Deep Sleep by Link270




Controls:
Move using WASD or the arrow keys on the keyboard and look with the mouse.
Use the E key for interaction when prompted.
Shift will let you sprint, space bar does a small hop. (The hop is mainly for fun)
A controller should be able to be used during the game, however it may not work in the menu to start the game.
Notes:
- PLEASE READ: Due to time limits not a lot of play testing was done so some of the puzzles didn’t get very detailed instructions and may be hard to follow. Feel free to try them out on your own first, but the following includes a few minor hints for the puzzles in general.
- Each puzzle area has 1-3 things that need to be interacted with to solve, look for the interact icon.
- A few items need to be moved to a location; when you can no longer pick them up that portion is complete.
- At one point you need to move 4 of the item.
Look at this doc if you need more specific help. Spoiler warning, this document includes specific puzzle solutions. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-mT8aeqm_JquiVV2IMb40GGkEBahCX3g06e02eDUkY4/edit
If the cursor dot in the center turns green you can interact with the object. If it turns red you can interact, but there are some puzzles that need to be resolved first.
Bug Fix Version 0.2 fixes a few minor bugs that caused some issue with progression in certain situations. Also a minor fix to improve performance, and hopefully prevent a crash on lower end hardware in the final area.
Tools used:
Unity (2021 alpha version because we like to live on the edge)
Blender - 3D modeling
Ableton live - Music
Team:
Mitch (Link270) - Programming and Music
Tanner (Alphabean11) - Art
Skyler (1minatur) - Story and collider placer
We are a very new studio trying to get more going with our game development. Feel free to follow any of our socials if you’d like to keep in touch and follow us!! http://nievestudios.com/
Ratings
| Overall | 386th | 3.841⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1150th | 3.193⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 681th | 3.411⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 616th | 3.86⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 310th | 4.213⭐ | 110🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 186th | 3.995⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 92th | 4.294⭐ | 109🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 154🗳️ | 239🗨️ |
If your UI isn't responsive, you shouldn't forego the Unity launcher that allows you to set the resolution and fullscreen state. I couldn't read most of the text on my ultrawide monitor, though enough to understand what was going on... :grimacing:
This is a great entry, but technical issues have a significant effect on immersion, which is so important for games like this. Well done though!
I'm really glad you guys didn't go around the route of absolute horror. I have a feeling you could actually push it further and I was kinda on edge the whole time. You did well on conveying the theme and giving the message at the same time. Thanks for reminding us that.
There are two bugs I noticed!
* I actually use multiple monitors, so I can actually see the mouse trail outside to another monitor, which can lead me to lose focus on the game window especially where I can suddenly decide to fidget around and accidentally click on my mouse
* The cursor does, in fact, not show up after the credits!
Nonetheless, I love the art style and what y'all are going for! Great job~
I noticed the mouse not disappearing issue, then forgot about it, then noticed it again after the time was up. *facepalm* Not sure why the cursor decides to run away after the credits, but I’ll add that to my list of things to fix someday. Haha thanks!
The text scrolled a bit fast to me, making text with more than 2 lines hard to read completely.
Aside from that: graphics, music and topic are good, nice job. I was often confused about what to do and when but many already noticed that, so nothing more to share.
GG
As you mentioned in the game description, some of the puzzles did feel a little hard to interpret, but overall I think it was spelled out well enough in the dialog.
Nice job!
The terrain, puzzles and atmosphere remind me of a game called Dream that uses a similar style to communicate a different message. Haven't finished that one but one I definitely enjoyed.
The mood is definitely there, with music, dialog and environment setting it right from the beginning.
It lagged a bit on my crappy computer, but I could still enjoy it.
You are aware of this, but some puzzles would benefit from more hints or feedback (as in our game haha). The doc with solution is a great backup plan to compensate!
Thanks for the game 💕
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1002310964
Thanks for being part of the stream, yesterday was amazing! :smile:
The ambiance of your game is amazing, the atmosphere is really well done! Congratulation to the team
Edit: looks like hdrp only supports Vulcan on Linux, no ipenGL unfortunately.
The core idea of this game and the interpretation of the theme is creative. I managed to do the puzzles without help, but they could use some feedback. Although I think it was cool in its own way that there were no clues on how to solve them. The mood was great, the audio and atmosphere are very nice. And I liked the simplistic 3D graphics.
Great entry, well done!
The only thing I'd really change is just using the "shift" speed as the default. I spent the entire time in sprint mode as the walking speed was too slow without it.
great works
So with that in mind, I'd say you made the right call. Also for the record having sprint as a toggle rather than hold is always the right decision.
I had trouble with the first puzzle as mentioned by a few other people, and restarted the game before I checked the page and realized what I was doing wrong! With the hint that you needed to interact with a few things in the section, though, I was well able to solve the rest of it without a walk through. Once you know what you're doing, it's pretty intuitive to see what needs doing next, so good job on setting up the puzzles intuitively. I also liked that each of the sections had a distinct and clear colour palette - it gave each section a very distinctive feeling, even in spite of the cohesive design between them. The musical score was also excellent in each part for matching the emotion and guiding the player along the emotional journey you laid out.
The title screen was also very charming, and in some ways a bit jarringly whimsical once you've played through the game, but I think it does well to start the game off on a higher note that rapidly gets darker until finally coming through the other side.
All to say, good work, and a very thoughtful and interesting game! It's one of two Ludum Dare games I've actually downloaded this time around, and it feels worth it for the effort your team put into making a compelling narrative. ☆☆☆☆☆
Jump is there mainly because I didn't like how it felt to not have it. It doesn't hurt the game for being there and imho makes it feel a little better.
Four for the jail was honestly arbitrary. This was towards the end and I just don't think we had enough time to sit down and really decide what the number should be and why it would be any number. It doesn't help that there is no indication that you need to put four in there, so this point is very valid. Also I will note it was 5 in the morning when I was working on that section, so I don't have a lot of meaningful reasoning behind the choices at that time. haha
Thanks for the feedback on the story as well, we will need to go through and refine that as well so the feedback helps.
Thanks again for playing!
I'm glad you noticed the smallness of the child. That was done intentionally and I agree it plays out well.
I also agree the end is a little bit abrupt and a total flip from the final area before it, I noticed this a lot while watching other people play it. This will need a bit of attention for future updates for sure.
I'm glad you enjoyed the music, considering I put it all together in the last few hours I am surprised how well it turned out and how well it's been recieved.
Thanks for the review and thanks for playing!
For example, instead of "I can choose to be happy", I would like to do "Maybe I can be happy". Instead of "Life WILL get better", I would like to go the route of "Maybe life does get better".
Minor changes, but I think that solves several problems. For example, it fixes the hard turn from depressing to overly optimistic and sets it up to be optimistically hopeful instead (which fits better with what our original intent was), and it helps avoid the issue of downplaying depression and the time/effort required to heal from traumatic experiences.
Thanks for the feedback!
Edit: Scratch that, bugs were fixed!

Really nice ambience + visual style. The interactions felt very polished too, lots of attention to detail. Overall really nice entry. After reading through comments here I think I get what you were going with for the puzzles a bit better, but in the moment I was just clicking stuff and it wasn't very clear to me what that represented.
Putting the bear in bed for example, I figured the next thing I should do was go to bed, as that's what the dialogue said, but that didn't work. Then when looking around I accidentally activated the other two items in that room through the mother mesh, so it was a surprise when things moved.
My only nit-pick would be the text at the bottom of the screen, the placement didn't feel quite right and I found my attention drifting away from it while taking in the cool environments (Perhaps they could be integrated somehow?)
Overall though, I thought it was a wonderful little game and had a surprisingly poignant message!
@wheybags Thanks for the feedback! Yeah, we agree the dialogue for the puzzles is a bit misleading at the moment. We’ve got some plans to expand a little bit and fix those issues in the process, I’m glad you enjoyed the rest.
@jaiden-gerig Thank you! I agree, the overall mood really came together quite well. Thanks for the notes on the dialogue. We need to figure out a good way to have it show up, stay long enough to be readable, and still allow you to take in the environment more. I’m thinking of trying out having the character pause at certain moments and maybe look towards things in the environment to possibly help with that.
Thanks for all the feedback!!
- Super cool
- Liked the puzzles
- Sad that it crashed at the end
I think the art in the game, this low poly, minimalistic meets slightly abstract art not only works perfectly for the dream theme, but also if this subject matter was shown with more realistic people it would feel too real and would be a bit too much for me.
The music was great and I loved the different remixes/versions through each dream state. The movement was also great and I REALLY can't understate how nice it was for you to have dash as a toggle feature. So many have it as "hold to dash" and it's just more of a nuisance to do so.
Also didn't get any bugs on my end and was able to complete it all on my own!
And finally loved the ending scene, I love it when credits play over gameplay/you still have control to wander around. It's just a nice thing to have.
Overall your team did great and you delivered a game not only with a powerful and hopeful message, but links to help people and all of this in 72 hours.
Great entry and great job.
(And final quick note, love your teams logo!)
Agreed on the ability to move during the credits as well. Small things like that, especially in a game like this, I’ve always liked.
Glad you like the logo too, we spent a bit of time redesigning it recently as we had started working on a larger scope game (hopefully to come out next year) and this game jam was a great break from that and gave us a lot of experience.
Thanks again for the feedback! And for joining us on stream for a bit. (And watching me struggle through frog haha)
Overall, an excellent job on the atmosphere all around. Having an ability to jump was nice, although I didn't really feel like jumping till I got to the meadow.
Personally, I wish you had a different subject. This reminds me of the worst of humanity, of the worst people I knew, and that's far from fun. And, yeah, I know that spreading awareness is important.
In any case, it's still a very nicely done jam game!
but I play one minute I fells boring :smile:
One issue I did have though was that the mouse look got locked in a certain area and I could not make a full 360 turn. At one point it didn't allow me to look down either (linux build). Didn't prevent me from finishing the game though
Visually it's great. Low poly is low poly, it looks good and gets the job done; the use of color, lighting, and fog all come together very well! The musical motif, evolving through each chapter was a very nice touch.
I appreciate that there are interactions... *something* that needs to be done beside walking to each point in the story. I would have liked a little more feedback (visually or with sound) to let me know I was doing what I was supposed to. Sensitivity and look inversion options would also be nice.
It's cool that it has a message, I'm left a little uncomfortable, and that's probably a good thing.
Good job!
You can find the timestamp of when your game was played here: https://tinyurl.com/LDJAM48-ursa
Can't wait to see more of what you'll be doing in the future.
The hints on the puzzles in the description helped quite a bit - I can see myself having been pretty stuck on a few of them without them.
I will mention that I didn't get the credits after running for a while, and actually thought the game just ended in a field with music and the few final messages. I did manage to hit the edge of the world, if that helps. I apologize - I know that's not a super descriptive bug report, but I'm not sure what I might have done differently than the average person.
This didn't take away much though - I did see all the final messages, including the "I can choose to be happy". (I saw your comment earlier about changing this wording, and I agree that would make a big difference.)
I hope for the best for your studio! If you can do this in a weekend, I'm sure you can do many great things.
The visuals were really good, and the mostly monochrome style & abstract environment really nails the dream feel.
There's a bit of lack of feedback & hints on some of the puzzles though (exit behind the door in 1st level & having to put 4 of the moms in the jail).
Well done all around!
Here is my LP :slight_smile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7unK3BbsEAw