Abandoned Archive by Vedal
Welcome to the Abandoned Archive! Traverse through this mysterious labyrinth to uncover its secrets, who knows what spells you will find in this action-filled procedurally generated roguelike!
PLAY IT HERE: https://vedal.itch.io/abandoned-archive
The Abandoned Archive is a forgotten realm, preserving many mysterious spells. Libraries are places of rest for the Orbite race - a generally peaceful and calm species. However, you find yourself in the centre of an internal dispute and unknowingly pick a side. Fight off waves of Orbites, whilst you scavenge the archive, looking for more powerful spells and the missing pieces of the Core; the ruler of the Orbites. Protect yourself and the prestigious leader of the Orbites, otherwise your odds of surviving will be laughable…
The controls are as simple as “W” for up, “A” for left, “S” for down and “D” for right! You can utilise any fascinating spells that you discover, with the usage of left and right mouse button for you primary and secondary spells, respectively. Space bar is used for any special spells you pick up, so watch out for those! You can use the shift or control key to roll, making you temporary invulnerable; great for narrowly dodging attacks. And finally, the “F” key can be used to teleport back to the Core, if it ever requires your protection.
Note: We recommend playing in fullscreen for the best experience, and using the windows build for performance.
Changelog (04/21/2020):
- Fixed music fading bug
- Fixed issue with map generation generating too few enemies/pickups required for completion
- Fixed tooltip fading animation not playing
- Fixed explosion sound effect
Ratings
| Overall | 752th | 3.686⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1136th | 3.363⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1066th | 3.363⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 982th | 3.765⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 454th | 4.157⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 705th | 3.67⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 65🗳️ | 70🗨️ |
Strenghts :
- Awesome visuals
- Varied powers
- Well-thought UI
Possible improvements :
- Performance is really wonky on HTML5
All in all, great job !
Overall loved i!
It just shows you guys are very well organized and/ or extremely good at what you are doing. Absolutely adore the game!
The dodge-roll / magic teleport dash thing is amazing. Helps with navigating the library as well as being fun.
I found the library to be a bit too large for its contents and the controls are ever so slightly clunky.
Otherwise very nice, polished project.
There is a good level of polish for a game jam, good job!
Well done.
The level layouts are phenomenal and really nail home a sort of mage-centric building would be and your team should be proud of how well you did! Good use of particles and lighting effects as well.
All around, a strong submission!
Edit: I encountered the soundtrack fade bug so you might have uploaded the wrong version.
I had a great time but I felt like the level is pretty empty - tuning up the level design would make this game perfect (I mean it). It's very intuitive to play, the usability is on point - that's the hardest bit to get right and you did it.
Great job!
After talking to the quest giver (orb), I got the spell that took form as a thick blue whiteish line. I found the water arrow spell and went to the right. I battled a few enemies and died in the hallway connecting the spawn point and the right room.
After I died, I repeated the process but killed the enemies and entered the room at the end of the hallway. I remember it having a staircase leading upwards. It was just as I reached the center of that room the sound faded out for a 1-2 sec, went quiet and suddenly started playing again.
At the time I thought it was intentional since the fadeout in itself didn't seem like a bug, but if it wasn't, you could always try and walk through the same process I did and see if you manage to encounter the same bug!
I did find it annoying that the orb got destroyed during the cutscene after i patched it up, and perhaps clearer enemy attacks?
What I liked:
- the design and the animation of the main character. That's really need for a jam game!
- the controls are tight and everything moves smoothly.
- multiple spells to choose from.
What I'd change:
- the design of the enemies, though I get this is a weekend game, and there was little time for the characters.
- for a fast-paced action game, there's a lot of text. Players, who like fast games usually don't like reading, and reducing most dialogues to a sentence or two would help them get into action faster.
- the environment is big, but most of it is empty and not very interesting to explore. Removing some of the empty rooms and making the game tighter might make it more fun with less work.
- I'm not quite sure what happened there when the orb died. New enemies appeared, and the main character died a couple of times before the game really ended. This might have been described in some of the dialogues that I skipped, because they were too long...
The visuals are beautiful, and the overall mood and ambience is well achieved. The environments felt a bit empty, a little bit more of findings and enemies would've made them more interesting to explore.
When it comes to battle controls, I did struggle a little bit to find out how to properly attack and dodge. I think it was basically down to a lack of visual feedback, but I'm not sure.
Now, I do like a lot the idea of grabbing spells as you explore. Definitely adds extra interest to the mechanics and makes it a lot more dynamic. You've got some very nice animations going along with those as well, which made me wow a little. Very good job overall!
Ambitious! I think this could benefit a lot from some quality-of-life improvements, e.g.: better indication of HP loss, direction indicators for the collectibles (if it was purely RNG, it seemed the latter two got put too far!), invincibility frames when spawning close to home, more visible bullets, timers for waves attacking the Orb, etc.
But as it currently stands it's very laggy, and the combat (and well, everything really) feels like it's happening in slow motion, so there's definite room for improvement there. It would also be nice to have a more granular view of what your attacks are actually doing to the enemy and whether their health is decreasing, because all of that felt a bit vague. But overall, my take-away was pretty positive, and I think it has a lot of potential. Nice work!