The Hidden Soul by Ovid
Story
Your friend was captured in the phantom realm! you've got to clear all the phantoms and save your friend. In order to walk in the phantom realm you have to have an anti-phantom-lamp, and you can only walk in the area that's lighted by the lamp, you've got to stick to the lamp's loop of light. Can you save your friend?
How to play:
Use W and S to go back and forwards
Use A and D to rotate
Use Q and E to strafe
Use J swap Items
Use L to open a door
Use K to shoot
Use I to reload manually (it reloads automatically anyways)
When holding the lamp you can move freely but you can't fight back.
When holding the gun you can shoot but you are bound to the circle/loop of light.
Walk on the pick-ups on the ground to collect them.
Other bits
This game was written in a custom game engine using C++ and OpenGL
Recommended: - When the game is done loading rotate a little bit to increase the FPS. - Don't play on fullscreen
Important
If you get this error:
Click on the installer in the game's folder called VC_redist.x64.exe, this should install the necessary files for the game to run.
Have fun! :D
| Youtube | https://www.dropbox.com/s/x34v2j7qkxizf68/The%20Hidden%20Soul.zip?dl=0 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/the-hidden-soul |
Ratings
| Overall | 956th | 3.389⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 888th | 3.272⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1108th | 3.033⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1474th | 2.772⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1009th | 3.326⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 625th | 3.375⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 668th | 3.5⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 44🗳️ | 66🗨️ |
This is a fun 3d/2d mix shooter game! It took me a little while to fully realise the game mechanics and using the lamp and stuff. I could've obviously checked the instructions as there it clearly says that. But either way, after getting used to the feel of the game, it started to be really fun! The sprites of the monsters were actually sick. I don't know what it was about them, but they looked awesome. Even when they fired at you with something, the animation and the sprite isn't like "next-gen" but it still looked good.
Also props for adding music and good sound effects, it made the game a lot more interesting! And the mood was also cool.
Huge props for doing this game, and a cool entry! :)
The lamp mechanics are good.
As I was walking I had troubles judging how far I could go when the lamp was put down.
I believe having a visual indicator for how far from the circle the player is (tinting the peripheral view or something else) would be great.
It took me some time to get used to the "swap to move" mechanic, but after that it was fun to navigate in the dungeon and kill some angry mobs. I really liked the audio atmosphere and the pixelated graphics.
The game was a bit difficult for me and I didn't make it very far, but I usually almost don't play 3D FPS games, so it may not be as hard for someone used to this kind of gameplay.
On the technical side, great job on the engine, it works beautifully! I played on Linux via Wine and it felt bug free.
@chocolat-endive it works on Wine? nice, I'm really surprised, I berally excepted it to work on Windows
@cookienoir yup, raycasters are very simple and fun to make, especially with the great tutorial we found for the rendering part
Thanks @feiko :) we aimed for that feel
I also like the core gameplay idea of having to switch between your lantern and your gun, but the execution itself is poor. There are these brief moments of input lag that you get after reloading or switching weapons, which may have been unintentional. It could have used an indicator that told you when you could shoot again.
The start could have also been more clear. The instructions don't match the actual controls and there's no mention of the light mechanic. Because of the small room and the angle of the camera, the circle of light isn't really visible. I was stuck for 3 minutes trying to understand why I couldn't get through the door.
Yeah, you mentioned the main problems we have in this game, the controls aren't the best, they're pretty unintuitive and annoying for the first time. About that input lag after reloading, originally we did it when there was no reload animation and forgot to adjust it to the animation so there's now a weird lag after the animation is done.
About the start, we would love to add a tutorial level but we had about 20 minutes before the deadline when we were finished with the level design, so we stayed with the "Controls in the LD page" but the writing at the start was a pretty bad idea.
Thanks for the feedback :)
enjoyed the game a lot !
Last words to game: I like this kind of wolf3d game, its retro but its 3d so :)
One last note: I always write down honest review, because everybody need that, not just nice craps with some bullshit, but sometime I will aperceite very good games. So if this review insult you, but use it well :) Anyway every game is counting so :)
The game itself lacks balance and mechanisms but your engine is really promising.
If you improve it between two gamejam, you could achieve to do a more complete game !
Nice mood and graphics.
Btw, what do you think we should balance?
Ok, I didn't noticed about the light circle ! I'll re-test it
Ok so I would like to correct my review: the balance problem is not really the firerate but the tankiness of foes and the "freeze" time after using the gun (after the end of firing animation, you cannot reload/change weapon instantly).
Good job guys !
The controls were hard, and I definitely prefer when i can look around with my mouse, having strafe and turn as different buttons is not something that I'm used to at all (but if the game was longer I'm sure i would get used to it).
Really cool to see someone do something totally custom. Great job!
The controls are a pain at the start, but you get used to it in the second run.
My friend made the enemy sprites and I still have nightmares ...