Used To Be by Heiden.BZR
Story
You're between 35 and 45. You will no longer recognize your reflection in the shop windows on your way to work. House — office — house. Coffee that hasn't smelled for a long time. A sofa where you drown but don't rest.
They advised to "go to a psychologist." You postponed the visit exactly 437 times: either you were in a hurry, or you were lazy, or "it'll do anyway." But today, there's a crumpled business card in your pocket, a taxi with worn seats, and you notice how your palms leave wet marks on the doorjamb.
The office does not look like a medical one. No questionnaires, no standardized tests. Just a chair, dim lights, and a quiet voice.:
"Just relax. We'll start when you're ready."
The door closes.
CONTROLS
WASD - move
SPACE - jump
Q and E - rotate room
F - use interactive objects
Team
Heiden.BZR: programmer, sound designer, manager
Egor Murza: 3d artist & textures
Arkadii Mikhailov: level designer, game designer, narrative designer
Phen: sound designer, level artist, ui artist, textures
AI used for: background music (suno.ai) & backpack 3d model (meshy). Other sounds are taken from free stocks.
| Link | https://heidenbzr.itch.io/used-to-be |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/used-to-be |
Ratings
| Overall | 211th | 3.833⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 274th | 3.619⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 156th | 3.802⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 619th | 3.354⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 375th | 3.811⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 208th | 3.943⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 90🗨️ |
The game ran at low fps on my computer that may be why
You guys went crazy on bloom and post processes, my poor 970 couldn't handle it
Maybe rotating the player position relative to the room pivot at the same time as you rotate the room would fix it, but that may not be what you intended with the gameplay
Too bad, it really looked interesting, I would have loved to see what came after
Nice graphics and mood regardless, loved the cutouts with the angry faces drawn upon them
@yatsu @justine-d
Thanks for feedback!
Yeaaaah I fought Unreal's physics and I have lost. And I'm not sure it's fixable there. Guess I should have picked something less physics-sensitive or pick another engine...
@justine-d sorry for the fps! There are cons in having cool computers huh. None of us had noticed any fps issues... I'm guessing it's rather antialiasing though. But there are still physics issues even with nice fpx :C
The art direction is immaculate given the jam time constraints. The post-processing might be a little heavy (my laptop was sweatingggg just to play this game) but it also looks great.
The rotation got a little bit glitchy, but I was able to avoid clipping out of maps on rotation if I just jumped before pressing the rotate key.
Awesome work!
Remind me "The Stanley Parable"
@jordanfb @idos @daria-anosova @leo115 @pincushion thank you so much for such warm words!
The atmosphere is amazing, almost gave me the feeling it was a horror entry at first, but it’s not really haha. It feels more like a delivery of some inner voice or emotion, which I totally relate to. Being an adult is just hard, and that quiet depth caught me off guard in a good way. Definitely not what I expected, but I appreciated it.
All in all, great job!
This game blew my mind! Visually, mechanically, audibly, everything was sound!
The puzzles were challenging, but fair. Felt really good for an introduction, I'd love to see what kind of puzzles you guys would come up with with more time!
There was a few bugs with clipping through the walls, but I can't say much, you should see how much you clip through the walls in my game :laughing:
Amazing job guys! :clap: