LudumData

Memory by agentparsec

[raw]
made by agentparsec for Ludum Dare 54 (COMPO)

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Choose which memories to save on each milestone of your life, and try to live positively overall.

Features

  • In-game tutorial
  • Procedural music

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Detailed Gameplay Rules

  • Memories have one of three Subjects (Science, Art, or Physical), and one of three Spheres (Family, Self, or Community)
  • Skills and Knowledge (yellow and cyan memories) only provide skill points for the Subject/Sphere they are in
  • Memories will fade over time and provide less skill points; they will fade slower if they are next to a memory of the same Subject or Sphere
  • All slots must be filled before you can advance to the next milestone (unslotted memories are lost)
  • You can also pull out and replace memories with different ones, good to do with faded memories that are not providing the stat bonuses they once did
  • Experiences (green memories) are either positive or negative, and the chances of it being positive increase the higher your total skill is for whatever Subject and Sphere it is
  • Slotting a positive Experience gives you +! Outlook at the end of the game; slotting a negative Experience gives you -1 Outlook
  • Experiences provide stat points like Skills and Knowledge, and negative Experiences generally provide higher levels of them, so it may be worth taking a negative hit briefly in order to improve the odds of positive Experiences later
  • Experiences have a chance of being Important (white memory) or Traumatic (black memory), which will fade slower than usual
  • All Traumatic memories MUST be slotted before you can advance
  • If you ever have more Traumatic memories than you can slot, the game immediately ends; otherwise, it will end after age 80
  • At the end, you will be given your final Outlook, as well as which Subject and Sphere you had gotten the highest during the game

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Tools Used:

  • Engine: Unity 2021.3.0f1 (Did not have enough time to learn Godot well enough)
  • Graphics: Gimp 2.10.20
  • Music: Reaper v5.983/x64

Known Issues

  • Can't fullscreen the HTML5 version, and for some reason it will ONLY run here on the LD page; it would not work on itch.io
  • If a memory fades enough, it will go back to being strong again instead of staying faded
  • Advance button sometimes doesn't go away at end of game
  • Probably a lot of tuning that still needs to be done
  • The game needed to have a way to see your total stats, or to more easily tell what each memory contained without having to hover over it, but time ran out before I could implement these features
Link https://agentparsec.itch.io/memory
Link https://agentparsec.itch.io/memory
Link https://agentparsec.itch.io/memory
Link https://agentparsec.itch.io/memory
Link https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/memory/
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/memory

Ratings

Overall 195th 3.519⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 313th 2.889⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 59th 3.944⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Theme 94th 4.037⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 288th 3⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Audio 42th 3.923⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 38th 3.944⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 25🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 299757
02. Oct 2023 · 13:37 UTC
The gameplay is fun and the whole thing is very polished. Love the symbolism of human memories and how what memories you carry affect you as you grow. Great game!
Cronno
03. Oct 2023 · 01:36 UTC
I like the theming a lot and the music fits very well. I felt that it was very difficult to tell if I was doing a good job. Most of the decisions that I made felt arbitrary. You did a great job with the atmosphere though.
Tkap1
03. Oct 2023 · 03:00 UTC
Not my kind of game, but it sounds good, looks good, and fits the theme
Don Fouts
03. Oct 2023 · 15:24 UTC
Cool idea and a fun take on the theme. The music was a little on the loud side for me and I would have maybe rounded some of the numbers up to clean up how the scores look. Overall this is a solid entry, nice work!
cogcomp
03. Oct 2023 · 16:15 UTC
Interesting idea. It wasn't clear to me from the statistics at the end if I'd done a good job or not though.
Pe7e
03. Oct 2023 · 16:20 UTC
Nice idea, perhaps the background could change depending on points invested? Art vs Science vs Family?
Always like a sound control.
IDidGame
03. Oct 2023 · 16:24 UTC
Very interesting! Really makes you think and the sound responding to your actions was very nice. I think it might have been cool if there were some descriptions for the individual memories.
CaptainDreamcast
03. Oct 2023 · 16:35 UTC
Me holding onto my first science memory like a champ.

I'm not sure if I did well or not, I lived until 80, but I think I became a bitter old man, with a negative outlook. But I still cared about family, so maybe it's not all bad?
Very unique take on the theme that made me go "of course, that's genius" with the limited memory capacity. I loved the setup, how you can first hold more, and then almost kinda depressingly, lose more and more. The music also set this transcendental tone and mood that fit really well I thought. Very cool game, loved it, great job!
NKooo
03. Oct 2023 · 16:37 UTC
Really solid game--interesting concept, and felt really relaxing to play. The one thing that was a bit annoying for me was that I had to be pretty exact in slotting the memories, and would often miss and have them drop down. It was a minor issue though, and overall I loved the game.
kenevil1
03. Oct 2023 · 16:45 UTC
Really cool concept, the procedural music was absolutely fantastic, super cool concept of an individuals life represented in orb form.
LDJam user 352490
04. Oct 2023 · 01:27 UTC
Music and concept were surreal. I didn't understand all the mechanics (not sure what the outlook at the end was based on), but it was cool experimenting with different setups. It feels like I got to progress through someone's life in some abstract sense.

I was able to get an ending outlook of -228 by always filling the grid with bad experiences (does that make me a terrible person?)

![ending_outlook.png](///raw/ae0/65/z/5f79b.png)
Rincs
04. Oct 2023 · 06:34 UTC
![Capture.PNG](///raw/ccf/64/z/5f82d.png)

I'm glad I managed to get a more positive outcome on my second run. xD
kiv
04. Oct 2023 · 09:50 UTC
Very clever and thouthg-provoking idea, and also pretty neat production. Thank you for the experience.
minjutin
04. Oct 2023 · 11:52 UTC
The game just works, it seems so simple but still, it makes you emotional and think about life. The theme is so well handled, I actually felt like someone has fully utilized the concept of limited space by creating something truly innovative. This could be even bigger, with custom events for every memory (I can't wait for the extended edition)
Spike Studio
04. Oct 2023 · 19:14 UTC
Cool concept, and the particles were really nice, and the music was great also. Nice entry!
cheesepencil
04. Oct 2023 · 19:21 UTC
jam games making me cry today i guess...

What an adventure! Had one adventure where I just kept adding "bad" memories until it was pretty much the whole mind...
Agraffs
05. Oct 2023 · 07:28 UTC
Really interesting game. The whole principale is really well though and the game really has a deep meaning. Going to grab a coffee and meditate on the meaning of life now... Nice entry ! :)
nardandas
05. Oct 2023 · 09:43 UTC
Ending outlook 20! I played this on stream, and I think having the dev there kind of colored my experience. I think the game as presented doesn't give the player all the information they might want to make good decisions on what to do with their memories. In particular, getting the particular mechanics around maintaining ability scores, what those ability scores do, and how scores are accumulated, made the game a lot more satisfying for me. Even without that though, I felt the game just had incredible mood without really saying a lot concrete. Great job!
Hawkin
06. Oct 2023 · 02:32 UTC
The pacing and the teaching was very good. I really loved the simple style and particle effects. I'm super curious about the procedural music too, as it was surprisingly pleasant and very calming.

I guess I didn't have a very good outlook on life. I think that might have been due to the number of negative versus positive experiences? Overall, I really enjoyed that this game did not have win/lose stakes. It was all about the experience. Thank you for sharing that.

![Screenshot 2023-10-05 212745.png](///raw/319/53/z/5fd6d.png)
OadT
07. Oct 2023 · 14:10 UTC
Wow, very cool idea of shrinking the brain when it gets older and forcing you to keep traumatic memories. The gamemechanics explained in the tutorial are very interesting, I would have only wished there would be some more visual help during the gameplay to properly utilize them, currently you have to check the stats manually and I was not entirely sure whether the mechanics worked the way I expected and had an effect at all. But I loved the atmosphere of this one!
almost
20. Oct 2023 · 03:14 UTC
It's an interesting idea. I think I didn't fully understand my objective. I thought the idea was to try to minimize the rate of fading so I generally picked big numbers, but I ended with an outlook of -61 at age 80. Two of my final three memories were black. I am wondering if I was supposed to try to cause negative or traumatic memories to fade as opposed to just not picking them.

The game explained that some memories can be negative at the time that yellow appeared so I thought that yellow were negative, and it explained traumatic memories at the time that green appeared, so I thought that green was traumatic, But then later I saw black traumatic memories and I realized that blue/yellow/green were categorized into experience/skill/knowledge. There were also sparkles and other visual effects on the green nodes that I think indicated good or bad things but I don't entirely know what each one means.

It would have been nice to have some visual indication of which attributes each memory contains, like physical family and art so that I can group them more effectively.

The area shrinking when you get old was pretty dramatic.

![memory.png](///raw/974/1/z/60787.png)