I love the artstyle and lighting! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a second key in the starting area, real or fake, so I couldn't progress. But, I may be missing something obvious.

@ralin each area has 1 key to open the next. but all the areas cept the first one have tons of fakes in them. and you have to find the right one to open the next door. ill try the game out again and see if theres a bug, but last time i checked the first key was good. *edit* yeah i went back and played it again, and yeah i could get the door open, did you try and pick up the torch to look for the key in the room to the right?

It took me a while to get going but once I got a hang of it, the game was ok. I especially liked some of the sections where moving mine carts provided me light at right moments. Not sure if I should have had a torch at that point but I found it a nice touch regardless.

Extra props for the mood. I think you have used some of the most used assets on the planet well to create something that feels original.

Darkness mechanic is really good, although I had hard time distinguishing one key from the other! Dodging minecarts was fun. Overall mood and theme is just right, but inventory system did feel a little bit frustrated (is it ok that I drop a key near another key and suddenly I only have 1 key left?)

@spica that could be a bug i may need to address. thanks for the heads up!

Very good atmosesphere in the game!

@spica you were spot on, i found the bug, fixed it and you can now swap keys, thank you so much for reporting that.

In some areas, you can move without a torch on and get a feel of the area by the moving wagons. I liked that. I think having some 1 lane corridors when there player has to time moving on tracks between small gaps in the walls would be an ice addition. Nicely done :D

I don't know what happened, i ended up training mutant turtle to do ninja stuff :/

Great game, I like the concept, and the art is on point, lightning is perfect for the game, really nice touch. All these fake key are kinda boring after 3 to 4 door tho

Nice game !

I love the dark atmosphere of the game

Weird atmosphere. I like it.

Having to carry and drop the light source is a good idea. I wish the pixel art wasn't so pixelated, I couldn't tell what anything is besides the mine carts and keys, so it was more like playing a game of trial and error with abstract shapes. The music is interesting.

The first mine cart that hit me scared the crap outta me lol. Unfortunately couldn't find the real key? Maybe making the first puzzle a bit easier would better? Well done :)

I felt the number of fake keys was a bit much. The south path with ~5 fake keys is just too much, I'd prefer being able to deduce them, or at least a shortcut back once I find one.

cool mood. the lighting was really neat and really gave you the feeling of being in a dungeon. it took be a while to realize I could carry torches, but the idea of having minecarts as a light source so that you have to follow them is pretty neat.

Depressing atmosphere, ominous music, interesting gameplay. I like it!

I love the music the most out of everything, it's a really good fit for the theme and setting of the game, it took me a bit to figure out you could pick up that flower in the corner to get light, maybe mention that at some point unless you did and I just missed it, but overall I enjoyed the game and loved the sprites!

the paths were a bit long and annoying lol, the carts that give light are good design though, a bit too depressing for me lol

This'd been even more awesome if there were fewer keys to pick 😅
The ambience was great along with the levels design and art but I'd have much preferred a shorter but fun version of this game! Great work tho :smile:

I did not like this game... I did play it for 20 minutes though!! And the mood was amazing. I dont think any of the game design decisons really made any sense. The perma death, the one item at a time... everything about the keys. I played for the sounds, mood, atmosphere and art. I dont know how you could win this without just checking every key. Some way to maybe tell which key is right would probably help.

It's a cute game and a good idea, i liked it ! I agree with some above, i would have prefer it with less keys to test out.

Your ability to meld the perfect color palette with the music creates a sublime atmosphere, and the game flawlessly fits its theme while maintaining a riveting tension throughout. Great game!

The only thing I'm missing is a brief animation for the rat, it would have been great. But I insist, great game!

Interesting idea, I both like and hate the carry the light mechanic as it can feel tedious at times - it would be nice to "unlock" more light or torches and to have a little dim light attached the the rat.

There were a lot of fake keys and they didn't really add to the experience but the mood and atmosphere you created was great and I enjoyed my time as a rat :)

The game is quite moody and the concept is neat. But I do agree with others that the fake keys are way too many in each region. And I know each region has one valid key so if you open a gate with one you can ignore the rest in that area but still, the later areas seemed way too big with too many keys. In the areas with carts going through you can just follow one or safely navigate your way in the dark, but the graveyard with spikes along the corridor was too annoying.

I managed to unlock all doors except the last one on the left:



Then stepped on a spike in the top left area with my 1 hp :slight_smile: . I would have loved to get all the coins and see the epic win screen. I think it would be better if when you die, you just drop what you are holding and teleport to the start area instead of restarting all over. Cool concept though and the art style is very nice. Nice work!

Game looks very nice. Gameplay I found a bit repetitive and a bit annoying having to walk back and forth the same ways because keys were the wrong ones. Also the message about a key being "fake" was confusing, because it turned out that a key that was "fake" for a door could actually open a different door. But fake makes you instead think that the key is useless. Overall it's well presented visually. Maybe some walk animation on the character could have added a lot more immersion. Controls were simple and intuitive enough and the pickup mechanic seemed to work very well.

The game has stunning visuals, the lighting and visuals make for a very atmospheric game! I'm not sure if it fits the theme that well, I think the level design could be tightened up since there's a lot of backtracking, and the level could be smaller. The torch design is a bit confusing, I actually thought it was a side-view of a key at first (personally, I'd make the base of the torch straight instead of squiggly) Overall, great job though!

Cute mouse. And the concept of being a rat and finding the keys and coins are quite creative. But it was so difficult and confusing to find matching pairs. I hope at least I could got some clues

Pretty fun, good idea. I thought the lanterns were knives at first but figured that out pretty fast. I like how you have to do lots of running back and fourth to try out the different keys. Makes for extended play.

solid execution, a bit more explanation would ease the player into getting started with what to do and so on.

I like the atmosphere/mood of the game

With all keys having the same look it didn't take long for me to lose track of which ones I had already tried :key:

The spikes(?) were not immediately obvious that they were dangerous so I just walked into it

Every time I picked up a fake key I felt so betrayed haha. I did have a really good time playing your game though, the atmosphere was super fun!

Love the dark atmosphere! Very clever with the light implementation, especially since it makes the game all the more difficult to navigate and find your keys! The fake keys were also clever, but I felt soo insulted whenever it was revealed it was a fake key lol

The backtracking is a bit painful. I was able to open up 5 of the gates after trying so so many keys, but I ran into some spikes while at 1HP and I didn't want to start over. I did love the atmosphere a lot. The lighting and sound really added to the mood. I really enjoyed that part. With just a few tweaks this could be a really cool game! Nice work!

Very good entry!
Liked the concept and plays really well, the lighting is interesting and is a great addition to a jam game.
I found having to backtrack quite a bit was painful, but nothing too terrible.

Love the atmosphere of the game. The sounds are nice, effects as well, and it creates an otherworld-y mood. I liked the sound for coin pickup. I played twice - on my first try, I brought all keys from areas to the center even when a door was unlocked. I also thought the darkness might spawn ghosts so I kept carrying my torch and dropping/swapping with key every few metres, so it was slow going.

Spoiler about gameplay:

!> The second try was much more fun - I ran in the darkness, progressed faster, and even got to the graveyard. I hand't used any of the health potions yet so I was feeling real confident I could make it. I gathered all the keys from the graveyard by swapping with the torch, I had them all in the first room ready to go, about to go back the spikey corridor. But then, a ghost spawned very close to me, I got spooked and ran into it multiple times and died. Sad life for the rat.

I might not have it in me to make a third attempt. I'll perhaps give it another go after work.

Removing keys after they've been tried to all doors and found wrong, with a little sound effect, would make it more satisfying to carry those wrong keys too.

But, overall, the game feels solid, the light mechanics are interesting and little frustrating without being too overwhelming - as if you take it slow, you can definitely progress with patience - and the spikes are a good deterrent of just running head first to darkness. A really good game!

Whoa I loved this one. I think the idea of moving forward in the dark is such a timeless/scary mechanic and you pulled it off really well here. As a side note, if you ever need original music, I'd love to volunteer my help! I was recently doing a similar thing with a grinding, undulating drone-loop. Cheers!
danburnsmusic@gmail.com

Really nice mood in the game! The light and ambient sounds really make up an intensive atmosphere. However I found it a bit repetitive having to go back and forth to test that amount of keys. Maybe it'd be nice to reduce the number of keys a bit? Great game! Congrats on the entry!

nice game art and game mood,little confused to pass

Nice laberynth game, congrats!

A fun idea, and perfect for the pixel art style! I think the simplicity of the mechanic is where this game really shines (that, and wherever you have a torch!). While the ambient drones in the music don't exactly loop very well and aren't super catchy or anything they fit the mood of the darker-than-dark dungeon VERY well, and really help foster a sense of limited space. The fake keys cause a lot of backtracking through the side areas and end up feeling a bit unnecessary - though it DOES make unlocking a door pretty satisfying. The only other thing I'll say about the fake keys is it would be nice to have a single place to stash the ones you've tried on all the doors and don't work; the hub room gets pretty messy with all the useless keys laying around. ;) Generally, this is a cool idea that I think could be a super fun adventure game with some polish and more time to devise level layouts that don't depend on the fake keys/back tracking to pad out play time. All-in-all though for a one person team and the game jam time constraints, you should be very happy. Great work!

Played for a bit, was not sure why there were so many fake keys nor how to get rid of them. The darkness mechanic was alright but I wasn't a huge fan of it when I got stuck in areas - had to wait around to see some light. Nice artwork.

You did a great job on the mood of the game by tying together the lighting, art, sound, and mine carts "with a mind of their own." The gameplay was a bit too heavy on the repetitive side though. I wish there was a way to understand which key fits a particular door, rather than trying every one in the level, otherwise there's just lots of backtracking. Nothing that couldn't be fixed post-jam, though!