LudumData

Back Four Seconds by madalaski

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made by madalaski for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

BackFourSeconds4.gif

PLAY IT HERE (BROWSER):

KEEP YOUR PAST SELF ALIVE!

Back Four Seconds is a Narrative-Driven Puzzle Game where you use the magic of Time Travel™ to keep yourself alive!

Screenshots:

Screenshot3.png Screenshot2.png Screenshot1.png

Controls:

  • WASD to move

  • E to interact

  • T to time travel!

  • M to mute music.

  • SPACE to skip cutscenes

  • Q to open settings (and adjust mouse sensitivity!)

Tips:

  • The red area on your timeline the time after your death, the green area is when you can still fix things!

  • Knowing knows yourself better than you! Talk to Martin (red tie) and he'll usually have some helpful hints towards your next objective!

  • Each problem has multiple solutions but, in order to beat the game, you will need to interact with everyone and everything! Sometimes even multiple times! Leave no stone unturned!

  • If someone doesn't want to talk to you because you said something silly, go back in time and erase yourself before you can do that! They'll tell you how long ago you ticked them off. How strange, yet convenient!

Tools:

  • Engine: Unity
  • Sprite Editor: Aseprite
  • Model Editor: Blender3D
  • Audio Recorder: Adoble Audition
  • Dialogue: Twine 2.0

Music by my very good friend J-ZERO. Check out his LP right here:

Youtube https://madalaski.itch.io/back-four-seconds
Youtube https://madalaski.itch.io/back-four-seconds
Youtube https://madalaski.itch.io/back-four-seconds
Youtube https://madalaski.itch.io/back-four-seconds
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/back-four-seconds

Ratings

Overall 284th 3.939⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Fun 510th 3.684⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 53th 4.2⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Theme 951th 3.776⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1043th 3.755⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Humor 51th 4.213⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Mood 212th 4.052⭐ 50🧑‍⚖️
Given 60🗳️ 66🗨️

Feedback

CharlieTU
21. Apr 2020 · 14:53 UTC
Nice game you got there ! Musics are nice, time travel was a good idea ! (Mouse sensibility was way too high but that nothing)
Danial Yong
21. Apr 2020 · 15:07 UTC
Not sure why but i'm kind of reminded of slenderman. i like it
Scharma
21. Apr 2020 · 15:36 UTC
I do think the time travel could have more uses. But I did enjoy the voice-over and sound design. Congrats on your project :)
Isiah Brighton
22. Apr 2020 · 01:48 UTC
This was great to play. I enjoyed the way it made fun of the butterfly effect to make extremely mundane actions like getting coffee or stopping a killer death robot feel a lot more important.
Robert Solomon
22. Apr 2020 · 01:48 UTC
Enjoyed it and found it unique.
Nota
22. Apr 2020 · 01:55 UTC
oh wow I had a lot of fun playing this one! I loved the narration and dialogue!
Fat cat
22. Apr 2020 · 10:20 UTC
This was really really cool! I loved this mechanic, the narration & setting reminded me a bit of the Stanley Parable. Mouse sensitivity was a bit too high. I got to the part where the band was about to split up, and I talked to the Coolio guy but couldn't find a way to progress.
🎤 madalaski
22. Apr 2020 · 10:59 UTC
@fat-cat You can now change the sensitivity in the settings by pressing Q!
🎤 madalaski
22. Apr 2020 · 11:01 UTC
@fat-cat and like I said in the tips, Martin is a good person to talk to, if you get stuck. He's also the band's Number 1 fan... :wink:
Fat cat
22. Apr 2020 · 12:13 UTC
@madalaski Ohh right Coolio did mention that, it didn't register for me that I was supposed to talk to Martin because I AM Martin, so I thought any information he'd have would already be known to me ^^' My mistake sorry
Mravec
22. Apr 2020 · 15:13 UTC
Super awesome and original. Loved the narration, the humor and the mechanics.
YorisFresh
22. Apr 2020 · 17:33 UTC
I loved it! I loved the narration, the art style and the music! The only issue i had was that people didn't have any thickness, so i couldn't see them from the side and that made it hard to find where my past self went to destroy them, but i guess that's part of the art style. Also it seems that the game made my mouse invisible and i couldn't pick any choices, because i tried to time travel while in dialogue. Overall it's really well done and feels really polished, good job!
Rongefilet
22. Apr 2020 · 17:50 UTC
Just 5 stars all the way, that was brilliant. A little bit confusing at first but overall just an excellent short game, Thanks!
raytheonly
22. Apr 2020 · 19:17 UTC
This was so good! Everything was on point. The look, feel, sound, humor. It felt like a complete game.
Especially liked what you did with the post-processing effects as well with the mipmap radius thingy. Made the look coherent.
Great Job!
FlashViper
22. Apr 2020 · 21:17 UTC
This is really cool. I'm impressed at how you were able to implement time travel!
Danielhands008
23. Apr 2020 · 03:54 UTC
This game is fantastic, I love the PS1 style graphics when I saw it I knew I had to play it and I'm glad I did. The voice over game me 'Getting Over It' and 'The Stanley Parable' feelings and hooked me in straight away. My only problems were that I wasn't sure what would undo when rewinding time and erasing copies and how it would effect other stuff. But other than that the game had me laughing from start to finish and is one of my favorites from the game jam.
Dandala88
23. Apr 2020 · 14:49 UTC
Nice stuff! I love the simple graphical style and the sounds were nice as well. I had fun trying to solve the mystery. To just give some type of feedback I would say that the time travel could have used more delineation and polish. Maybe some indicators of events. That is a small criticism though cause I thought this was really well done.
Honey Pony
23. Apr 2020 · 17:46 UTC
Lots of good stuff in this game. I like the gameplay, and I enjoyed the narration. Personally, the narration, especially the opening narration, reminded of of Little Big Planet.

It took me quite a while to figure out that I could interact with the mask, and that I had to talk to Martin to solve the band problem. I believe someone else also mentioned this--Stewart tells you to talk to Coolio, but that doesn't actually help you come up with the new name. I guess I sort of assumed that my player implicitly put on a disguise because nobody was freaking out? Like, the tutorial kind of made me think I would need to find a disguise before talking to anybody, but it turned out I just needed one before talking to Martin.

I also never really felt like I actually solved the robot puzzle? Like, I got the Boss to not fire Martin, and then the game apparently thought that the robot was no longer going to kill him..?

As far as the writing, I thought it was mostly pretty good, although the writing around Robin seemed a little needlessly awkward.

All told, a good entry. Definitely feels like a complete game.
🎤 madalaski
23. Apr 2020 · 17:56 UTC
@honey-pony I wasn't even trying to do a Hugh Laurie impersonation but, now that you mention it, it is very similar! The band puzzle is the only puzzle that doesn't have multiple solutions as I ran out of time to code it in and I do think it suffers for it but I'm glad you enjoyed it! The robot thing was a last-minute hotfix as my playtesters would save Martin's job before stopping the robot and not have any clue what to do next.

In regards to @dandala88 and @danielhands008's mention of a more robust event system, that definitely is something I would love to add to the game in future but due to the time restrictions, wasn't able to implement here around my fairly rudimentary system. Who knew time travel was so complicated!?

Thanks to everyone for your lovely comments, I'm so glad people are enjoying the game!
matsuya
25. Apr 2020 · 17:09 UTC
This is probably one of my personal favorites for this year's LDJam, I really enjoyed the time travel mechanics and the graphics style was simplistic yet pleasing to look at. The story was short but sweet and I really hope we can get more games in this style.
Duke
25. Apr 2020 · 21:53 UTC
This was, by a pretty big margin, the best entry I played so far. The game play really caught me off guard. You really did a good job on introducing the mechanics via dialog with Stewart. I all felt very organic and easy to grasp, while still having the illusion of actual control. The time travelling mechanic worked good on both story and mechanical level. The dialog was witty and kinda reminded me of the game we made :) not thematically, but in terms of the attitude of some of the characters. And awesome voice work, by the way. Had this "Stanley Parable" vibe going.
The graphics and art were also really good. The whole presentation worked perfectly. Seeing, that you made this by yourself is astonishing. Pat yourself on your shoulder with my best regards. I really enjoyed myself playing this.

There is but one criticism I have: The mouse sensitivity in the browser version (that I played) was way too high :D That's all
AdonisDevs
25. Apr 2020 · 23:26 UTC
This is great! The dialogue makes it so much better, too. I really liked how you did the tutorial :D
Charles Fernandez
25. Apr 2020 · 23:52 UTC
Really unique game here! I found it really entertaining and laughed at all of the things that would get Martin killed throughout the game. I hope that doesn't make me a bad person lol. Martin's past self had weird movement bugs, like where he would cut through walls. Other than that, the game was awesome! :)
Team-on
26. Apr 2020 · 00:05 UTC
I quess that everyone already say that you really do amazing job on narration)
🎤 madalaski
26. Apr 2020 · 00:18 UTC
@matsuya @duke @adonisdevs @team-on Thanks for all the kind words guys! It's so great to hear it's been one of people's favourite entries, especially after all the work that went into it and especially 'cause I'm not a team or one of those famous developers who everyone rates the games of. Just one guy with a can-do attitude and a British accent. Tell your friends about the game and I'll make I get around to rating each and every one of your games :sweat_smile:

(Though I've already played yours @duke and I definitely agree with you on the dialogue front. Gotta love a bit of self-awareness!)
AcidmanRPGz
26. Apr 2020 · 01:13 UTC
I loved this so much! Only 2 issues - 1 is that the mouse sensitivity was a bit too high, maybe if you were to add an options menu, and 2 is that there was no way to quit, so I had to alt-tab out. But other than that, I found it hilarious, the puzzles were interesting and the story was (oddly) fun and captivating!
kjscott
26. Apr 2020 · 20:51 UTC
The total punnage of that game was pretty high, very enjoyable to play through and listen to the different timelines play out. My only complaint is that I wanted more :(
kjscott
26. Apr 2020 · 20:52 UTC
The total punnage of that game was pretty high, very enjoyable to play through and listen to the different timelines play out. My only complaint is that I wanted more :(
kjscott
26. Apr 2020 · 20:53 UTC
@kjscott I think you went back in time and accidentally ended up posted twice there -_-
Kayahr
26. Apr 2020 · 21:26 UTC
Impressive little game. Funny dialogs and/or/xor hilarious story. :D
cheesepencil
27. Apr 2020 · 03:02 UTC
Lovely narrative and clever time travel gimmick, I'm glad there was a tutorial and an option to change mouse sensitivity. The visuals were simple but just right for the purpose. I wish I was as cool as coolio!
very dark lord
28. Apr 2020 · 13:38 UTC
So cool! Had this tab open for a few days but hesitated to play it, as "time travel" sounds like something that, well, takes some time to play through. :D And I was not disappointed. Even in the end I was still a bit confused about the timeline stuff and what my other selves were or were not doing and what deleting them would have for effects, but I somehow managed to find my way through this maze of sad alternate realities and ended up in the one that, I guess, was sad as well but at least met the game's end condition, so yay!

Very well done. I quite dig the aesthetics, the narration is great, it's certainly a very innovative game, and the writing is very funny. I've got nothing to complain about!
SplitPainter
30. Apr 2020 · 20:43 UTC
What an awesome atmosphere and concept. The visuals sucked me immediatelly, but then I think I can execute further on the concept, for a post jam version. The way you can die was unexpected and fun xD

Btw, has the red timeline concept came for you in the Jam or is it inspired from somewhere else? It is really cool.
Trexxak
02. May 2020 · 08:54 UTC
I'm a sucker for 2D in 3D, and I appreciate voice work a lot - and you did a fantastic job on both fronts. Very intriguing concept and funny dialogue, too! :D
Lyje
11. May 2020 · 13:17 UTC
Really charming. Lovely graphics, sound, atmosphere, writing, concept and humour, in no particular order. Definitely one of my favourites!
Ava Skoog
12. May 2020 · 17:55 UTC
Love me some time travel! 💜 Great mechanic and good work on the story with the voiceover and all! Wish I could turn the head bob off tho. 😅 The subtle mockery of the hair bow tendency was great. Very cool game!