A Shot in the Dark by thecatspajamas
Theme -- Two Button Controls
Find your way, lit only by your magic crossbow bolts.
Click to move or shoot, right-click to change modes. Beware that the menu takes 2 seconds to load, and we don't know why...
(Update)
By Popular demand, we now have a zip file download!
(Update 2)
Made file size smaller for faster downloads and faster start of game load time.
Design:
Paul Schwarzwalder
Phoenix Smith
Programming:
Paul Schwarzwalder
Phoenix Smith
Art and Animation:
Lynne Startup
Level Design:
Jami Schwarzwalder
Phoenix Smith
Music:
Coldharvest I by Ethan Helfrich of Rest You Sleeping Giant (Free Music Archive)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sound Effects:
Archery arrow release - AM (AudioMicro)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Footsteps by InspectorJ (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Ringing Ambient Background (YouTube Audio Library)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Water dripping in cave by lebcraftlp (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
cave waterdrops by voltae(freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Several other clips from YouTube Audio Library, free sound & AudioMicro
Find your way, lit only by your magic crossbow bolts.
Click to move or shoot, right-click to change modes. Beware that the menu takes 2 seconds to load, and we don't know why...
(Update)
By Popular demand, we now have a zip file download!
(Update 2)
Made file size smaller for faster downloads and faster start of game load time.
Design:
Paul Schwarzwalder
Phoenix Smith
Programming:
Paul Schwarzwalder
Phoenix Smith
Art and Animation:
Lynne Startup
Level Design:
Jami Schwarzwalder
Phoenix Smith
Music:
Coldharvest I by Ethan Helfrich of Rest You Sleeping Giant (Free Music Archive)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sound Effects:
Archery arrow release - AM (AudioMicro)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Footsteps by InspectorJ (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Ringing Ambient Background (YouTube Audio Library)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Water dripping in cave by lebcraftlp (freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
cave waterdrops by voltae(freesound.org)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Several other clips from YouTube Audio Library, free sound & AudioMicro
| Windows | http://thecatspajamas.itch.io/a-shot-in-the-dark |
| Mac | http://thecatspajamas.itch.io/a-shot-in-the-dark |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=66266 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 93% | 2 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.55 | 292 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.36 | 355 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 3.55 | 468 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.79 | 106 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.90 | 90 |
| Theme(Jam) | 3.72 | 475 |
- Very effective visuals that tie in with game play.
- Combination of audio and visuals creates a nice mood.
- Innovative mechanics.
- Runs well.
Things that could be improved (IMO):
- Camera movement in first person is too loose.
- Ends abruptly.
Excellent work.
I feel the graphical style, albeit stylish and simplistic was a bit ruined by the gradual mixing of colours, the initial black white green was great (less so the green), but when purple, red and blue started being thrown in the mix that threw the style off a lot for me.
(Also the crosshair when you click is red, and the platforms you walk on are green, this is a bad design decision)
The game fits well to the theme, using right/left click to play, I've never played a game quite like this one, so for me it's innovative.
The mood is great, it really feels as if there's some kind of meaning to the game, and overall the game is solid.
Now onto issues I had with the game:
For me, right click wouldn't work most of the time, this was very frustrating for me. I would spam right click to bring my crossbow up, but it would only react 1/20 times.
I have ignored this bug for the sake of my review, under the premise and hope that you'll be implementing a fix for this.
Another issue is that if you're in the crossbow view and you open the ESC menu, you don't have a cursor, so you can't change your settings.
Also, you can get stuck in the level if you run across a gap, where you were supposed to fall down.
Thank you for a great entry and a great experience, I hope to see your games in the future as well, and I hope that you continue to develop and polish this game further, because I would play it. :)
Five flash arrows from five)
I had a bit of jankiness with right-click detection, sometimes I had to press it a few times to switch modes. But nothing game-breaking.
A bit of polish, maybe some more levels and more clarity regarding some of the mechanics - the different "height" in levels isn't very clear atm - would make this a great game.
I loved it. One of my personal favorites so far!
It just needed to be a bit more snappy, faster swap between perspectives and a less agonizingly long and not immediately visible arrow charge (lerp it so the initial backwards movement is quick, but a full charge still takes some time!). Metroid Other M comes to mind as a good example of snappy perspective change like that (this could be great on a WiiU with the remote really).
You could also add more conventional wasd/analogue stick controls for movement in the future without the theme restrictions, but pointing where to go did work well enough.
The shadows being far off from her feet at some point were a bit weird (they seem to work right in the last level).
Sound or animation (even just a colour change) was really missing on the buttons.
Only handling could be improved.
5/5
The only thing which seemed a little bit off was 1st person FOV - it seemed that the distance to objects in FPP mode was way higher than in TPP mode (ojbects in FPP seemed to be further away than in TPP).
I love everything about it, just put some nice music and add more complicated levels and it'll be perfect :)
How can I follow up on what you guys are doing? Twitter maybe? :)
Great entry!
Nice mechanics, I liked how it evolve within the levels.
Nice work.
(Ps : I get some performances issues with the last level)
It's an interesting concept, to be fair, but I'm not a fan of the trial-and-error gameplay.
I've made a let's play video if you want to check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhaSv2QOzpI