Aspect Traveler

co-authored: @zerovirus
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.82
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.43
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.57
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.95
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.96
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.55
Mood★★★★★★★★★★4.38
Deliver a star to the top of a mountain to deliver a universe. Beware, though- if any of your six Aspects drop to 0, your journey will come to an abrupt end.

This is a story-heavy text-based resource management game. Made by Benedict Ide and Zerovirus for Ludum Dare 53 using CreateJS. Some images generated using Stable Diffusion. Background music from Purple Planet, with wind sfx from guyburns via Pixabay. CORS issues prevent audio from working in the embed- download and run the local version for best experience.

e: The LD site's download link seems to be acting up? Here's a backup Dropbox link if that doesn't work: https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7oxppaew1po76o/LD53-local.zip?dl=0

Comments28

saffeine2 May 2023, 01:07
the art is so beautifulll
T C
T C2 May 2023, 01:39
Very moody game. I love the idea of the game style where you can't let resources drop to zero being combined with a text adventure! Great work!
Gev2 May 2023, 01:48
I like the atmosphere of this game. The relaxing music and background art meshes well with the text adventure format.
chompdev
chompdev2 May 2023, 06:03
Wow, now this is impressive for a jam game! The writing, presentation, and stats-based conversations give me some nice Disco Elysium vibes. I love how the situations can play out so differently on each run, and how you really need to pay attention to your stats and evaluate each action carefully. The volume and quality of writing is quite impressive for a jam. Excellent work on this one!
Jaxah
Jaxah2 May 2023, 14:28
A beautiful and moody game! :heartpulse:
Love the story and the elements for gaining and losing points in attributes depending on your choices.
agameortwo2 May 2023, 16:46
I really like how you have to trade off between different options to keep you stats up.
the neon shark
the neon shark2 May 2023, 16:47
Rich narrative and dialogue. Well made!
MallanSandan2 May 2023, 16:50
Very beautiful art and UI! Cute story with interesting way to balance choices!
Daniil Vakhrushev2 May 2023, 16:54
I like the narrative design. And the idea behind elements is unteresting. Would like to see a hint on what an action will spend tho. Sometimes its not obvious enough.
Gread job overall
milano232 May 2023, 17:34
Unique game. I made it halfway. If i had a bubbling candle i would have made it the whole way in an instance (Stardust reference). Great art. Really innovative on the type of game submitted. I liked the game and am looking forward to giving it another try.
LDJam user 345969
LDJam user 3459692 May 2023, 18:47
This game is a gorgeous work of art and its creators are beautiful people! 😭

Congrats on submitting a narrative-form game! It's much appreciated! Gives me Tokaido vibes -- Tokaido the boardgame. 😉
Phoenix Fireflower2 May 2023, 19:27
Marvellously written. I think this is the clear winner for the Mood category because you absolutely nailed the atmosphere.
Oradimi
Oradimi2 May 2023, 20:00
I'm usually the type to shrug off narrative games, especially in the context of a game jam, but I got very immersed into this one. The sound effects, music and art really sealed the deal, I was hooked! Great job on the writing too. I got to the falling snow boulder and died due to lacking the green stuff. I'll definitely share this game around, and try to get to the top of the mountain. Huge W, among my favorite games so far!
mitur
mitur2 May 2023, 21:51
Never been a fan of novel-like games, but this one is very well-written and beautiful!

Going to recommend to my friend that digs this genre, well done!
Obe Dot
Obe Dot2 May 2023, 21:58
The writing is good, really captivating narrative.
Samoussa
Samoussa3 May 2023, 16:35
The game is so nicely written, it was a pleasure to read ! With that kind of atmosphere it was easy to be submerged in the game right away.
I didn't made it to the top on my first run, but by then it was already too late, I was too involved to try again until I got it !
Congratulations on making such a great game!
riley9
riley93 May 2023, 20:26
very pretty. while i played it, it felt like i'm holding a tgc card in my hands, while the pictures and texts on it move and change (so magical)
Loveschach4 May 2023, 06:12
Cute game! I'm surprised you got so much writing done in the short jam time. I especially like the idea of the angel's language!
Str8griz
Str8griz4 May 2023, 20:11
I really like this idea of a well written, interactive, strategy-story based game. I also love this art style!
Swordfish
Swordfish5 May 2023, 00:34
I'm impressed by the amount of writing here, that's a lot of effort on its own plus the art and music are nice. I never made it to the summit, kept dying after a couple of turns since I had a hard time telling which options would reduce which stats. Some of them were intuitive, like the hot and cold ones, but the others were a bit more difficult for me to judge. I noticed that sometimes the options showed the effects they would have but sometimes they didn't, I think consistently showing that info would be a major improvement.
Toccio94
Toccio945 May 2023, 21:19
As others, I'm not really into visual novel games, but I got involved into the story of this one, especially thanks to the resource management aspect, which helped keeping the tension high.
I more or less managed to reach 3/4 of the path, but couldn't go forward and got frustrated even though I'm sad I didn't finish it.

I think the game is too punishing from the start, and even thou I like that u have to guess what every elements does by playing, it's really not very intuitive. For example, I realized that the last element is about fatigue and stamina, so I decided to take the long path instead of going for a more dangerous path (which I though would have required more """platforming""" and therefore more stamina) but taking the longer path was instead the bad decision, which, I mean, also made sense.
Ultimately, it seemed like u just had to play and play again until basically u knew already every option.

Having to reload the page and not having checkpoints is too much for me, especially for a jam game. If it was a more intuitive thing, I think I would have though it was more on me not getting it, but there is too much randomness.
I like that u don't (always) show how much stuff will cost, since otherwise it would be trivial, but at least should make a bit more sense, and should give you a bit more time to play in the first 5-6 encounters instead of being so punitive.

A more tech thing, it would be nice to be able to play fullscreen or at least full browser windows, it was painful having to play in a quarter of the window.
Falk Hoeppner
Falk Hoeppner5 May 2023, 21:27
I'm a big sucker for games like this. The amount and quality of the writing for this is very good, and it comes together in this enjoyable, cohesive product. Loved it!
sebbot5 May 2023, 21:27
beautiful game. pretty difficult, took me like 8 tries. well done!
Shiiro 10psi6 May 2023, 00:37
It was difficult to get through to the end. Especially with the events being randomly ordered and the costs and rewards being unknown until you try them for most options, but I'm glad that I kept trying. Really great story and art.
Grizembrrr
Grizembrrr6 May 2023, 10:38
Wow! The writing quality and quantity is amazing, gg for that!!! I really got into the story.
The concept of having to manage resources in order to go on an adventure and discover a beautiful story is pretty smart!
I would have liked either a save system, (outside of a jam scope:) maybe such as when the player has tried that option in a past run already they know what it does ?

Thank you for this (unfinished (for now)) adventure! 😊
LDJam user 234769
LDJam user 2347696 May 2023, 12:48
This game was very cool! Impressive narrative work.
Reading the other comments I understand I was lucky as hell though :laughing: because I finished the game on my first run! maybe because I had most of my positive events early on, filling my gauges up before having to use resources? Also just luck when choosing I guess.
I really loved the story, I tend to be annoyed by the "she's an ancient being with powerful magic but she's a 10 year old girl" trope, but despite this I ended up liking the characters and their relationship, and thought that they were both very cute.
For the art part, the interface looks neat! and the global aesthetic was quite cool. The event images were a bit heterogeneous but you had a lot of them so I guess there was a trade-off to make haha.
Thanks a lot for the game and congrats!
Francis8 May 2023, 03:29
Really beautiful game, I loved it so much
Found a bug?
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