Eclipse by SaraMartins
A journey that starts. Will you have the power to be the same?

This game was made by Isaque Sanches, Sara Martins, Tiago Salgado and Vasco Rodrigues.
On the keyboard, use WASD / Arrows and the Mouse to play. Move the mouse to CHECK your POWER.
POST-JAM UPDATE: Now you can find an updated version on Itch.io below the submitted version, with improved animations, lighting and an intro screen. Check it out :)
Eclipse is a single player mythical game based on observation and exploration. Traversing a maze, you will find your true power. Let yourself immerse in the path to discovery...



| Windows | https://saramartins.itch.io/eclipse |
| Linux | https://saramartins.itch.io/eclipse |
| macOS | https://saramartins.itch.io/eclipse |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/eclipse |
Ratings
| Overall | 361th | 3.456⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 658th | 2.779⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 292th | 3.294⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 731th | 2.868⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 183th | 4.116⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 58th | 4.088⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 166🗳️ | 75🗨️ |
On the flipside, the gameplay itself seems a simple, and artificially difficult / fiddly, simply because it can be hard to see where you're standing. Making this clearer by tweaking the lighting or raising the camera position could be good.
But overall, definitely cool :) Nice work.
- i like the light indication to solve the puzzle
- mucis fits the game
I wish there were some more game mechanics on top of mazes. The introduction and starting animation was so exciting, but solving maze after maze seems disappointing. Please don't get me wrong, I don't want to offend you, art and sound give so much potential to this game and but it stays unused
The puzzle or maze type game was pretty nicely made
Well Done!
And also the mood was so great. That light in the darkness of the night looked fantastic.
I suggest adding surprises for the player to experience while walking through the maze. Like adding an evil ghost to follow the player, so the player has to decide faster.
Or evil trees! (It came to my mind just right now)
But in total, It was great. keep working on it. :D
I gotta say, it's really hard to maneuver through the maze, you only get a rough sense of where you are located.
That's my only real issue with the game, but it really gets frustrating over time.
The art is great, music superb and it overall has a very relaxes and nice atmosphere to it, with the gameplay sadly being not as much fun as it could have been.
again, loved the music
The angle change with the mouse was really cool but you didn't really use it for anything other than seeing the end of the maze, you may as well have just had the higest angle for the gameplay. I wish you'd used it for something! Like have a section in front of the maze and one in the back so you actually have a reason to switch back and forth, it could also allow you to vary up the gameplay at certain points!
I don't really know what the true power I was supposed to find is, all I found was the exit and I didn't really want to slowly go through another maze again to find out.
This game has a load of great points, decent polish and an interesting mechanic, amazing artwork, atmospheric music but it's kind of ruined by this lack of focus on some things. Like you can't really focus on all that atmosphere cause your focus is immediately on the slow maze that you've already solved but need to finish still, and you never use that mechanic and you don't get any kind of ending other than a smile. Just a bit of thought into some key details could do your game wonders, looking forward to the next one!
Music and artstyle set a nice atmosphere. The objective could have been made a bit clearer. I was quite confused to just start at the beginning again when I finished the level.
Well done.
The concept is really original, and very well executed. It's really enjoyable to cross the mazes, and the art style and music are nice.
Good job !
Thank you so much for playing :)
I agree with other feedbacks you received, loosing and winning... not much of a diffence to see but on a jam i'm not gonna be hard on you
I'm gonna play it again, just for pleasure, here take 5stars
Very relaxing maze with a nice poetry touch. Really good job! :)
Occasionally I would seemingly get stuck in a place, but the arrow-system in the interface sort-of made up for that. I'm not sure how you'd be able to fix that without taking away from the experience.
I'm left pondering the meaning, especially since the 'maze' is very simple in the daylight cut-scene, but transforms into a more complex shape by moonlight. I don't really need an explanation, I just like pondering :slight_smile:
About meanings, I'm really glad it got you pondering, it definitely was one of our goals, make it about reflecting, feelings and mood, and maybe even about relating the little guy with the person who plays. Darkness gives and takes, maybe that's something I can say without taking you the experience of pondering :D
Thank you so much for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed :)
EDIT: Now I saw the moon! My bad. Mistakes were made lessons were learned.
I don't see the power mechanic within this game, but my game doesn't include that either so I can't criticize that a lot.
The music was nice and fitting!
Overall, I enjoyed it, but I can't say that it is complete. Changing some of the levels more would improve the game, and adding a small story behind it would make your game even better! Well done, and better luck next time! :smile:
The camera work is nice, graphics are beautiful, lighting is well done. Music was very nice and pleasant.
Overall, well done, however here's **some things I disliked / would like to see changed.**
-The game was too dark. My screen settings that I have is already several shades darker than most other peoples screens, so a dark game is several shades darker for me, where normally people can see some shapes, i can see only darkness. So that's a thing I think you should address and keep in mind, that not everyone runs on the same settings as you. So keeping game with settings (darkness / brightness) that works for jsut about everyone and not only for you will be a good practice, same applies to running game in full screen, I typically personally never run a game in full screen.
So with my screen being so dark, it was quite difficult to near impossible to see the maze and navigate through it, but I managed anyways.
However, setting brightness and the full screen setting aside, this was an amazing game that was really enjoyable.
Thank you for your suggestion, and for playing!
Regarding the game being too dark: we know that the lighting of the character is a bit difficult, we are trying to improve that, but the countours of the maze are noticeable. I personally have my computer screen on the lowest setting of brightness, so I do understand what you're trying to say. However if the whole maze was more lighted it would be just a simple maze to go through, no real challenge, and even more boring gameplay wise. We did try to make a compromise between that, as I use my settings on lowest, and we felt that more light would break the challenge.
About running a game in full screen, I guess it's something about taste. We also felt that running the game windowed took away the immersion of the experience. Also, when you buy a game, it is a wide spread standard (with exceptions) to start on full screen. For this experience, it felt fitting for the mood.
Thank you again :)
About the story, we really meant it as an interpretation for the player, to make him feel and mauybe connect with the journey of the little guy. We do like metaphors. We are improving some animations for the winning and loosing, to tie the story, but having a backstory is not something we are planning to do.
Thank you so much for playing and for enjoying it :)
Maybe you should be more clear showing that you can see the moon passing by the sun, because I just realized it by reading the comments and the first time that I played the game I thought that you don't have time limit or that the game doesn't fit the theme of the LD, because I finished it without any inconvenient (even when I think that the game is beautiful and very well done), but then I realized that you have this natural timer and that you where running out of time.
I love the work, the art and music, really artistic and pretty game :)
Good work!
[Danae streams Ludum Dare 39: Day 3, part 1: Eclipse](https://youtu.be/LN1svjCl2z0?t=2h51m10s)
This was interesting … The art is quite lovely, but I'm not sure I would call this a game. I wish there was more experimental gameplay, not just the maze, which was more tedious than challenging.
But, nice job :)