> “You are trying to wake ancient unnameable gods by taming dark and secret powers. You’ll need to be cautious, as the ritual is as unstable as your skills, and the creature’s condition will degrade if you don’t maintain the equilibrium … To a point of no return.
> Conduct the awakening of living blasphemous fish-frog or find the secret to bring to life The One Old ! They’re waiting for you ...”
__________________________
> We’re excited to announce to you all that we’re officially working on Lovecrafting for a full release !
- Maintain the stability of your creature while bringing it to this world. - Choose and combine wisely, as the ritual will become more and more difficult. - Discover up to 10 ancient gods by combining certains traits in a successful ritual.
Controls A mighty mouse will only be asked from you.
Language English only, but you will encounter some unspeakable words …
Credits A game by Théo Saragas, Cecil Desbaies and Matteo Gaulmier, all from Nameless XIII. Music credits : "Ultimate Game Music Collection", John Leonard French / "Dawn of Man", Quincas Moreira
Screenshots
Video
Changelog (Times are CEST)
0.1 (05/10/2021 - 0h00 - Hidden) : - First release
0.2 (05/10/2021 - 0h30) : - Fixed a bug preventing cards to appear on build
0.3 (06/10/2021 - 14h00) :
- Fixed a bug where cards were getting out of screen
- Fixed a bug not previewing the corresponding caracteristics with "trait" cards
- Fixed a bug not showing the corresponding "mask" when unlocking a god.
- Fixed a bug not playing "whispers" sound
0.3.1 (13/10/2021 - 14h30) :
- Added an option to cut off "whispers" sound
0.4 (22/10/2021 - 00h00 / Post ratings period) :
- Added a rule preventing a card to have similar actions.
- Added constellations, a hint system for getting gods.
- Changed the way trait are picked. Now, it'll give you at least one trait leading to a god, if possible.
I freaking love the art, it's so good! The game itself was a little hard, and even after about 30 minutes of playing I still can't manage to make a god haha. I do really like this though, such superb work!
I'm sure it's not because I simply LOVE lovecraft but seriously this game has such an amazing feel to it. The idea was excellent and the execution is oh-so sweet.
This game has such a strong atmosphere. The visuals are gorgeous, simply gorgeous. And the mechanics, while simple, complement the entire design. This is a very strong entry, congrats.
The first time I played I didn't realize what I was doing, and thought I was trying to get the bars to go into the red. And then once I got them there, it was too late to fix it.
The second time I understood it and had a pretty good time! Unfortunately, I encountered a bug right at the end. I picked Humanoid, and some of the cards flew off screen and then I got the win screen and the lose screen at the same time, or something? I took a screenshot
This game is so fun! It starts out a bit strange and I didn't really understand.. but the game does a good job of showing instead of telling, and I got a lot better as I played and started learning! Really great job on this, looks and sounds amazing as well.
Great Interpretation and integration of all elements! The card mechanic and the blood progress bar make great assets for tension and progression! Also, Nice pun! 10 / 10
This was fantastic! Great game, the only slight feedback I can give is that the icons sometimes are hard to distinguish, but it also adds to the tension, so feature I guess?
dude i LOVE this game! BUT i found a bug that made it so I cann never complete a lovecraftian abomination. Whenever one of the bars reached the red area, the cards would spawn and go too far to the right so much so that you couldn't click on them because it went behind the UI.
Very cool art. Very nice music. The gameplay is simple but you managed to create tension with it great job.
2 small things you can improve after the Jam: * When choosing a card at the very last second I ended up not being able to choose the next card (I think I choose AND got the "you fail to choose go to next cards" effect) * Nit-picking but on the web version you could reduce the "fullscreen" when the player click "Quit"
Very well done one of of the Top game of this Jam. Definitely scores in the Art category.
As everyone else said, the art is fantastic. When trying to start over I did encounter some crashes, but easily resolved by refreshing the page. No crashes or game-killing bugs in actual gameplay. I feel like this is the sort of game that could be played with a deck of cards on the tabletop, but the addition of the increasingly-problematic timers really adds a lot of (good) stress to the challenge.
SUPER satisfying of a game to play! Absolutely love everything being done here design and visually, just spent the past half hour trying to get some of the ones in the compendium. Unfortunately I have a bit of a bug that's plaguing me like one of the earlier comments posted, but otherwise I had a blast playing it and the details overall are super nice, fits the them very well too. 10/10 great entry right here!
Game design, art, and sound work perfectly together for the creation of atmosphere and mood. In the end, I didn't have time to choose the right cards because of the timer so I kinda feel nervous
Found a gamebreaking bug: the cards get placed off screen after about half a game... This kills every run that gets there This is happening consistently. Windows version
Oh my gohs, awesome atmosphere/mood, I love it. Good looking game for me, good work. I love audio in the game, I want it more!. Really ?! That game is really fun, good job. Somebody use more time to think about the game then others, it is visible in inovations!. Nicely fit into the theme. Overall I think this game is good, and I think, next time you will create as good game as this is, or maybe better, so good job.
Brilliant game, it was so much fun to mix and match and create my own elder god. I loved how the complexity built up, from managing one bar with one card, to the end where each card was changing 3 different variables and the time was ticking down and it all got a bit hectic. I really liked how you could choose your type of creature too - it wasn't just random, and I liked having that control over my spawn, even if I kept getting unnameable beasts instead of actual elder gods. The art and sound design just helped improve the awesome theme and feel of the game, the mounting music and weather just added to the atmosphere in the perfect way. The compendium was a good addition as well; it was great looking through all the potential creatures and seeing all the effor that went into the visual design. Phenomenal work for a game jam, I loved it!
This was so extremely beautiful! I would love to learn to make pixel art like this, this is amazing :D The audio also fitted perfectly, creating a truly mysterious and scary atmosphere. The gameplay was also really cool. At the beginning you can still take your time and make a perfect decision, but near the end you really dont have time and just choose on instinct XD
I agree with many others that it was not very clear to me how the game worked. I thought I was just trying to keep the bars out of the red zone, but I never managed to make a monster with a name. Are there some more mechanics that I am not understanding?
Anyway, this was really an amazing experience! Definitely the most beautiful game of the jam I played so far! Great job ^_^
At first it seemed very confusing, but I picked up the rules very quickly. I really liked the mood and unique concept. It was really fun weighing the options and gambling on what would come on the next round. Good job!
Such an amazing submission! I'm in awe :D Love the aesthetic and I found myself really immersed in the game as time went on, loved the sound direction as well.
Incredibly fun idea. I really liked that in the beginning I tried making the optimal choices but later on I barely had time to actually do that and just had to go with the chaos. This is for sure one of my favorites so far!
Wow! Really fun and fully realized! The art really stands out and fits the theme perfectly. I had to restart a few times because of bugs with menuing or cards being shifted to the right, but otherwise, I think I made some pretty cool monsters. Maybe next time it will be a god!
quick question, why would you not opt out of the humour category? You would've gotten 5/5s for literally everything but the humour cat. AMAZING game btw
Absolutely love the idea, reminds me a little bit of Potion Craft with the novel but super fun crafting system! The art and feel of the game is gorgeous as well, it's great what y'all have put together!
Main issue is the cards flying off the screen, every time I'm about to craft a named creature the cards fly off the screen and I lose :( Should definitely look into this bug because it is game breaking.
A smaller bug is when shrinking or gaining stat bars it seems that sometimes the indicators will point to the wrong stat, but definitely appreciate the QOL of pointing to the stat anyways!
Smaller design things I would consider: it would be nice to have the stats be a little bit more distinct, maybe color code them? Sometimes when things get frantic, all the icons appear similar since they are all the same color scheme and it would be easier to figure out which stat is which with a little bit more differences. It might also be nice to sort the stats on the card based on the order of the stats in which they appear, because sometimes you see some stats but they are in the wrong order.
Absolutely beautiful game and the graphics are on point! The variety of monsters is insane given the short time the game was made in. Also really enjoyed the general mood, overall everything is fitting extremely well together :D
Unfortunately there was quite some bugs while summoning that the cards tend to fly off the right side of the screen which automatically results in a fail. Also the web build tends to freeze Chrome completely when trying to quit the game.
Other than that really amazing submission, congrats to the team for the great work!
Usually I don't like this kind of game, but this is really well done!
- Strongly adhere to the theme and I like the way it is implemented - Gorgeous graphic style - Plesant to hear music - The compendium is another clever choice, the player feels a sense of progression and gives replayability - The progression in which the mechanics are presented is also well done
Really nice and polished game guys. Keep doing games :smile:
Cool game, great mood and super interesting use of the theme. Hard to think of any improvements although I successfully summoned 1 monster then didn't feel very motivated to try and summon another; so some kind of communication that there's more exciting content and you unlocked something would help (maybe if you unlock a component when you summon a monster the game could communicate this a bit more clearly)
Thank you all for your amazing feedbacks ! It's difficult to answer to everyone, while rating and testing all the other games, but we read everything and it means a lot. Thank you all
I haven't been able to make a god yet, but I like my little dudes anyway. Great art and music, they really make the atmosphere. Had a lot of fun with this one, great game!
I really liked the game, there's a nice ambiance and a nice concept around it. The management asked to the player and the pay off (get a nice monster at the end) is really cool!
Thank to all of you for your messages, it's really fulfilling to see a lot of people enjoying the game.
We pushed a new version fixing some annoying bugs (cards shouldn't disappear anymore!). All informations are in the changelog. You can still get the original release in the itch.io page by downloading the v0.2.
A little note about the Gods as a lot of you seem disapointed not getting one. The game was designed with getting a creature as the main goal and the Gods more a special reward/achievement. With hindsight, the game doesn't convey successfully this feeling and could let you feel you failed. It's obviously multifactorial but I think the most important is the process'randomness (for those whose interested, there's 12 differents traits so 220 combinations of 3 traits. Each 10 gods representing one unique combination, you have less than 5% chances to get a God by picking traits randomly). I'll probably add a rule during the week-end so you can get at least one "god drawing" by game. All in all, if you completed a ritual and got a creature, don't feel disapointed, know you won :).
Very impressed with the art and the lovecraftian vibes. For the game mechanics, I'd maybe have liked a little longer on the timer when the rounds started having a time limit - but that could just be me being bad the game. Other than that, very neat game that shares some cool DNA with Reigns!
Wow that escalated quickly... Visuals and sound are spot on, it really felt like I was summoning some terrifying ancient creatures. Also very polished, such a concept just wouldn't work otherwise.
Best game I've played so far, I was able to understand the mechanics without even reading the description. Every visual feedbacks are on point and the difficulty curve is perfect.
Phenomenal entry! The art, the gameplay, the presentation are top notch! One of the best in this jam! As a lovecraft fan I'm very happy I got to play this!
Your game is absolutely beautiful, you got the horror ambience spot on! The gameplay is great too, I felt the tension and instability really build up near the end.
That is just cool. Great polished game, and gotta admire the theme you went with. Didn't manage to get a god, but will come back around to this one later. Would love to see this one as a full game, would work well on mobile
Great game, compendium adds a lot of investment to me even if i'm not going to fill it out completely because I know that if I do replay the game more, i'll be able to make progress in the compendium. If I had to criticize it, i'd say that for replayability, the start feels a bit long. The old god theming was great though, nice entry overall.
Phenomenal job on the game! I had loads of fun with it and spent quite awhile just trying to get some of the named gods for the compendium. Visuals and gameplay are super good and I love how it gets increasingly more stressful and difficult the longer you go on. Great job overall! :)
This game is amaaaaaaaaaazing! Just leaving this comment here now so I can go back to the game and play more! Going to summon some gods before I go to sleep, maybe I get lucky and dream with some of them!
Of all the games I've played so far, this one has the most different concept. I found it very interesting. I will try to get all the gods. The art is very beautiful and so is the audio. A game that would be easy to sell on a platform.
Amazingly good game! Extremely impressed with how intuitive the gameplay is, no explicit tutorials or explanation of controls or gameplay yet it just makes sense. It has really excellent design in all regards, gameplay, visual aesthetic, ominous moody audio, it's all so well packaged. Even it had just been the basic gameplay without the additional time pressure it would still be great. I honestly can't think of anything to nitpick or improve. Best game I've played so far, great work!
That game was so good! the visuals were amazing and the gameplay quite intuitive. I had a lot of fun creating my monsters.
If i can make a suggestion, maybe mention that there are whispers in the game, or even better if we could turn them off. Those kind of sounds are really hard to deal with for some neurodivergeant people. I'm sorry if that sounds like a nitpick cause otherwise I really loved your game!
@saltysa Hello. I'm really happy you liked the game. Concerning the whispers, we didn't even know that could cause some problems. I'll add an option during this week-end to turn it off.
@hotowlgirls You're right about game's beginning. It was designed as an introduction to the mechanics and a way to "experiment" the game without much punishment but it feels boring after 2/3 runs. We're thinking on how to improve this part.
I really liked the game. Very interesting mechanics and setting. The graphics and animations are amazing and the music brings out the atmosphere well. I'd love to see a sequel.
At first I thought "well, this isn't so difficult", but then you added a timer.
But, yes, as others have said already, this is a phenomenal entry, with amazing art, sounds and gameplay, that fits the theme perfectly. Probably contender for winning, and if not, you should at least be incredibly proud of yourselves.
My only criticism is that the art shows rain and thunder and there's no sfx for either of these things.... I feel like it would fit the atmosphere!
What an original and fun concept. The difficulty progression felt really balanced, progressively becoming more chaotic as you learn to play. It's really unique and is one of the most polished games I've seen this LudumDare. The art looks fantastic and the game is full of atmosphere
Wow amazing work here. Most of Lovecraft adaptations, in any media, tend to lose *something* as it's really hard when one tries to represent the *indescriptible*. This game, however, managed to keep some of the *cosmic horror* tone.
This game is incredibly well done! I love the mood and Lovecraft theme and the art is incredible. I wasn't able to create a god after quite a few attempts but this game is highly replayable and I can definitely see myself revisiting it with that goal in mind.
This is great! Such a unique experience. You really captured the feeling of the spell becoming more unstable as you get further in. Love the whole vibe of the game, it came together beautifully. Good job!
Amazing game! Really interesting take on the theme. The game's state is kinda out of your control since sometimes there are cards that are all bad but not instantly getting game over after reaching the red gives us ability to recover from our mistakes. The game has really nice graphics & audio too!
This is amazingly fitting the theme and what impresses me most was the audio's fitting the gameplay process so nicely! Just cannot believe that this is done in just four days! Absolutely Well Done!
Absolutely incredible. Obviously Others have said pretty much everything there is to be said about it. Love it. Congrats on maybe winning some categories :wink:
a visual wonder, and originality. The pixel art is fantastic, the sounds and the setting. I can't find anything else I could contribute that they haven't already said.
This was great! I played a lot of rounds, never once actually won, but loved every minute. Excellent presentation overall. Hats off to the entire team.
This is a very simple concept, but very well executed and a lot of fun to play. The art style is simple but gets the point across effectively, and the animations on the abominations are very impressive. The music and sound effects are really nice. The gameplay is simple to understand, but quickly becomes intense and enjoyable as more and more things to manage get dumped upon the player. This game gets brutal in how quickly it forces you to make a decision by the end, but anything I lost, it never felt like I was cheated out of anything, which is a really impressive feat. Great job by the team.
This is my jam, I could see this being a creation/breeding mechanic in a really cool Lovecraftian Beast Pokemon game. My only issue is I'd like to be able to review the compendium during gameplay, unless I missed a way to. Otherwise feels like guesswork trying to bring in an actual god.
Absolutely excellent! I loved the overall style of your game, the cards were an interesting twist. I'll admit that I played for about 40 minutes and was only able to craft one monster, despite the difficulty curve I had an absolute blast! One point of feedback, the games title screen doesn't render properly on a 21:9 ultrawide screen in full screen mode, it cuts off the tops and bottom of the game and has default unity sky visible behind your graphics. Great game overall!
This must be the most creative instability mechanics I've seen yet, and the audio-visual presentation is just out of this world! The gameplay reminded me of Reigns a little bit: you make decisions that affect different parameters simultaneously, so you rarely get exactly what you want, and the whole process feels unstable, but not entirely luck based. Brilliant entry!
Awesome concept and awesome execution. I like how the game is simple enough to understand that it does not require any tutorial - you just play and it understand. I also found that the game took a while to kill me, even if I was messing up; i.e. there was a lot of leeway initially or at least it seemed that way. So this makes for a smooth, intuitive onboarding process which is what you want, especially for a game jam.
Initially I was not sure how well it tied into the unstable theme, because it only felt unstable to me towards the end. But then I read through some of the comments and realized that the cards with multiple changes in short time limits did really push me to instability, which was very cool.
Because the game concept is simple and focused, you were clearly able to get it quite polished, in terms of art, audio and UI, and probably were able to playtest a fair bit. Things like the indicators next to each of the UI whenever you hover over one of the cards that affects it - things like that only come from playtesting and evaluating and are super helpful as a result so kudos on that.
The first thing that struck me when I turned on the game was the music and it was AWESOME. They say that music establishes a tone and vibe of the game, and this is a great example of that.
I tried really hard to think of some suggestions or criticisms I could give, and I have just a few small ones that could maybe help you if you are planning on expanding it.
1) When it got the end of the game, I wanted to spend more time in the "unstable state". I wanted to feel like I was on the verge of dying for a longer period of time. In my case, my first playthrough I died shortly after the tense music and timer started. My second playthrough, I was in the tense state for maybe 20 seconds before finishing the game. I think you can look at something like DOOM 2016, DOOM Eternal, or Ruiner for that "on the verge of dying" loop. In those games, you are just about to die when you are just barely able to kill an enemy and find some health, and they likely have some internal systems built to make the enemies give you a bit of leeway on the edge of death. And this might go on for minutes in medium to large fights. You guys do a good job of the leeway, but in terms of the length, you are only in the tense situation for a little bit of time. It's like getting just a taste of a great meal, which you have been looking forward to for a while. Minor complaint overall, but something worth considering.
2) When I finished the game, I did not feel some great joy or anything like that. It was fun to make it to the next step and the next step, and so on, but at the end of the process I expected to feel rewarded for making a monster but I didn't get that feeling. Maybe this has to do with some more art / sound / vfx that should play once you create a monster to really highlight the moment. And maybe this will be helped by addressing the first point and making the tense situation last longer so that getting out of it feels more rewarding.
3) I think this works great as a game you have to play for 5-10, maybe even 20 minutes. But I wonder how you make it work if you want to expand the game? This is not a criticism of the game jam submission - I think as a submission it's great, but just thinking in terms of a full game. Do you keep going down the same route, and just add more stages? You make a monster, and make another monster joined to it, and so on and so forth to form a multi-organism being or something? Or do you also expand the gameplay itself, have monsters fight each other or kill humans etc? This is a great concept, just curious how you would expand it essentially.
Okay, I rambled enough. Great job! Thank you for reading my essay if you got this far :laughing: :smile:
Absolutely unbelievable that this was put together in such a short period of time. This is the absolute highest standard of a release and the bar has been set almost too high with this entry. Truly incredible.
@skallywags Keep rambling, no problem, it's always nice reading people who saw the work/time invested in designing the game and giving such feedback.
Concerning your points, you're totally right about the success not being rewarding enough. We worked mainly on the gameplay loop and didn't have much time to polish the endgame (either victory or defeat) and it's showing. Obviously, adding some SFX and art is the easiest way to improve it and would have been enough for the jam. As for the future, your take about "unstable state" is interesting so I'll explain a bit more our process : the game was more designed around the difficulty curve and how we put more and more pressure on the player as the ritual go on more than sustain an "on the verge of dying" feeling. The two main reasons were the crescendo feeling seemed more fitting the theme (we don't see the theme as a "must have" but still a matter you try to take into account) and more importantly, the difficulty to balance randomness in such a situation. To maintain the player in this "zone", you'd have to acknowledge the game state (player's life, current turn, position of each characteristic...) and tweak the rules governing randomness accordingly and pretty precisely. In 72H, such a system seems almost impossible to produce as it requires a HUGE amount of calculations and/or playtesting. Of course now there's no theme to follow and we have more time to devellop the idea.
Now, concerning the way we keep the player interested in the long run... good question! We had some discussion but we haven't decided a direction at the moment. If you're interested, you can complete this survey, let us know your impressions and maybe even take part in playtesting.
@jpatchz It's really touching but I have to disagree. This one will forever be the epitome of video game. :wink:
@artonix@alexej@piper-thompson@jusw85@boaheck-artgent@echo-gameworks and to all the others people who commented, thanks for your messages and your sight on the game. It's a great feeling seeing that much reactions about our game(and for those wondering, even if we didn't answer much, we read all the comments).
An impressive game. I loved the pixel art animations and also the way soundtrack builds up over the run along with the difficulty curve increasing with timers. All of which gave a great ambiance to the game.
I don't have much to say about the cons of it as a jam game as the game loop feels complete and overall well polished. The main issues would be that not all victorious runs lead to what I feel like is a Victory (summoning a named god) and that you don't really know if the unnamed monster is supposed to be a good end or not. This could be fixed by having all possible combinations of Traits leading to a God but that would require I guess at least 2-3x more Gods (which would be undoable in 72h though), or having some kind of hints (other than looking at the compendium) to what choices might lead or not to a named god.
Now, seeing as you're thinking about possibly extending the game further, here are some thoughts about that : - The gameplay as it stands feels a bit too simple and repetitive for a complete game that could be played for a few hours (it's totally fine for a jam game that is tested in 30mins max though). Some additional game mechanic would be welcomed to have more variety in the gameplay. - A current side goal I guess is to fill the Compendium with all gods. So, replayability has to be adressed as dozens if not hundreds of runs will be necessary. You could add maybe rogue-lite elements to it (ie. you start by summoning lesser gods first, get upgrades through the runs, then summon greater ones), maybe a story, or whatever you feel like might do the work.
This is my first time playing something like this on a jam, I liked it! There were tense moments in the process of choosing cards, it turned out very atmospheric!
Tons of people have tried to make Lovecraftian games before but seriously this one really pulls it off well. From the visual style to the sound and music, it really sets the atmosphere! As a Lovecraft fan this was really an impressive entry, well done!
what a cool idea, the cleanest animations i've ever seen in a LD game, tense gameplay and just everything about this game is the best
N
Nate95412 Oct 2021, 03:11
This is really brilliant! The way you slowly introduce concepts was perfect, no tutorial needed! But DAMN did it get difficult!! And the fact that you have actual goals to optionally try to summon? Chef's kiss! The graphics and audio were great and set the mood fantastically. All around fabulous job, I really love it!!
Dang this game is just blowing up! Great to see another moody, menacing, card game get created for this jam. Seriously great stuff on everything, the visuals especially are so great and fun
Pretty descent game! Thank you so much! The only downside, for some reason it didnt work from the browser (latest Chrome version, latest Win10 version) Amazing visuals and mechanics. Just love it!
Just wow. The pixel art looks excellent. The in-game mechanics are easy to understand and interesting. Now I want to unlock all monsters :) Great job with the game!
This game was incredible!!! The art is fantastic, it was interesting, and super fun to play. I also love that the monster is still there when you go back to the menu. So awesome! :D :D :D
I originally tried to play this on my phone about 12 days ago after one of you commented on my game, and I gotta say that despite itch.io and Unity WebGL's complaints, it is technically playable on phone! But the resolution is very tiny and hard to read and click on, so I wasn't able to tell what I was doing. Waited to have time to play it on my PC properly, and well, university + other life things happened...
But now here I am, and it's a good game! I made a few abominations but couldn't figure out the recipes for any of the actual gods. It would be nice if there were clues about what combinations might make gods (as I assume it's based on the things like humanoid/dreamcatcher/feral, etc). Visually, "immunity" is a little too large - the "y" is behind the meter. It is also a generally small resolution UI - I played in browser and had to full screen it to see hte buttons, which is at least a step up from not being able to read anything on my phone's screen. The cards are nice as they are very large and easy to click on even on small devices, but the fonts and buttons could use some legibility work. (This is counter to my advice regarding "immunity" being too big - which is to say, perhaps it's more that the fonts need to be larger, but have more breathing room away from the meters).
I enjoyed this a lot, even though I gave up on making any gods - but that's partially due to outside forces demotivating me from playing longer (read: I've got some kind of back sprain or other injury going on so this game is very intellectually stimulating in a very fun slay the spire type way but not in the right way to distract me from my pain).
TL;DR: Fantastic game; UI resolution isn't quite accessible & hints on god recipes would be lovely.
@papabirb Hello, nice to see you came back after almost 2 weeks to test again the game, even if it's a bit sad to hear that our game isn't a cure to backache (hope you'll feel better).
Concerning UI, you're right, we focused on make it fit on PC and we need to work on accessibility on portable devices.
As for the gods, it's a point of design we didn't polished enough. As you and others mentionned, it can be frustrating to not get any gods (or at least a hint). We made some modifications (a hint system, tweak on randomness) to try to solve this but it'll only be available friday to comply to LD rules.
Anyway, thanks for your feebacks,it always appreciated.
Wow, very nicely done. I love the combination of aesthetic and design, the UI work is top notch. The only thing I didn't think was clear was how long you could have a lever in the red before a failure, but the rest of the game is really great!
Awesome game! I couldn't manage to summon a god :( But still fun nonetheless!
At the beginning I was a little confused, but I found myself carefully choosing my card later. You managed to implement the idea of keeping all of the parts balanced really well. I actually found myself thinking about my card choice and not just picking a random card.
It wasn't immediately apparent to me what I was doing, but after the first few rounds of cards it became clear.
The atmosphere of this game is unmatched, and the audio is lovely. Gameplay is really engaging and tense once you know what's going on. Didn't get a god on my first playthrough, but I'm going to try again now!
Excellent idea and very interesting artistic style. I would love to see it more worked and polished, it would especially improve the "cards" to make them look better and improve playability. Really very good job! xd
Awesome game, for a jam game I think it is a complete product. What can be improved in a later version is feedback on getting to a god and the loose condition.
Really nice mechanics, really great art, really effective audio - this feels super good for an LD entry. Great way of taking some simple mechanics and building something that feels purposeful and challenging. Any complaints I have feel more like suggestions for a full version of this and would feel unfair to put on a jam entry like this (and most of those sound like you're already working on). Great work, looking forward to seeing more.
Interesting game, great art. I played through it a couple of times but I can't tell if there is a strategy to end up with a names god, both times I just ended up with some unnamed monster.
Puisque nous sommes dans la large description des éléments positifs et négatifs, je dirais pour commencer que le visuel de ton jeu est parfait - c'est l'idée que je me fais de l'esprit Lovecraft. L'esthétique me rappelle un jeu du même acabit - Death Trash. Pour le gameplay, je ne suis pas trop habitué aux jeux de cartes ou de plateaux. Élaborer un monstre au fil de ses choix est une bonne idée - après ça devient vite cyclique. Néanmoins, en terme d'entrée pour une GameJam, c'est très bon. La musique est planante. Ça commence comme le Canon en C majeur de Pachelbel, mais très vite, on s'envole pour d'autres nuances. Tu as participé à une très bonne entrée. Bravo ++
Concernant tes remarques à propos de mon jeu, je te remercie, mais je te trouve un brin sévère. Comme tu le dis en préambule, c'est à prendre avec des pincettes. Néanmoins, sois assuré que je prends en compte ton feedback parce que manifestement, tu sais de quoi tu parles - tu es peut-être même un professionnel eu égard à la qualité de ton entrée. On est d'accord - tout est à revoir dans mon projet. 3 jours - 3 jours pour faire une entrée qui se détache des autres entrées du fait de son originalité. En premier lieu, j'ai imaginé un jeu d'équilibre (comme les centaines que l'on a considérées durant la 49ème LD). J'ai choisi une autre orientation. Il ne fallait pas jouer ! J'ai placardé un peu partout l'information selon laquelle ce jeu ne convenait pas aux personnes souffrant de pathologies affectant le visuel. Bien sûr que ça t'a fatigué les yeux. C'est une torture pour l'esprit que cette expérience où tout est instable, du game controller à la moindre des textures. J'ai eu peu de temps pour composer un projet alliant environnement non-euclidien et énigmes. Je crois que tu ne sais pas ce qu'est un simulateur de marche. C'est bien plus basique. Bien sûr, qu'il faut garder haute la barre de l'intérêt pour un projet semblable. Il faut bien plus, mais je me désole du fait que tu juges une entrée pour ce qu'elle aurait pu être avec davantage de temps, de réflexion et d'éléments. C'est comme si tu jugeais ton Kébab du coin considérant qu'en un autre lieu il aurait pu faire de la gastronomie. Je voulais utiliser cette dernière comparaison de second degré volontairement afin que tu comprennes que je ne suis pas fâché - je te remercie encore pour ton feedback. Peut-être en reparlerons-nous une autre fois après des mois de développement. Bonne continuation à toi. Je te souhaite le meilleur ++
PS : Ashwalkers est dans ma Steam liste. Il faut vraiment que j'y joue :)
J'ai aussi répondu à ton "feedback request" pour une full version de LoveCrafting ++
@geckoo1337 Oula, je crois qu'on a une petite incompréhension là, j'ai peur que tu l'ai quand même pris un peu de travers (ce que je peux comprendre, pas de soucis).
Je vais pas m'étaler sur tous les éléments mais j'aimerais juste préciser 2/3 trucs : - Le ton que j'emploi. Bon déja, c'est par écrit, donc je peux pas être aussi exhaustif et précis que je le souhaiterais, y faire passer toutes les nuances de mon point de vue, sinon j'y passe l'après-midi et je ponds un roman (jusque là, je t'apprends rien). Ensuite, en me basant sur ta description et tes réponses aux autres commentaires, je me suis mis en mode "professionel". Je me suis trompé, je m'en excuse. Je reconnais que j'aurais pu m'arrêter plus longtemps sur les qualités de ton jeu. - *"On est d’accord - tout est à revoir dans mon projet."* Non pas d'accord. Un peu déçu de t'avoir transmis ce sentiment. - *"En premier lieu, j’ai imaginé un jeu d’équilibre (comme les centaines que l’on a considérées durant la 49ème LD). J’ai choisi une autre orientation."* Tu en es sincérement remercié, j'en ai vu assez. - *"Je crois que tu ne sais pas ce qu’est un simulateur de marche. C’est bien plus basique."* C'est vrai que "walking sim", ça fait péjoratif. C'était une simple comparaison sur la boucle de gameplay. Après, c'est clairement pénible d'expliquer ce genre de truc à l'écrit, je vais pas m'étendre. - *"Il faut bien plus, mais je me désole du fait que tu juges une entrée pour ce qu’elle aurait pu être avec davantage de temps, de réflexion et d’éléments."* Mon jugement, que ca soit la notation ou l'analyse, ne se fait que sur l'existant (mon expérience de l'existant en tout cas, c'est nécessairement subjectif). J'ai l'impression que t'as vu des reproches dans une phrase comme *"Le thème me semble sous-exploité"*. Qu'on soit clair, pour moi c'est à la fois un fait neutre et quelque chose de logique (t'as pas eu le temps d'en faire plus). Donc dans la perspective de la Game Jam, je trouve ça très bon. Pour le post-Jam, ça me semble à approfondir. En gros, comme ta remarque sur l'aspect cyclique de notre jeu (auquel je souscris). Bref, on rejoint mon premier point sur mon approche. - *"Peut-être en reparlerons-nous une autre fois après des mois de développement."* Ce soir, demain, la semaine prochaine, dans plusieurs mois : avec plaisir.
@concker-88 Les mots sont subjectifs - on ne sait pas bien compris - OK. Le fait que tu prennes le temps d'approfondir ta pensée me touche beaucoup. Le voile est donc levé et les doutes dissipés. Je comprends mieux le sens de ta pensée. De mon premier projet, je voudrais bien faire quelque chose de plus attractif. De ce fait, je ne peux pas reprocher à quelqu'un son feedback. C'est un acte nécessaire et j'approuve la critique constructive. Je souscris à ton analyse première. C'était juste quant à la forme. Oublions - c'est ma faute - une mauvaise lecture de travers. Bonne continuation à vous. Je vois sur Steam que vous êtes déjà bien posés avec un bon jeu - des projets pour LoveCrafting. C'est cool. Le cas échéant, si vous avez besoin d'un testeur ou d'autre chose, je suis à votre disposition. Salut ++
@adrian-guevara Man, as nice it is to see you praise us, I think you should take some time off because you seem a bit angry. You're even rude to some people, I saw your comment on Quantum Splitter and it's not nice. I think his first place is deserved and one of the best Compo Game I played (I tested 220+ games in total).
I can understand you're a bit disapointed about ratings and yes, the system is not perfect (but none are). At the end of the day, it's just a friendly competition and we all know how it works before the results. Take some time to cool off, enjoy the positive outcome (your game received a lot of attention) and come back to us with a clearer mind.
@concker-88 I haven't saw that it was a combo game, maybe it's not the best example with Quantum Splitter, but come on...you understood the message, all years is the same and they are not trying to improve the system. And I'm not that angry, I guess I'm bored and I don't wanna work xD. But I have my right to being angry, the ludum guys have something good here, and they are not making any afforts to improve it.
@adrian-guevara I don't deny you the right to be angry. What I meant it's probably not the good state of mind to express your disapproval towards ratings system. Besides my point is not only about politeness but also about efficiency. If your goal is to try to improve Ludum Dare, being direspectful to organisation and other jammer is without a doubt not the good strategy to win them over your point of view.
Now to talk to the core of the problem (ie : the rating system), I can see what you mean. Yes, there's a (little) mathematical bias whether you got a lot of ratings or not. But I think you miss something : no system are flawless. There'll always be a way to cheat or people feeling it's unfair towards them. At the end of the day, rankings are cool but not that important.
One last point : your critics on Mike and his team not wanting to improve the LD is uncalled for. They proved it just this night by adding the results countdown.
To sum up my thoughts, as a friendly advice, please try to be more charitable, it'll be beneficial not only to others, but more importantly, to you.
Hello @felinalain ! The music actually comes from an asset pack (that we paid for and have the rights to use without credits), called "Ultimate Game Music Collection", by John Leonard French. You can find the concerned song here : https://soundcloud.com/game-music-collection/arid-wasteland The music in Supraland must come from that asset pack too. But you're right, we should've credited it anyway, so here we go !
Comments202
I'm sure it's not because I simply LOVE lovecraft but seriously this game has such an amazing feel to it. The idea was excellent and the execution is oh-so sweet.
The art and music are excellent!
The first time I played I didn't realize what I was doing, and thought I was trying to get the bars to go into the red. And then once I got them there, it was too late to fix it.
The second time I understood it and had a pretty good time! Unfortunately, I encountered a bug right at the end. I picked Humanoid, and some of the cards flew off screen and then I got the win screen and the lose screen at the same time, or something? I took a screenshot
Really excellent work!
@squirmonkey Huh-oh, we'll look into that one. Thank you for the report !
2 small things you can improve after the Jam:
* When choosing a card at the very last second I ended up not being able to choose the next card (I think I choose AND got the "you fail to choose go to next cards" effect)
* Nit-picking but on the web version you could reduce the "fullscreen" when the player click "Quit"
Very well done one of of the Top game of this Jam. Definitely scores in the Art category.
This is happening consistently. Windows version
I however didn't manage to summon a single beast with a name
That's an amazing game, everything is so well done and convey this Lovecraftian mood! Great job!
Also the art is awesome and the mood with the music is perfect !
I agree with many others that it was not very clear to me how the game worked. I thought I was just trying to keep the bars out of the red zone, but I never managed to make a monster with a name. Are there some more mechanics that I am not understanding?
Anyway, this was really an amazing experience! Definitely the most beautiful game of the jam I played so far! Great job ^_^
Good job!
This is for sure one of my favorites so far!
Main issue is the cards flying off the screen, every time I'm about to craft a named creature the cards fly off the screen and I lose :( Should definitely look into this bug because it is game breaking.
A smaller bug is when shrinking or gaining stat bars it seems that sometimes the indicators will point to the wrong stat, but definitely appreciate the QOL of pointing to the stat anyways!
Smaller design things I would consider: it would be nice to have the stats be a little bit more distinct, maybe color code them? Sometimes when things get frantic, all the icons appear similar since they are all the same color scheme and it would be easier to figure out which stat is which with a little bit more differences. It might also be nice to sort the stats on the card based on the order of the stats in which they appear, because sometimes you see some stats but they are in the wrong order.
Unfortunately there was quite some bugs while summoning that the cards tend to fly off the right side of the screen which automatically results in a fail. Also the web build tends to freeze Chrome completely when trying to quit the game.
Other than that really amazing submission, congrats to the team for the great work!
Usually I don't like this kind of game, but this is really well done!
- Strongly adhere to the theme and I like the way it is implemented
- Gorgeous graphic style
- Plesant to hear music
- The compendium is another clever choice, the player feels a sense of progression and gives replayability
- The progression in which the mechanics are presented is also well done
Really nice and polished game guys. Keep doing games :smile:
Still amazing game very polished.
The music is great, overall a good atmosphere.
Спасибо!
We pushed a new version fixing some annoying bugs (cards shouldn't disappear anymore!). All informations are in the changelog. You can still get the original release in the itch.io page by downloading the v0.2.
A little note about the Gods as a lot of you seem disapointed not getting one. The game was designed with getting a creature as the main goal and the Gods more a special reward/achievement. With hindsight, the game doesn't convey successfully this feeling and could let you feel you failed. It's obviously multifactorial but I think the most important is the process'randomness (for those whose interested, there's 12 differents traits so 220 combinations of 3 traits. Each 10 gods representing one unique combination, you have less than 5% chances to get a God by picking traits randomly). I'll probably add a rule during the week-end so you can get at least one "god drawing" by game.
All in all, if you completed a ritual and got a creature, don't feel disapointed, know you won :).
So smooth. The graphics is incredible - WoW. Can't believe how good this is and it was made in so small amount of time.
Congrats on your entry. I would love to see an actual full game
system is clear,
Im enjoy it very much!
But it cant let me feel unstable~
Visuals and sound are spot on, it really felt like I was summoning some terrifying ancient creatures. Also very polished, such a concept just wouldn't work otherwise.
I'd maybe add a Zen mode without the timer, or maybe I'M just bad :D
The visuals and audio were absolutely stunning good job!
One of my favorite entries so far :)
Every visual feedbacks are on point and the difficulty curve is perfect.
Too bad I'm too slow to enjoy it fully, but this was really exceptional work!
The art is very beautiful and so is the audio. A game that would be easy to sell on a platform.
Congratulations!
If i can make a suggestion, maybe mention that there are whispers in the game, or even better if we could turn them off. Those kind of sounds are really hard to deal with for some neurodivergeant people. I'm sorry if that sounds like a nitpick cause otherwise I really loved your game!
@hotowlgirls You're right about game's beginning. It was designed as an introduction to the mechanics and a way to "experiment" the game without much punishment but it feels boring after 2/3 runs. We're thinking on how to improve this part.
But, yes, as others have said already, this is a phenomenal entry, with amazing art, sounds and gameplay, that fits the theme perfectly. Probably contender for winning, and if not, you should at least be incredibly proud of yourselves.
My only criticism is that the art shows rain and thunder and there's no sfx for either of these things.... I feel like it would fit the atmosphere!
Congrats on a fantastic entry!
I wonder how I'll be able to make a god next time...
The music and art are cool!
We're thinking about bringing the game to a fully fleshed release.
As we're still unsure, we're looking for more precise feedback about it.
Some of you mentionned that you would like to see a full version (@mrchip @jon-nova @stroe-andrew @nefylem @liviuslycurgus), so if you would like to help us, you can follow that link. This a small form and you can add your mail adress to get informed, follow us and participate in more testing !
Thanks a lot everyone for your support, it's amazing. We see you soon !
The gameplay, visuals and audio go well together and the approach to the theme was great as well!
Well done! Thank you for the game
I liked the mood that was set by mostly sounds and music but also the dark mostrous theme.
Initially I was not sure how well it tied into the unstable theme, because it only felt unstable to me towards the end. But then I read through some of the comments and realized that the cards with multiple changes in short time limits did really push me to instability, which was very cool.
Because the game concept is simple and focused, you were clearly able to get it quite polished, in terms of art, audio and UI, and probably were able to playtest a fair bit. Things like the indicators next to each of the UI whenever you hover over one of the cards that affects it - things like that only come from playtesting and evaluating and are super helpful as a result so kudos on that.
The first thing that struck me when I turned on the game was the music and it was AWESOME. They say that music establishes a tone and vibe of the game, and this is a great example of that.
I tried really hard to think of some suggestions or criticisms I could give, and I have just a few small ones that could maybe help you if you are planning on expanding it.
1) When it got the end of the game, I wanted to spend more time in the "unstable state". I wanted to feel like I was on the verge of dying for a longer period of time. In my case, my first playthrough I died shortly after the tense music and timer started. My second playthrough, I was in the tense state for maybe 20 seconds before finishing the game. I think you can look at something like DOOM 2016, DOOM Eternal, or Ruiner for that "on the verge of dying" loop. In those games, you are just about to die when you are just barely able to kill an enemy and find some health, and they likely have some internal systems built to make the enemies give you a bit of leeway on the edge of death. And this might go on for minutes in medium to large fights. You guys do a good job of the leeway, but in terms of the length, you are only in the tense situation for a little bit of time. It's like getting just a taste of a great meal, which you have been looking forward to for a while. Minor complaint overall, but something worth considering.
2) When I finished the game, I did not feel some great joy or anything like that. It was fun to make it to the next step and the next step, and so on, but at the end of the process I expected to feel rewarded for making a monster but I didn't get that feeling. Maybe this has to do with some more art / sound / vfx that should play once you create a monster to really highlight the moment. And maybe this will be helped by addressing the first point and making the tense situation last longer so that getting out of it feels more rewarding.
3) I think this works great as a game you have to play for 5-10, maybe even 20 minutes. But I wonder how you make it work if you want to expand the game? This is not a criticism of the game jam submission - I think as a submission it's great, but just thinking in terms of a full game. Do you keep going down the same route, and just add more stages? You make a monster, and make another monster joined to it, and so on and so forth to form a multi-organism being or something? Or do you also expand the gameplay itself, have monsters fight each other or kill humans etc? This is a great concept, just curious how you would expand it essentially.
Okay, I rambled enough. Great job! Thank you for reading my essay if you got this far :laughing: :smile:
Concerning your points, you're totally right about the success not being rewarding enough. We worked mainly on the gameplay loop and didn't have much time to polish the endgame (either victory or defeat) and it's showing. Obviously, adding some SFX and art is the easiest way to improve it and would have been enough for the jam.
As for the future, your take about "unstable state" is interesting so I'll explain a bit more our process : the game was more designed around the difficulty curve and how we put more and more pressure on the player as the ritual go on more than sustain an "on the verge of dying" feeling. The two main reasons were the crescendo feeling seemed more fitting the theme (we don't see the theme as a "must have" but still a matter you try to take into account) and more importantly, the difficulty to balance randomness in such a situation. To maintain the player in this "zone", you'd have to acknowledge the game state (player's life, current turn, position of each characteristic...) and tweak the rules governing randomness accordingly and pretty precisely. In 72H, such a system seems almost impossible to produce as it requires a HUGE amount of calculations and/or playtesting. Of course now there's no theme to follow and we have more time to devellop the idea.
Now, concerning the way we keep the player interested in the long run... good question! We had some discussion but we haven't decided a direction at the moment. If you're interested, you can complete this survey, let us know your impressions and maybe even take part in playtesting.
@jpgfg Woah... :relaxed:
@jpatchz It's really touching but I have to disagree. This one will forever be the epitome of video game. :wink:
@artonix @alexej @piper-thompson @jusw85 @boaheck-artgent @echo-gameworks and to all the others people who commented, thanks for your messages and your sight on the game. It's a great feeling seeing that much reactions about our game(and for those wondering, even if we didn't answer much, we read all the comments).
I don't have much to say about the cons of it as a jam game as the game loop feels complete and overall well polished.
The main issues would be that not all victorious runs lead to what I feel like is a Victory (summoning a named god) and that you don't really know if the unnamed monster is supposed to be a good end or not. This could be fixed by having all possible combinations of Traits leading to a God but that would require I guess at least 2-3x more Gods (which would be undoable in 72h though), or having some kind of hints (other than looking at the compendium) to what choices might lead or not to a named god.
Now, seeing as you're thinking about possibly extending the game further, here are some thoughts about that :
- The gameplay as it stands feels a bit too simple and repetitive for a complete game that could be played for a few hours (it's totally fine for a jam game that is tested in 30mins max though). Some additional game mechanic would be welcomed to have more variety in the gameplay.
- A current side goal I guess is to fill the Compendium with all gods. So, replayability has to be adressed as dozens if not hundreds of runs will be necessary. You could add maybe rogue-lite elements to it (ie. you start by summoning lesser gods first, get upgrades through the runs, then summon greater ones), maybe a story, or whatever you feel like might do the work.
Maybe that's just me but I kept being confused with the stomach and heart icons, maybe their shape are a bit too alike or something.
Amazing visuals and mechanics. Just love it!
But now here I am, and it's a good game! I made a few abominations but couldn't figure out the recipes for any of the actual gods. It would be nice if there were clues about what combinations might make gods (as I assume it's based on the things like humanoid/dreamcatcher/feral, etc). Visually, "immunity" is a little too large - the "y" is behind the meter. It is also a generally small resolution UI - I played in browser and had to full screen it to see hte buttons, which is at least a step up from not being able to read anything on my phone's screen. The cards are nice as they are very large and easy to click on even on small devices, but the fonts and buttons could use some legibility work. (This is counter to my advice regarding "immunity" being too big - which is to say, perhaps it's more that the fonts need to be larger, but have more breathing room away from the meters).
I enjoyed this a lot, even though I gave up on making any gods - but that's partially due to outside forces demotivating me from playing longer (read: I've got some kind of back sprain or other injury going on so this game is very intellectually stimulating in a very fun slay the spire type way but not in the right way to distract me from my pain).
TL;DR: Fantastic game; UI resolution isn't quite accessible & hints on god recipes would be lovely.
Concerning UI, you're right, we focused on make it fit on PC and we need to work on accessibility on portable devices.
As for the gods, it's a point of design we didn't polished enough. As you and others mentionned, it can be frustrating to not get any gods (or at least a hint). We made some modifications (a hint system, tweak on randomness) to try to solve this but it'll only be available friday to comply to LD rules.
Anyway, thanks for your feebacks,it always appreciated.
At the beginning I was a little confused, but I found myself carefully choosing my card later. You managed to implement the idea of keeping all of the parts balanced really well. I actually found myself thinking about my card choice and not just picking a random card.
Great job!
The atmosphere of this game is unmatched, and the audio is lovely. Gameplay is really engaging and tense once you know what's going on. Didn't get a god on my first playthrough, but I'm going to try again now!
The art and music are excellent!
Crafting a character was dandy idea but I think it's not relevant for Unstable Theme.
But I enjoed your atmosphere! Thanks for the experience!
Congratulations for good work in a such short time!
Concernant tes remarques à propos de mon jeu, je te remercie, mais je te trouve un brin sévère. Comme tu le dis en préambule, c'est à prendre avec des pincettes. Néanmoins, sois assuré que je prends en compte ton feedback parce que manifestement, tu sais de quoi tu parles - tu es peut-être même un professionnel eu égard à la qualité de ton entrée. On est d'accord - tout est à revoir dans mon projet. 3 jours - 3 jours pour faire une entrée qui se détache des autres entrées du fait de son originalité. En premier lieu, j'ai imaginé un jeu d'équilibre (comme les centaines que l'on a considérées durant la 49ème LD). J'ai choisi une autre orientation. Il ne fallait pas jouer ! J'ai placardé un peu partout l'information selon laquelle ce jeu ne convenait pas aux personnes souffrant de pathologies affectant le visuel. Bien sûr que ça t'a fatigué les yeux. C'est une torture pour l'esprit que cette expérience où tout est instable, du game controller à la moindre des textures. J'ai eu peu de temps pour composer un projet alliant environnement non-euclidien et énigmes. Je crois que tu ne sais pas ce qu'est un simulateur de marche. C'est bien plus basique. Bien sûr, qu'il faut garder haute la barre de l'intérêt pour un projet semblable. Il faut bien plus, mais je me désole du fait que tu juges une entrée pour ce qu'elle aurait pu être avec davantage de temps, de réflexion et d'éléments. C'est comme si tu jugeais ton Kébab du coin considérant qu'en un autre lieu il aurait pu faire de la gastronomie. Je voulais utiliser cette dernière comparaison de second degré volontairement afin que tu comprennes que je ne suis pas fâché - je te remercie encore pour ton feedback. Peut-être en reparlerons-nous une autre fois après des mois de développement. Bonne continuation à toi. Je te souhaite le meilleur ++
PS : Ashwalkers est dans ma Steam liste. Il faut vraiment que j'y joue :)
J'ai aussi répondu à ton "feedback request" pour une full version de LoveCrafting ++
Je vais pas m'étaler sur tous les éléments mais j'aimerais juste préciser 2/3 trucs :
- Le ton que j'emploi. Bon déja, c'est par écrit, donc je peux pas être aussi exhaustif et précis que je le souhaiterais, y faire passer toutes les nuances de mon point de vue, sinon j'y passe l'après-midi et je ponds un roman (jusque là, je t'apprends rien). Ensuite, en me basant sur ta description et tes réponses aux autres commentaires, je me suis mis en mode "professionel". Je me suis trompé, je m'en excuse. Je reconnais que j'aurais pu m'arrêter plus longtemps sur les qualités de ton jeu.
- *"On est d’accord - tout est à revoir dans mon projet."* Non pas d'accord. Un peu déçu de t'avoir transmis ce sentiment.
- *"En premier lieu, j’ai imaginé un jeu d’équilibre (comme les centaines que l’on a considérées durant la 49ème LD). J’ai choisi une autre orientation."* Tu en es sincérement remercié, j'en ai vu assez.
- *"Je crois que tu ne sais pas ce qu’est un simulateur de marche. C’est bien plus basique."* C'est vrai que "walking sim", ça fait péjoratif. C'était une simple comparaison sur la boucle de gameplay. Après, c'est clairement pénible d'expliquer ce genre de truc à l'écrit, je vais pas m'étendre.
- *"Il faut bien plus, mais je me désole du fait que tu juges une entrée pour ce qu’elle aurait pu être avec davantage de temps, de réflexion et d’éléments."* Mon jugement, que ca soit la notation ou l'analyse, ne se fait que sur l'existant (mon expérience de l'existant en tout cas, c'est nécessairement subjectif). J'ai l'impression que t'as vu des reproches dans une phrase comme *"Le thème me semble sous-exploité"*. Qu'on soit clair, pour moi c'est à la fois un fait neutre et quelque chose de logique (t'as pas eu le temps d'en faire plus). Donc dans la perspective de la Game Jam, je trouve ça très bon. Pour le post-Jam, ça me semble à approfondir. En gros, comme ta remarque sur l'aspect cyclique de notre jeu (auquel je souscris). Bref, on rejoint mon premier point sur mon approche.
- *"Peut-être en reparlerons-nous une autre fois après des mois de développement."* Ce soir, demain, la semaine prochaine, dans plusieurs mois : avec plaisir.
Bon finalement, c'est un plus que 2/3 trucs :/
I can understand you're a bit disapointed about ratings and yes, the system is not perfect (but none are). At the end of the day, it's just a friendly competition and we all know how it works before the results. Take some time to cool off, enjoy the positive outcome (your game received a lot of attention) and come back to us with a clearer mind.
But I have my right to being angry, the ludum guys have something good here, and they are not making any afforts to improve it.
Now to talk to the core of the problem (ie : the rating system), I can see what you mean. Yes, there's a (little) mathematical bias whether you got a lot of ratings or not. But I think you miss something : no system are flawless. There'll always be a way to cheat or people feeling it's unfair towards them. At the end of the day, rankings are cool but not that important.
One last point : your critics on Mike and his team not wanting to improve the LD is uncalled for. They proved it just this night by adding the results countdown.
To sum up my thoughts, as a friendly advice, please try to be more charitable, it'll be beneficial not only to others, but more importantly, to you.
The music actually comes from an asset pack (that we paid for and have the rights to use without credits), called "Ultimate Game Music Collection", by John Leonard French. You can find the concerned song here : https://soundcloud.com/game-music-collection/arid-wasteland
The music in Supraland must come from that asset pack too.
But you're right, we should've credited it anyway, so here we go !
Have a good day.