Gravelighter by radow
You find yourselve on a dark graveyard, with your trusty oil lamp running low on fuel. Can you make it to the saving warmth and light of the house before it runs out?
Features
- Explore a handcrafted graveyard
- Solve puzzles in order to find your way to safety
- Play in three modes
- Normal - the game as originally intended
- Light - adding much more light, making the game playable for anyone struggeling with the low brightness
- Hard - turning up the difficulty to 11 the game becomes a potentially frustrating experience, that asks players to explore and optimize every bit of their route in order to make it through.
- An atmospheric Soundtrac
- Bits of voice acting and small cutscenes
- Options, Settings & Menus =D
- Play on Windows, Linux or Web (experimental Mac build w.i.p.)
The Team
- Pingu - 3D Art, Game Design, Level Design
- Radow - Programming, Game Design, UI/UX, Particle Systems
- Sergeant Biggs - Sound Design, Game Design, Programming
What we used
- 3D Art
- Blender
- Substance Painter
- 2D Art
- Photoshop
- Audio (music and most SFX are not created by us, see ingame credits)
- Audacity
- Engine
- Unity
- Version Controll
- git
Builds & Installs
We are currently working on uploading the webbuild version.
We recommend playing the desktop build though, for better lights & shadows.
The desktopbuilds are your usual Unity desktop builds.
Screenshots



Ratings
| Overall | 977th | 3.588⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1690th | 3.096⭐ | 80🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1646th | 3.077⭐ | 80🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1144th | 3.698⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 801th | 3.916⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 480th | 3.681⭐ | 82🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1849th | 2.205⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 289th | 3.951⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 119🗳️ | 116🗨️ |
@weil Thanks! At some point we talked about possibly adding a jumpscare, but in the end we prefered the eery mood paired with the dispair of the fuel running out.
@petrifiedapple It's rather large for a webbuild ~250MB. We reccomend playing the desktop version for better lighting and shadows in any case, but want to give players who prefer webbuilds an option to still paly the game and in our tests it was running with solid FPS numbers in most browsers.
It’s just a little annoying that our character throughout the game in some kind of incessant deep panic, it seems because of the music. I would say that it is just tiring.
I think you managed to deliver the mood and experience perfectly.
I died a couple of times in the starting area before getting used to the lowering/raising gas mechanic, I personally think that a more safer and less punishing beginning could have helped a lot.
Anyway, great job!
@perpetuummobile Exploring enough of the graveyard to be able to orient oneselfe is certainly a challange, given the restrictions on light and speed. We do think that having the lit windows of the house on the hill, that can be seen from almost everywhere does help with that a bit =)
@louis-hayes-greenwood We thought that a jumpscare might be a bit predictable, but given that a couple of people have now asked for it... we'll see =) We do have a list of things to add and tweak for a postjam version and we'll put that on as something to look at.
@bakaraf that sounds like a great idea, have fun! =D
@superpatch you are probably right concerning the starting area. We had plans for an oil barrel in the starting area at some point, that would allow you to return and replenish the lamp as often as needed, but later decided against it, because we did not want the player to stick so close to one specific point, but rather push them out to "new" areas, in order to find more fuel. Maybe just adding a few more fuel pickups in the first area could dampen the effect. We will definitly have another look at the balance based on the feedback we are getting over the coming days and weeks.
The movement is too slow for my liking. I get that it's about managing the oil in the lamp.
But if it was depleting faster and I could move faster in exchange, that' be cool.
Regardless. I liked the puzzles in the game and the atmosphere in general.
Good job on the assets too! Spot on voice acting :D
Also, the controls were good. Snappy, precise. Just how I like it.
@damagefilter a few people have mentioned this. We didn't want to do a jumps scare, because it felt predictable and somewhat silly, but something along the lines you mention might actually work quite well.
@corriecravie It seems like we underestimated how long people would need to find the angels. We actually were more concerned about the lever, because of the positioning in the level, but have now observed a few people even running past the angels without realizing that they could interact with the, so a bit more hinting seems to be warranted.
Concerning the movement speed: We did want the game to feel a bit slower than games usually do, to increase the sense of dread, but I can definitely see where this becomes more annoying than we wanted if people need to redo the beginning multiple times. we'll talk about a a fast-walk feature that will allow players to speed up for a while before catching their breath or something along these lines and see how good that works in testing =)
@overmolo @perfontana & everyone thanks for the kind feedback :heart: The atmosphere was what we were focusing on most an we are thrilled to hear, that so many enjoyed that aspect of the game :smile:
Game itself was a bit confusing to me but nevertheless Well Done!!
@maksym We might have tuned normal mode a bit too brutal (it can be difficult to judge the difficulty if you know the level very well and can only simulate the original exploration to a certain degree). We are working on a postjam version that will likely be more lenient in normal, especially since the hard mode still exist for those who really seek a more brutal challange.
@bodaciouslycrazy thank you so much! we are super proud of what our artist @png was able to do in so little time.
@morandigame thank you so much! Will be sure to have a look at your entry later today =)
@marcusnystrand glad you feld the atmosphere :D We were reluctant to add too many pointers on what to do and might have overdone that a little. The upcoming postjam version will include a few things in order to guide the player a bit more, especially in the very beginning of the game.
@n-feofentov We noticed that a few people had more trouble finding the second statues than we had anticipated. We are not sure yet how to adress this, since we want to keep the incentive/need for the player to thoroughly explore the graveyard, but will look at tweaks that might make it a bit more obvious once the player is heading roughly in the right direction. We talked about checkpoints as well, but decided against them for the current levelsize, since we do like the fact that even failing can be rewarding, sicne it allows the palyer to start again with more knowledge about the situation, enabling them to solve the earlier parts of the level fairly quickly.
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@palsina Thants an interesting idea. I think it would give too much information in a format, that is very different from the primary exploration mode(it would give it in an abstract, almost map like fashion, while the game tries to communicate through a very immersive experience of the scene), but maybe we can find some kind of middle ground that gives the player a bit more direct information upon their death without going as far as such a GPS view. Great suggestion in any case!
@blue-pin-studio There is supposed to be an audioqueue that is supposed to give a bit of a hint for the statue puzzle, but the coliders and trigger conditions are set up in a far too restrictive way. Thats somethign we are tweaking in the postjam version right now, as part of our efford to rebalance normal mode.
As for the scarry and eerie elements: A fair few people have suggested jumpscares and we really don't want to do it, because we felt that a traditional jumpscare can easily come of as cheap and a bit silly if that makes sense? But this has lead us to explore some ideas similar to your other suggestions (having things move aroudn you or trigger sounds behind you) and somethign along these lines will be shipped with the postjam version.
@dauntlessstudio From the feedback we recieved and the people we were able to observe playing the game it's quite clear that we overtuned the difficulty for the normal mode in the jam version. We had already suspected this and turned down the original difficulty of normal mode significantly before turning the game in, but it doesn't appear to have been enough. Adjusting this is part of what we are currently working on for the post jam version.
We are also quite happy with the light mode (especially since it makes the game playable in spite of the overtuned difficulty on normal), but it does take away a bit from the tradeoff mechanic the lamp is supposed to provide, so we don't want to abandone the other two modes =)
@lairinlair @leetchi-heda @inventivum-games @proforce thank you so much for the lovely feedback!
@mehrdadsh We are generally happy to work with other devs, but are also quite busy with our existing projects, so I wount be able to promisse anything. But for a future jam (LD or otherwise) this may be an option.
I wasn't able to finish in my first playthrough as I kept getting disoriented, though I realized after I stopped that the house was a way better landmark than I had first though. I definitely want to come back and give this another go!
I also really like the fog, but it does almost eliminate the core mechanic and without the glow it did not look the way we wanted it to look like, which is why we didn't include it in normal.
Here is my Playthrough. My microphone volume is a little low.
A more elaborate fix would be to differentiate the different parts a little bit more so you can remember more easily where you have been.
We were hoping that the light from the two windows gives some assisteance in keeping track of where the player is, but I do agree that this needs work, in normal mode anyway.
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/615937007?t=5h15m27s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin