The Sound of Light

The current record is 104.32 seconds for all 5 mazes. Send screenshots of the end screen for verification.

Fun game! I really enjoyed the pacing. I breezed through the early levels but as the levels continued the game became more demanding. On the final level, it look me quite a bit of effort (and excitement) to get past those nasty ants

The current record is 89.72! Faster than anything I could do, but the screenshot is legit.

The link doesn't seem to work. I have the same probleme with other game with files.jam.host :confused:

[Edit] Thank's for the link!

Good game. Ecolocalization adds fear to the maze

How do I play this? TheSoundOfLight.zip link does not work for me

It looks like the Ludum Dare link is broken but it will not let me edit the post at this point (it definitely worked for a little while). Please use the link below.

You can download the game from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1W5a-3jM7UChdsN4LLucUfce7X9oca68Y

The echo-location-idea is quite an interesting and clever take on the theme! The idea is easy to get and the gameplay is fun (even though I'm really bad at it and get jump-scared by the enemy bugs at every turn). The UI is lacking in contrast though, and can be hard to read sometimes (e.g. the Exit button in the main menu).

@berin Thank you for the review. The jump scare part of it makes me smile as that is what I was aiming for with the ants. The UI is bad, I meant to change the buttons and to make a pause/exit screen, but had a hard time packaging it and ran out of time.

- Interesting idea, the echolocation effect lighting the walls was pretty cool.
- The first few maps seemed to be the same, then a little different and finally total shift leaving me confused. I feel it would be better if each map was different so the player would have to discover them.
- The echolocation timer left me waiting a couple of seconds waiting for it to come back, which wasn't very enjoyable. I think it would be nice to be able to use the echolocation more, but maybe it would have a weaker effect, like every second or two you could light up the wall you look at and 5 adjacent walls.
- I sometimes lost track of enemies chasing me, I;m not sure if they went invisible, but I think it would be good to always see the enemies, at least the ones close by, on account of being able to hear them.
- I also found the audio to be a bit loud and annoying

@ellaris Thank you for the feedback. The first few maps were trying to introduce the players to the concept so they could finish the later maps. It could have been done better for sure. I also wanted players to have to be in the dark a bit. The enemies glow so they actually can help you see when they are close to walls.

Congrats on finishing this project! Loved the idea, even though I don't have a good mental map.

This was pretty cool. I liked the idea of the "sonic discovery" but I feel like the walls it lit up were inconsistent. This made the final level difficult, but not in a fun way.

I do like the actual graphics though. The sonic discovery looks pretty cool, and I like that activated enemies light their surroundings with a dull red glow.

The sound design is a mixed bag however. The footsteps are a bit too loud, same with the sonic discovery. It was kind of grating.

I like the game concept and I hope to see a refined version at some point.

@real-flamingicecubegames Thank you for the feedback. This was my first time making sounds myself, so I have a ton of growth in that area for sure. The inconsistency of the walls lighting up has to do with the method I used. The sonic discovery really should have been a directed cone and ray traced, but I just made it a giant invisible ball that grew. Anything it overlapped lit up, so it led to some strange interactions.

Interesting idea for a game, I wish the "sonic recovery" was faster because I sometimes just couldn't quite tell where I am.

Good idea for the game, I definitely felt quite lost though and found myself staying still waiting for my bar to recharge. It felt a little like cheap when I couldn't see a wall and then suddenly I'm dead.

@monsieurduck Thank you for the feedback. The game is intended for you to stop and recharge. The walls don't kill you so you must have been chased by an ant. The ants glow and can actually help you see a bit if you stay ahead of them.

I really enjoyed your game, although I'm biased as I'd been working on something a bit similar as a pet project for the better part of this year (though it's been untouched for a couple of months... we'll see if I ever get motivated to finish it). I wrote down some feedback as I played, but your commenters have been pretty thorough so far, so I'll just add that it would be helpful if the map room was lit up or made of unlit materials so that we didn't have to waste our first charge of the level checking the map before we went into the maze proper.

As I said, I like these sorts of games so if you decide to develop it more, @ me and I'd be happy to give it a play test or other feedback on specific things.

Well done on the compo!

@oter Really appreciate the comments. Would love to check out your game also. I had wanted to make the starting room lit in the levels after the first level as I kinda wanted you to click to see it at first so you saw how the echolocation thing worked. I had ~8 hours left to make changes like this and I decided to package my game and make sure I could upload it. I misunderstood the Ludum Dare limit on 256MB and ended up spending most of that 7 hours getting the game under that limit. Then I found out I could upload anywhere with no limit and the LD uploads quit working for a while anyway :(

I had a lot of fun playing the game! You had a great idea to include a map at the start of each level so dead ends don't feel cheap.

I think being unable to see the surroundings for a few moments and creepy bugs chasing the player make it a really scary game.

Good job!

Sorry you had such trouble uploading, I would have been so panicked if that had happened to me!

The game I made for this LD is very different from this type of thing, but here is a link to a WebGL build of my similar game. The main similarity is the use of light around the player, and mine was developing into a maze game, but this little gameplay slice is just a single room to get the idea of the mechanic.

https://play.unity.com/mg/other/webgl-builds-373698

The controls and everything are explained in the comment below the game, so make sure and read it all if you do decide to give it a try.

@oter Interesting concept. I think there is a lot of room to play with light. Players are so spoiled being able to see everything these days :)

Would recommend a Linux build!

I enjoyed the concept of this one quite a bit. I'm a sucker for maze games in general, but the need to remember and use the echolocation to get your bearings was a nice addition. I do think it would be more interesting if the echolocation used some kind of energy mechanic instead of a static cooldown, but that's a minor thing for a jam. Great work.

@bentglasstube ty for the feedback! I think there is potential with the idea but it definitely could use some refinement.