B R U I S E S by leafthief

About
Bruises is a short point & click adventure about keeping a relationship alive. For three weeks now, you weren't able to skate. Your board is still up in the 'home', a self-made hideout in an abandoned industry building you and your friends use to skate. For three weeks now, it was just you and your thoughts. Barrages of the same thoughts over and over again. You can't bear it.
You HAVE TO skate.
You have to GO GET IT.
Controls
Left Mouse: Interact Right Mouse: Look
Features
- Playtime: ~ 5min
- point and click adventure game
- emotional short story
- three puzzles

Credits
Music: Isolated by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3930-isolated License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Everything else: @leafthief
| Youtube | https://leafthief.itch.io/bruises |
| Youtube | https://leafthief.itch.io/bruises |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/b-r-u-i-s-e-s |
Ratings
| Overall | 101th | 4.144⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 735th | 3.567⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1312th | 3.244⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1725th | 3.42⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 20th | 4.728⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1th | 4.728⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
Because I'm pretty terrible at point-and-click games this took me a lot longer than 5 minutes, but even still I felt like experiencing more of this story.
Sweet job.
It's very atmospheric and the story is interesting. Love the artstyle! And the music suits the mood.
I got stuck a few times, but I'm glad I could finish the game :)
Great work!
Btw of course 5*
It took me a bit to figure out that right clicking was different then left clicking. Once I did I got to appreciate the characters and writing a lot more.
I had a lot of the same problems I usually have with the Point and Click genre. I spent a lot of time hunting for the right thing to click on. To repair the torn message/photo, I saw posters that are TAPED to the wall and I'm thinking "Oh! I'll take the tape and use it on the posters" but instead I was supposed to click the box next to the posters. Which makes more realistic sense but I didn't realize the box was clickable right away so I got stuck.
I liked the picture/message re-assembly part as a way to vary up the gameplay. Although I found it kind of frustrating that if two pieces overlapped I'd almost definitely select the wrong one. It seems they lock in place if you put them in the "correct" spot. I wish it were more forgiving and gave some sort of feedback when you got it in the right spot. The message was especially hard to assemble. I got stuck at the message because I don't know how the game is expecting me to arrange it, I have some pieces in the right places so I try to align everything with those pieces and the game doesn't take it. It seems like there's an expected gap between two pieces I'm supposed to fulfill, but that feels impossible to predict. If you're able to patch this I highly recommend it.
This is the best writing I've seen in a Ludum Dare game, it's a shame I'm roadblocked by the gameplay. If it does get patched feel free to @ me in a comment and I promise to replay and re-rate it! I wanna see the ending!
Also: I somehow managed to get into a bugged state where text would appear and immediately vanish when I clicked on things. It might have to do with alt-tabbing out of the game? Alt-tabbing back and forth seemed to fix it.
Also-also: I think there's a typo "You wanna to skate gain?"
I had trouble finding whatever it is to stick the message pieces together unfortunately (I'm very bad at point and click games), but what I played and saw of the message has such a good presentation! I'm especially fond of the purple violet and gold color palette. :smile:
else really enjoyed all of it
Well done!
Awesome job!
I really wanted to love this game more than I did. I found the puzzles to be too obtuse in their solutions, though I guess this is just a common pitfall of the P&C adventure genre. The collision when reassembling the photo and the message was also rather wonky and a bit unsatisfying. But I adored everything else. The pixel art, and cutscene animations were truly lovely to behold. Great music to set the mood also.
Great work!
Congratulations for the game!
I really wanted to experience the story but gameplay is driving me crazy.
Still it has potential to an interesting narrative driven game. Keep up the great work!
The mood of this game is incredible,everything works so well !
The music, the art syle the story ! Loved it
I really enjoy point and click games this was definitly a very nice one, the visuals fit very well with the gameplay
I used to play roller derby and this felt really personal to me.
The art is so cute, and the music fits really well :) I'd love to know more about the story!
Despite that gameplay kept pulling me out of the experience. I usually have a hard time with point and click games where the story is so cool that I just want to explore the world. But the puzzles on this one were quite obscure. Would love to see a full game featuring this vibe but without pixel-hunting or traditional puzzles.
I decided to translate it in french ^^ :-)
https://we.tl/t-OPRQpmcuh4

Hello leafthief. Oh yes, for sure you have it! :-)
Glad you like it! ^^
Here is all the text in case you need it:
https://pastebin.com/nm310FxE