I need a password to play? :(

@pierce-brooks Yeah, I password-locked the page for technically no good reason, good thing I made sure to include the password up in the description above. 😅

@peace-of-cake-games woops! sry! <3

Pretty cool, it's got a nice retro feeling to it! I felt like the boss fight was a bit long. Long texts are also a bit hard to read, it would help to have a bit more space between lines.

Agreed with Cagibi on every point. Text was hard to read; would have preferred less texted too and more readability - especially at the top. Boss fight was a complete damage sponge lol - not necessarily fun (also hard to tell how you're doing while they have a health bar)

The boss fight was way too long than needed but overall an nice simple and straightforward game, the pixel graphic goes pretty well with it too.

This game was pretty good, although a few things could of been improved: The Text was at times very hard to read (i know that at the beginning of the game you said that as well) and the boss fight was very long and predictable - there could of been a second phase (or more) once you hit half health or something like that. The positives for this is that the art was very good - it sets the mood very nicely - And the music was very good, especially when you went into those empty houses.

What were you going to put into those empty houses? Or were they supposed to be empty?

@cagibi @lucas-guimaraes @huntrt @rottenthunder997 Thanks for playing, everyone! And yeah, I knew the text was way too hard to read, so much that I had to put a warning at the beginning of the game. The game runs at an *extremely* low aspect ratio (216 x 120, roughly the equivalent of half the size of an NES/Famicom screen if it was at 16:9 ratio) and the Construct 3 engine doesn't support displaying text well at low aspect ratios. I've tried reducing the amount of space between characters to make it a lot easier to read, but some uppercase letters would get jumbled together, making it even harder to read.

It doesn't help that that specific text plugin does not easily support any sort of character-specific spacing like kerning, using that text object at low resolutions unfortunately always results in a good chance of it being hard to read.

And also, sorry about the extreme length of the boss fight. 😅 I accidentally set the boss to have 400 health points when 300 or 250 would have been better, on the plus side at least it means it makes getting zero damage a bit harder. Did anyone manage to finish the boss fight without getting hit a single time?

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@lucas-guimaraes I only bothered adding a health bar for the boss itself and not the player since you can technically take unlimited damage; the boss fight is designed so you'll always win (all it can do is delay the inevitable and all that) and you can try and get a good high score for least hits taken during the fight. Originally the boss fight didn't even have that health bar for the boss, I added that in with probably about 10 minutes left in the Compo since I realized the music speeding up as the boss gets weaker wasn't as good as having an actual health bar onscreen.

@rottenthunder997 I was thinking about adding a second phase to the boss fight, but as it is now I'm surprised the only phase of the boss fight even works at all. In the middle of making its randomized attacks there was a bug where it would stop moving randomly or glitch offscreen, I completely mutilated the code and then realized after making an absolute mess that the solution could have been fixed simply by making it so the boss couldn't do the same attack type twice (which was the intended behavior anyways).

Oh, and I was completely joking about the houses being supposed to have something in them, I could never think of what I wanted in the houses that didn't give you the blaster item. It would be a shame to have a background music I spent an entire 10 minutes making go to waste so I made a bunch of empty houses and joked about how I did literally nothing with them.

I think I understand where you coming from. It reminds me of "The problems of anxious limbo", a game I started (and of course didn't finish) a few years back.

I overcame your virtual anxiety/depression, so I hope it'll somehow magically help you overcome the real ones. Good luck to you. These are strange times.

@kuro Ah, you realize that this game has some autobiographical elements! The part of me fighting back against the depression and anxiety thanks you.

A short but sweet game. I think other people have already pointed out any flaws, so I'll just comment that this was an unexpectedly positive spin on the theme, in a sea of games where you try to delay something bad from happening!

Really liked some of the smaller details like the player looking towards the mouse and the text in the empty houses. I do agree with other people that the boss fight was probably ~2X longer than it needed to be, but that was my only minor complaint! Great theme of overcoming your anxiety/depression :)

Thank you for playing, @lancival @nethead !

@lancival Yeah, I figured pretty much everyone would do depressing games or games you have to speedrun, the instant I saw the Theme Announcement my first thought was "uh oh, here come the depressing games". I told myself I absolutely would *not* make some death-related downer of a game.

@nethead Glad to hear some praise for the player looking towards the mouse, it took me an unnecessarily long amount of time to add because I kept typing in the angles wrong! 😅

So my friend @peace-of-cake-games - i got into your game now and finished and was "only" hit 454 times by the endboss haha :D

I really enjoyed the game and really like to pickup the topic depression and to fight against for it.
Also the visuals are really Atari like sometimes but with a spooky mood - it matches totally.

Great work man.

@neowhoru What a "flawless" score! But really, since you can't lose to the depression it doesn't matter how many hits you take, the hit tracking is really just for high scores. Most of the times I tested the boss fight I got about 2 hits, I did manage to get a perfect score of 0 hits once or twice though. Perhaps in a post-Ludum Dare version I'll learn how to make online leaderboards and add a leaderboard of people's best scores against the depression boss. (I'm also considering an Android port and possibly voice acting, along with making the boss have less health and trying to improve the text font....)

Thank you for playing, and I'm glad you enjoyed the graphics! I really struggled with how I wanted the graphics to look at first, eventually I decided on that retro low-resolution black-and-white color scheme.

Great message here! It makes me happy to see a game where the inevitable thing is us, the player, conquering whatever we set our mind to, no matter how long it takes.

@mhorth Glad you like it! Thank you for playing!

Well, I feel silly now, as I didn't even realize the twist on the theme until I saw the other comments! I'm pretty much going to envy all of these entries because I couldn't come up with a good idea myself; but this isn't about me, of course.

Like the above comments, I felt the text was a little eye straining; personally, I didn't care much about the inclusion of profanity, but that's MY personal opinion. The player goes behind houses but not the gun, though that's a minor nitpick; my game certainly has sorting problems itself. And for some reason I find the sound effect for defeating anxiety hilarious.

Yeah, the boss fight overstays it's welcome, but the music during that fight, I found particularly interesting. I swear it's gotta be changing dynamically as it goes on! And I got hit 19 times.

Very nice little experience. Great job!

@ronanrory I should be able to get around to your entry tonight, can't wait for another batch of amazing sound effects! 😉

I agree that the text's spacing is pretty annoying, once I get around to making a devlog there'll be a better explanation but basically since the screen resolution is so low (half the dimensions of a 16:9 ratio Nintendo Entertainment System) the font would either be poorly spaced like that or it would be impossible to read. Personally I'm pretty annoyed at how terrible character spacing like that was my only choice with such little time to make a game. I've already begun planning for a post-Compo extended version (with bug fixes and maybe an Android port and if I'm really that bored, voice acting), hopefully I should be able to find a workaround when I've got more than 2 days to make the game.

Whoops, sounds like I forgot to fix the gun versus houses glitch. 😅 And you're correct, as the depression boss gets lower on health the music speeds up! When at full health the music is at normal speed, by the time the boss dies the music reaches double the original speed. Originally that was the only indication of the boss' health, luckily I had the sense to throw in a health bar last-minute.

The song you used for the empty houses totally reminded me of some existing game I played as a kid. There's no way I can remember which game at this point, but it was really surprising.

When I started the game, I actually mistook that tutorial arrow as a guiding arrow telling me where I needed to go, so I started to make my loop around that whole area. I guess it ended up doing the same thing it was meant to do regardless because I managed to go through the game anyways.

As you already know, the boss HP is a bit much. Even 250 might be too much unless it's given more phases or firing patterns. I was actually happy I didn't take damage so I could park myself and slowly whittle it down over time. Otherwise, the overall design was fine because you could place yourself in between the 2 lines of fire to practice some shmup skills.

I thought the section in the lower right where you claw through the darkness was pretty good. I'm curious what you would do in the full version. You may be able to play with that as a full mechanic because it was pretty satisfying.

Great job on continuing to experiment with a variety of game styles!

@peachtreeoath I'm surprised that's the first time someone mistook the arrow at the start as a place to go to instead of indicating it told you the controls. 😅 Whenever I get around to making a post-Compo update I'll have to experiment with changing the game's resolution to try and make it so I can have some text at the start saying to hover the mouse over the tombstone, currently I still haven't gotten around to fixing the text sizing issues I've mentioned in almost every comment.

Post-Compo I definitely want to add more phases to the boss fight to make it harder even with less health instead of the boss fight just being ridiculously long. Currently the boss' only attacks are to shoot in a slightly sweeping pattern, shoot at random angles across the middle area of the area, and to send bullets straight at the player to prevent the player from just sitting in one spot; it would be neat to have the boss move up and down to force the player from camping at the top and bottom edges of the screen, and perhaps add a rare hard-to-avoid ultimate attack.

I'm glad you liked the "clawing through the darkness" bit! My original plan was to have the game constantly create little "anxiety demons" that would chase the player and perhaps shoot projectiles that would annoy the player by bouncing them back a little bit, but the Compo's low time limit and not having much time to work on the game meant I had to be lazy and reuse the anxiety walls from earlier in the game.

Anyways, thank you for playing, and the very detailed feedback!

@peace-of-cake-games yup, shooting those to clear a path reminded me of https://youtu.be/AoQAS2O7Nc4?t=87

I like the chasing idea too!

,
- -- destroyer of
|o o | D E P R E S S I O N
- --
o || o and
|| , A N X I E T Y
\\__/
also, i too, thought the arrow pointing to the grave was a "go here" indicator... eventually i figured out mouse cursor was part of controls and it makes sense when you realize the description mentiona a point n' click mechanic but... well... egg on my face. i think it's the arrow image specifically; primes my brain for WASD-ing instead of mousing over.

the empty houses added a nice eerie factor but the boss fight felt kinda samey. i think a new attack pattern for under half health or something would spice up the inevitableness. other than that it's a short and sweet little game, t'was a journey, Wormy.

I really dig the sound design of this one. :thumbsup: Especially for the boss, which sped up as its health dwindled, nice touch!

I also like how it looks like your opted to not kill the player at all, and instead track how many times they were hit by bullets. That was probably a good call in order to keep the momentum of the story and gameplay. :slight_smile:

I see you improving a *lot* with each new entry you submit to LD. Keep 'em comin'!

Nice game. That final boss took a while to defeat. I'm just glad that I didn't seem to take any damage and didn't have to start over. The ending said that I was hit 26 times.

I like those games where you have to encounter yourself and your inner demons. They have mass potential, but it’s always very hard to transfer it into a game design. I believe those games can help people in the future much more than we currently think. Nice entry!

I think you did a great job of creating an uncanny mood. I love the aesthetics as well — a very good use of grey, black, and white. I felt like I fell into a pit of gloom and despair — no doubt, that was the intended effect! At the same time, it was fun exploring the area, shooting through barriers, and entering houses.

The sound effects complement the graphics very well. It feels good to overcome depression and anxiety, even if symbolically. Nice work!

@shreemp Nice character art! 👍 I'll be sure to add a clearer indication of what the arrow means and more boss attacks in the post-Compo version, whenever I actually get around to it.

@coleslaughter I'm glad you liked the music's increasing speed! I'm a big fan of when games have music that changes as you advance through a boss fight or get farther into a level (heck, Nintendo even does it in Mario Kart games as you go from selecting a driver to selecting a course to play).

Here's to hoping the next Ludum Dare entry is even better! All of my past Ludum Dare entries are almost laughable compared to what I can do in 48 hours when I do things I'm actually decent at such as chiptune music and pixel art. Improving my skills makes better games, but doing what I'm actually somewhat skilled at brings even more improvement.

@levidsmith That's a pretty good score you got on the boss fight, thank you for playing!

@schwede I believe that games that raise awareness about mental health problems definitely have the potential to improve and save lives. An anti-suicide game could help someone realize they do have reasons to live, a game about depression could encourage someone to seek professional help, etc.

@gamebuilder I'm glad you enjoyed the dark and edgy mood! It would seem that the Mood category appears to be my strong suit in Ludum Dare entries....