Dream Descend

by benedek-labancz

co-authored: @daniel123425332

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.07

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.93

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.00

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.75

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.86

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.84

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.45

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.40

Dream Descend is a platformer game that takes place in a Dream. The Player needs to go deeper and deeper in the Dream to stabilize it. Fight with Monsters, face your Emotions, explore your Mind.
And if the Player reaches the very depths of the Dream...

Be sure to check the Credits...

Maybe there is something...

There is a bar on the top of the screen. It's the Stability of the Dream. If it reaches zero, then you'll wake up. Kill monsters and interact with doors to stabilize the Dream. But the Dream is constantly becoming unstable.

There is a unique Dash mechanics. After you Dash in one of the direction, then you must Dash in the other directon before Dashing in the first direction again, so you can't Dash in the same direction twice in a row. Watch the arrows at the bottom of the screen to know which direction can you Dash.

Controls:

Left/Right Arrows to move

Up Arrow to Jump (again to Double Jump)

Z to shoot

Arrow + SPACE to Dash (available from 2 hrs)

E to interact

Patch Notes:

Sign for the warning of epileptic seisures was placed.

Fixed subtitle issues.

Fixed audio issues.

Fixed issue with a non-appearing effect.

Comments21

Mester26 Apr 2021, 22:34

Very good, but more fighting scenes should have took place, and the wolves should have moved.

LauraWilkinson27 Apr 2021, 08:41

Cool concept, works really well

xJazzaXx27 Apr 2021, 08:47

Fun game, fits the theme very well, enjoyable descent.

Craplex27 Apr 2021, 08:47

This is kinda scary. Good music dynamic gameplay.

sadsmile27 Apr 2021, 08:48

meaftereverygamejamthevideogame

Human Writes Code27 Apr 2021, 08:49

I'm not sure if I understand the game. I think I get that you're supposed to keep falling, but I always just woke up at the same point. Is there a way to extend your sleep time and I'm just too dumb to see it? Probably. Anyway, I like the effects you've added and the old school graphical style. The music is suitably haunting. Let me know if I missed something in the gameplay and I'll have another go!

euske27 Apr 2021, 08:51

I laughed at the game over screen. :)

Amar Ravi27 Apr 2021, 08:56

Interesting concept, I do like how the layers are visually so distinct from each other. The controls could be improved though to make it snappier, I also think it would play better if the camera could show more area below the player than above the player. I say this because the game is about going lower and with the current camera position, its hard to see the spikes below you and you accidentally fall onto them. Focusing the camera below will allow for more careful platforming

Nice Gear Games27 Apr 2021, 08:59

I love the surreal environments and enemies, and the mechanic of killing sheep(?) to extend your sleep time as you fall further through the dream worlds. I did find the jumps to be a bit finicky and that combined with the level design (in the first area I think you NEED to kill the sheep on the right side in order to extend your timer, but the only way further down is to jump all the way back to the top and then go to the left to fall) made the time limit a bit too punishing. A great premise with very haunting atmosphere!

Benedek Labanczauthor27 Apr 2021, 09:13

Hi @human-writes-code!
Thanks for playing!
The Dream is constantly becoming unstable. But of course you can increase the stability, so you won't wake up. You can kill monsters or interact with doors to increase the stability. There is a door in every stage. You can interact with pressing E. I hope this will help you!

OrcPaladin27 Apr 2021, 09:35

That was a nice run! It took around 1h for me to beat this game, that amazing feeling like was in 90-s with some cartridges. No tutorial, madness goes around, high difficulty and you need to figure out how to deal with all of it. Thank for the game!

Benedek Labanczauthor27 Apr 2021, 09:47

@orcpaladin Thanks!

Niklas Zhaga27 Apr 2021, 15:18

Sheepdogs is so scary :D Nice mood, I remembered how I played a "home alone" on NES, great job guys

SirRed27 Apr 2021, 22:16

A checkpoint system would vastly improve this game as it became very tedious to replay each level over and over again after getting far. Another improvement would be that some of the things seemed to pretty much instakill like the waterfall type things in level 2 did. I liked the movement and platforming and level design with different themes going deeper. Good job.

Flying Dog Fish28 Apr 2021, 20:00

I love the atmosphere.

TentacleMax29 Apr 2021, 14:26

I found it pretty scary and hard, but fun to play

Togis30 Apr 2021, 09:34

I uploaded our gameplay of your game on youtube, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.be/watch?v=1F0Ywiy2Mt8&t=633s

Thanks for being part of the stream, it was amazing! :smile:

Sorry we didn't reach further than the second hour. Overall it's interesting, I was not frustrated while playing the platformer. It's a good sign, it means I was failling because of lack of skills and not because the game is unfair. Good balancing and level design.

I also really enjoyed the atmosphere and the music.

A small improvement could make the game could be much more compelling: when we wake-up we could restart at the current level instead of having to restart from the beginning of the dream. This would have help me a great deal to lean muscle memory and practice.

Good job!

EOShadows3 May 2021, 00:25

Really good game! I love how you used the idea of going deeper and deeper into sleep as a response to the theme, and the dark mood and audio was pretty cool. The player sprite was nice, and I really liked the music - it was a a great touch and contributed nicely to the mood of the game, along with the floating particles, transitions, and creepy graphics. The game was also really fun and challenging, and I kept playing over and over to try and get further and further. It took a couple retries to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, but I didn't mind - you explained things enough in the description so that it was more of a fun, interesting task to figure it out. I think the only issue I had was that, while the challenge of the game is a good thing, the game feels a bit too difficult. I didn't really get a chance to use the dash much because I only managed to get to hour 2 once after many retries. A checkpoint would be nice, at least once every 1 or 2 hours would be nice. Other than that though I really liked this game. Well done!

BoxedMeatRevolution3 May 2021, 01:47

I made it to Hope and defeated the boss! At the end my personality got consumed, which makes it seem like maybe I lost... Either way, I enjoyed playing this with a friend! We raced to see who could beat it first, and it was fun trying to learn to quirks of the game to speedrun it. The movement felt a bit slow and floaty, but I enjoyed the creativity of the level design and the characters met along the way.

Obelex14 May 2021, 14:59

I liked the game! The changing graphics for each level is nice and I liked the music (especially the boss fight one), also having the timer be your "life" is a good idea and being able to gain it back by killing enemies feels rewarding. Some obstacles and enemies seemed to deal a bit too much damage though, and I would have liked to be able to see further below me. Also there is a bug where I got stuck when interacting with some white character so I had to restart the game.

Benedek Labanczauthor15 May 2021, 08:15

Hi @obelex!
Thank you for the feedback. I'm sorry for that. I will try to fix it.

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