[LD47] Falling Asleep by Dark Dungeon Studio
TEAM: SOLO
ENTRY: COMPO

STORY:
You are a sleep agent... your job is to rescue those who are stuck in a nightmare.
Today, you're tasked with rescuing Bobby from a nightmare where he's stuck in an infinite falling loop.
Find a way to fix the dream and wake Bobby up!
CONTROLS: - Left Click: Grab item 1 - Right Click: Gran item 2 - Space: Combine item 1 & 2 into a new item
IMPROVEMENTS To Make: - More levels - Controls must state that it's Click and Hold, not just click
BUGS: - Jittery loading screen - FIXED(No code changes. Fresh build only.): Text disappears during the Tutorial on Chrome and Edge. {Firefox works fine} - FIXED (Small code change): Items not moved into view on different resolutions - FIXED (Small code change): Health -100 bug?
TOOLS & ASSETS USED: - Engine: Unity 3D - Photoshop: Sprites - Music/Effects: Audacity - Music: AIVA
UPDATE: - Uploaded Windows Version - Uploaded Mac Version (NOT TESTED) - Uploaded Linux Version (NOT TESTED)
Ratings
| Overall | 499th | 3.044⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 561th | 2.53⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 386th | 3.121⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 215th | 3.809⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 484th | 2.909⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 120th | 3.603⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 338th | 2.391⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 180th | 3.469⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
You have a very good point there.
I will make a note of that. :smile:
- after tutorial all text was gone tho :(
- some items did not seem to combine, not sure if that is the intention
(played the html version)
The audio was great!
I should've made it more clear.
Items have to be combined in a specific order. (For the player to figure out.)
SPOILER:
- Pillow & Blanket = Bedding
- BedBase & Mattress = UnmadeBed
- Bedding & UnmadeBed = MadeBed
- Move the MadeBed onto Bobby = Saving Bobby
Thank you for playing.

@namidasai Thank you for the feedback. I wanted to polish what I had first, unfortunately I had a few bugs and it took all my time to fix those. The plan was to have at least three missions with different puzzles.
@shashwat Unfortunately I didn't cater for touch screens, as the game requires the Left and Right mouse buttons to be held down at the same time and then the Spacebar to be pressed.
This happens on Chrome and Edge, but does not happen on Firefox.
It seems like there's an issue with Unity's TextMeshPro.
I will look into this now.
The disappearing text issues has been resolved.
I deleted my build folder and ran a fresh build.
There must have been some old reference in there somewhere.
P.S. No code changes were made.
What version of Chrome are you running?
I'm running the itch.io browser games fine on Chrome Version 85.0.4183.121 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Also, programmer art is best art. XD
Thanks for the feedback @thecakeconsortium.
I have no idea how it's even possible to go to -100 without the game ending. :laughing:
It's a bit of an abstract puzzle that you need to figure out which objects to combine, until you're left with only one.
Also, I just have to say, while sad to hear over and over again, I appreciated Bobby falling scream. Nice work.
I will have a look into the -100 health issue and the missing item.
The game should start with four items: Pillow, blanket, mattress and BedBase.
I think I found the issue.
The game doesn't seem to scale with different resolutions.
So if the resolution is running in something less that 1920 x 1080 the "Pillow" is off screen.
I will do a bug fix on this quick.
BUG UPDATE:
- FIXED: Text disappearing during Tutorial
- FIXED: Falling Objects loading outside of game view (All objects should be able to combine now)
- FIXED: -100 Mental Health Bug (Funny enough it was caused by an infinite loop)
Great music and I like the consistent art-style!
Only some of the items can be combined together.
Just for some clarity, to combine item 1 & item 2 you need to be holding both of them at the same time, by Left/Right clicking and holding on them.
There should be 4 items, excluding Bobby, falling on the screen when you first start.
SPOILER:
- Pillow & Blanket = Bedding
- BedBase & Mattress = UnmadeBed
- Bedding & UnmadeBed = MadeBed
- Move the MadeBed onto Bobby = Saving Bobby
PS. I know its has nothing to do with the game itself but the amount of description for controls, improvement,bugs etc. given above makes me feel it's rounded of. You game me something to think about on my next compo entry.
I'm glad that I have given you something to think about as well.
It's always nice to hear when someone is able to learn from you. :smile:
I had a few issues while playing - text all disappeared on me in the tutorial mode, and the right click seems unreliable a lot of the time.
Thanks for sharing your game, great job.
Always nice to hear good things. :smile:
@letterafterz Did you play on the browser or a downloaded copy?
I know there was an issue on the browser version, which was fixed after uploading a new build.
Some notes:
- Loading bars and unnecessary as it all goes by too quick.
- You might need to consider your UI layout a bit. This might be a rare occurrence, but I'l playing on an ultra-wide, so when I fullscreen it winds up cropping instead of letterboxing. I typically drag my editor windows into all sorts of weird shapes while play-testing to make sure it looks good on any display ratio.
- There were times I'm pretty sure I successfully clicked but I didn't grab anything, I'm wondering if collisions need tweaking.
- I don't think the spacebar is really needed. One you remove either mouse button, checking to see if you're holding two combinable items would be good.
- The game's over quick, but the process to retry its a bit long.
- Once I restarted the game and only three items were falling, I couldn't possibly win.
Thank you for your feedback.
I'm aware that aspect ratios do mess up the game's UI sometimes.
I still need to figure out how to develop around that, as Unity doesn't support it built in. :cry:
For starters, the "Canvas Scaler" component by default is set to "Constant Pixel Size". I find it's better to "Scale With Screen Size"
Also by default, when you "Match Width Or Height", it defaults by Width instead of by Height. This is weird because monitors are getting wider every generation, not taller.
It's a bit to get used to but I more or less learned on my own, like I said you can just set your game resolution to "Free Aspect" and change it to weird non-existent rations to see how the UI elements are affected.
Also liked tutorial feature, well done!
But as for me its hard to grab items, dunno what is the reason. And it's unclear which items combined and which are not. I would impove:
- shrink gameplay width
- make more clear which items can be comined, and add a bunch of new items
- maybe increase "catch radius" for taking item, because it's really hard sometimes to catch something
Ah, and art is really fun ;D
Good job!
@dcrdro Thank you for giving the game a go! I will definitely need to work on the catch collisions.
@zeu31 Please have a look now. I forgot to remove the restrictions off my Google Drive link sharing.
I see you uploaded your source, so maybe I'll take a look at later, it and give you some pointers.
EDIT:
Okay, so I downloaded your source. There's a lot missing but I did experiment with fixing your spash screen image.
First things, I removed your blank black image from behind your logo, and just had your main camera show a black background. I can to screencap your logo to replace it in the project. So here's what you have...

Looks okay here, but lets squash down the screen...

The image stayed centered and the same size, so as the screen got smaller, it overlapped the top/bottom... And if we were to make the screen narrow (like a phone in portrait)...

Same basic issue. It retained position in the center, and it's size, and did not scale.
First things first, look at the canvas, you have it set for UI Scale Mode of "Constant Pixel Size". Let's change that to "Scale With Screen Size". You'll probably immediately notice the image no longer fits but don't worry yet.
A new "Match" Slider will appear that goes from "Width" to "Height", and is defaulted at 0.0, so it only scales with width. I find this weird, I think usually height is the way to go, so go ahead and change that to 1.0.
The image might look right now, and you might consider it done, but lets go a bit further.
Your current anchor point is center-of-screen. This is okay, but you don't JUST want this image centered. You also want the top of the image to have a set gap from the top of the screen, and the bottom from the bottom of the screen. So, I think you should anchor to the center, stretched.


Now, the proportions of your image from the top of the screen to the bottom will scale no matter what size/ration the screen. If you wind up with a resolution that's much taller than it is wide there might be an issue, but you only need to worry about that for mobile games.

Now, your intro screen has a similar issue, where it scales in such a way that it's cropped on ultrawides:

You already have it scaled with screen size, so good job there. Your match is set to 0.0 for Width, so change it to 1.0 for Height.

Already all the text is on screen. You already wisely anchored your panel to the entire left edge of the screen, and the text is anchored to be stretched across the whole panel, so that should be good to go.
For the most part I think your issues are with Width vs Height scaling.
Thank you @kantieno and @ramble-house-games for giving my game a go.
I will make the instructions a bit clearer when I have some free time.
Gameplay wise it felt like things happened very quickly, I either won or lost in a few seconds. Maybe longer but certainly felt really short. I liked the idea of grabbing different items with different mouse buttons, so I wish there was longer to play with that.
I wish that it was just click instead of click and hold. and maybe mouse only too. with the left click being hold, and right click being release/combine.
Those dots look like an aim thing. which is a little confusing.
It not instantly clear that you can't hold the body itself. you could show a x when the mouse is over the body and/or some highlight when it is the objects. not that it is a big deal tho.
I will definitely be reconsidering the mouse controls to make it a little more intuitive for the player.
The idea is that the player needs to hold both items at the same time, which requires a degree of actual concentration.
Which is why I went with Left and Right Click and Hold.
I will play around with the mechanics, until I find something that feels great.
The dots were confusing to me as well; I didn't have an issue with the hold buttons controls, but it seems like a good idea to look into that for accessibility indeed.
It seems like the main areas that need improvement are:
- Item "container" dots are confusing.
- Click and Hold not being clear enough. I have an idea on how to fix this, which might work for touch screens as well.
- Longer and more complex levels needed. Maybe more items and faster dropping speed.