It Gazes Back by Sylvic

made by Sylvic for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

Sometimes it's better to keep your curiosity to yourself.

Play as Quinn, a common technician working inside the crew of the Stellaris spaceship. An unknown entity has entered the ship, and Quinn's only hope for survival lies in his willingness to overcome his claustrophobia and make use of the limited space inside ventilation shafts to reach the docks and escape the ship. Be careful of what you see though, some minds are not made for the secrets of space.

*TRIGGER WARNING: Depictions of enclosed space, gore. *

This game is not ranking for audio or art: - Some audio files are original, others are free assets. - Art assets were made with Leonardo AI.

Creator notes:

Limited space...IN SPACE

Hello there! This is my first time joining LDJam, and actually, my first time ever making a game by myself (and 4th time ever working on a game). Lots of fun working for real with Ren'Py, had only experimented on it before but never made a "complete" game.

Originally planned on adding a lot more stuff, but as it happens with jams, you do less than you originally planned to. Had too little time to further the story and add more descriptions, but will try to add more variations of sounds to make it more immersive.

The relation to the theme is quite thin, but I liked the idea as it came to me so I just rolled with it anyway!

Link	https://github.com/TakaVII/itgazesback
Itch.io	https://sylvic.itch.io/it-gazes-back
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/it-gazes-back

Ratings

Overall	1132^th	2.325⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Fun	1134^th	1.975⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	1129^th	2⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Theme	1099^th	2.475⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Humor	925^th	1.556⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Mood	859^th	3.132⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Given		26🗳️	3🗨️

Feedback

Euix

03. Oct 2023 · 02:20 UTC

The art is very stylistic and macabre. I found the story a bit confusing and disturbing at times, but the whole space Cthulu vibe is pretty sweet. I knew something was up with Alan! Unfortunately I couldn't complete the game because of a crash once I met up with Logan:
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
File "game/level3.rpy", line 451, in script
"It was a small group, probably around 20 people, less than 10% of the total crewmembers."
TypeError: %o format: an integer is required, not TagQuotingDict

🎤 Sylvic

03. Oct 2023 · 03:05 UTC

@euix Thanks! Should be fixed now.

Edearth

03. Oct 2023 · 13:01 UTC

I got to the ending where you see the eyes and it's sick, I love it!

When trying to get the good ending I kept getting errors saying 'Sayer "y" is not defined" or something similar. There were some lines of dialog I couldn't see, but apparently it jumped from ending to ending so I could see all of them. And I have to say I'm baffled, I don't know how to get to some of them. I think that's very cool.

It could've probably used some more ambience/music to better adapt to the mood of the scene (I only heard 2 different ambience tracks), but that's the only complain I have.

🎤 Sylvic

03. Oct 2023 · 14:13 UTC

@edearth Thank you for the review! I fixed that mistake, first time making a game solo, and also first time making something in Ren'Py so there are a lot of obvious mistakes I might have missed 😅 There are currently 2 possible endings, with 2 different variations of each one.

I did want to add more ambiance music to help with immersion but ran out of time to add it, also why I added some prefab sfx and opted out of ratings in that category.

LDJam user 262766

04. Oct 2023 · 14:58 UTC

Good novel but I am not fan of AI pictures. But of course I can understand you alone developer without any artist) Great work anyway

Raptorspank

05. Oct 2023 · 00:52 UTC

Congratulations on your first solo game! It's a neat take on the theme, applying it to a visual novel like that. Overall you've got good atmosphere here and a good cosmic horror angle.

HappyGamer500

06. Oct 2023 · 02:35 UTC

Windows build doesn't seem to work, or maybe my machine is not set up correctly for the game.

I played the browser version. The game seems to be a pretty good visual novel. The one criticism I have is that the art could have been generated more cohesively, sometimes the style felt a bit inconsistent. Other than that cool game with good ambiance.

ping78

06. Oct 2023 · 05:06 UTC

Congratulations on your first LD entry. I hate reading, I'm not a fan of horror, I don't get visual novels but this was quite enjoyable. Well done.
File “game/level3.rpy”, line 653
TypeError: %o format: an integer is required, not TagQuotingDict
However this seem to happen after the game fails to end and level soft restarts with a different character.

LDJam user 206001

11. Oct 2023 · 00:01 UTC

Honestly, I won't be able to vote here because I don't understand English perfectly so I couldn't take advantage. I came to say that it was a good use of Leonardo AI. In a little while I believe there will be no distinction between whether it was made or created with AI, but anyway, I liked the sound effects. I'm just not going to vote because I couldn't read the story. Ah, one thing I need to say, even using Leonardo AI you can work on the images in photoshop, crop the backgrounds, animate things instead of just static images. I say this because it weighed a lot, they are large images, and it took a long time to load. Normally games don't do this, they use spirits with transparent backgrounds in intelligently designed backgrounds to take up less memory. Images that repeat themselves, but look whole, is the trick. Of course, it's more work lol and I know the time.

LDJam user 262525

16. Oct 2023 · 15:33 UTC

I like seeing something outside the box in these jams, and a VN certainly fits that label. Well written and interesting. I wish there was more sound effects, especially in the first half of the game, but given the time restriction I think you did a great job!

🎤 Sylvic

17. Oct 2023 · 18:20 UTC

@dennis-magnusson Thanks! Certainly I felt the lack of sfx did hurt the overall immersion but I ran out of time.

Jonathan Lorenz

19. Oct 2023 · 17:10 UTC

Not really my kind of game... I tried it out of curiosity but to be honest didn't played very long. So yeah, didn't have much to say about the game itself. But congratulations for making the game by yourself and completing this Ludum Dare, that's an awesome achievement. Keep up the good work!