This game is hot. It shows that this hole LUDUMDARE shit sucks and allows only for shit-tier games done in two days, so games like this can't really spread their wings. 10/10 I'm 16 and this is deep.

the game wasen't working, but the artstyle is cool

@pink-spaceman, can you tell me in what way the game wasn't working? I am shocked as this time I even tested it in a few browsers and everything worked fine except for the small glitches on the Safari.

I never really play these types of games but this one had me. The art is very fitting, music and the voice acting was spot on as well. only thing I struggled with was the combat, I had no idea what I was doing but I still won. overall its a good job :thumbsup:

Great art,music,narration. Game was a little confusing, but I did enjoy it throughout, Thanks for your hard work.

@jamie-simpson, thank you and I am glad that you liked it. I agree that the combat got out a little confusing, it's mostly to the time constrains. Actually, I was trying to create a variation of a very old combat system which was a little questionable by itself, but I saw potential in it.

@michaelyount, thank you for the kind worlds, yes, this game seems a little strange sometimes but I hope it works on the overall deranged atmosphere in the game.

Love the derangement!

That was impressive. I really enjoyed speaking voice (is it yours?) and music (played by you?). General context was not so clear but it definetly was worth trying (and dying bad at the iron one). Thanks for your participation

I really liked!. I had a little trouble fighting to figure out which one was stronger.

Nice game !

what a great game. I love the grotesque art style, the moody soundtrack and the amazing voice acting. The game is definitely very different to what you see in game jams usually and I adore it for that. Some of the decisions you made me make where pretty difficult. The only thing im a bit unsure about is the combat. Could you maybe explain how it worked exactly ?

@leggy, Thank you, yes, everything in this game was done by me. I didn't managed to finish everything in 2 days that's why it turned into JAM contribution.

@ringabell, Thank you, yes, fighting is a little confusing, but this time I balanced the game so that you most likely will win most battles easily anyway. If you experience some problems you can try to pick the right combination for the enemy you have trouble with (each character has his favorite attack and defense strategy which they use more often), and use it to break they defense and protect yourself from their attacks.

@nyanpierre, Thank you.

@michael-grieshofer, Thank you, I thing you really praise voice-acting too much)

About the infamous combat system:

I. Each round you select your **Attack** and **Defense** moves. There three **Attack** options which are in reality:
- Strike to the Head
- Strike to the Torso
- Fire a gun

They are all equal in a sense what damage they do. But each of them can be cancelled by the respective **Defense** move:
- Cover your Head
- Cover your Torso
- Hide from the projectiles

II. Then you opponent selects his **Attack** and **Defense** moves. It's done randomly but there is ~50% chance that they will select their favorite moves which are defined for each character.

III. Then, if your opponent selected **Defense** move which cancels your **Attack** move, your attack fails, if not - he loses 1 point of health. After that it's your opponent's strike turn and the logic is the same: if you managed to select **Defense** move which cancels his **Attack** move, you don't recieve any damage, if not - you lose one health point.

And this happens each round of the fight.

@lesinvisible when I say I really like the voice acting I mean it. There is a very irresistible charm to it. Just my opinion.

Thanks for the breakdown of the combat system. It seems very random to me. The only thing you could do to do better is to figure out what the fav move of your opponent is if I understand correctly. And finding it with a 50 chance seems pretty pointless to me. But that isn't a problem I think because its not the point of the game anyways.

@lesinvisible i click on the screen and press buttons, and nothing happens :I

Okay the soundtrack is mad and brilliant. I love the visuals. The combat wasn't as hard for me to follow as others, but I think there could be a little more explanation throughout the UI to facilitate people playing the game as intended. Even just some tooltips when hovering over buttons would go a long way to making it more approachable, and you could flood the tooltips with flavor-text as you've clearly got a strong handle on worldbuilding.

I demand you continue to work on and refine this. I need to play this game when it's a complete vision realized. Incredible work.

Art and audio are amazing :) The combat system is a little confusing, but I think some button labels and an info screen could quickly clear that up based on what you've written about the system in the comments above.
Overall really impressive how much you managed to get done!

Excellent audio work. Rare to see voice acting in Ludum Dare.
The centre panel images were super tiny for me for some reason. Everything else was fine though.
I found it hard to get into, the interface was not explained at all.
I would have liked to have seen some reactions from the characters after you make your choices.

The art looks really good, the music and audio are good too. As others have mentioned, some explanation of the UI would make it much easier to play at first.

The art and audio in this game are very good! I like the choices you had to make, although it wasn't completely clear to me at first what the game wanted me to do, but I figured it out eventually. Like some others, I didn't understand the combat system, so I just kept selecting random combinations, which worked most of the times. Some text to go with the buttons could be a good addition, to make it all clearer!

@michael-grieshofer, Yes, the combat system is random and primitive at best. But I liked the core concept of it with kinda indirect control, much like the games like Laser Squad Nemesis. But, the general idea for this system I got from a very old game - Knights of Legends. Won't truly recommend it as combat system is the only good thing in it)

@pink-spaceman, This is extremely weird and I am sorry that you can't play it. What browser do you use? I can recommend trying Chrome as it's the native browser in which it was tested the most.

@threeli, Thank you for your kind words, maybe this game or game with the similar concept will turn into something bigger sometime. As probably many people here, I usually find it hard to mobilize myself on doing some programming projects not in JAM-time.

About hoovering tool-tips - this is a forbidden and dangerous programming magic for me as of now, sir!

@kenneth-wheadon, Thank you, one of the reasons the combat system got so confusing is a lack of time. As during this JAM I decided to change the workflow and first completed all assets for the game and then started programming.

@someone, Wow I am really flattered by your compliments about the voice-acting! Yes, sadly I had to keep character's interactions to the minimum as the scope of the game was starting to significantly overwhelm what was possible for me to do even during 3 days. I initially wanted to add some animations of characters on the location's screen as well, but it's gone too.

About the super tiny locations images is, again. extremely weird, maybe you got very large screen and something went crazy. This all makes me really disappointed in html format as I primary liked him because of it's consistency and stability.

@choppers, Thank you, I wouldn't consider myself a talented painter, so it always so unexpected to hear compliments to my art.

@last-angle, Thanks, yes, the only good thing I can say about combat system here is that it's like a story in porn movie - it is here but it's not that important. Most important decision here was to balance it very forgiving, so it doesn't cause any problems with progressing the game.

**--- SECRET ALERT ---**

Maybe it's a good time to share a secret that this game has **TWO** endings.

I like the art style and music. I had a little hard time figuring out the buttons at first.

Well that was something quite different.

I survived until the final fight (at least I think it was that in the middle against the governor) but met my demise there because of what I'm guessing was just bad RNG.

I'm kinda 50/50 on the visuals here. I really liked the drawings but as the buttons there were just too small and messy. Sadly too the player portrait was probably the weakest piece of art of all in my opinion. The combat buttons really would have needed a tooltip or something. It was just a complete guessing game what everything was supposed to do. The combat really should have been explained somewhat. My best guess is that it was kinda like a rock paper scissors thing where you pick attack and defense separately. Probably a good idea would have been to remember the previous player choices and use them as default instead of resetting each time.

Went for two more tries but didn't even close to that. Met my end at second to last step on uneven pattern and then the last try I couldn't even beat the second opponent of loving brother. Maybe seeing both the combat messages at once might be good. So it wouldn't clear the player hit info when it was the opponents turn. That way you could digest both pieces of information in peace before choosing your next moves.

Would be nice if the conversation would actually reveal something (mainly the health since that seems to be the only thing that matters) about the enemies. Only on my third try I discovered the book but can't really get any reasonable information from that one either.

Went for yet another run and faced governor again. Managed to whittle his health to zero but he did the same to me. Which I think is weird that they still get to do their final blow after death. I guess I'm reaching the limit of my stubbornness. The next run I was on my second to last fight against a two healther and he just dodged everything every single time and proceeded to kill me. Thanks!

The musics were nice and using guitars for sound effects too was cool. But the sound effects did get very repetitive very fast. Also a very nice addition to have actual voice acting! Very much a rarity in jam games.

Okay, a one more final try! But this one will be the last try for sure. Brb...

Yeah, yet another double KO with the governor. GG.

Anyways, good job! :thumbsup:

basically the Dark Souls of websites.
amazing game, full of personality and passion! I absolutely loved it! I even played your other games on your website (xith google trad haha) a little bit
the over-the-top voice acting was cool, the dialogues are really well written, and the music is different than the usual stuff you hear in video games (it reminded me of old John Frusciante music, from when he was really into heroin)

anyway that's super cool congrats!

Wow! Really awesome art design! The watercolor art style and the music really get me! I appreciate most the attack sound, cool! Also, the storytelling is great, unfortunately, I am quite confused by the combat system but it is can be fixed easily. Good job!

I LOVED the music. LOVED it. And the voiceovers as well. Best audio in any Ludum dare game ever :)
I liked the writing a well. Each character had his/her/its own personality and unique kind of madness. Very nice.

I'm a bit split on the battle system. I like the basic idea behind it, but the icons were not clear to me, so I wasn't really sure what I'm choosing. I wish there was some tooltip with a name of a thing when you mouse over the icon. I also thought that reading the journal would help me with choosing the best strategy against each opponent. But that also doesn't seem to be the case. Seems more random than not. But maybe I am mistaken, because - as mentioned before - battle icons were not really clear.

I liked the art on characters very much. It really enhanced the whole experience.

It's definitely unique entry and more than worth playing through few times!

Amazing game. You should put more info on your page if your willing to share! Did you record the guitar? I felt like it helped draw you into the world more.

I was locked into the game, everything came together really nicly, the art stlye, the voice acting, music. Flow state achieved, Really well done. And you are extremely talented, sir! The VO was excellent!

Combat system played its role I think, breaking up the dialog. I basically just tryed att/def combos randomly.

Also I played the game on my phone in a browser, which was exciting. What tool(s) did you use to make this?

The mood is definitely not my cup of tea, but if was I would probably like it., Its just a bit too much for me.

The combat is a bit confusing since there's no visual ques for whats happening...

Ya that's all I got, sorry. I'm sure other people will enjoy this type of things but its just not for me.

Great game - though I did get lost in the visuals a little (wasn't sure what each button did etc). Wanted to steer clear of the comments, but I see there is a lot down here too ;)

Voice acting and music is really well done, and the gritty art style really fits in well!

Awesome job! I love your style! The graphics and audio are amazing for a Ludum Dare entry. I had no idea what each of my attacks/defence styles do, but that is part of the charm of the game. I'm just an exterminator here to collect life flavour.

@edur, Thank you and sorry, maybe dark art of hoovering tool-tips is really needed to be studied)

@antti-haavikko, Oh my god, this the largest comment I ever got here, so, first of all, thank you for your feedback.

Fight with the governor can be a little unjust, especially if you got unlucky with health essence drops from the previous fights. I probably should have made this less random, because the fight itself if already tuned down and usually you will have a +1-2 hearts health advantage.

It's very interesting to hear different pespectives on the art, especially that your least liked portrait is the main character's one. If I might pick it would be something like Tired Beauty or Iron Power, guess I could have made them much better. With combat button I agree with you, sadly, when I figured that they are kinda small, I already prepared renders for most of the interface (it's a humble 3D model) and there wasn't too much time for reworking. You mostly correct about rock-paper-scissors nature of combat and it was actually easier to make game remember your previous combinations, but I didn't leave it this way. Guess, just felt like it)

It was really unlucky runs, happened to me a few times, but usually I got an easy ride. And, as I said, really tried to push myself to tuning down the game's difficulty, so it won't turn into radical RND mess completely. Also, if you don't care about morale, you can always cheat by choosing weak opponents (for exmaple, Uneven Pattern have 6 HP, while it's counterpart, Dreamer Deceiver only 2). Or, you can always select 1 or 2 button for attack and first button for defense (as 1st attack button and 3rd button for defence is his favourite combination).

Yes, the journal is only for fluff or if you are interested into the main character's perspective on the occuring events and people. Glad that you found it in this case)

Again, I really felt sorry that the game gave you such hard times, if it gets it easier - you can select the following pattern of characters to kill (Steel Leg, Abomination, Loving Brother, Pitiful Rat and Dreamer Deciever). This will be considered as mostly moster kills and you won't even have fight the Governor. But in this case you will recieve a "bad" ending. But, there is honestly no true destinction what is "good" and what is "bad" in this world.

Glad you liked the music, I recorded 10 sound effects in total, but it's probably still not enought to the amount of fights in the game. And I relly flattered that you liked voice acting.

I am amused by your stubbornness, as I wrote, there is an easiser way for completing the game. And thanks again for your feedback!

@dotsquare, Haha, thank you, I think it's a good comparison as I only can code in JS) I am amazed that you even tried other games from the website, yes, voice acting is a little experimental as I tried to say here, but it's kinda how I felt and invisioned it. Sadly, I never heard John Frusciante, but it's nice that you liked the music, initially it was my main hobby when I really got into doing something artistic in my adulthood.

@lesinvisible don't get me wrong, I loved your voice acting haha, it's over the top but really really cool :) anyway great game! congrats again

@the-body, Thank you and glad you liked it. About art-style, watercolor here is kinda limited, because I am basically coloring inked lines like in the coloring book, but it still gave some unique watercolor-type textures.

@dotsquare, No-no, it's cool and I understand. Also, I really don't mind any critique. If anybody here wants to share that they found something bad or cringy, I would definitely like hear it. Also, this game is not perfect by any means, anyway)

@fabula-rasa, Thank you, I think you are too kind to my music, but I am glad you liked it soo much)

Yes, I agree that the battle system is the weakest link here. Both from the explanations side and actual gameplay. So, I at least hope that it didn't take too much from the overall experience.

Thank you again for your feedback.

@linkwin, Sorry, I like minimalistic descriptions, so you will go to this world with an open mind and expectations. But, yes, everything you see in the game I recorded and drew myself. The only reason it's a JAM game and not COMPO is that I didn't manage to complete everything in 2 days.

Glad you liked the overall flow and the random approach to combat is okay for a battle system this advanced)

About the tools - this game was built using vanilla JavaScript and HTML+CSS for interface. It's primitive, sure, but one of the plus sides is that you shouldn't worry too much about multiplatform compability (as it's basically just a webpage with some code). Only worrying thing is that it's still possible to have some small glitches depending on which browser you are using.

@wolfier, Still, thank you for trying and your feedback.

@silkypantsdan, Thanks, yes, this goddamn buttons are tricky, I guess I just got lost in their visual appeal and missed functionality part.

@yeomsley, Haha, yes, experimentation and doing random things is just the meaning of life in this game)

@lesinvisible I'm totally with you there! I guess I wasn't clear, I meant info about how you developed the game, and about yourself. That's really impressive that you didn't use a framework.

Another note about the combat system: I kept referring back to the diary to see if it had any hints on what combat style to use for each encounter. Not sure if it was supposed to? or just my intuition.

@linkwin, Thank you, but I guess for the game this complex no framework is really needed)

No, actually I planned for the diary to give you some insights about what our character thinks about others and give a small insights on his personality. This was more a compensation for the cut characters' dialogs.

@antti-haavikko, What did you say about my portrait? Lousy Pittiful Rat got it much worse!

This was great and very unexpected! Felt like a punk rock early 2000s web game. The music was great and I loved how the guitar riff played when attacking.

I didn't quite get the combat and just selected random attacks. This didn't matter much as it was still great fun due to the great atmosphere, and in some respect actually helped the whole "strange forgotten punk web artifact" aspect of the game.

This is a really cool game!
The art of the game really grabs the attention and I like the look of each character you meet. The overall feeling of the game is also really good, with great voice acting and epic music to really set the mood.
So again, it is a really cool game!

I really liked the art style, I feel like it would really help if there was a tutorial because it took me a very long time to figure out...

Also, I think it would be nice if you could know which enemy there would be where. that way you can look in your notebook before you fight them

I really liked it, I just wish there was some kind of tutorial :D

Loved the voice acting on this one, however it was a bit hard to play as nothing was clear regarding the buttons, the atmosphere was there but the game needs a bit more work on being transparent and letting you know what the buttons do, good job man.

I like this style of game

As many others I really liked the graphics and audio, but didn't understand how to fight. After I then saw your comment explaining it, I understood it, but in my opinion it is to random if you hit or miss.

This is one of the more unique entries. Music was great, and I loved the sounds of hitting/being hit by the enemies. Combat was confusing but I think basically figured it out. Lost on the final boss though because, so I didn't get to see what happens at the very end.

Okay this one is something else ! The narration and voice acting was on point, and the music and artstyle really created a deranged small world. The fight mechanic could be better explained ingame but it's still kind of random and if you're not lucky you can just die even if you play correctly. There should be an hint of either what the preferred move(s) is/are or maybe sometimes what move the ennemy is going to pick (at least one of them). Didn't finish the game but i'll try again tomorrow !

@neontropics, Thank you, I am glad that you liked atmosphere and I guess HTML development really brings some old web vibes)

@nabo369, Thanks, I personally don't think that the art in this game is this good, but it's nice to know that it can serve the overall atmosphere nicely.

@crazybot, Thank you, and sorry, I guess my powers really ended on the tutorial part, I too think it desrves more explanations.

And yes, I wanted initially to make so it will be easier to reach the journal while you are in locations but my strange OCD with buttons and interface served me wrong while I was thinking how to implement it.

@noobdude, Thank you, I agree that the game came out a little like a thing in itself.

@xiyou, Thanks, glad you liked it!

@zeusonator, Thank you, now, it post-JAM mood it seems very clear that just something like changing the chance of enemies to use their favourite attack/defense from 50% to 70% will do the trick. But when life gives you lemons...

@boxedmeatrevolution, Nice, I am glad you liked it, if you even have a mood to try it again I listed some tactics for good/bad endings above.

@theapplecake, Thank you, yes, fighting here is again a black sheep of the flock, but I hope that it doesn't get too annoing. As I mentioned previously, one of the possible solutions to complete this game is to select Keeper of Dust, Abomination, Loving Brother, Pitiful Rat and Dreamer Deciever as enemies and then press 1 or 2 button for attack and first button for defense in the fight with Governor.

Wow this was quite the entry! I loved the atmosphere and mood you set. The voice acting was unexpected but a nice touch. I could see with more iteration this becoming a cult classics

@frozenfire92, Wow, thank you, you're too kind)

Amazing game. The only downside is that is hard to understand the combat, if you add a tutorial its 10/10. Loved the voice acting and the music

@sabasa, Thank you, I am glad you liked it.

Nice entry! Great art and music and some design choices. As many others mentioned, combat was confusing but I guess that with some instructions it could have its depth. Anyway, good one.

@doloc, Thanks, glad you liked the visual appeal, sorry, confusing combat is our second name)

This was cool to play. Really liked the music and how the attacks added to it with guitar riffs. The voice acting was also great - so much variety for, presumably, just you doing all the voices! I didn't really get how the game worked the first time though (how you pick one enemy from each grouping of map locations to kill), but I figured it out for the second time. I also didn't understand what most of the combat buttons meant even in general terms, except the gun - they could have used icons that were easier to interpret at that small size, or tooltips.

@bmacintosh, Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, that the interface came so unintuitive, as I mentioned previously, there was an issue with the scale as well. In the final render of the interface buttons came as too small but it was no time left trying to re-do it. Also, I don't think that I drew them to clear to begin with, but let them be here in the normal size at least.

As usual I really like the game world you have created. You have nailed Mood, once again. Oddly enough, I think the best part of this game is the map — every time I looked at it, I was curious to see where I could go. It gave me a sense of freedom.

As others have mentioned, I found the combat system a bit confusing. Tool tips or labels under each button would go a long way. Even so, combat this time around is an improvement over your last game, which I found to be too difficult in that respect. The journal entries are also impressive. "You may even become a dream itself" — if that isn't philosophy, I don't know what is. Nice work, compadre.

@gamebuilder, Thank you, it's nice to keep this trend of your reviews).

Glad you liked the map piece, it was one drawing that at first looked catastrophic. Also, yes, I turned down difficulty on this one, so it will be easier to enjoy things which are not as rusty as fighting system. And thanks for the compliments on my writing, I think that here it definitely better than in the previous entry.

The atmosphere is really nice. The whole interface, the map and journal combined with the strange dialog give you an immersive experience. Really feels like being in a very rotten town. The combat feels to random, but fortunately I manage to get to the governor nonetheless. Thanks for the game!

@zubspace, Thank you, I am glad you enjoyed the atmosphere, sorry about the infamous COMBAT TROUBLES, but the overall feel and design was the main goal of this entry.

Game very nice,hope for further improvement

I'm getting some serious TROIKA! vibes from this entry, which is awesome. The art is great and the voice acting was brilliant. Combined they form a really off-kilter mood that works so well to draw the player into this weird and wonderful world you've created. I'm really digging this one. My only quibble was the combat was a little obtuse. A few clues as to which combos were each opponents favoured attack/defence would have helped. I enjoyed it a lot though.

Good stuff :8ball:

@dantelich, Thanks!

So I was quite confused with the buttons in this and kinda guessed my way through the combat,..but..This game has my top marks for atmosphere/mood you just really done a great job on that. I don't gravitate to this art style but I can certainly appreciate that its done very well. The music and writing and voice acting add so much to this. I have no idea how you managed to do all this alone. Awesome work

@oddballdave, Wow, TROIKA games? You are too kind) It's nive you enjoyed the settings and overall compostition of the game. Combat is really the black sheep of this entry and the only logical thing of using it which I see is the following:

Try the first combination and change it depending on the combat results. Like, for example, if you hit the enemy normally, you leave the same position for attack, and, if you were hit as well, you change your defense stance for the next one.

But, to be honest, I thought about this strategy only recently.

@denzil-gomes, Thank you, yes, it was hard completing all of these in 3 days, but in general it's doable. The only issue is that because I decided to first create all of the assets, I didn't leave as much time on programming as was needed. That's why sorry for the confusing combat mechanics.