Housekeep by Roka Josh
The Game
After receiving a mysterious letter from your estranged uncle, it falls on you to look after his house while he's on vacation. Tend to the house by completing various tasks, but watch out as the house will begin to get you. Slowly but surely your sanity will drain and weird things may just start to occur. You could have sworn the bathroom was here, and is that shadow moving towards you or is it just your imagination? Stave off insanity for as long as possible by sticking to your routine and keeping the house in check, last long enough and you just might discover a grave secret...
Screenshots
Aim of the Game
- Your sanity will constantly drain and the more days you spend in the house the quicker it drains.
- Complete daily tasks around the house to keep yourself in check.
- Once you have completed all your tasks for the day go to bed and start it all over.
- Be wary of ???
How to play
- WASD and Mouse for player movement
- Left click to interact with objects such as tasks, doors and your bed
- Hold tab to display the tasks for the day
Note
The 'Fixed' version of the game listed seperatly on the Itch.io page fixes a few issues regarding task completion, lighting problems, the lack of mouse sensitivity control and material errors as well as optimisations to tackle the performance issues some were having. These fixes are allowed in accordance to the Jam rules as they do not add to the gameplay in any way, but if you feel you must play the original version then simply download the 'Original Jam Version' instead!
Credit
- RokaJosh: Programming & Level Design
- RokaGraham: Art & Voice Acting
- Yarro: Art & Sound Design
- Hazzer: Programming & Level Design
- Goro: Art
Tools
- Unity 2021.2.8f1
- Visual Studio Code
- Adobe Photoshop CC 2022
- Adobe Audtion CC 2022
- Aseprite
- Paint
- Ableton Live 11
| Link | https://jagtek-games.itch.io/housekeep |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/housekeep |
Ratings
| Overall | 583th | 3.596⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 916th | 3.173⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 479th | 3.52⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 828th | 3.542⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 528th | 3.852⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 405th | 3.593⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 672th | 2.96⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 291th | 3.87⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 33🗨️ |
+ Good music and audio
- The audio would be better if loops worked
+ Really nice graphics. Works really good with the music
- Mouse control is super sensitive
+ Creepy
Nice work!
I would add an option to finetune mouse sensitivity though.
Liked the music, sfx and graphics as well.
I have a question though. Is there an actual ending?
Is there a way to slow down the insanity?
This is a good game. I haven't anticipated that it was an "horror" game and the first monster gave me a spook lol.
I really liked the game, but the framerate is not really good at all and my GPU ran at 100%!
Here are some tips for the next game you create:
* Bake your lights. I think I counted 20 or so lights in the main room and six in each corridor and it seems to add up to a lot! There's no real need for dynamic light here, therefore baking it will help the performance a lot by calculating how the light will render once and for all.
* The room with barrels and mops was very laggy for some reasons. I'd recommend setting everything that will not move, ever, as static. It will also help with the light baking (if I remember correctly)!
* I think you could ad some occlusion culling here, even though it feels unecessary since it's a little map, so the GPU doesn't calculate stuff the player doesn't see.
Appart from the performance issue, I really enjoyed the game! Keep up the good work :smile: !
Don't count my words on that though, it's been a while since I haven't touched Unity's light more than that and maybe a mixed light will be better.
I think the game's appeal does wane a bit as it goes on though, eventually you reduce it to just checking every room in the most optimal path possible and the weirdness loses it's effect. Maybe a post-jam version with more events that could happen would be cool?