DECRYPTOR by Bastinus Rex
DECRYPTOR is a retro "Narrative exploration clicker game".
A DECRYPTOR is an ancient artefact used to decypher recorded messages. With each of your steps, power up the Decryptor, explore and find out how to complete the "delivery process" with the help of your messengers.
YOU NEED: -Mouse + Keyboard -A bit of time to read through messages
Move by clicking!
Investigate and try to understand the secret of this little universe!
Julialalart made the narrative story, and BastinusRex made the art, music and programming!
(Sorry for quitting the game you'll have to alt+F4, my escape button doesn't work!)
| Play on Browser | https://bastinus-rex.itch.io/decryptor |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/decryptor |
Ratings
| Overall | 265th | 3.875⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 986th | 2.958⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 156th | 3.896⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 870th | 3.587⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 250th | 4.188⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 291th | 3.708⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 3th | 4.646⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 10🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
The art/music and post-processing is also very well done to help support the eerie vibe! (Spoilers) the "pit" and the dark vibe of the last pillar even gave me some outer wilds feelings...
Some points of feedback:
- I felt having to click to take every step was starting to strain my hand by the end - maybe just hold to move?
- (Spoilers) I thought one of the keys shown in the final phase of the game was left arrow, not backspace (since on some keyboards this is just written "Backspace", not <-) so I spent a lot of time very confused about what to do. It'd be better if this was less ambiguous!
The mysterious and cryptic mood is on point! It's quite a job you achieved here, a huge GG for both of you!
Mystery and exploration linked to our friends despair messages, we want to know where this story ends!
I had a lot of fun playing it, you guys rock!
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I also have an issue with the key shown at the end, and thought it was left arrow or "tab" bar, but I figured it out and let's say that it added some mystery to this strange and moody game!
[END OF SPOILER]
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Seriously it's cryptic done well : I felt lost and lonely but also really close to the team mates in the mean time.
Just a little ergonomic feeback, I wished the UI was either "smaller" or the scroll bar was placed on the far left side (so that you don't scroll the conversation when you want to go to your left if you are as precise as I am xD)
Again, great job <3
@dungeoneer64 at start I wanted to make a feature that was the "automatic walking mode", it was a "hold to move" bonus that you had each 15 steps, and that you can upgrade by resolving the Pyragon pillars, but I didn't had the time !! But thank you for feedback, so I think if I improve the game I will add it first :)
The story was interesting, the characters were neat, I felt it was a little bit slow at times but overall it's super moody and really cool. I love the deep undersea drone vibes, I'm still not even sure what really happened, but it kept me thinking and I like that a lot. Great submission here!
Here is a link to the VOD that starts at your section.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1809875425?t=02h59m12s
From a gameplay point of view, maybe having a different timing for the messages, in order for us to have something to do instead of just running around waiting for the message to give us clues.
Very nice entry, well done !
And congratz for your 20th vote ;)
Sorry for the amount of clicking that you had to do, as I said I wanted to implement some automatic walking features, but didn't had time for this!
Again, thank you for your feedbacks and kind words
Was I supposed to be able to walk over the empty space in the middle? I couldn't cross it completely but I still got some way into it and floated…
The story/messages were nice to read, though sometimes a bit waffly: it feels a little disappointing to put effort towards decrypting a message only for it to be "Sorry"! (Nitpick: I think you were trying to avoid gendered pronouns in the writing, but "Melakio are" seems wrong since Melakio refer to themselves as "I", not "we".) More complex puzzles to progress the story would have been good—there is a lot you can do with the format if players are presented with enough information. I think the story explains that there is no actual two-way communication but some acknowledgement of the progress I was making would go a long way. Maybe there even could be an actual time limit (number of steps?) and a good ending/bad ending?
The graphics are neat, although the shaders/postprocessing are clearly doing the heavy lifting :) The music fits the mood. More sound effects would have been nice, especially for the milestones, like activating a pyragon.
The little messages like "sorry" took only few clicks to be unlocked (like 5 ?), so we thought that it was ok. And we thought that putting it on a single message added a bit to the "emotion" of it! But your feedback is interesting, maybe it didn't worked as we wanted !
SPOILERS :
"Was I supposed to be able to walk over the empty space in the middle?" : Yes ! There is a secret path in it that you can reveal if you turn the lights off. I wanted to keep the path walkable even when you dont see it, because it still exist physically even if you don't see it!
This secret path guide you to the final cinematic of the game if you resolved the 3 pyragons puzzle before
Thank you again for taking time to put a feedback like this, this is really precious to me
And sorry for my messy english !
I agree with the sentiment of some of the other comments regarding the amount of clicking required, but it did make it feel like you had to work for the messages/clues while giving you some time to try and figure it out on your own -- awesome entry!