Ray's Ludum Dare 48 Submission by Raymond Bourke

[raw]
made by Raymond Bourke for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

Not much to play, but this is what I was able to get done.

I envisioned a game that takes place on the pages of a book and tells the story of a friar traveling deep into the depths of hell on a personal but doomed quest to rid the world of evil. Each page would warn you not to go any deeper into the story, because the main character is fated to fail if you keep turning the pages.

What I ended up with was a lot of spaghetti code that would support the systems of a game like that, but without much content. There is only one "level" (page) to play, and it is a particularly easy one. The game has no introduction, no menus, has some bugs, and is a far cry from the epic story I envisioned.

It was still fun though and I learned a lot. This was my first time making a graphical game without an engine to help me and it was a quite a journey. I think I will keep working on this project and see if I can turn it into a real game.

The gameplay is built around changing the text of the story to make it have a better outcome for the friar. You control the friar with the WASD keys, and enter text fields with SPACE. The ENTER key will let you move around again and stop editing the text. Once you have the right text in each field, the page automatically turns. However, there is only one page to play in this version.

Originally, the entire story of the game was going to be told in verse, with each page being one poem, and to beat each page your solution would have had to maintain the original meter. I'm really excited to keep working on this and add everything in the original vision. ludum48capture.PNG

Ratings

Given 5🗳️ 2🗨️

Feedback

araz vakili
27. Apr 2021 · 02:49 UTC
nice
Braden land
27. Apr 2021 · 03:05 UTC
Really cool game!
AbigailCorfman
27. Apr 2021 · 03:08 UTC
I really like this concept and I want to explore further, but I don't understand what I'm supposed to do once I've pressed space over a text box. If I press backspace, it seems to take the letters, but I don't know how to get Peter's letters back into the book. Help?
poboy
27. Apr 2021 · 04:27 UTC
Really cool concept! Would love to see this developed further.
teenythanos
27. Apr 2021 · 04:38 UTC
This is SO creative!
mrmedic
27. Apr 2021 · 07:09 UTC
What a nice idea! The graphic style fits perfectly to the game and the animations are great. I had a hard time typing the right letters, especially that the letter "_" is just a space. Regardless of that, there is much potential in the story telling. Well Done!
Pharaohcity
27. Apr 2021 · 19:21 UTC
The concept for this game is so amazing, I would love to see it fully fleshed out some day. Good luck!
🎤 Raymond Bourke
27. Apr 2021 · 23:10 UTC
@pharaohcity , @poboy

Thanks for the feedback! I plan to keep working on this. I wish there was a way to let you know when I am done.
🎤 Raymond Bourke
27. Apr 2021 · 23:15 UTC
@abigailcorfman

When you press backspace, the letters that are in the text box you are interacting with are added to "Peter's Letters". You can only type letters that Peter has, and you do so by simply typing the key after you have pressed space and are in a text box field.

It is really unclear how it is supposed to work because I didn't have time to flesh out the game with a GUI, a tutorial, an introduction, or anything like that to really communicate to the player well.

I think I am going to try to add a few things like this as well as a couple of bug fixes and a few more pages to the story and upload the new version to itch.io when I can so that the game has a good foundation, then start making a long and complete story mode.
🎤 Raymond Bourke
27. Apr 2021 · 23:17 UTC
@teenythanos

Thank you so much! I wish I could have had more time to do my ideas justice in the jam.
lesinvisible
29. Apr 2021 · 17:16 UTC
Very fresh and creative concept, I love such type of games. Would to see what comes of this game someday too.