I think some indicators that what you were doing was having an affect would go along way. Something to show your spells are hitting, or that you are eating the apples. I didn't really feel like I was very effective, and I couldn't tell if I was doing it right.

The graphics are pretty neat though, very moody and spooky.

I found this game a bit difficult to play. I loved the mood you created, first person dungeon crawlers have such an atmosphere and you managed to get the graphical style pretty well crafted. The controls didn't always work however. I would often hit back, or strafe, and it didn't do anything. I like the fact that you have a mini-map but i think it would have been nice to have that bigger, or maybe have more of an indication where the rest of the spiders or the tree were, just so there was a bit less getting lost. I had one incident with a spider where it shot about 10 attacks in a row and almost killed me in one hit! I think with a bit more polish you could have this looking nice, as the atmosphere is almost there, but the controls were a bit too off for me. Nice work!

i really liked the graphics but as said before some indiaction on damage taken or dealt would have been helpful. alsoi found a bug where you can strave trough a wall and walk outside the dungeon

I like the retro style movement system. Maybe some type of melee would help, since I waited near the tree for a while and no mana was dropping. Nice entry.

The DA feels me nostalgic, the gameplay it's pretty messy, I didn't know what was my goal XD I'm looking for some updates ^^

Definitely has the basis for something here; I was getting Eye of the Beholder or Blade of Destiny vibes and it had a good atmosphere.

Gameplay wise I'm afraid there didn't seem to be much to it; the movement bugs with strafing were a bit confusing, and I wasn't ever sure I was hurting the spiders (I think lack of visible feedback was the issue in general).

I'd second the suggestions that others have made about adding some sort of melee system; probably go full hog and use this as the base for a Dungeon Master clone as we don't see enough of these anymore. :)

I wont repeat what others have said about melee, lack of feedback of hurting enemies etc or what should be standard features that I assume you did not had time to implement (roaming enemies, more spells etc). But I will write some other suggestions here:

-Sometimes apples are glitching, you cant pick them up, they are just bouncing of. Instead of having them as a physic based object, they could have only trigger collisions (size of tile) and raycast down to see if they are on ground. If not, move until they are. Much less glitch prone approach as it is faked.

-Mana could be found in maze, now it has too much repeated tasks. Get apples, find enemy, kill it, walk back to apples, walk to enemy, kill it, walk back to apples. That tree could serve some other purpose, as a goal, life restorer or anything really.

Thank you everyone for your valuable feedback. This project was difficult I over scoped alot. There are so much I want experiment with, so maybe after the jam I will read all your feedback again and try the idees that I have. Thank you.

Really nice game i like the graphical dungeon crawler style.
- The strive was the wrong way around for me, i could only strive through walls and not along open spaces. I was very confused at first, but after figuring that out i just didn't use it :joy:
- The combat is authentically simple, hit and take damage. Maybe "modernizing" that formula would be cool?
- I liked the idea with the apples, but i took more damage than i needed bullets so sometimes i was just running around in circles around the tree.
- The graphics of the tree didn't really match up with the surrounding area, not a big deal for the jam i know, but maybe having a pixelated effect over the whole game could improve the feeling in an easy way? :thinking: Essentially rendering it at a low resolution once and mapping that to the actual resolution, like "a short hike", might be worth looking into, if you want to experiment.
Otherwise i liked the idea, and its definitely an interesting interpretation of the theme.

Nice to take a trip down the memory lane with this 1st person RPG approach. In essence it's a good idea but the main loop is lacking since combat isn't really fun, so you just run to the tree and back out there to spam click the spiders. The only escape from monotony is that you have to locate the spiders, so it's like a hide&seek, but after a while I'm 99% sure that I killed them all yet there was no victory event so I was just speeding between the walls in # pattern, on the bright side the walls look pretty.

Very cool game, I like its atmosphere. Too bad there were no sound effects during the battle, then the experience would have been even greater

I love this kind of dungeon crawler, I think it was a nice idea. The controls feel good but it's a bit sad I don't really understand if I'm actually hitting spiders or missing them ^^'

Graphics and global tone are alright, I think if the map was not so small and only populated with spiders, I would have been really curious to explore it! It's spooky and I like it haha!

A classic dungeon crawler. Felt claustrophobic, as dungeons have to be. In battle I did not really "feel" if a bug was hit. Solid game. Very big indeed for a game jam.

The feedback on spellcast is a bit hard to understand. The structure of level works well with the collect tree in the center. I feel like this could have been a good wave defense game in the middle. The visuals are really cool. Like that type on movement that add some constraints. Congrats !

Very difficult to tell what I was supposed to be doing or what was happening. Perhaps a text log of events might help?

Very immersive and gloomy! I love the atmosphere. On my first play the spider surrounded my before I had a chance to find a tree because I lost all of my mana on the first one (couldn't tell if I was harming it). Cool game, though, great work!