Update: Small bugfix and collision correcting (see itch.io page for slightly more detail)
A short game made in Love2d about keeping the massive heart in your basement fed with blood. Kill the bloodbeasts and bring their blood back to the heart before time runs out. First finished game we've made and first time using Love2d
Tip: the creatures you need to kill for blood spawn randomly and more spawn when one is killed. They can show up in places you've already looked or in places where you've killed them before.
Even though there might not be a payoff (or maybe I'm just bad at playing this game) to feeding the heart, I really enjoyed exploring the world. Got it up to 90 seconds. I also loved how i kept finding new nooks and crannies after a successful blood run. I don't know if you open up more of the map the more blood you find, but really fun map to walk around in.
@sean-park Glad you like the map :smile: There technically IS an ending (after you return 15 blood to the Heart) but we ran out of time to make it interesting, it's mostly just a "I actually did it" thing. Went back and forth on whether to have an ending or just focus on getting a high score and time dictated we go with the one we had started to code.
@rednaxelus It IS pretty hard, I haven't actually won the game :face_palm:
I liked the art and the mood in this game, but I think it was a little difficult to see the player character sometimes. Maybe consider adding a black outline to the character? Also, I am on a high-res monitor and the game window was a little small.
Great job with the sounds and the aesthetic overall though!
Great mix of sounds with graphics to create an excellent mood. While the game play itself is a bit simple, It was enjoyable simply to walk around and take in the creepiness. Great job!
Loved the aesthetic of the game, especially the soundscape. I think that it would be a good idea if the heartbeat could also be used to guide the player back to the basement. Also some of the collision tiles aren't clear visually. Great entry!
Hey there - this entry was really intriguing, there was a lot that I really liked and I few things I didn't.
You handled this type of game appropriately by creating a lot of different spaces to explore, and directions to explore in, with varying features all around. I also really liked the concept of listening to the whispers to guide you. The game also strikes a nice pace by keeping the player moving fast and the timer tight (maybe a bit too tight? this game was really difficult!). I would've appreciated some sort of compass or arrow to guide me back to the basement because I had a tendency to get lost, which was a death sentence.
Some of the spaces - like the house and the well - never had any bloodbeasts. This felt mildly frustrating - perhaps I just didn't get far enough into the game for them to start spawning there?
The presentation overall is nice - the audio is pretty well done. Now, the graphics. I'm always a sucker for this style of graphics, and I especially liked the red accent to mark blood/bloodbeasts. The heart, as well as the blood that followed the player, looked especially nice. But there were a few issues with execution here. I had a really hard time telling apart solid objects from background objects, as well as what was an entrance/exit to a different area and what wasn't. This, to me, is worse than graphics that just look bad, because this actually detracts from my ability to play the core game.
It didn't seem like there was any real ending? If so I never made it - like I mentioned this game felt pretty hard. If not, then you really ought to have some way to show the player how well they did, and maybe maintain their best time/score. Otherwise I feel no motivation to continue playing.
Great work, this is fantastic for a first-finished game.
@epicular Thanks so much for the detailed feedback! A technical issue that we didn't have time to resolve was audio feedback for bloodbeasts inside areas like the well and house. You're spot on that it's a bit frustrating to have to manually check them every time, as the audio cue only plays once you enter. A lot of the spritework was messy because I probably got carried away with the number of objects I wanted to put in and should have focused more on making a smaller number of things read more effectively.
Really dig the art, especially the sound really sells the mood!
If I had something to critisize it's that the game could start out with a few more spawns, as I was really confused what to do for the first 10 seconds or so until I finally found something red :D
@trexxak Yeah, we definitely needed to do something different with some combination of the spawns/time limit/ending. I was tweaking it right at the last minute but decided to just consider it finished lest I break it at the last minute.
What a great game! The mood is just amazing! It was a bit hard at first but after a few tries I actually managed to finish it.
A few complaints:
- It was hard to find my way back sometimes. Maybe add some compass that leads you to heart when you have blood?
- The best strategy seemed to be to try to stay as close to the basement as possible which is a bit of shame, because the world looked pretty interesting and I wish I could have more opportunities to explore it
- The ending is veeery anticlimactic
Still nice entry. Good luck with getting 20 ratings!
@lamossus Thanks, and I agree on all three of your points. Maybe if we'd had some shortcuts back to the beginning we could ameliorate those first two. As for the ending, we just ran out of time. I was thinking about what to do for the ending the whole weekend but it kept getting pushed back till it was literally the last thing I did right before I uploaded the game so it ended up kind of shit. Others have suggested that we should've just gone with a high score approach and I think that probably would've been the right answer for our first jam game and first game in this engine instead of thinking we'd have time to make some super cool ending on top of everything else.
Beautiful Horror-Game. I like your Interpretation of the theme. The SoundEffects are just onpoint and the Idea is Simple, easy to grasp and worked out quit good, but is it even possible to win the Game or am I just feeding the heart, till an eventual death? Great Work, Thank you :)
@westmave There is technically an ending, but it just...ends. We ran out of time to make anything satisfying :/ In retrospect we should’ve just made it a high score type thing.
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@rednaxelus It IS pretty hard, I haven't actually won the game :face_palm:
Great job with the sounds and the aesthetic overall though!
It reminds me the game Minit.
You handled this type of game appropriately by creating a lot of different spaces to explore, and directions to explore in, with varying features all around. I also really liked the concept of listening to the whispers to guide you. The game also strikes a nice pace by keeping the player moving fast and the timer tight (maybe a bit too tight? this game was really difficult!). I would've appreciated some sort of compass or arrow to guide me back to the basement because I had a tendency to get lost, which was a death sentence.
Some of the spaces - like the house and the well - never had any bloodbeasts. This felt mildly frustrating - perhaps I just didn't get far enough into the game for them to start spawning there?
The presentation overall is nice - the audio is pretty well done. Now, the graphics. I'm always a sucker for this style of graphics, and I especially liked the red accent to mark blood/bloodbeasts. The heart, as well as the blood that followed the player, looked especially nice. But there were a few issues with execution here. I had a really hard time telling apart solid objects from background objects, as well as what was an entrance/exit to a different area and what wasn't. This, to me, is worse than graphics that just look bad, because this actually detracts from my ability to play the core game.
It didn't seem like there was any real ending? If so I never made it - like I mentioned this game felt pretty hard. If not, then you really ought to have some way to show the player how well they did, and maybe maintain their best time/score. Otherwise I feel no motivation to continue playing.
Great work, this is fantastic for a first-finished game.
Thanks again!
If I had something to critisize it's that the game could start out with a few more spawns, as I was really confused what to do for the first 10 seconds or so until I finally found something red :D
Other than that though really great work!
A few complaints:
- It was hard to find my way back sometimes. Maybe add some compass that leads you to heart when you have blood?
- The best strategy seemed to be to try to stay as close to the basement as possible which is a bit of shame, because the world looked pretty interesting and I wish I could have more opportunities to explore it
- The ending is veeery anticlimactic
Still nice entry. Good luck with getting 20 ratings!
Thanks for the feedback! :smile: