A Mote in the Dark by Kirenio
In the world of darkness a small mote of light awakens from the slumber. It struggles to expel the all consuming darkness and to awaken others like it.
Short Instructions
- Keep Light Motes alive by collecting smaller Light Orbs that spawn around them to restore their energy.
- Beware of the Dark Orbs as they damage the energy of the Light Mote. Energy is represented by the circle around every Light Mote.
- To activate additional motes your primary mote needs to have at least 100 energy, which is half of the bar.
- If energy of a Light Mote reaches 0 it collapses.
- If your starting Light Mote collapses the game is over so watch over it above all else!
There are in depth explanation of mechanics below if you want to know how exactly everything works. If you have more questions you can ask them by leaving a comment and I will answer it as soon as I can!
Controls
- LMB - activate or pick up
- Scroll - zoom
- Hold RMB - move camera
- Hold L.Alt - hide/show UI
GitHub: https://github.com/Kirenio/furry-enigma
Play or Download at https://kirenio.itch.io/a-mote-in-the-dark
In-depth Gameplay Mechanics explanation
Light Motes
Light Motes produce energy by burning their energy reserve. Energy reserve is 200 points and it burns at 2 points a second speed.
Light Motes connected by lines which indicate relationship, they send half of the burned energy and energy received from their children upstream to their parent Mote. Energy received from child Motes restore energy reserves of the parent. With 1 active child parent only loses half the energy, with 2 active parent no longer loses energy, with 3 active parent regenerates energy at half the speed.
By doing so they produce 10 points a second and sends half of what it produces upstream to their parent mote. So with 1 additional mote active your parent mote will produce 15 points a second, with 2 additional motes it will produce 20 points a second. So the more motes are active the more score you get each second. When Light Motes collapse they release a burst of energy that increases your score by a large amount.
Orbs
Orbs spawn around active motes. Small Light and Dark orbs give score points when clicked on. - Light Orbs: 25 to 100 points - Dark Orbs: 25 to 400 points
Orbs spawn on average every 2 seconds. Light orbs restore energy and start with a 60% chance to spawn, Dark Orbs reduce energy and have 40% chance to spawn. After each 3 orbs spawned time between spawns gets shorter and the chance of Light orbs to spawn also reduces. After a while only Dark orbs will spawn. Each Mote tracks this separately.
UPDATE: - Fixed issue where game would start freezing constantly. - Fixed game not stopping and orbs still working after game over. - Missed a check to see if connection line needs to be reset.
Ratings
| Overall | 549th | 3.094⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 664th | 2.548⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 383th | 3.129⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 555th | 3.065⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 467th | 3.29⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 392th | 3.226⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 45🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
The only thing I could have loved (maybe I didn't saw it ?) is some kind of timer to see which "Light" is going to collapse in order to really manage the things I am going to click.
Good work ! It can be really interesting on mobile or tablet !
By default with UI enabled there's a circle around every mote that represents energy left in it. Maybe you hid the UI by accident?
Secondly - I think I need a little more explanation. I was able to feed the first mote and keep it alive, I then triggered 4 other motes but eventually they all died and soon enough there were no more white discs to click on and it was game over. Can you explain the strategy I should be using?
P.S. I hope **formatting** I've used is not too **obnoxious**!
**What I wanted** was to provide a bite sized but complete experience. I've ended up achieving that with artificially limiting the duration of each playthrough by gradually increasing the difficulty. I decided to do so that potential player can experience a cohesive game with beginning and an end, while not getting bored out and quitting it. **While doing so** also providing player a control over difficulty of the game by giving an ability to increase the amount of active nodes player has to manage.
**What I failed** to do was to provide a good risk-reward mechanic by undertuning the amount of points player scores from having multiple motes active. I believe that would be way too major change in how the game will flow to fix after the deadline. Oh well, live and learn.
**What I hope** is that players will have maybe 2 or 3 runs and 3 to 6 minutes of fun yet as challenging as they want it to be experience. Personally I would consider that a victory.
Expecting a player to read (and understand!) that description of the game mechanics is a bit of a stretch. 90% of people will just scan it and dive in (like I did) and then be confused.
With that said, graphics and sound add a great feel to the game, and everything felt nice and polished. I'm sure it could be something special with a slick, intuitive tutorial. Well done!
@korvyashka Thank you very much for the feedback too! I glad you've enjoyed the atmosphere of the game! And I totally agree that lack of any indication on status of the orbs was a huge mistake on my side.
I couldn't really figure it out, I think the sheer amount of text thrown at me at the beginning was too much. Maybe having the text unfold over the course of the beginning of the game would have been easier on us new players. Great art style.
Overall a really interesting idea. Well done, thanks for sharing!
Unfortunately I do have a massive problem with the design, you see I'm allergic to *clicking*. The less *clicking* I need to endure the better. So how could you reduce the amount of *clicking*?
For instance, the motes could attack and collect the orbs automatically at a speed relative to their energy level. The player's job then would be to manage the energy flow between the motes, diverting the flow when the situation calls for it. Just an idea.
Ok job in all, but not for me!
The overall design and UI was great. Current power levels were communicated really well in an unobtrusive, readable way. I think with refinement to the gameplay (clarity of purpose, giving some level of automating clicking) this could be a really interesting strategic clicker game.