere and mood. If you composed the ambient piano and wind soundtrack, I give you mad props. Really beautiful.

Despite what others are saying, I really didn't have too much of an issue with the controls. The only thing that confused me with that was your prompts being backwards from the actual buttons. (i.e. RIGHT: No, LEFT: Yes)

I couldn't figure out where to go after sleeping the first night. I guess I probably just should've kept sleeping...

Overall, really nice work. Level design was charming and everything was really peaceful. Fantastic job!

@joe-cowman thanks for playing it!

and yes... to be honest I'm not sure if there was a reason to put "Left No Right Yes". Maybe it would had been more clear put them inverted like you say.

pd: also yes, I made the music!

As other have said, something about this made me stick with it for a while longer then I expected to when I first got my hands on it. that being said the controls were what eventually caused me to stop playing. Some sort of visual feedback over whether I can click a location and move there would be great. I recognize with this simple of an art style adding anything more can be tough, but that combined with the right click to use thing really threw me for a loop.

@ilseroth Sorry to hear that you had problems with the controls ... I know there are problems so I can understand your comments.

The worst part is that I thought that moving with the mouse was a good idea, because at first it was going to be: arrow keys + x z.

Bad design options, but that serves to learn and improve in future experiences.

Thanks for playing!

Bravo for attempting an end-to-end story game like this for LD, and bravo again for how it turned out! I think going with this retro black/white art was a really smart decision, which let you put time into story, level building and the music (Which is gorgeous, and sets the mood perfectly for a game like this). Those extra design/art work really helped the game stand out.

However, some nitpicks: camera was too jarring (Maybe a smooth camera follow would have been better than the pixel/pixel jump?), and the UI also being white in a black/white game made it hard to read. Also, I think some more bread crumbs would have helped the game progression (I got stuck on the roof for really long time not sure what to do with the mail box).

Overall, great game though!

Great music, great atmosphere. I did feel a bit rushed with the time ticking, but it turned out to not be so bad.

@wildmusketeer @doubledragonbimmy thanks for playing it! your comments are very appreciated!

Great atmosphere! sounds and story are really immersive but the movement is a little bit hard. once I went to bed the days was passing too fast in my opinion but still, I really enjoyed the game :D

A great example of how sound design can absolutely make an experience special. The subtle music paired with the thought provoking notes made this one a bit more special than others. I didn't / wasn't able to finish the whole game unfortunately, but I really enjoyed what I played.

Going to bookmark this one for a rainy day and come back to it.

Thanks for making this!

Not to beat a dead horse but the controls were rough, nearly stopped playing before I got the hang of it. Glad I didn't though, the game was very interesting once you get past that initial jankiness. Impressive scope and atmosphere.

Really interesting atmosphere. The music and visuals and time counter all seem to serve their purpose well.

The Left-Right number selection puzzles were a bit unintuitive, partly because the text made no indication of what happened (it just restarts when approaching again) and partly because the controls are, as mentioned by others before, not very responsive.

This game shows that you can have a great mood with simple graphics. So few little pixels can transport you into an other story. I wish I could do that. Good job!

I didn't mind the controls too much. Despite the fact that it was sometimes confusing as to whether you preferred the left click or right click, but since there were only two buttons involved, it didn't take much to figure out. A lot of the sameyness looks with the notes was a bit frustrating, especially at the start, where you have to find the key and the icon for it looks exactly like the notes.

I totally dig the 1bit style. Black and white pixel graphics in a minimal style are so my thing. I love how it starts from that outer view and then goes to a closeup of the character once you get into the lighthouse.. That really gave me a feeling of becoming immersed into this universe slowly. Musicwise, it's very well done. There's a lot of emotion in the tracks that gives this simplistic art style a lot of depth and matches the tone of the narrative. I liked interacting with the telescope, thought that was pretty cool.

The days counter HUD, while interesting, didn't really mesh with the graphics, gamewise. The white text meant that anything on the white floor made it blend in with each other. And yeah, like everyone said, the movement was a bit choppy, but it didn't really stop me from being curious as to how this game would conclude. This was simple, dark but emotional. I like it.

Really nice sounds, it makes great mood of the game! Graphics is also awesome, I like this simple and striking graphics. I would appreciate diffenrent controls at all, because despite my age I still can not remember which hand is left and which is right :(

@tomiinek @random-storykeeper @aurelien @iak @joatski @burgee @szczebel1995 your feedback is very valuable to me. Thanks for playing and for taking your time to comment!

As others have said: you did a great job creating the atmosphere of loneliness. It took me a little while to get used to the interaction controls. The movement seemed unreliable. I would left-click somewhere and sometimes he would only walk half way there and stop.

I managed to make my way inside the lighthouse and after sleeping I was able to use the radio but I became frustrated when I felt like I had visited all the dots and the only thing left to try was sleeping again.

However, despite these minor niggles, with more time this could be a very absorbing story. It reminds me of a Mastertonic game I played on the Commodore 64 called Zzzz! I found that one frustrating too! Maybe I'm just not cut-out for this type of game!

@richard-michael-smith omg I searched about zzzz and I think it's awesome!

Thanks for playing!

Very atmospheric game. Nice work. :)

@arcticmattekar thanks for playing it and for your kind words! I'll try Murder Mitosis when a get home from work!

Edit: Ups! I've already played it, I just visited @for-science's profile to rate his game and saw it. Congrats! it's awesome!

Great atmosphere! It's funny how at the beginning the left and right click are not intuitive at all, but you learn fast and it's even necessary to acknowledge it's importance in order to beat the game. Fantastic music, and good, but easy puzzles,

@le-slo wow... thanks for your words, I'm glad to know that you liked my game!

I love this kind of minimalistic stuff. the atmosphere is very unique and the sound/music really clicks with that atmosphere. I also got undertale vibes. Nice work!

I'm not even going to comment on the the technical issues, because I know other commenters have already covered them in depth. That said, the graphics, writing and audio definitely combined to create a really interesting experience and atmosphere. You wrote in a response to @slimabob that you spent some time on stuff you didn't end up using, I'd definitely be interested in hearing about some of that stuff, as I definitely think it'd be worth expanding this into a longer experience (though, in a game like this, when it's longer, it can be hard to strike the right balance between puzzle-y bits and story/atmosphere, still worth trying though).

@philomory My plan was to add more than one island, so when you turn on the lighthouse you could discover a boat and sail etc. (but only in a limited area)

I also wanted to give the player the possibility of going back in time because certain puzzles could be solved only on specific days.

Another idea was to submerge the island gradually as day 10 approaches. Blocking and granting the possibility of accessing certain places depending on the day.

In short, I wanted to make each day feel like playing a new set of puzzles without having to show the player another physical place.

Those were my ideas and I started to code some of them, but I couldn't implement all of it. (In fact, I only finished the lighthouse part, when you turn it on).

Well... Thanks for playing and thanks for your comment!

ps: I love your game!!

@sean-m glad to know you enjoyed my game! thank you!

you're right. controls are not good. but the idea was great and I loved the 1-bit color graphics you had going.

@brandann thanks for playing!

This was a really moody game. The quotes, the art, the music, and the simplicity of the gameplay all added up to a really pretty, ambient experience. I agree with those above saying that the controls are a pain, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Still could be improved there. Other than that though, I really enjoyed it. Had a very "classic point&click" feel. Nice work!

There were some grammatical errors in the intro for example "a escape" should be "an escape" but I never knock anyone for those just point them out so that they can fix them. The controls like everyone else is saying need some help. I like that you did all the art in black in white. However I don't like that everything is in a different resolution. Like the telescopes pixels are smaller than the grounds pixel etc. I like the atmosphere you created.

The controls were a bit wonky, but I loved the art style. With a bit more polish this could actually be really great. Keep up the good work!

@morrilet @those-30-ninjas @xykvy thanks for playing my game!

Took a while to start rolling and I almost gave up. But the atmosphere was brilliant and I did finish it. Story lacking a little bit and I am sure you are aware of the "controls" situation. Not bad at all :wink:

@listonos thanks for your feedback!

amazing soundtrack! can I download it anywhere?

@samlo I can upload it if you want! thanks!!

The audio was fantastic and made a great part of the mood for this game. I know you've gotten comments about the controls already so my quick fix would be to just swap them around and even better just leave right-click to be 'abort/no' and do everything with left-click. Because while the mood from the music was really something spectacular and the text promising. The fight with the controls made it kind of hard not to loose track of that mood. A very small comment about the style. The intro font/style was a bit surprising given the style of the rest of the game. The first type of puzzles seemed to revolve around finding keys too which seemed to not give so much story as they were about clicking around. I think the game is really the beginnings of something rather great. But here's also a very personal opinion about story and mood driven adventures in games. I enjoy solving puzzles, and like puzzle games. But if the story gets me hooked, I really want the puzzles to take a step back and be carefully weighted as to not interrupt the flow of the narrative. And while I don't really know how your game plays out, I looked around the lighthouse some and didn't see anything obvious that I should do, I think the narration-puzzle balance doesn't work that well for me. Still, as a LD entry, I think it is very impressive and the way it built up the mood in the beginning was very well done.

@local-minimum wow! thank you so much for such nice comments!

Yes... there's a lot room for improvement and I learned so much from this ludum dare! so I hope my future games are better, I'll try to not make the same mistakes again.

at first, I had no idea that I was the black square an I thoutht, that I am the whole island. anyway, the game looked nice, but it could use better controls :)

thanks for playing! @dejvo

dat pathfinding tho

I liked this entry. Not sure what sort of message it was trying to convey in the end, but overall there was definitely a mood here. Was a bit confusing at first, but I think that may have been the point. Music fits nicely and sound effects work great. Moving around was a little stiff at times, but not a big issue given the small space to explore.

Especially liked the telescope. Somehow the different art style worked out quite well there, and it added to the mood once again.

Neatly tied together and well presented. Really nice job!

Note: I think there might be a bug after it says the end, because I right clicked again and got another message box saying something about a weird box, and then I couldn't get that to disappear.

@ava-skoog Thanks for playing and for your kind words! andddd yes! there's a bug in the end. glad you finished it!

I trully, trully loved the concept of this game, it's world, it's scenario, it's really well done and down to earth keep it up man.

@maelstroon thanks for playing my game!

Interesting story! I included it in my Ludum Dare 38 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyqjTvBURc

@jupiter-hadley thanks for playing it!