sound is striking!

and game is fun too

Nice game, enjoyed it very much. Keep it up!

Great concept, but I felt that the levels were too easy and not really a puzzle. There was only 1 level where you really had to maneuvre between the blocks, but for the rest is was almost always: walk straight to the memory cell and then to the exit, and it worked.

This game could have potential but I think the levels need to be tweaked for it to reach that potential. Still a fun game though :D

(Oh and perhaps a bug, even though I won, it still displayed "game over" along with the win message)

I got 8 memories! Some of the later level layouts are very interesting and cleverly designed. With some better art and music, I can see myself playing that for hours :)

@jelbre thank you for the feedback. After submitting I was a bit worried that the game was too easy. After getting the basic game mechanics in place I had spent a couple of hours looking for different patterns for each level, hoping to find at least a few difficult levels. I thought I had found a few but apparently they are not difficult enough. In the final hours I got side-tracked with some other aspects of the game (such as the portraits of the ten children) and that left me little time to hunt for challenging levels. I think next time I will spend less time on content and more time on game mechanics, though I do believe that the ten portraits of Gretchen's children add an incentive to complete the game.

The "Game Over" message just means that you completed the game, regardless of whether you win or lose. After reading your comment however, I realize that it is redundant, as a simple "GAME WON" message would be sufficient.

You really outdid yourself with the story. The levels didn't have any real challenge, but the reward at the end really makes it all worth it.

@adonisdevs thank you for playing. Complete just two more levels and you will see images of each of the ten children, as remembered by Gretchen.

Nice take on the theme! Well done! Glad to see there is still some love for LÖVE! :smile:

@mrjorts thanks! The story took longer than I thought it would. To be honest some of the ideas for the background story came to me before the theme was announced. The idea of an older mother in search of her lost children gestated in my mind for several days before the competition began. As I was working on the game, I decided that Gretchen would have ten children, one for each level. The result is that each level is a mini-quest, replete with obstacles, a sub-goal (find the memory cell) and a final goal (exit the SEER state).

In addition, I wanted to have the game based on being inside someone's head, since I noticed that while I was thinking of various game ideas before the theme announcement, I spent a lot of time inside my own head. I think we all do to some extent. In this way Gretchen's head is like a mirror to each one of us.

@goutye thank you for the comment. For the theme I wanted to experiment with the idea of memory and space. There is a long history of using the concept of space as an analogue for memory, as is evident for example in book 10 of St. Augustine's _Confessions_, where the metaphor of a mansion is used to express the vast, rich expanse that is each individual's memory.

To use LÖVE was an easy choice for me. It is the only game-development framework I am familiar with, and on top of that I like Lua for its speed and ease of use. I do regret however that LÖVE games are less accessible for users who don't have Windows. I am a big fan of Linux but unfortunately I don't have the time or resources to create a Linux executable. Hopefully the Linux users out there can use the source code to play on their own platforms.

I like the concept and how unique is it, I just feel that the levels are too simple and I would like to be able to hold down the walk button instead of having to press it multiple times

This game is really interesting potential puzzle wise. I liked getting a close up for all the pictures in the game.

@johnnydalvi I hear you. Originally the game was meant to be more like a turn-based game in which the player takes his or her time and strategizes, trying to predict VIPER's next moves in Gretchen's head. But for better or worse it turned into something like a race game, where in some cases the avatar must rush to the exit before being trapped or blockaded; I agree that holding down the walk button would help but I didn't have time to implement it.

@chaitae thanks for your comment. The close-up portraits were done rather quickly using Gimp; they don't quite look like children (more like worn-out adults) but it was the best I could do given the time and resources.

I like the idea and the shory was definitely a good motivation for completing the game. All of the critical comments I was going to make where mentioned above. I felt that the story was a lot to read a the beggining of the level, maybe it could be separated in chunks and the player could press a button to keep reading, but I understand that the limited time didn't help for that haha.

Nicely done! Felt satisfied with those child portraits.

This was, very weird. I think there is some interesting design space with the idea of a maze that grows before you like this. I don't think there's enough information to make strategic choices about how to move, you just try it, fail, and restart, which feels a bit bad to me. I'd like to have some information about how fast the blocks will move so that I can figure out and plan the puzzle beforehand. Then you can have more levels that have failure states, and maybe work on a little bit of puzzle generation instead of static puzzles (though I know that's asking a lot!).

Interesting game mechanic. I really wish key repeat was on so I didn't have to keep tapping my keyboard to move. Otherwise, well done!

I aggree about the puzzle being too easy, I'm not sure what you could do to change that. If they could turn in a predictable way Either by having arrows on the floor or some other mechanism, it would cause the player to have to stop and think a lot more. It's a tricky problem, you need something that is individually easy to predict but complex when in combination with others.

The kids are a bit horrific, one looks a bit like Noel Fielding though :-)

A good game idea, the music should be improved. The graphics are good.
But our game is better)))

@rodrigo-molina, I hear you about all the text at the beginning. My wife gasped when she first saw the instructions. This was my intention as I wanted to break some of the sacrosanct rules of game design. Also having all that text crammed into one page jibes with the theme of running out of space.

@incobalt Thanks, I think your suggestion about generating puzzles instead of having static puzzles is a great idea; I vaguely had some idea like that during development but I didn't want to risk having the player get stuck in impossible levels. But your idea has a lot of potential and with more development time it would have been feasible.

@lerc I salute you for your honesty. It's true that some of the kids do look a bit beaten up (Sally and Mary clearly being exceptions). However, I think this adds to the story because it shows that Gretchen loves all her children regardless of how ugly they are (and in this sense she triumphs over Ujarak, who sees the children only as lifeless objects to be _used_).

@gamebuilder Oh I see! Very clever choice then hahaha, great!

As others have said the puzzles were a bit simple, though I think there is a lot of potential for good puzzles with the mechanics you have. Having the faster walls close to the player would force them to think and make decisions about which route they want to take. Having the slower walls would be farther away, means that unless the player thinks very many moves ahead that they could setup traps as the player navigates the moving maze. I think for some of the earlier puzzles it would be beneficial to have a smaller playing area make them tight but quick. Anyways this is just if you wanted to tweak things for a post jam run down sort of thing. Anyways I had fun.

Have fun out there!

This was definitely different. I enjoyed the game, but as has been said often, the levels were too easy. I completed all ten without restarting any. I get what you have said about the wall of text at the beginning, but many game design rules are sacrosanct for a reason. Breaking them just to break them is not a good idea and your wife's reaction was right. A wall of text like that makes people not want to read it, which is a shame as it provides a deep story to what is happening, although not really a good understanding of how VIPER expands. (That is not necessarily bad as figuring that out is part of the puzzle.)

Really interesting idea! Gameplay was good and I liked you draw for the game!

Liked the idea of having the maze grow depending on what you do. Moving the character across the level I think takes too long since its a lot of spamming. Would recommend making the levels shorter and the movement more drastic

@phlip45 glad you had fun with the game and thank you for the suggestion. I agree that requiring the player to plan several moves ahead would make the game more challenging and fun.

@james-dunlap there is a lot of food for thought in your remarks. It's true that often the rules of game design have solid reasons behind them. On the other hand breaking rules in itself is a form of play. Case in point is Ludum Dare — its underlying premise breaks the rule that a good game requires a long time and a large team to develop. Ludum Dare puts the fun back into development and in my view it encourages us to break the rules.