The Hollow Library by Snowdrama
Play as Clara Page, the ghost librarian, as she delves deep into the Hollow Library, a place haunted by Clara's corrupted friends.

Help Clara find the soul fragments to restore her friends to the way they were before and bring peace to the library!

Can you save your corrupted friends?
| Link | https://snowdrama.itch.io/the-hollow-library |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/the-hollow-library |
Ratings
| Overall | 380th | 3.526⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 544th | 3.105⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 588th | 2.895⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 489th | 3.526⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 502th | 3.421⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 583th | 2.471⭐ | 19🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 258th | 3.763⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 2🗨️ |
After I built the one AI that ran from you, and had a plan for the 4 ghosts, I started on the art/animations/atmosphere. By the time I finished the art assets it was half way through Sunday and I spent the rest of the jam doing the scene transitions, the actual like level unlocking mechanics, the dialog thing, and such. I was working on the game loop right up to the end basically.
Thanks for giving it a shot!
Hope you get the 20 votes until the end.
@neowhoru Yep this time it was just me, the only thing not me was music/sound which is why I opted out of that, but I had to have sound to get that atmosphere so I bit the bullet on that one. I also really liked where the mood ended up, my main wish is that the mechanics were deeper but I'm just glad I finished lol
But still it was fun with good ambience! Something that happened to me on the last level was the ghost (I guess that by chance) picked the direction they were running from to be where a shard I haven't picked up yet was - if that's not a mechanic, but it should be? It would both make sense and help with finding shards when you don't have many left.
Really nice game! I liked the music and the atmosphere; they worked very well together.
A small note on sound balancing: the music in the third level could have been a little bit quieter, as it was noticeably louder compared to the other levels.
I also think a hint system to help find the souls would have been a nice addition, but nonetheless, I managed to beat the game! The art was fun and I had a great time playing it.
To help with the missing souls issue, there was also going to be an in game map system to help you find where you haven't been. Appreciate you playing!
@chuchugeralt Thanks for playing! Yeah there was supposed to be a mapping system that would assist with helping you find the souls, but it got cut due to time constraints(90% of the gameplay was made in 6 hours, the rest of my time was art and atmosphere lol)
The audio was added last minute, as I initially didn't have sound at all, but instead of having no sound, I used some CC0 audio so I didn't make it myself(Hence opting out of Music) thus the mixing wasn't adjusted at all and I didn't notice it but I noticed it later.
@darianifakina Thank you! I spent a lot of time on the atmosphere! Thanks for playing!
@neowhoru Yeah I plan to make another post soon I've been playing and rating games as well trying to help get the danger ones up to 20 haha
@rol Yeah the issue is that while you shine the light they don't stop coming at you, so it's mildly finicky. The area to hit them is also a sphere located at towards the feet(which is the collider) not the whole body, combined with the fact the flashlight collider is a cone shape, could be part of why it feels inconsistent.
@alex-mcgrath Thanks! I had planned to do a unique ghost AI for each room but I ran out of time haha! I can dig into it after the jam for sure! Might be worth doing an update
Yeah the AI isn't very smart, it kinda just walks towards the player, so it can follow you down dead ends which I can imagine is frustrating. The flashlight delay is also kinda broken, if it goes off the collider for even a second, it resets to 0, which is something I want to fix in a post jam release by having the charge goes down slowly when not pointed at the ghost.
The other issue I know of is hitbox for the light is a small circle at their feet, I found during post jam play-testing people were pointing it at the ghost's face, which works when it's far away but you end up with situations where the cone shape of the flashlight, would miss the circle due to angle, which would break the connection, so it compounds the whole full reset if it even loses contact for a second.
I may be updating it at some point but yeah all good feedback thank you for playing!