Lightbearer

by deathlymad

co-authored: @gent, @impforhire, @lord-blackheart, @marzenie

Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.56

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.15

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.79

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.87

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.19

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.34

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.19

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.24

Controls:
WASD - Move
E - Interact
TAB - Show mouse
Lightbearer explores a harrowing journey through an ever-changing, mysterious forest. As the bearer of precious artifacts, you must rely on your torch to navigate the twisting paths and ward off the shadows. With each step, the trees shift and morph, blocking your way and forcing you to forge a new path. Try to navigate through the forest in time all while unraveling its peculiarities. Can you make it to your destination to deliver the rare goods, or will the darkness consume you?…

(The game has to yet reach its potential but we believe in our concept and are excited to embark on the journey of developing it further!)
Also please be patient with loading times. It has been tested in its web version. <3

EDIT: due to all the feedback on the lag issues i went ahead and updated the version in the webhost link with the couple lines it took to fix pre-occlusion in the hope that this is going to aleviate some of the issues. In the interest of fairness, the version on this website has not been updated it is still exactly the version uploaded on 2/5/23 at 2 am - @Deathlymad

Furthermore it has been brought to my attention that the loose scene is empty. if you want to retry just reload i guess :P

Comments19

NuiN2 May 2023, 09:30

It's really laggy on web on my end

CodeForJoyCaro2 May 2023, 09:33

It was not easy to explore the environment because the controls did not work as expected.

ToSMaster2 May 2023, 09:37

Cool idea and great atmosphere! I struggled a bit with the controls. Camera seems really stiff and could use some improvements. Pressing tab to show the mouse seems a bit over complicated. But I am sure your final game will be great! Keep it up!

Sodoj2 May 2023, 09:38

A neat idea for a game with very thick atmosphere! Besides low framerate I experienced a glitch that would set your torch time to indefinite if you manage fiddle with interact button a couple of times. That did not prevent me in soaking up the woods though! Good job!

hotaloca2 May 2023, 09:38

How can I find the city? :smile: I like the overall athmosphere and moving trees/stones like a magical forest is a good concept (not sure in execution how you can outsmart the forest though and what strategies you could play). The game has a good mood, the light / sound really worked for the forest which is barely visible. I wish somehow the tourch would have an actual light - it felt weird the torch is emitting light from nowhere. Seeing all the inventory system etc. maybe a much lesser scope with only simple dialogs would have been sufficient for a jam, no?

Frib2 May 2023, 09:38

I also have a very low framerate on the webGL version.

I couldn't get out of the starting area :D and at some point I glitched into the default skybox. Not sure what I am supposed to be doing, I can place torches but other than that I just have a very small area to walk around in until I get teleported into the void. Got any hints to get further?

Iluvatar2 May 2023, 09:46

The controls were a bit glitchy, and I ended up stuck in the trees, but it's okay, I will not rate you for that, because I understand it must be pretty hard to make a 3D game like this in a short period of time.

I really loved the atmosphere and art, it's one of the best looking game I've played so far. Absolutely love the lighting and dark vibes. I wish it was more technically polished, but apart from that it was pretty cool! :)

Deathlymadauthor2 May 2023, 09:50

Sorry about the poor performance. Tiles would need to be occluded for computation but that broke shortly before time ran out.

chesschaser2 May 2023, 10:22

Can always respect a 3d game. Great work!

MKRaw2 May 2023, 12:18

Nice mood

Timbaleek2 May 2023, 12:44

The mood in the dark forest and fog in the distance was very nice. I could intuitively walk to the city, so good game design. The inventories don't work and how long your light will last is not really explained. With a bit more time this game could be really cool :)

prachi3 May 2023, 01:12

Looked really pretty, but I was unable to get past the inventory screen. I clicked the x and it deleted the whole world :0

Agrimes3 May 2023, 01:48

Cool to make a 3D game like this for a game jam. Very laggy, but good atmosphere.

RenardGames3 May 2023, 12:45

Looks nice and moody!The idea was probably too big for the jam but I am interested to see it if you will develop it further!

Bastinus Rex4 May 2023, 11:39

I was hooked by the artstyle, but as you already said it's very laggy, but it's still really cool that you managed to do this !!

ruruie7 May 2023, 13:24

This is ambitious. I loved dimly seeing the woods move in the distance. Real spoop factor and a really intense sense of setting. Unfortunately, I seem to be clipping out of the world quite a bit, I suspect when the wood does a spin with me near the edges of cells.

For me, the mouse sense was very low so a slider for that would be helpful.

radgegames9 May 2023, 13:26

I applaud the attempt. I also suffered the frame rate issue but still enjoyed exploring for a bit. Great entry

TheSmellofOxygen12 May 2023, 16:11

I wish there was a fullscreen option for web! The dark atmosphere at least deserves a dark webpage background. I wanted to play more and could see the thought put into the game, from the character portraits to the dialogue, to the inventory system and the waypoints of light. Very cool, but unfortunately I was unable to play for very long because the webplayer had some terrible view controls. For some reason the camera rotation was not working as intended and I could only wiggle it a bit left and right, so I couldn't actually look hard to the left or right, only forward with a little variation, and it didn't seem to fully match my mouse movement with camera movement. If this gets a camera control fix, or even if the camera was tied to player rotation as a quick fix, I would definitely play again.