Ballad of Lead Shroud by KrummSakura
A short narrative psychological horror game. I hope you enjoy it.
After struggling to sustain her 'rich & famous' lifestyle for years, the only remaining member of the band 'Lead Shroud' uses her final wish from the notorious monkey paw to summon her late band mates from the dead. Although her previous wishes came true they also brought horrible consequences she had to deal with. Can she get what she wanted without paying an unfortunate cost this time? Or will she get what she really deserves?
Bug Fix 1: A game-breaking bug was fixed. The broken version also can be downloaded from this link
Bug Fix 2: Some typos were corrected. The broken version also can be downloaded from this link
Bug Fix 3: Typos/grammatical corrections.. The broken version also can be downloaded from this link
Post-Jam Improvements: No additional content/mechanics * Text cannot be skipped before it ends, to avoid missing texts. * Movement speed in text scenes was decreased, to avoid potential erroneous triggering. * Text color in the final scene was changed to distinguish the speaker from the protagonist.


| Microsoft Windows - Bug Fix 3 | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yoGB2c3VifOxdNumDNU3k9jgl8zRs-kT/view?usp=sharing |
| HTML5 (web) - Post-Jam Improvements | https://krummsakura.itch.io/ballad-of-lead-shroud |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ballad-of-lead-shroud |
Ratings
| Overall | 887th | 3.294⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1138th | 2.706⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 990th | 2.902⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 803th | 3.392⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 687th | 3.578⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 370th | 3.569⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 319th | 3.863⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 107🗳️ | 145🗨️ |
Eerie stuff. Although on my first run I did walk into the pink room. :3
I initially thought it to be a part of the game, but falling for about 2 minutes I figured it wasnt :3
Nice way of pacing (no pun intended) the backstory, and I really like the chromatic aberration effect as well, cool touch!
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**Horror**: For me personally it wasn't scary, but I like the atmosphere with the music and visual effects.
**Technical**: I played in HTML which might be the reason for some jerkiness of the camera movement, though I think for me it even enhanced the experience but most likely wasn't intentional. Also, sometimes I skipped text accidentally as at first I thought it would just show the whole line, and then it happened a few times when I thought maybe I'd interact with that door, but oops it happened at the same moment game tried to tell me something.
**Story**: The story is well thought out and explained, and tells a lot about the characters. I think I noticed a few problems with grammar, so if you get someone to spellcheck, it would help. (Unfortunately didn't think to take a screenshot at the moment. One second.)

*I didn't say I would sacrifice my partner.*
*I couldn't write any songs. I couldn't get along with any of the new members.*
**Art**: I like the models of the band members, they look decently creepy but still gorgeous! :D
Also, her "phrasing" was pretty bad (and I think it's intentional? and part of why it failed?) As I would understand it as "I want THEM to be rich and famous". And so they kill her. But also obviously because they had bad blood between them when they were alive. Which also makes our MC a bit stupid because she didn't realize they wouldn't be that happy to see her. All of that is NOT the critique of the game or story, but my feelings about this particular character :) Maybe it could even be enhanced with less of "it affected me badly and I got lucky I survived" and more of "It's their fault they died and left me alone, to fail" which would explain her egoistic and self-absorbed character more and make it more believable how she made that decision. After all, her second wish seems to be the reason they died, even? (Replaying 2nd time as I missed some dialogue accidentally on my 1st)
To nitpick a little, the moving text was a bit hard to read and would have been easier if it revealed from left to right instead of expanding from the center.
Everything is very cool from the mood to the story. I would only change the text, to appear in one go, probably. Letter by letter feels too common and annoying if you read fast.
I've found it hard to move on now... weaning is hard........------------
Who's coming to resurrect me?
A few times I mistakenly skipped the monologue when I clicked on the E. It seems like it would have been better to rewind the text on the button first and then close it. Because the player tries to press the button everywhere, and the monologues appear too abruptly, giving the opportunity to skip them. You could also do a little protection against - make it impossible to skip a monologue for the first 2 seconds after it appears.
Also, at the end it's unclear when the band is speaking. Before the "reunion" the player always sees text of the same color and associates it with himself. This could be solved, for example, with a different font color. That is, when the group members speak - their font color looks like their clothes or something like that. You can also highlight the words of the group with sounds - when the player's monologue appears "sigh", and when the group's monologue appears "infernal laughter" or something like that.
Really well done ! :)
There's a few things that made getting through this story kinda difficult... like the mouse sensitivity is too low, the text is too slow adn the skip action doesn't let you read it, the FOV is also too low which feels kinda disorienting, and I feel like you could have made text boxes that allow for more than one line at a time, so that walking 2 steps didn't always interrupt you with a text box.
That all said, I did really enjoy the vibe of the graphics and shaders, the music and the way the story was told through the environment. If you take care of those little problems, you could make a lot of really cool games in this same style!
Anyway, great job! It's a lovely, multifaceted showcase. Story, mood, interaction etc.
Quick side note on the web player: It seems you can't focus the game viewer again if you loose focus and have to refresh the tab. No biggie when you know of it though.
I think you should capture the cursor on every click in web builds for these type of games, so that the game doesn't become unplayable if you ever hit escape and want to come back.
I was a bit annoyed in the ending corridor by the texts appearing and stopping me at wherever I was and wherever I looked at the moment, it also felt a bit awkward. I don't think it's a good idea to take away the control from the player this repeatedly. You could just have a longer corridor and let the sentences appear as the player walks toward the end to make it all feel more fluid.
Think you missed a chance to add a bit more detail by not specifying the favorite record and book as you did with the absinthe.
I liked this. I see what you meant in your comment on my game. Very cool premise but not much gameplay. It's still neat to experience a short story in a slightly interactive way like this, and I enjoyed looking around and trying to find more interactions before moving on, like the ones on the vases or the one on the sign.
The chromatic aberration is nice and fits. I did not like the headbobbing one bit I'm afraid, especially not how much there was even when standing still :') Overall very nice visuals. I think if the characters had been put into the initial environment they would've clashed, but they fit in the weird, dreamy space you find them in. It's a cool contrast.
Good effect when you speak, altho the width of the text should probably have been limited as it ended up spanning my entire monitor so was a bit hard to read.
The music was nice and I liked that the interaction sounds were based on the same piano. Nice sounds after the ritual when the corridor got ominous.
Overall very interesting and well made! Still wondering about the backstory, very mysterious.