Cool concept. Took a minute to understand though

Funny little horror game. Feel a little bad inviting people over to be eaten though, gotta say...

I really love this concept... sacrifice for dark god, you know)))

The mood in this game is outstanding. It has a charming retro Flash game look to it. The silhouette of the monster is delightfully creepy, and there's just the right amount of colour applied to the psychic ability. Paired with the screams of the martyrs and the crunching sounds, plus the distorted sounds in the music, it was an evocative experience.

The gameplay was simple, but straightforward. It was strange that the stairs were basically anywhere on the floor, as if people magically had the power to levitate upwards, haha, but I found it amusing. I was confused by how the health and score metres were affected; it seems like the people have one hit KOs and I couldn't get two people in a row to the attic in succession, but each person I led up there seemed to give anywhere from 30 to 80 points. I also felt as though the controls were somewhat unresponsive, like there are slight delays when I press a key to go up or down the stairs. I'm not sure if it was intentional for the challenge, but I think the need to weave between the wandering enemies demands less of a delay in the controls. Perhaps it was just my machine, as I did notice the game lagged a ton when I tried to stream it on Discord to show a friend.

(I just took a quick look at the video gameplay; I didn't realize you could wait on the balcony. :face_palm: I basically just tried to rush it every time lmao.)

Also, if a person could really be led into a dark house with zombie-like creatures and not immediately think they need to get the heck out, I mean, that's really on them, isn't it? :joy: All kidding aside, the game was just the right amount of creepy and I love this dark take on the theme.

@random-storykeeper thanks :) - not sure about the lag issue. I like to make my games challenging, but this one is pretty hard. As you spotted, there are a couple of safe areas which help (bottom right room and central balcony).

I might need to raise the health, just a little, but you *can* survive encounters with zombies. It's just that if you're not careful they will kill you pretty damn fast.

The game is quite tricky already so I didn't want people to fiddle about finding the stairs, so I decided to just make a big central chunk of the house the stairs.

I tried to make the intro text a little cryptic and flavourful - "uninjured means you are more delicious" - so, the more health you have the more points you get for the sacrifice.

There is also a suspense element, in that if you rush you will probably die - if you try to calm yourself, relax and wait for an opportunity you'll do better.

Thanks for the detailed feedback :) cheers

Nice concept

Nice concept

The concept is great, but I'm sad to say that the execution is mediocre, but that's ok, I had the same problem with my game too, that's just the nature of game jams I guess!

I see you had the idea to something that was almost like a stealth game: avoid contact with enemies and make it through a house. You had a good idea to make it unique - with the fact that the player cannot see in the dark with a side on view, and the ability to see anywhere in the house with a click - but it'd not fully realised.

First of all, there's no incentive to click anywhere that isn't near the player, because it's not beneficial to see anywhere in the house other than right next to you. Moving up a floor isn't dangerous because you can see silhouettes in the window, so you just need to keep spamming click around you to make sure you aren't being jumped, and watch the window for a silhouette to know when its safe. I woud've given the player a permanent - but short - light source that is always on top of them so you're never sure what you're walking into. And without a "mana" bar or equivalent, there's no reason the psychic button couldn't have been held rather than clicked, because you can spam with no consequence.

The width of the house is also either irrelevant, or unfair. if the key is on the left half of the house, you can grab it without ever needing to walk past a zombie, because stairs are everywhere, If the key is on the right side of the house, its unfair because you *have* to walk through a zombie to get to that half; they don't stagger their patrols enough for there to be a gap.

I also found a bug where you can repeatedly press Space to spawn the key in a new location. It resets your score, yes, but on the first run this isn't a concern because you don't teleport back to the beginning.

Interesting concept, but unfortunately not realised because of the design.

I like the idea of looking at your character from an outside perspective and only being able to see what is going on every now and then. The only complaint that I would have is that the house is too small and that you cannot really do anything about the enemies other than just wait. For me this caused me to have the key at a position where I could not really go. So if you want to turn this into a full thing? Make it bigger. Good idea for this theme and hope to see you again next time!

@finn-truman Thanks for the feedback

The game is a proof of concept and needs some tweekining, but I made some difficult choices in the short time available.

All I can do is report from my gameplay testing on some respects: it *is* beneficial, sometimes, to look elsewhere in the level, but really it should be beneficial more often. So tweaking here would be good.

I thought about the lamp idea, bit didn't like it. The game is supposed to be claustrophobic, and a little disorienting. The psychic eye is on a timer, so you can spam it a little, but not fully spam it. The psychic eye has a nice psychedelic touch, and has several parameters that can be tweaked; area of effect etc.

You don't *have* to walk through a zombie (watch my gameplay video) - but I agree, in that the zombie routes/movements need to be tweaked to allow more opportunity.

I think it is realised, just could be realised a bit better. My primary goal is to make something unique and something atmospheric. Of course, gameplay is very important, but the bones are there. The fact that the key is random is also why it is a "repeating" game, again, could tweak it so that key appears in an easy place on 1st martyr then appears in trickier and tricker places as you progress.

Thanks for bug report - will have to look into that.

Cheers,

@hare-software thanks for feedback,

I think zombie movement/routes can be tweaked, the idea is for the house to be quite claustrophobic.

And no team, just me - the sort of games I make should really be in the compo and not the jam. But I like to use royalty free assets sometimes to speed things up - you can't do that at all in the compo.

Cheers,

@fishbrain Whoops, I mispelled 'theme' as 'team'. Totallly get what you mean btw, it is the right scope for compo, but making all those assets would really take some time.

a thrilling experience!
SFX are really good, except for the collect key sounds- really annoying. Thunder and other sound effects are really good.
The graphics and the athmosphere is cool....
The question here though is ... Why?
Why do you need to collect the key ? and feed yourself into the Kraken monster ?
the gameplay is too dark and a sort of hide and seek that gives you no suspance at all, since then you need to give yourself up to the Kraken. Not really an exciting way to go :)

I like the simplicity though, one screen, a house, few objectives. The issue is that they don't really glue up together, given also the theme of this LDJAM.

But enjoying experience nonetheless :) So thank you for your entry.

Hey man, very cool and beautiful game. I loved the Tim Burtons feel like.

@notapixelstudio Thanks for the feedback. Ha! The key is a very simple arcade sound (from bfxr) -OK, agree, a little annoying, but wanted something simple and arcade-like to say "yes! you got the key!".

This game is getting interesting feedback. You ask, why? It makes perfect sense to me, but it's left a little up to the gamers imagination. The thing in the attic takes psychic control of you and assits you with the psychiic eye, some previous adventurer defeated the creature and locked it in the attic. It also needs to feed on your energy - the concept fits fine with the theme I think.

The "pay off" (reward) is simply the nice sound and visual effects of being devoured by the monster.

My approach to LD may be different to many. I want my game to be unique more than anything else - that means that sometimes, for some people, it doesn't "work"...

But I am glad you enjoyed it. Cheers :)

My first thought when I saw the icon was like: “Looks interesting but is probably click bait”, then opens the gameplay trailer, and my reaction was just “What!”, aka the art perspective is very striking!

I think the house is a little too small, this game feels a lot like the one screen arcade games like pac-man / donkey kong / popeye. So I think that if you add more routes in the house and some unpredictabilities in the enemies, this could be really great :)

@ristoretto Thanks for your feedback. And you're spot on! - thanks for seeing the comparison with retro single screen games, especially Popeye. This was the style of game I was going for. And yes, definitely some room for those tweaks. cheers,

Love the music and art in this.