#### Welcome to the Abandoned Archive! Traverse through this mysterious labyrinth to uncover its secrets, who knows what spells you will find in this action-filled procedurally generated roguelike!
The Abandoned Archive is a forgotten realm, preserving many mysterious spells. Libraries are places of rest for the Orbite race - a generally peaceful and calm species. However, you find yourself in the centre of an internal dispute and unknowingly pick a side. Fight off waves of Orbites, whilst you scavenge the archive, looking for more powerful spells and the missing pieces of the Core; the ruler of the Orbites. Protect yourself and the prestigious leader of the Orbites, otherwise your odds of surviving will be laughable…
The controls are as simple as “W” for up, “A” for left, “S” for down and “D” for right! You can utilise any fascinating spells that you discover, with the usage of left and right mouse button for you primary and secondary spells, respectively. Space bar is used for any special spells you pick up, so watch out for those! You can use the shift or control key to roll, making you temporary invulnerable; great for narrowly dodging attacks. And finally, the “F” key can be used to teleport back to the Core, if it ever requires your protection.
*Note: We recommend playing in fullscreen for the best experience, and using the windows build for performance.*
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Changelog (04/21/2020):
- Fixed music fading bug - Fixed issue with map generation generating too few enemies/pickups required for completion - Fixed tooltip fading animation not playing - Fixed explosion sound effect
Really well-rounded game, with a lot of polish in only 72 hours. I loved the little pieces of lore, the various powers, the clean UI and the overall visual style.
Great visuals for 72 hours. I had some problem where I lost hp when fighting but I was sure I was not hit by the enemy. Or maybe I just didnt understand some enemy attack.
the game looks amazing for a jam game, though was tough to control without a mouse. the labyrinth felt empty most of the time, more enemies could fix that. the text was really small and hard to read on my screen, and i wasnt super interested in sitting for a few minutes to read all of the orb's dialogue at the start. good polish and fairly enjoyable experience, good work.
The abilities on offer for the player are pretty nice. The dodge-roll / magic teleport dash thing is amazing. Helps with navigating the library as well as being fun. I found the library to be a bit too large for its contents and the controls are ever so slightly clunky. Otherwise very nice, polished project.
Okay, I have a few thoughts on this. First off, The player control and controls in general are EXTREMELY well done. Your animation quality on this entry is top notch, though the normal running speed could probably be toned up a bit. Dodge rolling felt incredible, and it's not something I see many 2D Action titles do well.
The level layouts are phenomenal and really nail home a sort of mage-centric building would be and your team should be proud of how well you did! Good use of particles and lighting effects as well.
Cool game. I honestly got a bit lost because of how big the map was, but finding new abilities and trying them out felt really rewarding. The tornado one was my favourite of the ones I managed to find.
Edit: I encountered the soundtrack fade bug so you might have uploaded the wrong version.
The visuals are wonderful - highly polished, consistent and animations are very well done. I had a great time but I felt like the level is pretty empty - tuning up the level design would make this game perfect (I mean it). It's very intuitive to play, the usability is on point - that's the hardest bit to get right and you did it. Great job!
@thatsolodev I'm sorry to hear you encountered that bug, aha! Could you explain a bit where it is/how it happens, because it might be different to the one we fixed, thanks in advance!
Yeah so, I have no idea how you made this in such a short period of time but wow is it amazing! Art is excellent, movement is smooth and responsive, and excellent writing. Super super awesome job!!! :D
@tomyomy I don't remember doing anything in particular, but I can explain what I remember from my playthrough and it might help you recreate the issue:
After talking to the quest giver (orb), I got the spell that took form as a thick blue whiteish line. I found the water arrow spell and went to the right. I battled a few enemies and died in the hallway connecting the spawn point and the right room.
After I died, I repeated the process but killed the enemies and entered the room at the end of the hallway. I remember it having a staircase leading upwards. It was just as I reached the center of that room the sound faded out for a 1-2 sec, went quiet and suddenly started playing again.
At the time I thought it was intentional since the fadeout in itself didn't seem like a bug, but if it wasn't, you could always try and walk through the same process I did and see if you manage to encounter the same bug!
Solid entry, like you said in the description the HML5 version is laggy. But the graphics and animation were strong. I like the differents spells (the wind is my favorite), the roll make the all dynamic, and that fit perfectly the theme. Amazing job !!
The gameplay is somewhat classical, but that's not an issue.
What I liked: - the design and the animation of the main character. That's really need for a jam game! - the controls are tight and everything moves smoothly. - multiple spells to choose from.
What I'd change: - the design of the enemies, though I get this is a weekend game, and there was little time for the characters. - for a fast-paced action game, there's a lot of text. Players, who like fast games usually don't like reading, and reducing most dialogues to a sentence or two would help them get into action faster. - the environment is big, but most of it is empty and not very interesting to explore. Removing some of the empty rooms and making the game tighter might make it more fun with less work. - I'm not quite sure what happened there when the orb died. New enemies appeared, and the main character died a couple of times before the game really ended. This might have been described in some of the dialogues that I skipped, because they were too long...
Really solid entry, aside from minor things, like getting stuck in the doorways a lot, I enjoyed playing it. Having a random dungeon to explore, but also needing to defend some things in it can be an interesting genre mix for a more fleshed out game...
Good work, the graphics and the aesthetics in general are neat. Maybe you could add some type of indicator when you're getting damaged like a little shake of the camera or a sound, because you as a player don't feel the damage though you are seeing your life dop down. Also for my taste this game should have been a more fast paced kind off game but those things aside, a very solid game
Great game! Well done graphics and sound makes quite a big adventure mood. It was hard to read all the text because of its small size and glowing, but other than that the game is very polished overall.
Very nice entry! The visuals are beautiful, and the overall mood and ambience is well achieved. The environments felt a bit empty, a little bit more of findings and enemies would've made them more interesting to explore.
When it comes to battle controls, I did struggle a little bit to find out how to properly attack and dodge. I think it was basically down to a lack of visual feedback, but I'm not sure.
Now, I do like a lot the idea of grabbing spells as you explore. Definitely adds extra interest to the mechanics and makes it a lot more dynamic. You've got some very nice animations going along with those as well, which made me wow a little. Very good job overall!
We streamed your game with Danae: link to Twitch VOD (approximate timestamp)
Ambitious! I think this could benefit a lot from some quality-of-life improvements, e.g.: better indication of HP loss, direction indicators for the collectibles (if it was purely RNG, it seemed the latter two got put too far!), invincibility frames when spawning close to home, more visible bullets, timers for waves attacking the Orb, etc.
The lack of sound effects was definitely jarring. Maybe you should also start with 2 random spells, because the starting spell can't even kill most enemies in one cycle. I couldn't find any new spells in any of the generated rooms either.
I loved the graphics and the setting of the game (like seriously, the "abandoned" library aesthetic is the best), and it felt really well fleshed out and interesting. The game mechanics were intriguing, and I enjoyed the different powers/collection aspects. The audio could have used a bit more fleshing out, but considering how much effort was clearly put into the visual side of things it's not surprising that fell by the wayside a little (there's never enough time to do everything).
But as it currently stands it's very laggy, and the combat (and well, everything really) feels like it's happening in slow motion, so there's definite room for improvement there. It would also be nice to have a more granular view of what your attacks are actually doing to the enemy and whether their health is decreasing, because all of that felt a bit vague. But overall, my take-away was pretty positive, and I think it has a lot of potential. Nice work!
Comments38
Strenghts :
- Awesome visuals
- Varied powers
- Well-thought UI
Possible improvements :
- Performance is really wonky on HTML5
All in all, great job !
Overall loved i!
It just shows you guys are very well organized and/ or extremely good at what you are doing. Absolutely adore the game!
The dodge-roll / magic teleport dash thing is amazing. Helps with navigating the library as well as being fun.
I found the library to be a bit too large for its contents and the controls are ever so slightly clunky.
Otherwise very nice, polished project.
There is a good level of polish for a game jam, good job!
Well done.
The level layouts are phenomenal and really nail home a sort of mage-centric building would be and your team should be proud of how well you did! Good use of particles and lighting effects as well.
All around, a strong submission!
Edit: I encountered the soundtrack fade bug so you might have uploaded the wrong version.
I had a great time but I felt like the level is pretty empty - tuning up the level design would make this game perfect (I mean it). It's very intuitive to play, the usability is on point - that's the hardest bit to get right and you did it.
Great job!
After talking to the quest giver (orb), I got the spell that took form as a thick blue whiteish line. I found the water arrow spell and went to the right. I battled a few enemies and died in the hallway connecting the spawn point and the right room.
After I died, I repeated the process but killed the enemies and entered the room at the end of the hallway. I remember it having a staircase leading upwards. It was just as I reached the center of that room the sound faded out for a 1-2 sec, went quiet and suddenly started playing again.
At the time I thought it was intentional since the fadeout in itself didn't seem like a bug, but if it wasn't, you could always try and walk through the same process I did and see if you manage to encounter the same bug!
I did find it annoying that the orb got destroyed during the cutscene after i patched it up, and perhaps clearer enemy attacks?
What I liked:
- the design and the animation of the main character. That's really need for a jam game!
- the controls are tight and everything moves smoothly.
- multiple spells to choose from.
What I'd change:
- the design of the enemies, though I get this is a weekend game, and there was little time for the characters.
- for a fast-paced action game, there's a lot of text. Players, who like fast games usually don't like reading, and reducing most dialogues to a sentence or two would help them get into action faster.
- the environment is big, but most of it is empty and not very interesting to explore. Removing some of the empty rooms and making the game tighter might make it more fun with less work.
- I'm not quite sure what happened there when the orb died. New enemies appeared, and the main character died a couple of times before the game really ended. This might have been described in some of the dialogues that I skipped, because they were too long...
The visuals are beautiful, and the overall mood and ambience is well achieved. The environments felt a bit empty, a little bit more of findings and enemies would've made them more interesting to explore.
When it comes to battle controls, I did struggle a little bit to find out how to properly attack and dodge. I think it was basically down to a lack of visual feedback, but I'm not sure.
Now, I do like a lot the idea of grabbing spells as you explore. Definitely adds extra interest to the mechanics and makes it a lot more dynamic. You've got some very nice animations going along with those as well, which made me wow a little. Very good job overall!
Ambitious! I think this could benefit a lot from some quality-of-life improvements, e.g.: better indication of HP loss, direction indicators for the collectibles (if it was purely RNG, it seemed the latter two got put too far!), invincibility frames when spawning close to home, more visible bullets, timers for waves attacking the Orb, etc.
But as it currently stands it's very laggy, and the combat (and well, everything really) feels like it's happening in slow motion, so there's definite room for improvement there. It would also be nice to have a more granular view of what your attacks are actually doing to the enemy and whether their health is decreasing, because all of that felt a bit vague. But overall, my take-away was pretty positive, and I think it has a lot of potential. Nice work!