Moon Moth by kanity
The window is 800x600 by design. Controls: WASD, Space. Build for Windows. Made in Godot. HTML works (itch link) but I recommend download if possible (HTML lags a bit)
As a mythical being, you - the Moon Moth - sprinkle sleep dust on the city to create dreams for humans living there. They are calling out to you, sending subconscious signals seen as stars!
Their dream waves are of different types, but you can only catch one of each. The order does not matter, and there are four combinations in total plus a Wildcard. The dreams CAN repeat. Note the patterns and try catching a new combination each time!
Move with WASD and enter the Dreaming Minds shown as stars using Space button. No need to press Space when you are catching a Dream Wave - they connect to you immediately!
Everything in this project is done by me, Kanity. I wrote the sсript in Godot, music in BeepBox, recorded a main menu melody and sound effects using Movavi and my mic and my voice, including all the voice overs you will hear in game! Drew everything in Paint Tool Sai after sketching on paper.
Unfortunately, HTML build seems to be lagging a bit for me. I recommend downloading the file for better experience! As usual, I will record a YouTube walkthrough for anyone who can't play on Windows or just wants to see all the Dreams and how to get them!
Also, I couldn't make the stars disappear - the City scene reloads anew after the Dream, and so the stars are all back in place. Maybe I should make them global somehow but I did all I could as a newbie programmer and I am very proud of what I could do and I am tired and want to sleep. That's all for the "warnings" :)
Screenshots:
Enjoy playing! ^v^/ And let me know if you encounter any bugs! It's my first time working in Godot and generally writing an actual script :)
MY PLAYTHROUGH ON YOUTUBE W/COMMENTARY AND TIME STAMPS
https://youtu.be/Pfdv7jqL_Gg
| Older one, new is in rar in downloads | https://github.com/kanitykoruel-cell/mothSourcecode |
| Link | https://kanity.itch.io/moon-moth |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/moon-moth |
Ratings
| Overall | 194th | 3.28⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 234th | 2.862⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 122th | 3.485⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 226th | 3.076⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 44th | 4.067⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 48th | 3.795⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 70th | 3.1⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 25th | 4.076⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 62🗳️ | 142🗨️ |
There were some... interesting... dreams out there. And I love the recorder :D
Thank you!! I am so happy I managed to make a whole little game myself from scratch w/o help of things like RPG Maker and RenPy, it feels really satisfying I have made something that works xD
Hehe all those dreams are "interesting" I guess, so I wonder which ones you are talking about xD Honestly I feel like I didn't go wacky enough for the dreams as they can get really weird irl %)
Also, glad you liked the sound! ^^
The art and audio were great, it had this playful but mysterious tone. The animated intro screen was a nice way to set the mood.
Did I understand correctly that the different wave types are "stars", "horror", "water" and "romance"? I think that's super cool and I liked exploring the different combinations.
A very nice game and it's impressive that you made it in an engine you hadn't worked in before!
Ludum Dare is full of programmers so it's a nice change to see an art-heavy game.
And for this game, I'm using "art" literally, because it has so much character and really feels like visiting the author's mind for a few minutes.
I feel like I got the same dream from two different yellow thingies on the first screen; or does it depend what things you catch? But if it does, then what's the difference between the yellow thingies? See, I didn't quite understand it mechanically. But then, of course I didn't, it's a dream!
I dunno, I just love art, and I love seeing people express themselves.
This feels like a kind of 'outsider art', and I absolutely don't mean that negatively. It's just so free of crates and guns and gamey stuff. It just felt like I dozed off between playing entries and had this dream, haha.
Thank you for making it!
@vidarn
Thank you ^v^ It's funny how this came to be because I put the word "signal" in the dictionary and somehow one of the results of the translation was a "sun moth" and it just went from there... xD
And - yes, I did put those words as a sort of hint in Main Menu ^^ Though I had "water" one as "ocean" in my notes as well as code, I realized it's too limiting when I came up with a lake dream idea, so it became "water", a more vast concept. I had plans for other elements, such as "fire" and "woods/plants" but then the combinations started growing too fast... and I was trying to be realistic about things I can do in just two days ^^'
I am glad you enjoyed the game!! I've only started learning Godot last week so I made what I could with things I had time to learn x) (And googled and watched some tutorials/ read reddit / godot forum discussions to figure out stuff as I went)
@mrmastin Thanks :3
Honestly I was worried players will get confused with the 5 stars, but it's actually because of my programming inabilities. I wanted there to be 5 dreamers, and for stars to disappear after you use them once. But I wasn't able to do it: the star WAS disappearing before loading into the dream level, but then when I loaded the city level again, she was there again, as if the level was becoming a "clean slate" on each load. I tried some things but didn't figure this out in 48 hours and then didn't want to break my game on accident :(
Maybe it is not very clear from the description on the page and the game itself... But what creates a dream is a combination of the waves. There are 4 possible combos on catching three waves (in a 1 1 0 1 / 1 0 1 1 kind of way where each digit is a set type, you can only catch one of each and the order doesn't matter!) and a Wildcard which gives a special dream immediately.
For example:
water + star + romance = Dream #1;
water + star + horror = Dream #2
etc.
Then, after giving dreams to all 5 dreamers, the game ends. Unfortunately, I just couldn't make those dreamers disappear :( But the game still does have an ending after creating 5 dreams! ^v^
But anyway, I am glad you got some rest from lasers and crates hehe :) And glad you liked my art. I admit, my games are not gameplay-heavy in general. They are more about atmosphere, world building, story or psychological themes. But I am glad I went out of my comfort zone and tried coding and still managed to sneak art & atmosphere in!
Thank you again for your lovely review and have sweet dreams <3
The only issue I had is a jump-scare x2 speed dreams flying at me... they don't know I tried to get a specific sequence and couldn't afford a random piece connecting to me.
I don't know if it's a desired effect, but I felt like in a fever dream :D
As always, even though the gameplay itself is straightforward, your games feel truly unique.
Well done! :night_with_stars:
@kyanoss Thank you ^^ And one of the dreams in game is actually inspired by my childhood dreams :)
@lectvs Hehe if you enjoyed your time with it that's what matters ^v^
@mr-flower Thank you, I am happy that you liked it :) And the flute thingy between the scenes represents waking up, but yeah, it's probably a bit too sudden and jarring :')
@quasilyte Oh, that's great! I think fever dream is a perfect effect xD And the 2x dreams were probably horror ones, they fall real fast but from only one side of the screen. Wildcard is decently fast but rare and usually goes diagonally. But yeah the game is more like "evade the waves" than "catch the waves" if you think about it ^^'
@hagamosvideojuegos It is so simple also because I was coding this time xD And I am very new to it. But I am glad it still feels good ^v^/ Thank you for playing! <3
Wildcard:
Horror:
Ocean/Water:
Romance:
Stars:
It truly felt like being in a dream itself, the echoing voice, the ominous music (and my favorite Kazooie!). I really enjoyed this. You are very talented, keep up the good work. And thank you for this unique experience, a nice break from all the platformers and shooters :)
"Run Dream" - I loved this little detail so much!!!
I had maybe just one technical issue. I know you mentioned that the screen is 800x600 by choice, which is good in my oldschool books! However, the cropping in the browser seems to be a bit off anyway.
The gameplay itself was a little confusing to me though. I was not so sure what the difference between the stars on the main menu was. I also understood that I had to collect different combinations of dream waves, but it was not so clear to me what a dream wave exactly was. In the end I figured out they were just all the float 'dreamy' waves (I guess I should have realized from that ... :p ), but some seemed to move very fast towards me such that they felt like enemies to avoid. This last point could just be my gamer brain though >_< Perhaps a bit more feedback on which combination a dream corresponded to would have been nice.
That being said, those points didnt take away from my appreciation of the game! This was a very unique and fun experience. Thanks a lot :D
Wow, thank you for such lovely feedback ^v^ I am glad you enjoyed the game and my music and voice acting and all! It's always a happy moment when your art finds a resonance in someone's heart.
And thank you also for noting this issue on itch, I went and made viewport bigger, added fullscreen option and ability to scroll the screen, hopefully this will save others from such cropping. It looks all right when I load it, just lags, so I didn't know about this!
@andriybyelikov I'll take that as a compliment :D
Hello! ^v^/ Can't wait to play your game too ;3 I am glad you enjoyed mine, and definitely DO try voice acting, it's honestly so fun :) I kept giggling when recording fun stuff, and more emotional lines made me proud with how I have managed to act them out, and emotional too. It's also fun to play with your voice, speak and read in different ways. Honestly, audio has become one of my favourite parts of game making xD
On topic of the gameplay. With the stars, you see, they are supposed to disappear. They represent 5 different dreamers, and the idea is to create dreams for all of them. The dream itself is determined by the waves, so it can repeat. However, I am a newbie at coding and it was my first time writing full game code myself and working in Godot, too. I couldn't figure out how to make stars disappear for good: they DO disappear according to code log, but after loading back into the city level (after beating mini game) it's like the level is a clean slate, loaded anew, and so the star is back ;_; But I did make a global variable for stars collected, and so the ending still triggers after you create 5 dreams!
And on the waves: yeah, after testing several times I also felt like it's more of a "avoid the waves" than "catch the waves" mini-game ^^' The one flying super fast is the horror one, but it usually falls from pretty much the same spot. I thought about writing out what combo you got when showing the dream but then decided it would make it too obvious and there has to be some mystery in the game/gameplay :') (also I would need to add another in-between screen for that and that would take a while ^^') I'll def have to tweak that if I work again on this game!
The gameplay loop is nice, I like the contrast between familiar/recurrent city scene and the unpredictable dreams jumping at you. I tried to catch the very fast wave first, thinking it must be important and should not escape, before trying something new. So yeah I didn't get the happiest dream after all but thanks for showing it in the video!
@zirrrus Oh no :( You ended up catching the same combination over and over: water, romance, horror. I'll need to add the screen telling which combo led to the dream! Though now you know how I felt in my childhood when I kept having this nightmare night after night xD
@cogcomp @ilari Thank you ^v^
@ray-dino I am glad you enjoyed it, thank you :) Maybe I'll start doing more complicated mechanics as I learn more programming ^^
@christina-antoinette-neofotistou Thank you!! Honestly I was trying my best, just couldn't make the stars disappear after "using" them. I need to research global values and autorun feature in Godot more. But I am glad it was still fun to play! <3
when are you publishing a poetry book?!?!
Just a thought, but the audio related lag spikes could probably be fixed by preloading the audio files.
I like how there is some kind of 'level select' where you can choose the bedroom to enter. I can see that you had fun creating the art for this one. Your games always feel more as an experience than a game itself, which is cool I think!
At first I was expecting a cute, moody game with a little fluffy moth, I then caught some rather disturbing dream waves and loaded up on nightmare fuel (in a positive way :D). Also having some rather lovely dreams. Well done :)
Also one thing, to let people fullscreen your game while still preserving your 800x600 aspect ratio, go to your Project Settings -> Display/Window -> Stretch/Mode and set it to "Canvas Items". This will let your game fill the window without letting people see out of bounds!
@hammeredzombie Ahh glad it had such an effect! And I do love writing poetry, maybe a poetry book in a form of a game would be more accessible though :D
@soundgnome Wow, that's a cool comparison. I haven't read this book; but now it's on my list, thank you for recommendation :)
@xedur Thanks for the tip! I'll need to research how to do this :)
@oadt Thank you! I've planned them on paper first, based on elements (waves) I chose and taking inspiration from some of my own dreams :)
@frozenfire92 Thank you! I was worried and ready to extend to Jam, but so happy I managed to make a COMPO ^^
@robin-schmitz Thanks :) Yes, I came up with the concept after the theme was announced, made sketches on paper while planning and then drew everything on my laptop. I don't think premade assets are allowed for compo anyway :) Hopefully you enjoyed your dreams and my dramatic reading! :D
@fupi Yay! I am happy to hear the audio is getting better, it's really becoming lowkey my favourite part of game-making xD I even recorded a melody w real life instruments myself for the first time (the one in main menu if I remember correctly!) Cozy and uneasy is just my trademark I guess, though it happens by itself :'D Also, thank you for the tip on the resolution; is it something I do in Godot before exporting my project?
@t-c Thank you, it makes me very happy that my games turn out unique ^^ These are really just like a piece of my mind in colour and sound. I do see how I could make the combo mechanic a bit clearer, if I work more on this game I will be sure to fix that. I tried to represent the "themes" of the waves in their visuals, and added a hint on the main screen about what types there are. But I admit it's all pretty obscure. I wonder what you had in mind about a player themselves figuring out which wave represents which theme? How would that look as a game mechanic? Honestly I was simply hoping that visual design of the waves would be obvious enough by itself xD When you make a game yourself, everything is obvious to you, and it's hard to imagine how actually mysterious all of this will be to another person :') I am glad you enjoyed it nonetheless! Thank you for playing <3
Then when you saw enough dreams, and knew which waves created those dreams, you could see if you can spot enough patterns to have a guess as to the meaning of each wave. Just something that kicked around in my head after learning about the meaning. I thought it could be neat to present 'figuring out the meanings' as a game mechanic specifically. But I know that is a lot of work!
Also, the waves, once you know their meanings, definitely have a strong visual correlation to their meaning, you are correct! My brain did not think to try to find that meaning, though. When they're flying around on screen and spinning, and you're focused on which ones you want to avoid, I did not find myself taking the time to really examine the art! :laughing: And who knows, maybe if I went in knowing specifically there were meanings to them - I would have figured them out on my playthrough. My brain interpreted "note the patterns" in the description less as "look at the patterns themselves" and more "remember the combinations you picked"! But I don't feel the way that it was took anything away from the game. Just a cool way you could tie some kind of mystery/learning puzzle into the game, through wave combinations and dreams.
I do, really do, wish there was a way to scale the game a little, because it was _tiny_ on my 4K monitor, to the point of it being hard to see the drawn stuff and text and such. I would say it was restrictive enough that it bordered an accessibility issue (though i could ofc gone and scaled the whole monitor).
I did very much enjoyed my stay with the game.
More feedback in the play-through:
https://youtu.be/Ze55VHAdD_Q
@t-c
That's fair, you only see main menu in the beginning and then quickly forget about it, so it doesn't really help unless you are doing a second playthrough and looking at it again and thinking hey, wait a minute...
Thank you for explaining your idea, and it actually reminded me that I did have a more complicated game design in mind in the beginning (though different to what you said) but me being new to programming made it much more simple ofc. But I'll take notes and practice and hopefully next times I will be able to add more puzzles/other mechanics to my games!
It's honestly so eye-opening when you get feedback from other people playing your game (and not like when my sister or boyfriend plays when I am standing right there and can direct them and explain things) because when you make it everything is obvious to you and it's hard to realise some aspects will be confusing to a lot of people seeing the game for the first time ^^'
Wow, thank you for the video playthrough! That's very sweet of you to do and it helps so much to see issues with my game design. I've noticed you made a playthrough of some other games I played and liked this jam so I'll check those videos out, out of curiousity, too ^^
I am actually happy you managed to see 4 different dreams out of 5 (and the final one that you get after creating 5 dreams total), but your playing proccess shows it's easy for a player to get many repeats which is obviously annoying and gets boring fast.
I noticed you caught the "Horror" wave (purple one) almost every time; I was hoping it would be easy to avoid if needed since it spawns in pretty much one place on the screen, but now it's clear it will be the most caught one by many players. It is part of 3 combinations (water, star, horror (sea monster dream); water, romance, horror (mermaid dream); and romance, star, horror (exploding planet dream). You did catch a Wildcard on the 2nd playthrough, this gives you a special dream immediately. So you've only missed water, romance, star combination (it's a silly dream, the only positive one pretty much :))
Clearly I needed to make better instructions, I've already tried to make things more clear remembering previous jams experience (hence that ugly PRESS ENTER text, that's just me being paranoid) but still managed to confuse people :') But you did notice that it's better to remember and note the combinations, so at least that's not too obscure.
On the topic of resolution, as a person with an old laptop I honestly didn't even contemplate the existence of 4K screens xD Sorry! I even had it 1 to 1 in itch embed screen but now you can see a lot of gray around because I received a comment about screen being cut for them (which I didn't get testing it myself) so to be safe I've added fullscreen and made the window itself bigger. I was going for a retro cozy experience, hence the 800x600, and since I am really not a programmer and it's basically the first game I actually wrote a code for, I honestly have no idea how to let people stretch it, so sorry for that... I will note and research this for future use!!
But I am glad you could have a lovely time still and managed to see pretty much all my game has to offer, thank you for playing and making a video ^v^
It is quite possible that the "Press Enter" is needed, and it would ofc have been even more asset creation needed to have that hand-painted too. Possibly it could have been a little delayed.
The same thing with the mini-game instructions, that at least when i'm entering a dream for the second or at least third time, perhaps they don't need to be shown anymore. But it is scary to not have instructions and allowing for players to be confused and lost. So I'm not sure there at all.
As for purple, I might have gone for it consistently because it was purple :laughing:
I managed to trigger two regular dreams and the "secret dream".
Technically the game felt quite polished and well-thought out in comparison to some similar _stream of conciousness_ / "art-games" I've come across (or made myself for that matter!).
---
I like that the zany recorder -sfx played whenever transitioning to a different scene.
And funnily enough: I _actually considered using a recorder myself_ to make the audio in this jam! But since the theme turned out the way it did I decided to jump deep into the world of digital audio synthesis instead of using real instruments.
Being an amateur musician I've occasionally fooled around with the "standard" [soprano recorders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soprano_recorder). And it just occurred to me that I have indeed used one back in **LD49** to play a short ambience that I aligned with a piano-loop. Was both pleased and surprised how eerie of an effect it produced with some additional reverb and delay.
A few years ago I managed to find an [alto recorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alto_recorder) at a thrift-store among the "regular ones". I find that its slightly lower scale **(F⁴ instead of C⁵)** is more pleasant than the potentially ear-piercing shrieks they made us produce back in elementary school.
Many wouldn't believe how versatile of an instrument the recorder can be despite its bad reputation!
---
Keep on jamming! :musical_score: :notes:
It's pretty with all the sparkly graphics, nice to see some particles too. Fits the dreamy theme well. Of course some of the dreams were quite scary! I like how disjointed some of it feels, just like dreams, where one moment you're getting these funny recorder sounds, but suddenly some horror pops up. Makes me wonder if these are dreams you've had yourself, or if they represent something else in particular.
In terms of gameplay, it would've been nice if you'd been able to get the stars to disappear between levels to help us keep track, but as you said yourself, it was tricky to figure out. Something for next time! Likewise with the combos, it would've been nice to track them some way, because I kept getting the same dreams, but just as you had to do with my game, writing things down works too! :p
Cool stuff, looking forward to seeing your next Godot adventure if there is one.
@dis0rder
Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed the game and my recorder-playing :) I am curious about your game now too, hopefully I will find time to check it out soon! The audio is such a fun part of game-making. I don't think I even realised there are soprano and alto recorders. Sounds like a cool way to add more variety to the sound. And I didn't know about bad rep either! I feel comfortable with recorder since I played it in school, but I am very much an amateur also. (I did like the sound of recorder in school though, I found it quite melodic and felt happy with myself!)
I feel like your explanation of your LD49 melody explains why my music feels eerie... Because of the piano, recorder, reverb - all those being very popular with, well, me xD
@ava-skoog
Thank you! I really did like using Godot so there is a high chance I continue working with it :) I enjoy trying new engine for each Jam too though, so it might be something new. But Godot really feels like it's good for my simple indie projects, and the programming part isn't TOO challenging for me. And yeah I was super excited when I saw the tutorial on the particles xD It was fun to play around with them.
Some of the dreams are something I actually had (like the mermaid dream), some represent my thoughts and feelings considering the state of the world around me (like the dream about an exploding planet, it's about me feeling cut off from the world and feeling like there is so much stuff going down overall around the planet, but me still trying to reach out, like through those game jams for example, and communicate with people around the world ^^). I talk about all that in the video I uploaded on the youtube if you are interested, I linked it on the game page ^^
Writing the instructions into the foreground of each screen is clever. The starting menu's _Press Space_ could be made more bold, white outlined, or maybe have an outline appear when you mouse over it to be more eye-catching and obvious. If you go for the outline approach, you could do the same thing for the 5 moods to hint to the player yellow is stars, purple is horror, and so on.
For the scenes after collecting dreams, it would be nice if the player has the option to skip in case they have seen the dream before, either in 2 steps to show all then move on, or just move on immediately. It was probably out of scope though since in your original idea there was more persistence between levels.
Also great job on balancing the audio without overloading the wind or being too quiet with the voice lines. I can almost imagine the background trees and TV dishes swaying with the wind sounds.
My favorite dream was the... how do I even describe it? The Lovecraftian starfish rapper?
Great work on the variety of musical/audio elements, too. Really helped the game feel alive.
Very nice job!
Very cool.
@pkenney I love your description of the Dream#2, as I call it, sounds perfect xD Yeah, I know which one you are talking about. It was very fun to make, and I spent quite a bit of time drawing each vertebrae on that starfish skeleton :) Glad to know you tried working out the combinations, and enjoyed the audio as well. I tried my best to read each poem in a different way and use my voice differently since I am the only "voice actor", and create more diverse audio with BeepBox and recording me playing actual irl instruments, so I am very happy to know it worked! Thank you for playing :)
@ao-85 Thank you, I am glad you liked it ^v^
@steveofstevesgames Thank you for playing and for the compliment to my haunting voice! :D Glad you enjoyed the game ^v^