Aftermath by Peace Of Cake Games
A dark narrative-based game about death, sadness, and revenge.
You awake in your hometown, but everything is burning to the ground. You find items of a past life scattered around the town, and it would appear that you are the only person who is left. All alone and injured, you are dragged deeper and deeper into feelings of revenge. Time for vengeance.
There are three (technically four) possible endings, can you find them all?
This was my first time ever doing the Compo, my first time ever doing a narrative-based game, and my first time using my own art app and music app. In comparison to last Ludum Dare, this is also my first time having a game soundtrack and making a game that isn't half bad.
Enjoy, everyone! I barely made this in 48 hours, so I hope you enjoy the end result of the most stressful 48 hours ever!
Tools used:
- Engine: Construct 3
- Art: Partially my own app, Peace Of Cake Art Maker!, and partially the Construct 3 Animator
- Music: Partially my own app, Peace Of Cake Music Maker!, and partially GarageBand (iOS)
- Hosting: Scirra Arcade (Construct-only free HTML5 hosting site); Google Drive
Known Issues:
Because there will always be issues....
- Going left too much results in falling through the ground of the world. This is a pretty hilarious bug because last Ludum Dare I managed to have the same bug in the game (but that one was only if you played two consecutive games). Fix this by refreshing the page or reopening the app. [Fixed Post-Compo]
- The text is rather difficult to read sometimes. Sorry about that, that one is my bad! [Fixed Post-Compo, hopefully]
- The MacOS and Linux builds may or may not work.
How to unlock all of the endings:
!> The first ending, Pain, is unlocked if you decide to rest, or if you don't decide to get up quickly enough. The player doesn't have any reason to hold onto life so they die because of their injuries. I made it sound like resting to gain enough strength, but if you read carefully the player mentions being very injured. The injuries are too severe to keep living.
!> There are two versions of the second ending, Vengeance. The first one is if you haven't picked up an item and you locate the criminal responsible for the massacre. You'll kill them with your bare hands. The second version is if you pick up the knife on the ground, which I placed strategically so that the player is tempted to pick it up. You'll stab the murderer to death. Regardless of how you kill the criminal, you'll die because of the injuries. This is the darkest ending, because you seriously killed someone.
!> The third ending, Vengeance Without Murder, is a less dark version of the second ending. Instead of killing the criminal who killed your family, you have to go left at the start of the game. There will be an old pole with rope hanging down, and when you grab the rope you'll get a chunk of the pole, too. When you find the criminal, you will end up knocking them unconscious with the sliver of the pole and you'll tie the criminal up with the rope so the authorities can take care of the criminal. In case you were wondering, death is inevitable in Aftermath because there's no way to prevent the player from getting injured.
An important note I would like you to consider when rating Graphics:
I would appreciate it if you know that for the graphics, I did an intentionally handdrawn look. These graphics weren't just thrown together in about 5 minutes, I did spend time making the graphics have a deliberate handdrawn look to them. Thanks for reading! 😊
To MacOS users:
MacOS automatically tries to block any app I make, so you'll need to find some way to allow my app to run in the administrator controls.
Ratings
| Overall | 826th | 2.771⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 861th | 2.336⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 790th | 2.541⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 814th | 2.746⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 791th | 2.651⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 507th | 3.021⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 245th | 3.61⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 71🗳️ | 138🗨️ |
I would really appreciate it if you can let me know about any issues with the MacOS and Linux versions! I am unable to test them, so I'll need some players to help me out. This is my first time making MacOS and Linux export options so I'm sure there'll be issues. 😖
Right now the art and music apps are entirely keyboard shortcut operated and not very user-friendly since I made them for personal use, but now that my 48 hours of stress and success are over I'm probably going to work on making them be for a full release as an official software. I'll let you know as soon as I've got a good beta test ready, because I'm sure you'll like the music app (it's made for NES-style chiptune music development).
@metadept thank you! I was excited to be able to implement the little trail of blood, because the ground of the world is made of 3D objects and it's a relatively new feature in Construct 3. I saw that there was a "change image of 3D object side" action and I knew I would make a trail of blood wherever the player walks (or something similar).
The text is a bit too close together, eh? Thanks for the tip, if I make a post-jam version (not much of a game length upgrade but rather quality of life improvements) I'll edit the font some. I used a SpriteFont to make my own font from scratch (a Ludum Dare tradition) so the hard-to-read text is my bad. 😬
@3lstmsinatrenchcoat thanks for playing! You are right, I did plan a little bit more but ran low on time. I did plan on making the discovery of flashback objects have a little image for flashback visualization, but I realized that the way I planned on implementing it it wasn't practical and it was too time-consuming. I was also thinking about a little cutscene for each ending but seeing as I spent hours and hours on the opening cutscene, adding more cutscenes was an idea that got trashed pretty quickly.
Oh darn it, I realized I forgot to add the note about there being three (technically four) endings to the story on the game's page! I'm interested to know how many you found, since I forgot to make a note about it. Also, how do you think the story could be expanded more and given more depth? I'm really open to feedback about that since despite being a writer somewhat, this is my first narrative-based game.
If you want to emphasize the moral difference between endings 2 and 3, it would be a good idea to actually ask the player to make a moral decision at some point in the narrative, instead of basing the character's final moral decision on whether they interacted with a particular item previously.
I'm glad you too perceived it as "creepy" because one of the three music's names is "Creepy Synth Pad".
@oadt Thanks for the feedback about that, if I do a quality-of-life improvement update I'll change that.
(At least this Ludum Dare I didn't make a gamebreaking bug like last time.... 😣)
Thank you, @toasteater ! And I suppose it isn't.
Looking back at my dialogue choices I think it was a good idea to make the first choice of the game be "investigate" vs "rest since you're tired and injured" instead of "investigate" vs "well I'll go die now". Makes it easier for people to find Ending 1 on their first try. 👻
I only found two endings, death and revenge I guess. I didn’t find the sadness… I feel sad for that 😢
Also I felt that the revenge ending is a bit too sluggish, like I’m still confused because I found it four times and have no idea about not triggering it.
Also I felt under the ground by walking left instead of right.
I've updated the game page to say how to unlock all of the endings, I hope that helps.
Thanks for playing! Getting feedback on Aftermath is really helpful to me, since this game had a lot of firsts. First narrative-based game, first use of 3D graphics outside of a small demo I made, etc.
###### (To be honest, since all of my previous games I've made were nice and pleasant, even a game called Massacre Dungeon for the most part, I kind of creeped myself out with how dark this is. I've never made something so dark....)
I'm glad you like the handdrawn font, I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time making it. 😅
Some more Gameplay would have been great, but ok, the focus was clearly on storytelling.
Nicely done.
@gilborn yeah, I was intending to have some more gameplay, but due to the fact I intentionally overscoped just because I have wanted to tell this story for a while, I didn't manage to implement more gameplay.
Nice job, @conduit ! 😁 VENGEANCE WITHOUT MURDER is the closest you can get to a good ending. Technically there is no happy ending, I felt like an ending that made everything be okay might not go well with the dark and depressing atmosphere I made. An ending where the murderer is dealt with in a sensible way before the player dies is the closest I was willing to go to a good ending.
@godsboss oh, that's a good point, it does match the theme! Not only did I essentially make a Minus World, I also unintentionally followed the theme....
Yeah, sorry about the bad choice of font and font color @solweak ! 🙇♂️ I'll probably make a post-Compo version in one or two days to adjust that for anyone who wants an enhanced-quality experience.
@crowvax I'm glad you enjoyed Aftermath! This area of game development is new to me (despite being a fairly experienced developer), so I'm glad you liked the feel of it.
@brainloaf-studio That's a good idea, adding a text advancing button! (Or maybe I'll just make a button to skip the opening cutscene entirely) Thanks for the recommendation, I'll put that in the small update I'm working on.
Thank you, @linus-lindberg ! Mood is basically *the* category I feel good about. 🤔
Good game
I like the narrative based game, the text was a bit hard to read, but I get that it's going with the dark vibes. What made it more difficult though was how far away it was from me as the player, and the fact that I could just keep walking, and might not even notice the text. I think if this is a narrative based game, you should make the text more prominent, and not so easy to just ignore and keep walking, like maybe pause the game and have the player advance through the dialogue with button presses, and have the dialogue appear word by word or letter by letter to make it feel more engaging.
Funny thing is, all of the things you think should be improved upon were things that I had planned to implement but ran out of time to do! Proof of your story- and game-making mastery. This technically is a post-jam sketch of what I pictured in my head during development, not an actual pre-development concept art, but here:
I technically could have done a "click or press a button to advance text" mechanic with basically no effort at all, but I made the dialogue system when I was tired (and therefore dumb and not thinking about easy solutions clearly). Maybe next Compo I'll wake up early instead of staying up late.... 😅😴
I had also planned on making different backgrounds for the different endings (i.e. blood splatter background for Ending 2, player's body for Ending 1). In the end I didn't implement as much as I wanted to, but this was my first time doing the Compo and my first time seeing how long a narrative-based game with some animation would take, so at least I made something! I intentionally overscoped since this is a game idea I've had for a while, so I basically intentionally doomed myself.... switching to the Jam might have given me more time but I didn't want to try the Jam when it's the 48th 48-hour event. 🎉
Thanks for all of the feedback!
Good luck in the rankings! I expect your game will probably place pretty high in a lot of the categories.
Also seems like A button does not work.
Wait, the A button doesn't work? Thanks for letting me know, I'll look into it.
Thank you, @xiyou ! I was interested in making an atmospheric game since generally the games I make are just slightly bland action games, I'm glad I didn't completely fail. 😅
I'm glad you find it to be creepy, @neshtyak , because that's the exact mood I was going for! I've never made a narrative-based game, tried to have a very strong atmosphere and mood in the game, or made anything so dark, so honestly I creeped myself out a little when I did the final result of my 48 hours of work.
Sorry about the text being fast and difficult to read, I really blundered there and fixing the text will be the first thing I work on in the small post-Compo update.
I was interested to see where the writing was going to go. Because you woke up in such a confused and sudden state, I thought the player was going to be the murderer all along but couldn't see people in the correct reality. I think it's because the setup and pacing was similar to the Tales of the Black Freighter sequence in the Watchmen Director's Cut.
I looked into it too much. In some ways, the way you ended the story was more of a twist than that since it wasn't what I was expecting. Nice work exploring new kinds of games and genres, I like to do the same myself. That's what LD is really all about imo.
Hm, that's interesting you thought that maybe the player would be the villain. It is true that they were the murderer all along in a sense, seeing as the murderer got murdered.
I agree that Ludum Dare is all about trying something new! It's thanks to Ludum Dare that I actually have the courage to try making games for commercial release, and without Ludum Dare I would never have been introduced to the emotional power of narrative games and visual novels.
@felo07 Yeah, some of the game interactions are a little uncomplete due to the low amount of time for the Compo, I had planned to have a post-Compo fix for them up and running yesterday but I haven't finished it yet.
One thing that was confusing was finding the memorabilia was surprising since there was no graphical representation of the photo/journal/etc as you walked by so I wasn't sure if I was missing something. Other than that I'd say taking some more time to practice your drawing skills would help to make the narrative game more immersive.
I have tried 'A' but it didn't worked. Then I saw that written in blue on blue (that is bad) with acircle. So assume it's a controller button thing.
Music was very annoying, it hurt. Sorry!
About the theme. I haven't found any progression. So there is nothing deeper in it.
As for the use of the theme, when I upvoted "Deeper and deeper" I knew that almost everyone would go with the obvious digging or diving game. The way the theme was implemented in Aftermath is sinking deeper and deeper into feelings of vengeance (or in the case of Ending 1, pain that ends in death). I've never really been someone to take a theme or idea literally when the easiest idea is obvious to everyone.... honestly I'm not incredibly impressed with this Ludum Dare's theme.
Blood trail while walking is a nice touch. Graphic may be simple but it feels fitting.
In case you want to know how it went for me, first I got the worst ending as I was too busy thinking about what choice to go for after reading the text and didn't make any selection in time. On second attempt I went all the way left past the pole and outside of screen edge, which made the character invisible even when I returned back to the scene (I'm good at finding the worst possible thing to do in games), so that called for a restart. After a restart I went again towards the pole and used it, which gave me that rope ending. Figuring out what the deal will be, I replayed again just to read what happens with the knife option.
Story had a good induction, made me angry&sad and all, perhaps the weakest part was towards the end where people/person who did this are/is described as "a criminal" without any other explanation. Yet this may also be a more honest approach.. when faced with horrible stories our brains are made to look for someone to blame and to get a full explanation of what happened, which can sometimes be used against us and we end up being fed an explanation given by media, while the reality can be more complex or not even what the story told us at all. Again, congrats on finishing a Compo entry, it was an interesting experience and I hope you keep creating.
Nice job getting every ending! There are three different endings, and if you find the criminal with or without the knife (but still without the rope) there are actually two variations. (Further described in the **How to unlock all of the endings** part of the game page. It requires you to click it to view it)
Wow, some real philosophical thought about how one-dimensional and plain the antagonist is.... a lot of this game is up to the player to interpret, but the general bit of info is that person you end up either killing or apprehending is in fact villainous. They burned down a town of innocent people....
I may have managed to make a Compo game with actual endings, but I read your Fall Of Alice devlog, and I'm impressed! You and your partner made a pretty solid game in much less time than me. (I worked myself to death, just gamedev and sleeping took up about 36 hours, and it was a busy weekend for me too so I have no idea how I managed to get ~20 hours of gamedev.) I hope to see more of your fun creations in future Ludum Dares!
Nice presentation, I love how you presented the intro cutscene and transition! I also love multiple endings. Good work on writing the narrative.
Additionally, I like the trailing blood, and the eerie audio and atmosphere. Audio definitely adds a lot to the mood.
Well done!
Looks like your C2 game is lacking some ratings.... time for me to do some gaming! 🎮
I would say more but I am way behind on play and rate — our server was offline for a while and I was busy with some other things at the same time. Now I need to scramble to catch up with LD. Anyway, congratulations — this is a very impressive entry for the Compo.
What a nice well package litle narative game. I really enjoyed it.
The spacing between letters in the text made it super hard for me to read, maybe something related to dyslexia, but it could be fixed really easily.
Other than that, nice graphics, mostly in the waking up scene, and I enjoyed the way the story evolve naturally according to your actions instead of just dialog choices.
Congratulation! Very cool game
I'm glad you liked the graphics of the little opening cutscene, I don't code cutscenes very often so that ended up sucking away 3 or 4 hours of time. 😅 Glad to know it didn't end up being a total waste.
Sorry about the bad text, strong flashing, audio, and fast and unskippable dialog system, guess I really don't work well late at night. 🙇♂️😅 All of those were things I was implementing at 2 or 3 AM in the morning, now I know to get up early instead of going to sleep late. I really could have made a better dialog system if I hadn't ended up being pretty dumb when programming at 3 AM, I made a working dialog system in about 5 minutes earlier just to show myself that I could have done better. 😴 I'll definitely be adjusting this into a polished post-jam game that basically fixes up everything that could be better or didn't make it due to the strict 48 hours.
I actually made the font with Construct 3's SpriteFont plugin, it allows you to make and edit fonts on the fly by pulling up font data from a Sprite-style image you draw right inside of Construct 3. It's pretty effective for making fast handdrawn or pixelated fonts and not having to spend time surfing the web for free fonts. Looks like I deleted my dev screensnip of me drawing the font since I didn't think I would need to keep them since I kept forgetting to take dev screensnips throughout the development. If you're interested in the font it's right here:
(It looks pretty bad in-game because I forgot to edit the character and word spacing....)
- Cool moody graphics
- I'd prefer if I could skip the dialogue
- Music kinda hurts my ears
- I walked all the way to the left expecting an ending and fell through the floor :d
- Text is really small and the font is hard to read
- Can I not get the knife on the floor?
- Oh I think I understand, you can only reach the end with one item at a time.
- Wish there was something more to do than just walking right and choosing an ending..
Ok I got all the endings. I can't really say it was a very engaging game but I think it does a nice job of setting a mood.
Sorry about walking off the edge of the world. 🙇♂️ As I noted in the Known Issues it technically doesn't break the game, but it's still a pain. (I probably should have made a bug fix patch by now, but I'm waiting to do any post-Compo updates since there's too much that the Compo's small time limit scratched off of my to-make list.... I plan on making a post-Compo version with everything I could have made if I had 24 more hours.)
Obs: I really agree with what you commented on my game page. Our interpretations of the theme were similar hahaha. Just as you are following me here at ludum dare, I will be following you too. I wish you success!
I'm glad I managed to get to this one on time just before the ratings end. It'll be my last game of the jam, and it's quite a fitting closure, I'd say. A character dying as the jam wraps up. We should all be poets :muscle:
Anyhow, you asked me for opinions on the sprites and visuals, so I'll focus on that. First of, mad respect to you and all participants of the compo who have to do all of the work on their own in so little time. If the sprites of ours are applauded, it's only because I'm a dedicated artist with a fantastic team that does the heavy lifting everywhere else. Any compo participant, regardless of skill level, impresses me more than what someone in my situation can do.
In your case, I'd say that your game does a fantastic job when it comes to use of practical effects. The intro in particular, with the stars, the TV static and the glows, it really sets up the first person atmosphere. Some of that is lost when the core of the game starts, but it still fits the atmosphere of the game.
Sure, I wouldn't call your sprites pretty or outstanding, but at the very least, they serve the purpose of representing what they're meant to do without looking clunky, intrusive or out of place. The main character sprite does look good, even if the animation loop is a bit iffy. I can attribute that to the protagonist shambling around in pain, but even then, the shuffling could have been a bit better.
Regardless of that, the only suggestion I'd give you would be to do a bit more "thought" practice. Not to make "better looking" sprites per se, but to try to get the mentality of how things could look before you sprite them. Let's say, for a Compo like this, your character sprite - with 3 frames - is sufficient and looks good. But 2 out of those 3 frames could look more varied to make the character feel like it's moving more. The houses maybe could have had some rectangles or squares around or random strokes to show that they're broken. Put a lot of white blots in the sky for stars. Small things that shouldn't take you much longer to implement, nor have to spend weeks of practice if this is not your expertise.
My point is, there are different areas to improve on. "More quality" is one thing, but I'd recommend you to do "more varied" instead. With that I mean that you don't nead to do "much better", but rather, more diverse. You can use the same style you've got, but with some smart tweaks, it could pop more.
Those are just my opinions on the matter. The core game works well, tells its neat story as it needs to, and is short but effective. A welcome addition to the Ludum Dare compo roster. Do keep up the good work! :thumbsup:
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Wow, @moski , thank you for all of the feedback! I'm glad you liked the opening cutscene (I used up about a 5th of my development time on it 😅), and I do agree that the player animations could use more frames, there could be some stars in the sky, etc. This was quite an ambitious project for me, since a majority of the tools and plugins I used were experimental and untested, plus this was my first time making a game in under 2 days. I intentionally overscoped.... 😆
I honestly don't remember if I added some little details to the wrecked houses, I haven't opened the project file in weeks except for when I retrieved that image of the protagonist.... 🤔 Generally I build games at a 480p resolution since that was the default window size of a project in Construct 2, the engine I first used for learning to program games. The advantage of it is I'm pretty good at eyeballing how big images need to be, but the downside is little details often get unseen when it upscales. Next Ludum Dare I'll be sure to try and put the resolution closer to 720p so little details don't get erased when the canvas upscales. (I'm betting that 720p won't have to be downscaled for anyone, even my relatively small screen size is around 720p resolution.)
> I’m glad I managed to get to this one on time just before the ratings end. It’ll be my last game of the jam, and it’s quite a fitting closure, I’d say. A character dying as the jam wraps up. We should all be poets
That is quite a fitting ending! It's quite a nice ending to LD48 for me, too, having the last reviewer be none other than a game artist I certainly look up to as a superior artist. 😁