Candle in the rain by Erkberg
'Candle in the rain' is a short atmospheric adventure about keeping your candle burning bright.
All standalone versions and source are available on itch.io: https://erkberg.itch.io/candle-in-the-rain
The tree puzzle is really hard to figure out, so if you're stuck, here's the solution:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vf13UrdQLu87ElG9DZyp8v7P3zasJ2Yx
~ How to play ~
WASD / Arrows to move, mouse to look around and interact.
Keep your candle alive. Use right mouse button to move your hand down.
~ Tools used ~
Unity, Visual Studio, Blender, GIMP, FL Studio (included stage grand), Audacity, jfxr
~ Special thanks to ~
- my (remote) co-jammers and super-buddies Danny and Marius (they unfortunately didn't finish)
- my wonderful testers Mör and Kasi
~ Timelapse ~
https://youtu.be/XlI9GzEs0Qs
~ Post compo version ~
I've worked on smoothing out the rough edges of the game a bit during the week after the jam. The post compo version is up on itch.io and includes the following changes:
- set the cursor to be confined to the games window
- hid the cursor when it was not used
- forgot that I had used a sprite from the internet as a placeholder and replaced it with a sprite created by me
- tree puzzle is solvable from both sides and slightly easier
- fixed a few bugs (rain audio loop, player sometimes looking away from an interaction, end-sequences of point'n'click puzzles buggy)
- some visual improvements (scattered rocks and grass, level border, player walk animation. a little UI polish)
- hammering home the message of the perspective puzzles by adding text at their end
The compo version is still up on itch.io, so it's up to you to decide whether to play and rate based on that version or try out the smoother post compo version and take the changes noted above into account when rating the game. :)
~ A fun little story from during the jam ~
I sculpted all my models in Blender using a constant detail value of 30, which I believe is quite high, but it just allows me more flexibility, I feel (I'm still a total noob, so any advice is appreciated). So I sculpted the tree for the game and Blender started lagging. I checked the faces-count and it was at a whopping 2.3 million. After applying a 0.01 decimate modifier the lag was gone (and the tree also looked slighty better, less smooth), but I had already saved the .blend file before inside my Unity project and therefor inside my repo. And I had commited, but not pushed that file, which was 140mb large. When trying to push, I noticed that GitHub only supports file sizes up until 100mb (which is quite high already I guess). So in the end I also had to reset my repo. And I will never put .blend-files directly into my projects again (.fbx seems smaller anyway and also there was a bug with Unity and .blend-files that prevented multiple animations from being imported). Lesson learned :)
~ Parting words ~
This jam was just great and I'm kinda in love with how the game turned out ^^. Looking forward to playing a ton of games in the upcoming weeks!
Ratings
| Overall | 533th | 3.42⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 749th | 3⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 476th | 3.36⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 227th | 3.981⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 599th | 3.327⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 168th | 3.654⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 699th | 2.357⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 74th | 3.981⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
Yes, the tree puzzle is problematic. Spoiler alert: You have to look at the tree from the right angle for some time (there's a little hint blinking from time to time).
I actually really want for players to see the ending of the game, which is why I'm currently working on improving this puzzle in the post compo version, so that it can be solved from both sides of the tree and is a little more forgiving.
@owl-and-jackalope: Thank you so much for your comment, I'm really happy that you enjoyed it and played it until the end!
@twistedhawk: Thanks for playing and leaving feedback! There is actually a subtle hint at the tree puzzle, it blinks up briefly every 8 seconds. But it seems this is probably not enough to solve it... In the post-compo version, this puzzle is a bit more forgiving and solvable from two different angles (from the front and the back side of the tree). I hope this helps a bit, although it's probably still quite hard to figure out. :)
That doesn't stop this being an awesome little experience. The atmosphere of this project shines. The mix of the rain and the almost entirely grey colour scheme makes this game feel bleak, but then solving the puzzles feels almost hopeful. The slow walking and constant management of the candle is like an effective annoyance.
I really like this, wish I'd been able to solve the tree :(. Great work!
The movement was painfully slow. It made trying to explore the map really annoying.
@mrchippy: Thanks for your comment! The slow movement is quite intentional to support the mood of the game. And I think the map is small enough that it doesn't really matter to much. (the movespeed has still been increased a little in the post-compo version though)
@mykola: Thank you so, so much for your lovely comment! Another one to truly make my day. I love that you enjoyed the story <3 I added a few visual polishes in the post-compo version, not too much, just litte touches, and I think I'll leave it at this state, because I'm quite satisfied with how it looks. (there's always more stuff to polish, but gotta move on someday ^^)
@alexandroskap: I guess you solved the wall puzzle first :) It's meant to carry the message that problems might be way smaller than they seem at first (or even non-existent) when viewed from a different perspective (and prepare for the tree perspective puzzle mechanically). Or was it the one with the seed? That one is perhaps a little too simple, I have to admit :D
@red-ash: And yet another comment that makes my day, I can't believe it, thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed the game. I love making wholesome stuff these days :)
@jk5000: Thanks for your comment! The slowness is intended to support the mood, but you got a point with it being a little unfinished. I pretty much have three core mechanics in there (candle, point'n'click and perspective) and none of them is fully realized due to time constraints. But hey, you could also just call it casual gameplay :D
for a gamejam i might have preferred a focus on one type of puzzle, the shift from pointNclick to perspective puzzles was a bit confusing to me