The Witch's Curse by clue

[raw]
made by clue for Ludum Dare 50 (JAM)

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An evil witch has trapped a host of cuddly guests in her cursed mansion. Help protect them from the curse as long as possible!

Instructions

The mansion has several guests walking around inside. Sometimes, two guests will decide to talk to each other - this is indicated by a blue bubble surrounding them.

There are two very important sound effects you’ll want to listen for: - When you hear a cackling/laughing sound effect, that means one of the guests has gotten cursed. When a guest is cursed, they will wander around and talk to two uncursed guests, and die a few seconds after that (indicated by a purple aura). If they die, then they will also spread the curse to the two guests they just talked to (but you can prevent this by curing them, see below). - When you hear a “swoosh” sound effect, that means a cursed guest just finished talking to an uncursed guest. Use this to help identify which guests are cursed!

You can cure a cursed guest by clicking on them. If you click on a cursed guest, the curse will be lifted! However, if you click on an uncursed guest, they will die instead.

You start out with 3 lives (indicated by the heart symbol), and slowly gain more by successfully curing guests. You lose a life whenever any guest dies, and you lose the game when it reaches 0.

At the beginning of the game, there are 5 guests in the mansion (indicated by the mushroom symbol). More guests gradually arrive as you cure the curse - eventually there will be an overwhelming number of guests and curses, but try to delay the inevitable as long as possible!

Credits

Created in Unity by Colin Lu, Jon Schneider, and Anderson Wang

Ratings

Overall 917th 3.357⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 466th 3.591⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 63th 4.075⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 817th 3.548⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1006th 3.227⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Audio 594th 3.333⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 487th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 931th 3.262⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 48🗳️ 8🗨️

Feedback

🎤 clue
05. Apr 2022 · 02:02 UTC
![nyan.png](///raw/8f5/6/z/4c2c1.png)

Please help protect little Nyanderson from the Witch's Curse <3 !!
Azhures
05. Apr 2022 · 07:57 UTC
Game is nice, although a bit slow at the beginning, but then it catches up!! :)
DonHun
06. Apr 2022 · 09:19 UTC
I love the characters and the idea - really nice! I wish I would have survived longer - cured 8 guests in 201 seconds in my best try. But I always kept good care about the little cat! Well done team!
LDJam user 288830
11. Apr 2022 · 08:12 UTC
Cute game!
someone
11. Apr 2022 · 23:34 UTC
Neat game. Took a while to figure out what was going on though, even with the instructions.
I lasted 380 seconds with 31 cures. The end card doesn't show the time though.
It does get ridiculous after the number of guests grows a lot. I ended up just guessing towards the end.
Some of the tinted sprites can look very similar. I had a tree and a very slightly darker tree.
The cat was the best.
Melik Cagan Oduncuoglu
11. Apr 2022 · 23:39 UTC
Nice job, very little cute game.
Amanda Gallant
12. Apr 2022 · 00:16 UTC
A very unique idea for the game and definitely fits the theme. I had to focus really hard at one point to get it, and it was tricky that eventually you get guests that look almost the same but slightly different color. Very tricky!
PureImprov
12. Apr 2022 · 00:23 UTC
Fun to play! I like how there are audio cues, visual cues would be good too when the witch cackles and stuff (:
Jasper Hansen
12. Apr 2022 · 01:28 UTC
this game is super fun, there's so much to keep track of and it's bound to get overwhelming but it always feels like you're balancing your attention and taking risks and all in all i just really enjoyed it. You did a great job crafting a simple set of rules that spirals into a bunch of really engaging gameplay decisions. I liked the presentation a lot too, it's a good balance of readable and hard to keep track of and complements the gameplay well. It could maybe use a bit of fine tuning in balancing but this is a really solid game
Tobius
12. Apr 2022 · 03:20 UTC
Really clever mechanic for a game. It's like playing a hidden role game, but by yourself, and was surprisingly fun. I think understanding how to play the game and how long the guests have to live could be a little better conveyed to the player, and would be my suggestion as for what to work on next if you want to continue working on this game after the jam!
Tankou
13. Apr 2022 · 14:50 UTC
Cute game. It was fun to play!
quadtree
15. Apr 2022 · 08:40 UTC
Neat game, slightly confusing at first but once I got the hang of it it was interesting. It did seem like at times multiple conversations were happening at once, so it was hard to figure out who was the cursed one, although that's probably intentional.
knexator
18. Apr 2022 · 18:57 UTC
Amazing game! Keeping track of everyone is pretty fun, and the graphics are super cute. My only nitpick is that the gameplay-relevant sounds could be accompanied by some visual icon (in a corner of the screen, so not giving a location clue) as an easy way to make the game more accessible. Overall, very enjoyable :D
LDJam user 267116
19. Apr 2022 · 02:25 UTC
This is a really cool game! Tracking the guests was a very interesting challenge, and I love the cute icons for each one. Nice job!
LDJQ
19. Apr 2022 · 05:31 UTC
Took me some time to figure out the game loop, but once I did the game became very interesting.
Love the music, and the characters are cute.

I do think dying is a bit too easy; I would be doing fine then make a mistake that quickly cascaded into failure.
pcmaster
19. Apr 2022 · 09:42 UTC
Thumbs up for the sound fx :)
LDJam user 4886
19. Apr 2022 · 11:13 UTC
Once you get the idea it's quite fun trying to figure out who is cursed! Is this based on an existing game? It's quite original otherwise!
Mateu
20. Apr 2022 · 22:49 UTC
This was a really unique take on the theme, and I thought it was pretty great. The whole idea was really unique, and knowing the rule set was pretty cool. I got to a score of 17. I don't think that's super great, but it was still fun nonetheless. I have an interesting idea: What if the characters said some unique stuff when they were conversing, I think it would not only make the gameplay more interesting, but also serve as a distraction from the game. (Obviously this is out of scope for the limited time of the jam, but I just thought of it and wanted to share). Great game though, I quite liked this one.