ONI by Daniel Whittaker
All roads lead to ONI...
After receiving a mysterious letter from an...old friend...you seek out the facility known only as ONI. A broken down, decrepit research lab in the middle the countryside, a place that you cant help but shake the feeling youve seen before. The locals speak in hushed tones about the "The event", some great calamity that occurred at ONI years ago, leaving nothing but pain and tragedy in its wake.
And now, you are here...Why you dont know, but you intend to find some answers...
A narrative puzzle game featuring everyone's favorite game mechanic from 2011, portals! Make your way through the abandoned ONI laboratory, solving puzzles as as you attempt to get to the bottom of just what happened here, and what exactly it was that bought you to here.
Play with sound
* Download version recommended * The web version doesnt show post processing properly so looks a bit jank.
Controls and walkthrough (if you need it) included as txt files. Good luck!
More a teaser than a game, its relatively short and leaves the mystery as open as it begins, but hopefully you enjoy your time in the laboratory, maybe some day you'll decide to visit again. After all, its as they say, all roads lead to ONI...
LOG
27/04 Fixed UI scaling. Fixed some spelling mistakes
28/04 Fixed bolt cutter exploit
| (Having trouble pushing the latest version ) | https://github.com/blaze237/LD48 |
| Link | https://dwhittaker.itch.io/oni |
| WebGL (BUGGY) | https://dwhittaker.itch.io/oni-web |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/oni |
Ratings
| Overall | 463th | 3.795⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 431th | 3.682⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 257th | 3.864⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1258th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 674th | 3.87⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 695th | 3.455⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 212th | 4.114⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
I can tell you put a good amount of effort into crafting the story and it really feels like its on the right track - reminded me a good deal of the game "Ether One." Nice job!
Cool mystery game with nice graphics. I liked the way you used props in the environment to show the story to the player rather than explicitly tell the player (Much like the portal series). It really adds to the overall mood of the game.
Two things that are worth noting:
1. The exit is available to be interacted from the beginning of the game. I think this is a bug? Either way it makes it somewhat confusing as to what the goal of the game is since the bolt cutters serve no purpose if the door can be opened whenever
2. The game seemed to loop right back to the beginning and i'm not sure if this is intentional or not because of the "All roads lead to omni" intro.
I also got stuck a bit from not knowing that a silver anniversary is a 25 year anniversary, I had to google that bit. But that might just be me being dense.
Overall a great story game that kept me engaged. I would love to see this expanded further.
You can actually open the chained gate after picking up the red key card. I was quite confused here as I never saw the 'you need a bolt cutter' message. Made more sense on the second attempt.
Also password puzzle requires external knowledge. Managed to guess it after several tries though.
Put me down as another one that got a bit of motion sickness from this, especially if I stared too closely at the portals when walking through them, as it seems they're static cubemaps or something so they only react to view direction I think? Super minor thing! The portals were really nice looking, and it's impressive that you pulled off a proper portal in Ludum Dare!
I have a weak tolerance for creep factor, but the atmosphere here was sufficient to make my skin crawl a bit, so well done there. I'm very relieved there wasn't a jump scare or something with the talk of "echos" doing weird things, but the writing was very evocative and really got my imagination going for what you might pull next.
All said, this is a really great and ambitious submission. Nice work!
The sound is quite low - I had to bump all my settings all the way up. It's not a problem, just thought you'd like to know.
I did not really see a connection to the theme of the jam. But other than that - nice trailer!
There is no way out of this loop! But the blackboard did tell me that I am the solution... so, I have to keep looping :wink:
One of the best story/puzzle game I played. Very well put together. The story was the perfect length for a jam too, long enough to be complex and short enough to be completed and provide satisfaction.
The only things I would improve are:
The bloom on the portal is too much, the light from it was really blinding to see in the overall dark environment.
The voice over narration was really low for me, it would help greatly to add subtitle as you already have the tech present in your game. (some subtitle appear when you mouse over some items)
But overall, congratulation, this is an amazing game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsMPyOopzzU