Spirit Dungeon by Tarcisiotm

[raw]
made by Tarcisiotm for LD 43 (JAM)

Spirit Dungeon

Enter the spirit dungeon. Your soul is lost. To recover it, go through the dungeon, sacrificing your skills and world perception, to best all the challenges and emerge victorious.

Controls

-Wasd / Arrow keys to move -C to hit -Space to skip dialogue

screen<em>1280x720</em>2018-12-10_17-40-29.png

screen<em>1920x1080</em>2018-12-10_19-17-39.png

Credits

Sound track: https://patrickdearteaga.com/chiptune-8-bit-retro/

Tileset, character and slime: https://secrethideout.itch.io/rogue-dungeon-tileset-16x16

Ratings

Overall 669th 3.262⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 684th 3.048⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 754th 2.857⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 661th 3.238⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 762th 2.313⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 732th 3.026⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Given 9🗳️ 2🗨️

Feedback

HellSquirrel
05. Dec 2018 · 14:56 UTC
Nice work, good mechanic with light cutting and camera distance. Mb shouldn't enable to take an apple when full hp and highlight the key in the dark
arzi
05. Dec 2018 · 16:35 UTC
Nice game! The zoom effect was a bit weird, maybe because tilebased games like this don't really use one.
banjoduarte
05. Dec 2018 · 20:10 UTC
Alright game. Zooming was weird and combat was rough, but good job completing movement, sprite anims, and cutscenes.
Minechael
06. Dec 2018 · 00:14 UTC
I like the idea of ramping up the difficulty by taking things away from the player. Could be cool if something new is gained when a sacrifice is made. nice job!
gil4
06. Dec 2018 · 12:53 UTC
Really liked the idea of making a sound to see what's happening around you. A polished and interesting entry, well done!
ProdigalSon
07. Dec 2018 · 19:31 UTC
When I first read the description I thought it was going to be me choosing which ability to give up in order to continue but I see letting the game take charge of that allows for more control over the design. Simple and nice
randomphantom
16. Dec 2018 · 14:26 UTC
Interesting mechanic of making the game more challenging. I feel that the camera focus was a little all over the place though, and I didn't like the idea of having the sight bubble bobbing in and out in an unpredictable manner. Music was a little too blaring and loud at the start.
kbf123
21. Dec 2018 · 22:09 UTC
Not bad, I wouldn't call the game hard, but it did kind of get annoying when I had to attack to see.
acaral
28. Dec 2018 · 18:42 UTC
Very polished with an interesting graphic neogeo-style zoom. You deserve a lot more visibility because your entry is very neat, the gameplay is cool and it's fun. I hope you will be over 20 votes :wink:
neowhoru
30. Dec 2018 · 22:19 UTC
Feels very good - the gameplay is smooth. great game.
rosypenguin
31. Dec 2018 · 17:57 UTC
Neat entry with a unique concept of taking away the player's senses. I wasn't too sure of the difference between the second and third sacrifice, as with both I could just spam the attack button to "see". Combat could be more difficult, and the spikes were annoying in that they hit even if the player is barely stepping inside of the tile; I got hurt from spikes way more than any enemy. But overall I had fun with this and I wanted to keep playing to see what was in store for me.
Linear
31. Dec 2018 · 19:02 UTC
There have been several games based around this concept, but what I like about yours is that you executed it a bit better. Most entries based around taking away player abilities make the mistake of never teaching the player about their abilities, so when you get to the checkpoint and the person says "I will now remove your ability to doublejump", you go "wait, I could doublejump!?"

But here, you're removing things like vision and light, so it's immediately obvious what has changed. That being said, I loathed the spikes with a passion. The trouble with the spike puzzles is that they got very repetitive and later on you had to stop in exactly the right spot in between two spike tiles in the dark. It was a challenge based on your ability to adapt to the player character's movement speed and acceleration, not one in which prior skill or problem-solving capabilities gave the player any advantage.
🎤 Tarcisiotm
04. Jan 2019 · 14:21 UTC
Thank you all for the feedback!

I deeply appreciate the detailed feedback provided.

Sorry for the spikes! Sadly this was the case of being too close to the game: I played those areas so much that the difficulty wasn't there for me anymore, and I didn't get the chance to have someone test it for me before submitting the game. Next time I'll try to have someone play it to make sure I am not facing the "dev's blindness". My intention was not to have something super "hardcore", but something just and challenging, so I failed there.

Also agree with the zooming. I believe it got the feeling of "claustrophobia" I wanted to give players in some parts, but it was definitely overused and didn't work all around the game. I will be paying more attention to that next time, for this entry, however, to some extent, I wanted to have worked more on it, but of course ran out of time.

I could also have worked better on the ramping up the difficulty, especially with the spikes, to get users used to it before really pushing it to the edge.

Thank you all again for taking the time to do this, and until next time!