The Loop by TheVideoGamester
Based on the design choices, sound design, art, and humor common in point-and-clicks of old. This game does play into the old style arbitrary puzzles to some degree, though I tried to limit that. So far the fastest I've completed it is with 1 loop on the counter.
I am also clearly not artistically inclined. But I also limited myself to a pallette of 5 colors with 5 shades/tints for a total of 25 colors randomly generated by a bot. I did make one exception to that rule with the screwdriver for design reasons.
I also tried to imitate some old Foley techniques with an older mic to try and get the sound for the intro to have that retro feel.
Note: There is one serious bug I couldn't squash. If you make the window lose focus while loading from the menu into the game it will open into a tiny window. As long as you don't click out during that load you should be fine. Also the start sound seems to be a bit louder than it should have been so if wearing headphones, maybe turn it down a bit.
Theme - Stuck in a loop The theme for this game is inspired by the mechanics of Minit. I adapted that to fit into the arbitrary puzzle nature of old point-and-clicks so each run you gain a bit more knowledge about how each puzzle is solved. The only thing kept between loops is your inventory and knowledge of the puzzles. Most puzzle answers are set. The only randomized piece is who the time bomber is. This game has three endings. The Good, The Bad, and the Mediocre. Each with its own unique cutscene.
Controls -
Left click. Click on everything. Your inventory in the bottom left. Characters. Bits of odd art. etc...
Story -
You play as Sister Ruthia of the Cybercloth Order. On your way to a gathering where you will become one with the Allseeing, your cyber rail is hit by a terrorist with a time bomb. Being just outside its effect radius you are orbiting its event horizon causing you to continually relive the loop. There may be a way to stop it, just may take a few loops to do so...
Tools -
Gamemaker Studio 2.3, Aseprite, Abundant Music, Audacity, a case of Monster Energy, and your mom.
| Youtube | https://videogamester.itch.io/the-loop |
| Youtube | https://videogamester.itch.io/the-loop |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/the-loop |
Ratings
| Overall | 412th | 3.239⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 445th | 2.977⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 434th | 3.012⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 288th | 3.651⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 429th | 3.089⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 243th | 3.267⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 120th | 3.28⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 299th | 3.183⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 51🗳️ | 67🗨️ |
Idk if I won though, it said I had to kill one of the 5, and when I did I got an animation where the headstone was pushed onto train tracks or something, and then nothing happened.
Anyways, good job with this! It was pretty fun trying to figure out what to do, and being able to randomly kill my sisters.
Also having to redo that first door puzzle became a little tedious eventually.
I did play this for a while though, it was fun to trying to find the killer and work out how to interact with the world. Nice one :)
I didn't understand what is the trigger to start the loop, but I realy liked it.
And now I have an idea of the name of my next hamster hahahaha.
@aterlamia I think at the very least it help me stay consistent for a cohesive look. Was an interesting challenge to be sure. Thanks for the feedback!
@m8rix Lol. One of my favorite text hints. Probably the most like retro point-and-clicks. Glad you enjoyed the puzzles :smiley:
@pedrohph Yeah I came up with the reason just before the end. A Time Bomb. A bomb that blows up time. Kind of a play on words. But I didn't have much time at that point so its a little rushed and unclear. I'm sure Hammond, the orc, would be glad to hear you like the name he chose.
You say not artistically inclined, but I think you did a good job. The color palette is pretty good. Just by thinking about palette is a good step!
Nice work, stick with it.
@dharby Thanks :smile: Always been more on the tech side of game development. Been trying to learn a bit here and there about the art side though. To help communicate with artists on my team I work with better and figure out how to give good feedback on the art.
I had difficulty understanding the proposal of the game, but it is very well done.
nice sounds at the start though :)
@zackavelli That was a fun little Easter Egg to code in. I considered adding keyboard at one point but decided I wanted to stay true to the retro point-and-click. And I ran low on the time I personally had so I just had to finish before I could test anything more like an optional setting or something.
@indivicivet I'll look into it. I had it crash like that once but I just assumed it was because I was running a fairly heavy simulation in the background. Thanks for letting me know.
@kirbloid Glad you enjoyed it :smile: Spent a decent amount of time on them. Aside from the other sisters. But they were designed to be three of a kind as it were.
Really cool game! I liked the music. I like that you actually added some puzzles and they even have different mechanics. There's a good use of humor (Killer is his mouse's name, lol).
There were some things that weren't clear to me, like why the key-code would change between loops, and at first I didn't understand the purpose of the green paper. If you end up expanding it post-jam, try to make it so the player doesn't have to repeat puzzles with each loop, and having a key code carry into the next loop would be one example of that. But that feedback is only if you want to expand it post-jam; it's a totally-complete game made in 48 hours, so I'm not knocking it!
This really felt like I was playing an old-school point-and-click adventure, minus the "try-everything-until-something-works" aspect. Great job!!
@judgezedd Glad you enjoyed it :smile: Was a fun challenge to build.
@lelulagames At that point you need to try and figure out the time bomber by killing the other characters with the screwdriver. There are several different approaches that will net different endings depending on how many you off. I probably should have included at least one more flavor text to indicate the screwdrivers alternate use because the first is miss-able as I recently found out.
@layne-stokes Your feedback is appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the various endings
Who ever thought the mouse was the killer?
@obi-one Sorry about that. Should have mixed it down a bit more. I forget the laptop I work on has quieter speakers. Glad you enjoyed the puzzles.
@schwede I actually considered making Killer the mouse the bomber at one point :laughing: But I thought it would be a bit too arbitrary and felt many might not find the ending. Glad you enjoyed it :smile:
(I've asked my friend about his twitter, I'll get back to you if he has one)
Just finished the game :-)
At start the image was way too zoomed into the character for my taste, like a character so big on the screen I'm not used to that. But then I got used to it ahah.
The Electric panel was a pain to do each time.
And also at first it was a bit hard to understand, but my bad I never play this kind of puzzle games.
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I kind of liked the story and the events happening. Really loved the text of the weird green guy.
It was nice to enter you world through this game mate :-)
Don't hesitate to checkout our game if you have a minute.
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moral of the story at the end is kind of hilarious ahah.