Dahla's Journey by PiJaMar
After a lifetime working on a meaningless dead-end job for The Corporation, a small sentient being named Dahla embarks on a journey to discover the meaning of life. After exhausting her resources and spending all her savings, she travels far and reaches The Tower, where all living things go to be granted their Final Wish by The Power and then be released to transcend this life. The growling voice of The Power sounds astonished by her straightforward, unusual request, and throws her in the depths of The Pit, the infamous underground levels of The Tower. She must now face grave dangers unknown to her kind, with the promise of the greatest reward of all — pure, unfiltered knowledge.
Dahla's Journey is a retro sci-fi-esque broughlike set in a dystopian futuristic world populated by biotech life.
This is a turn-based game!
Use the ARROW KEYS or WASD to move to an adjacent tile or attack an enemy on an adjacent tile. After you move, enemies will take their turn and move. Beware, they're unpredictable!
Look where you're going! If you stop on a tile adjacent to an enemy, the enemy will attack you. Every time you get attacked, you lose one damage, and if your health goes to zero, you die -- permanently! No backsies.
Reach the vortex to advance to the next level. How deep can you go?
ITCH Game page: https://pijamar.itch.io/dahlas-journey
The Itch.IO page contains a playable browser-based version of the game and two download files, the Construct 3 source code and a ZIP with Windows EXE files (WebView2 required).
All art, music and programming was created by PiJaMar using Construct 3, ASeprite, Beepbox and SFXR.
Font "Matchup PRO" created by Eeve Somepx: https://somepx.itch.io/humble-fonts-free
| Construct 3 file (c3p) | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P6Ifhjc75Tn5x0-6AGOOzUTj30xVFzS8/view?usp=sharing |
| HTML packed ZIP | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tVfIxujsmG00i8G6QAwy_V8COwFuzdba/view?usp=sharing |
| Windows EXE (requires WebViewer2) | https://drive.google.com/file/d/18gBI2FsQFFEJvCHrNQ1c1VwuOVfzE79z/view?usp=sharing |
| Itch Page (Playable browser version) | https://pijamar.itch.io/dahlas-journey |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/dahlas-journey |
Ratings
| Overall | 143th | 3.861⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 241th | 3.667⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 421th | 3.255⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 525th | 3.454⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 147th | 3.981⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 123th | 3.788⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 339th | 2.728⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 65th | 4.038⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 72🗳️ | 98🗨️ |
The point you make about the "puzzle feel" is very on-point, I'll keep it in mind, appreciate it :wink:
The plan was for each enemy to move to a random position each turn (if possible). However, this was my first time making a turn-based game, so to be completely honest I did not figure out the movement "code" correctly and sometimes the enemies simply don't move. I just went with it :smile:
Thank you a lot for taking the time to play and comment, I really appreciate it!
Good job, good luck.
I didn't have the time to adjust the gameplay speed, but will definitely adjust it for possible future versions. Thank you for playing and leaving feedback, you are awesome :two_hearts:
And I deeply appreciate you for taking the time to play the game and leave a comment :slight_smile:
Yes, I plan on keep working on it, and I completely agree the gameplay is slow, will definitely fix that in the future. I also want to add some items and a bit more story (like randomized lines at the end of each run) to flesh out the experience. Really appreciate your kind words :heart:
So glad you took the time to play it :smile:
You're a great inspiration to me, I feel super starstruck every time you get to play one of my games :heart:
I think the gameplay itself is good groundwork for more complex puzzles in the future, maybe with enemies that eventually have predictable paths based on some sort of visual cue. I feel like the current strategy is to just ensure you're always one square away from an enemy until they approach you first so you can attack them safely. I got pretty far following that rule of thumb. Honestly that mechanic of waiting for the enemy to make the first move might lend itself well to a metaphor with the storyline too...
Anyway, great game and nice work!
Yes, there's no more story after the intro at the time. The game is "endless" at its current state, but the plan is to add more backstory and a proper ending in the future. I wanted to implement more interactions between "The Power" and Dahla, such as multiple different lines of text after the end of each run and item selection in between levels, but I ran out of time :sweat_smile:
I appreciate your insight on the gameplay mechanics, especially your thoughtful suggestion on tying it with the storyline, great suggestion! Haven't thought about it to be completely honest :smile:
Really appreciate you guys playing it on stream, thank you so much!
I absolutely love Into the Breach (and FTL), so that's a high praise for me, appreciate it :heart:
Also good to know there's something to appreciate even if you're not a hardcore player of super-niche turn-based strategy games :smile:
Will definitely work on a "proper ending" in the future. Thank you for playing and for commenting, I deeply appreciate it :heart:
But if you ever find out something "bad" to say about it, don't hold back, any feedback is valuable feedback! :smile:
The enemies were just the right amount of predictable and random to where you had to decide whether or not you could make a risky move, or play it safe. I ran away my first attempt, went full aggressive on my second, and tried to strike a good balance on the third.
I managed to make it to level 3 on my third attempt. Accidentally backed into a corner being too reckless.
The classic Rogue mechanics, sans stats, puts a lot of emphasis on positioning. I would have liked to see variety in the types of enemies and level layout. Also, some way to get back HP, such as one more life every 5 levels or something, would have kept me playing longer.
Good job!
I love the overall look and sound of the game (great music!), and it was very fun trying to find your way to the exit without making mistakes.
I made it to the level 8!
The fact you always had to move made it an interesting game, like a strange game of chess where you have to move to some place no matter what your endgoal is.
Overall, a fantastic game. Congrats!
I would have loved to see one more enemy just to see the different synergies and strategies, also having the enemies move the instant the player moves would improve the player experience.
Overall it was a great entry, good job!
Will definitely work on fleshing out the gameplay with more enemies and items and adjusting the pace for a future version. I appreciate the feedback, glad you liked the game :heart:
Not having a "Wait" action is one of the pillars of the *broughlike* sub-genre, created and popularized by game dev / designer Michael Brough. If you like the mechanic, I recommend checking out his games, especially Cinco Paus.
Thank you for playing and commenting :heart:
I was planning on adding items with effects like recovering HP and AOE damage, but simply healing every X levels is a neat idea, I might steal it for future versions of the game :wink:
I didn't have time to adjust the slowness of the movement before the deadline, but I'll definitely get to it soon :smile:
I will definitely add some more stuff to flesh out the gameplay after the jam, so any ideas are very welcome :slight_smile:
In all honesty, this is maybe my favorite game so far. It has great atmosphere, with it's simplistic and deliberate graphics and audio. The intro got me interested, and wasn't too long. The gameplay was fun, and although it seemed simple at first, it steadily got more challenging. I found you could be unlucky at the start of some levels, and receive unavoidable attacks though.
I couldn't finish the game, but then I read a comment on the itch page that there was no ending, and I came to think that it suited the game's intro story that way.
The character's goal was to find the meaning of life, which I felt got answered through the gameplay. You keep pushing forward until you give up and stop trying, or simply aren't able anymore. That' also a valid way to view all kinds of life in general. At least that's how I interpreted it.
Good job!
About the unavoidable attack situation — you're totally right, it's far from perfect right now and it can lead to some awkward situations. I believe having some way to recover health or some sort of powerful item / special attack that you can use once in a while, such as an AOE effect, could mitigate that. Or I could also rework the level generation somehow to prevent these weird scenarios where there's simply nothing you can do to avoid taking damage. Just brainstorming here :sweat_smile:
I'm honored with your comments and will take them to heart when working in a new version.
And congratulations on your game as well, I loved it! :heart:
Some people suggested having an indicator to where the enemies would move on their next turn to expand on the strategic decisions the player can make when moving. I'm not sold on that solution as it would remove some of the "randomness" of the experience, however, I totally agree that I have to do *something* to mitigate that "going back and forth" as it's far from satisfying gameplay :sweat_smile:
Loved your game by the way, congratulations!
Might have been inspired by it without realizing it, I can see where you're coming from. Similar color palette, broody music. Good eye, thank you for playing :wink:
I hope I get to play an enhanced version after the jam as well!
Great work!
Congratulations to you and the rest of your team for the great entry :slight_smile:
I think, then, the question is: how much control you want the player to have over the outcome of the game. The thematic implication of RNG dominating the outcome so strongly is that the player's decisions and skill is largely insignificant--and it seems to me like that fits with the rest of the story in the game so far.
It also could be interesting to give the player more and more tools as they complete more runs, and tie that progression into the story somehow. I think a strongly RNG-dominated game does give a lot of thematic material to work with, if that's what you want to do.
Aside from that: I liked the graphical style of the game, especially the introductory text. The gameplay of the game as it stands got a bit repetitive by the time I died (floor 12 or 13)--I'm sure adding more enemies and other things would help there.
I did enjoy the combat despite its RNG nature. It's kind of fun to keep dancing around the enemies until they make a bad move.
And thank you so much! <3
You raise some very good points about the randomness from an unusual point of view. The initial idea was that the story would be gradually shown to the player between levels and runs, with a little bit of meta-progression (for instance, I wanted items / skills to be randomized so you'd never know their effect before using them for the first time). I didn't have enough time to do all that, so I ended up cutting a lot in favor of a more simple experience. But I'll definitely revisit some of my first ideas post-jam — and the things you said gave me the opportunity to look at them in a different way. Thank you very much :heart:
I'm also grateful that you took the time to play my game and leave a comment, I really appreciate it :smile:
Yes, the enemy movement is random (and a bit glitchy, the enemies were supposed to always *try* to move if there's a direction available, but I must've messed up the code somehow). I will definitely rework the proc-gen / movement in the future, to make the level design a bit less random and prevent these incredibly easy levels where you basically just walk forward and get to the end.
I played my first runs without attacking enemies because I hadn't read all the instructions, and turns out it was a fun game too :laughing: with the attack it sometimes gets a little grindy, as people before me might've said it already.
Overall very cute, and very relaxing to play. The music is cool, my roommate came to my computer to watch me play when they heard it!
Also, thank you for taking the time to play and leave feedback, you're awesome :slight_smile:
I didn't unsderstand how the ennemis were supposed to move, I guess it was random? Either way, I managed to find some kind of strategy to progress through the levels, so that's fine for me!
I don't have much to suggest, you did a really fine job here, congrats!
The enemies were supposed to pick a random direction to move to every turn if able. However, I somehow messed up the code and sometimes the enemies simply don't move, which made the movement a bit more randomized than I planned. I did not have time to fix the coding, so I just went with it :sweat_smile:
Overall, I love the nostalgia that your color palette gives me - it reminds me a lot of a old GB game. And the Music was very well done as well! Very awesome stuff, looking forward to your next entry!
I will definitely work on picking up the pace of the gameplay in the future, I appreciate the feedback :slight_smile:
I love Construct 3! I made my first game using Godot, but I switched to Construct 3 afterwards. From what I read / watched, it seems it's very important to make as many games as possible when you're learning gamedev, and not having to actually write hundreds of lines of codes to make a simple prototype makes this easier for me. It's very easy to explore genres and gameplay mechanics while also learning the basics of object-oriented programming in Construct 3. I can see myself making the switch back to Godot in the future, though, or using both engines for different things when I'm more comfortable with writing code.
I loved the concept of your game, hope you keep working on it :trophy: