Flesh ripped from bone. An unfulfilled prophecy. Traverse the dungeon, rekindle the iron, and break the curse.
With nothing in hand he must press on to free himself from this vicious fate.
We hope you find this game challenging and rewarding.
Upon opening a door, that door will remain open through death.
Enjoy!
Game Versions:
v1.8 - Latest Version. Minor bug fixes. Game too dark on some older monitors. Upped brightness. Easter Egg fix, easier to view. Fixed L click to attack. Sometimes needed 2 clicks. Boss bug: invulnerable after teleport until 2nd projectile.
v1.2 - Original Jam Submission on 10/7
Tip for final boss: Dodge sideways instead of at him. Very few iFrames in dodge. .175 seconds.
though you have opted out of graphics, the art is nice! nicely polished look and feel. Couldn't get too far though, not game's fault... the last 72 hours have killed my carpal tunnel lol. Good job!
Thanks so much for stopping by guys. Unfortunately we couldn't get a web version to work. Luckily the game is quite small to download. Hope you all enjoy!
I just played the game and I couldn't get past the first stage of the game. Unfortunately, the game doesn't take too kindly to displays that have really dark contrast (like IPS displays on laptops), so it was really difficult to see the saws and the spinning spikes. Besides that, I would have looked forward to the latter part of the game!
@nachtwitch I think this was a great test for something bigger. But most likely won't be continuing this as is. I might have to bump down the difficulty, It seems like most people are stuck in act 1.
How does this game look so good? Great atmosphere, gameplay a bit hardcore for my taste, but it's not bad. Everything is very well done and I see it as a big full game tbh.
Level design is a bit frustrating and life is a little bit too low in my opinion(i know you should start with nothing, but man...), i will finish it someday :)
As others have said the graphics are really nice.Music is fitting, but more soundeffects would really add to the experience. Gameplay is hard. A little more work and this could be a AAA game.
thanks for all the kind words guys. yeah we kind of ran out of time on the sfx. defintiely will focus more on that next LD to get a fuller experience. unfortunately i spent most of my time adding sound effects to the boss barely anyone reached lol
Wow, this game looks great, but level design has too much dark spots and too difficult for me. It's not too bad if you character is killed by saw, but when saw was hidden in a dark, that's frustrating.
@wolf4d yeah sorry bout that one. we're planning to add more lights. its not supposed to be that dark but my monitor is quite bright so i couldnt tell until i was on my work monitor
I pretty much agree with everything that other people have commented. The environment and level design looks extremely professional with the game. However, the lighting makes it really hard to see the danger within the levels. I can't even pass the second room due to the lasers hitting me out of nowhere. Fix this and maybe decrease the difficulty of the enemies (at least in the beginning) and the game would be extremely good, though it is great already. Good work!
Thanks so much for trying the game. The lighting and difficulty issues have been addressed in the latest version and would be so grateful if you guys are willing to give it another shot.
Nice entry, it's impressive how much you were able to cram in for the jam! Some sort of hit indicator would be nice. I would sometimes think I got past a room flawlessly just to look at my heath and find out otherwise.
Pretty challenging game and although I didn't get far, I'm sure the rest of the game was just as good. I think the rate of fire for the stone rocks could be toned down a bit.
The boss is one tough cookie! Enjoyed chatting with you on discord! This projects really well made! The first stage is definately rough! (I personally liked it, but I know everyone has different tastes on that subject)
Only personal gripe was having to re-grab the torch, burn the wood, grab the sword, go to the altar, just to try to fight the boss again. Very minor but a VERY nice QoL change for people having issues on the boss.
I really enjoyed the art and ambience of the game. I also have a thing for these kinds of medieval traps, so I felt right at home playing this game. However, I couldn't find my way into the next area. I ended up quitting out of frustration. I really wanted to figure it out and move into the next area. Great job for a game jam! :) good luck!
This game is pretty good! A few quality of life changes I would make are:
- I found that in order to attack, you had to double click. I'm not sure if that's a bug on my end or in the game, but it's probably worth looking into (edit: just saw the note in the original post) - the attack animation shouldn't deal damage after the "swing" portion - dodge-rolling negates damage (though this would affect game balance) - after you burn down the vines, they should probably not grow back after every death, or have a faster burning animation - there were a few misaligned game objects like the torch vs the flame of the torch - the red crystal launchy thing's projectiles could use a bit more visibility (maybe a light source from each crystal) - maybe have a raycast to detect if there is a piece of terrain between the player and the camera, and if so, reduce its opacity
I really did like how the puzzles were laid out. They were difficult, but achievable. The level design and atmosphere were great, and I could clearly tell where the next objective would be. Although you didn't make the artwork, you did choose a very nice style for the game and stuck with it, producing a beautiful atmosphere. Overall, considering the short amount of time I think you did an excellent job.
The art style is very polished, the fx quite cool and in general it's a very good job. To have done it in 3 days by 2 fellas, has a lot of merit. My congrats! :D
@crazyhomeboys thanks so much for trying the game! The scope was kind of large for 2 people. I'm so glad we were able to finish despite all the small bugs
Something about the hit sound effect actually had my crying of laughter. The game itself was really well polished for a jam game. I liked the level design and the concept of a top-down souls-like. A little bit more work on lock-on and combat feel would make this game easily something I'd pay for, as a full game. Great work!
- Amazing art - Incredible mood and level design - Smooth controls, nice movement speed, and challenging game play Brilliant, just brilliant. Good job all of you!
@adamcyounis thanks for trying the game! I went back on your vods to check out your playthrough. I think youre 100% right about the life bar. I wish we would've done it dark souls style where it shows up across the bottom when you walk into the boss room but i finished that boss at 4AM Monday (like sunday night going into monday) haha. T_T your first run was amazing! you were actually only 1-2 hits away from killing it. I wish you couldve seen the ending lol.
Watching your playthough was very educational for me. Little things I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Thanks again for playing!
This is a really strong submission, but too hard. I see a lot of influence from Dark Souls, but with unfair difficulty, however, Boss fight is really good design wise. Nice work!
This was super tough. I wasn't able to beat the boss, but I enjoyed the journey. Getting the suit of armor felt super cool, considering you start with so little health. One thing I noticed is that the enemies were super easy to spam to death. Dodge rolling to them and spamming left-click killed them all without me ever taking a hit, whereas the boss was a huge step up in difficulty.
On the whole this was a pretty cool entry, though. Nice work!
I liked the art and the idea of you going through traps, I also liked the part that you use a spoiler item very well ocarina of time, I really liked the game but I found only the badly placed controls, I think adding the directionals is nice to gameplay
@asfdfdfd glad you enjoyed it! Wish we had more time to balance the game better and make more tweeks to it. but was pretty happy of the end result for our first LD
@spicypaper thanks for the kind words! I wish we had more time to focus on the sound as well. In the future I'll definitely leave more time for that in future jam games.
@brokenmirrormedia@kurokabe@shemokam@djindegames im glad you guys liked the atmosphere and the mood/setting! As a huge fan of the DS series we worked really hard to capture that dark souls feel.
I liked how you sectioned the areas. Completing one, getting something new that unlocks the other area felt nice. Especially the visual upgrade was cool and made the boss fight feel more special because of the anticipation you felt when suddenly receiving such an upgrade, you just knew something cool would happen soon and, thankfully, you did not get disappointed.
The only weakness in this is the difficulty. I personally found the first area more challenging than the second one. But I'm betting it's mostly due to the time constraint.
I think most people already mentioned almost everything else.
From a noobie's perspective: the 2 hits and you're out at the start kept me losing and having to start all over. Even when I finally was able to get the torch, I got hit once, and had to start everything over. What doesn't help is also the movement. There's a slight delay when you press to when the player moves.
I must say though, those beams are smart. Being able to predict where I was running, and shoot there, instead of me. I kept dying over and over without any potions though, so I was denied the ability to explore the game more.
I like the style and art of the game though, and the eerie music with it. Gameplay-wise, I just wish I could play without that delay/lag? (can't be lag because I set my graphics to the lowest)
@itsdanidre hmm once you grab the torch you don't need to start all over. You can go straight to the torch room from spawn.
As for the lag I don't know... I didn't really feel anything like that or have anyone reporting issues with a delay. What fps are you getting? We added a fps counter to the bottom left.
@itsdanidre thanks! Unfortunately i don't actually think the low settings would make much of a difference. Aside from shadow quality and minor performance changes. I haven't had the time to use different models or anything like that if someone selects "low settings" so you're not actually going to see a huge performance change. (Obviously since no jam game would really have time for that level of optimization) but just wanted to point that out.
Very nice graphics and aesthetic. The final boss fight was quite challenging - it was the only LD45 game that I wasn't able to beat in a single sitting this time around. While unable to beat the game during my first set of attempts on stream, I was able to beat it today as the end of our LD45 streams! Thanks for sharing the game with us and well done on this entry!
@youngblade just watched your vod of the game. Thanks so much for playing. I'm always on the edge of my seat when watching someone play against that boss haha
p.s. the end is just a easter egg to the 'tutorial' section of dark souls. just paying homage XD it seemed like some people didnt get the egg so thought id explain haha.
The effort and the content in this game is really cool. The Controls are OK and the learning Curve/Difficultness of the Game is totally fine and ok.
A bit more polishing here and there, esepcially in the bottom left area where its hard to figure out to jump over the gap and the point, that you stuck on the "iceshards" with just moving, then game will really be an awesome good product.
Comments82
Minor balancing changes and lighting is fixed in our latest update 1.3
@wolf4d @resummit @eryph @sefirost @palemek @daria-toni
Thanks so much for trying the game. The lighting and difficulty issues have been addressed in the latest version and would be so grateful if you guys are willing to give it another shot.
Only personal gripe was having to re-grab the torch, burn the wood, grab the sword, go to the altar, just to try to fight the boss again. Very minor but a VERY nice QoL change for people having issues on the boss.
Very well made guys!!
- I found that in order to attack, you had to double click. I'm not sure if that's a bug on my end or in the game, but it's probably worth looking into (edit: just saw the note in the original post)
- the attack animation shouldn't deal damage after the "swing" portion
- dodge-rolling negates damage (though this would affect game balance)
- after you burn down the vines, they should probably not grow back after every death, or have a faster burning animation
- there were a few misaligned game objects like the torch vs the flame of the torch
- the red crystal launchy thing's projectiles could use a bit more visibility (maybe a light source from each crystal)
- maybe have a raycast to detect if there is a piece of terrain between the player and the camera, and if so, reduce its opacity
I really did like how the puzzles were laid out. They were difficult, but achievable. The level design and atmosphere were great, and I could clearly tell where the next objective would be. Although you didn't make the artwork, you did choose a very nice style for the game and stuck with it, producing a beautiful atmosphere. Overall, considering the short amount of time I think you did an excellent job.
- Incredible mood and level design
- Smooth controls, nice movement speed, and challenging game play
Brilliant, just brilliant. Good job all of you!
Watching your playthough was very educational for me. Little things I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Thanks again for playing!
On the whole this was a pretty cool entry, though. Nice work!
I'll figure something up until tomorrow.
The images look awesome!
the game has a good vibe, nice work, you might want to balance the arrows's powers tho "^^
Great graphics, good controls.
I wish this game could be longer.
@spicypaper thanks for the kind words! I wish we had more time to focus on the sound as well. In the future I'll definitely leave more time for that in future jam games.
@brokenmirrormedia @kurokabe @shemokam @djindegames im glad you guys liked the atmosphere and the mood/setting! As a huge fan of the DS series we worked really hard to capture that dark souls feel.
All is done on high quality level. Level design is also good, fun and challenging. Well done LD entry!
The only weakness in this is the difficulty. I personally found the first area more challenging than the second one. But I'm betting it's mostly due to the time constraint.
I think most people already mentioned almost everything else.
I must say though, those beams are smart. Being able to predict where I was running, and shoot there, instead of me. I kept dying over and over without any potions though, so I was denied the ability to explore the game more.
I like the style and art of the game though, and the eerie music with it. Gameplay-wise, I just wish I could play without that delay/lag? (can't be lag because I set my graphics to the lowest)
As for the lag I don't know... I didn't really feel anything like that or have anyone reporting issues with a delay. What fps are you getting? We added a fps counter to the bottom left.
I appreciate the rerun and info. Best of luck!
p.s. the end is just a easter egg to the 'tutorial' section of dark souls. just paying homage XD it seemed like some people didnt get the egg so thought id explain haha.
A bit more polishing here and there, esepcially in the bottom left area where its hard to figure out to jump over the gap and the point, that you stuck on the "iceshards" with just moving, then game will really be an awesome good product.
The Easter Egg was really cool aswell.
Awesome Job
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494940957?t=10h56m44s
Hope you got some valuable feedback on your game and looking forward to seeing you next LD jam if I dont catch you before then! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin