Ludum Dare #33compo

Alice & August: A Love Story

by nic

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.00

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.38

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.53

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.11

Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.00

Coolness★★★★★★★★★★22%

DESCRIPTION

find alice.

CONTROLS

wasd / arrows to move
e to advance text

NOTES

keep the theme in mind while playing.

my first LD game and first ever game from scratch.
it was a mad dash to familiarize myself with lua and figure out
what resources were available for what I wanted to complete.

went for a gameboy classic kind of feel... minus the black background. oops!
it turned out almost exactly as I wanted, with less polish than I
wanted, of course :)

didn't want to fuss around too much with game mechanics since this is
a whole new world for me - so I went with a "story-driven" approach.
hopefully it wasn't a story borne totally of sleep deprivation and lack
of creativity.

my apologies for the programmer art!

would not have been possible without the help of the brilliant authors of
a couple libraries I used. you guys made this 48 hours much less of a hell
than it could have been!

LIBRARIES USED

sti: https://github.com/karai17/Simple-Tiled-Implementation
navi: https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9265

KNOWN ISSUES

- gridlocked movement would be better
- animations for august... although, it probably fits the story better w/o
- sometimes get stuck on edge of wall? experience this behavior in debug,
when testing release version seemed to be ok
- post more on github page issue tracker

Comments10

MarekkPie25 Aug 2015, 02:17

Moody, well written. Simply brilliant. Only complaint is that it was so maze like. I felt I might have gone out of order as well.

Vem25 Aug 2015, 17:32

There was not enough in the game motivating me to finish, basically.

There were multiple segments where I couldn't tell if I was moving forward or the game had frozen.

zenmumbler25 Aug 2015, 17:35

I'd like the walking speed higher are the hallways shorter. Seems interesting but this maze is even more disorienting than the one in my entry ;)

rustybroomhandle25 Aug 2015, 18:57

Enjoyed it, but similarly I think I'd have preferred a wider viewing angle and a less mazelike- perhaps more linear layout. Also, pity you have Audio deselected for rating - it's repetitive, but does aid the mood quite well.

wesley werner27 Aug 2015, 06:57

It reminds me of walking through the maze of one's mind, passing memories on the way. This is a great concept, the movement speed is a bit slow for those long long hallways.

Glad to see another game made in love! It makes me curious to use love too :)

AnaglyphCoding29 Aug 2015, 11:30

I loved the gameboy look of the game (minus the background of course) however when I was walking down a long hall I couldn't tell if I was moving or not. I didn't get to the end cuz mazes make me go insane and the music was creepy :P however, I enjoyed the mood of the game, character animations may have been a nice touch but maybe the lack of animation was intentional, I enjoyed it otherwise and would love to play a post-LD build of some sort. Well done! :)

ZNCatlaw7 Sep 2015, 01:29

The lack of animations made the long straight corridors very anxious. I actually liked this effect a lot, when paired with the music. At first I thought the maze was not respectful of my time, lacking any real mark of progress or milestones. At a certain point I realized that this must be intentional: the protagonist's existential crisis is mirrored by the player's own frustration at having to make their own meaning, despite the implicit promise the video game makes with us. I think a lot of the comments you've received about walking speed are motivated by this. Once the player realizes that the only feedback the game gives them is the rooms, she only wants to see more rooms and more quickly. I'm glad you made this, and I'm glad I had the patience for it! ^o^//

PS are there endings? I didn't find any. Do you have a twitter account, I would like to tweet at you.

PPS you should have opted out of the Fun category, but not the Graphics category, in my honest opinion. I rated this quite highly.

Karai1712 Sep 2015, 00:35

Cool, you used my library! :D

xvw14 Sep 2015, 04:41

A very super nice game !
Lve your write style !

pirate_shell14 Sep 2015, 10:31

I like the mood of it a lot! I think the lack of animation in the game as a whole was a very nice choice as walking down a huge hallway felt quite unsettling. The story seemed compelling and as a mood piece it felt great. Unlike some of the other commentors I didn't mind the walking speed or the long hallways, I just wished it was a more liniar piece. I also thought the movement was quite clunky as sometiems he would akwardly stop for what seemed to be no reason. The friction he had also didn't feel very smooth. Those are nitpicks, however. I loved it as a mood piece! The music was nice and atmospheric too!