Charge it! by TwistedHawk
You are trapped in the Haunted House, with only your phone signal to let someone know where you are! However, once that phone is down, you won't last much longer as well. Keep your phone alive as you solve the puzzles and boost your signal to escape!
Controls:
Arrow Keys - move Enter - Interact with objects Escape - Pull Up Menu Mouse 1 - move and interact with objects
Notes:
- Click on outlets to charge your phone. There is one in the foyer, and you may need to charge twice if the light goes out.
- The game doesn't end when the light goes out. you can still move around
- There is one outlet per area (5 in all) so you'll have to return to them as needed
- You can check your phone's charge and message upload in the in-game menu (not the main)
- You can use the rubble in the garden to save your game
- When you click on an object to hide under, click on that same object again to unhide it. Otherwise, you won't see your player character. You should not move until your character is visible again, otherwise it will be very difficult to become visible.
- some brown doors cannot be interacted with. These were intended to be doors to restrooms, but they got cut for time.
- There is a secret room that will be your key to finding a special treasure. Explore the mansion fully and try interacting with everything to find it.
Credits:
Kadokawa - RPG Maker MV Engine and multiple art and music assets GABlue - Additional Music assets including area themes TwistedHawk - Additional Art assets including hiding spaces and tile sets elementcy - Additonal Sound Effects brleise12 - Additional Art assets TateTate - Level Design, Programming, and Testing
| Youtube | https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/753102 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/charge-it |
Ratings
| Overall | 2347th | 2.845⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2420th | 2.476⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1881th | 2.942⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1502th | 3.535⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1683th | 2.413⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1794th | 3.037⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 56🗨️ |
In the end, I stopped playing because I was feeling lost in the game. I found the plug in the other room, but then did not manage to explore more without running out of power, and I gave up after 15 minutes or so. On the first couple of runs, when the screen went dark, I was not sure if the game crashed or froze, or if it was part of the game. Since there wasn't anything I could do (and since it happened when I was hidden under a chair), I just assumed that the game crashed, and restarted it.
After a couple of trials, I found that I can still access the menu - and still didn't find anything I could do in this state, so I started optimizing my search and looking for another plug to charge the phone, but did not manage and finally gave up.
Perhaps, from a gameplay perspective, it would make sense to start the game in a more linear area, where the player could try out all the mechanics with some hand-holding, so that they knew what to expect before entering the house. Another thing that would help is a battery + signal strength icon permanently on the screen, making it look like a phone screen. That would warn the user that they need to start looking for a plug or backtrack before they get stuck.
With this fixed, this could be a fun exploration experience.
That ghost adds some excitement to the game. Oh, and I liked being to charge the phone while hiding under the table. I'm not sure if this was ability was intended, but I got this warm fuzzy feeling while being plugged in and safe.
I enjoyed the game!
The atmosphere conveyed is also quite nice, though it could've been even better with some more lighting techniques used.
I found the controls to be a bit hard and died quite often. But one time, my phone went out and I was able to find my way back to the lobby charger through various dark rooms, which was a pretty good feeling. The bug that you can still move while being hidden is pretty annoying though, and having the battery show up while playing would be incredibly helpful.
After clearing the way east of the garden I couldn't find out how to progress further, maybe having a link to a walkthrough could help people who are stuck and want to finish the game.
Still, I enjoyed playing this, good job overall!
There is nice atmosphere, dialogs help player to get in the game.
The gameplay is little bit tricky to understand, you should add more GUI and maybe a tutorial to help player understand what he have to do.
Good job.
It was really hard to figure out what to do, and how to interact with things, so it would probably be better with some sort of tutorial explaining these things.