Downstairs

Great Narrative game! :smile:
The mood is excellent, the crisp graphics and the audio, Nice! :smile:

My main issue are with the platforming part, IDK why you have to hold Up to reach the next platform it's very unintuitive and frustrating. I ended up always holding my up key... :cry:

@doomky Thanks for the feedback!

You have to press up because you have to be careful when doing acrobatics on the stairs! Wouldn´t want to teach the youngsters to carelessly jump around on them ;-)

I loved the atmosphere in this game, really unsettling and the controls added a nice amount of tension without feeling too frustrating.
One minor complaint, esc key closing the application killed me, i was pretty deep into a run and hit the key out of habit to pause, and it totally ruined the run. The up key on the jump was also a bit cruel, caught me out a few times, but it did add to the tension.
Art and audio were great, overall very nice game.

@sharky3188 Thanks for your feedback and sorry for the inconvenience! I disabled it so that it won't happen to other players in the future - this would just be bothersome for people trying to play our game.

It is little too long for me, tbh. But it is good game with good mood! Thank you ^_^

*edit The link gives this kind of error. But thanks @peringo The mirror link works!

The game was just as amazing as it looks like in the screenshot. I got really good SCP vibes out of it and the overall quality was extremely polished. I got stuck when needed to shoot while the stairs were exploding below my feet. It's not as easy as action movies make it seem. Extremely well done!

Download links give "Not found" error :( The game looked really cool and would have loved to try it

@temposter Both links seem to work? I can upload a google drive mirror I guess.

Encountered some difficulties - on my keyboard all the arrows are one key and it is not very convenient to press it to the right and up at the same time. But I liked the game, I am very curious what would happen next (got stuck somewhere at level 5 because I am clumsy).

Very good game, it should take TOP 10, good gameplay, good visual, everithing good, but control shooting is hard

I would’ve preferred the action to start just a bit sooner — I get that it builds suspense, but for a jam game, it felt a little like stretching out gameplay minutes. The controls are tough, but in a good way — especially the jump, which feels like a cool challenge.

Very cool game! Amazing atmosphere and work with music and sounds. I just don't understand why the jump mechanics are made so inconvenient that you just need to press "up" again. But the presentation of the plot and the atmosphere are at an excellent level! Great work!

This game has a very cool mood! Got to the end after some trying. Kept dying in the first stairs since I was jumping. The having to press up is a bit odd, just had to keep it pressed. Other than that it was a nice experience. Nice work!

Nice keep it up!

I think in games like this it’s important to regularly give the player bits of content to keep them engaged. At times, my brain was only focused on holding the up arrow (which, by the way, felt a bit unintuitive), and during long descents where nothing was happening, I just felt like quitting.

That said, I really loved the visuals and the sound design. The core idea is super cool!

Great atmosphere and sounds, nice job!

I had an issue trying to play the game. Dialog plays fine, but in-game I can't see anything. I've included a link to the recording

video

... okay, the link won't show. I'll share the link with Nick

Hey @pretendcoding have you tried the shaderless version? Some dvices have problems with our CRT shader and show a black screen after the intro.

@sn4pi The only file I'm able to download is from the google drive; the other two lead to a "file not found" page

@pretendcoding I deleted the old uploads and reloaded it. It should work now, at least for me.

Seems like a bug with the LD page I guess, at the start it worked perfectly

@sn4pi I am so glad I got to play this! First off, Nick and I are gonna have a chat, the sfx are too spooky :rofl: This game gave me chills, it was really fun to play. When I noticed my other soldiers just disappeared, I paused and started looking around, trying to go back up. The first monster also got me a little. The only gameplay issue I had was after my first death, about halfway down the stairs the camera kept rubberbanding but it cleared up when I stopped moving and started again. This was a really good and fun game to play, you guys did a great job!

i like the vibe

:/ I can't get this to open on my machine (Windows 11). I just see a nearly-blank black screen, with a tiny bit of something faint in the top-left corner.

Very cool and a bit gloomy as for me the general atmosphere of the game, musical accompaniment and also retention to the game, the highest rating, thanks for the game

Hey @ukulelefury have you tried playing the shadeless version? Some devices have problems with our CRT shader and show a black screen

@Sn4pi :) Thanks! This sounded fun, so I was really hoping to try it out. The shaderless version worked!

I love the pixel art and animations. The controls feel a bit unintuitive to me, but they work well enough once I figured it out. I love the dialog and atmosphere! This was a lot of fun. It felt a tiny bit slow to me at the start, but I guess that helps let the atmosphere sink in. :) Very cool game!

I loved the game but it was a little too long and the centipedes are way too hard because they can get into a spot where you cant shoot. Other than that the game was great had a lot of fun playing it and the music was great :)

The visual effects and moodiness were spot on, well done on making it spooky to play.

The most important piece of advice – I recommend that you change the icon. Here's the frame composition I suggest to make the icon more engaging and clickable.

I'll share the rest of the feedback in the coming days.

This game is so atmospheric and creates such a wonderful, tense, fun mood. Really enjoyed the way the challenge ramped alongside my growing skill so it never felt too easy or too hard. Loved the art, sounds, everything. Great game!

`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBfaZje8liE`

Amazing game with fantastic atmosphere! The pixel art and sound design create a really spooky mood that kept me on edge. The story pulls you in from the start, and the tension builds perfectly as you descend deeper. Good job!

Masterful use of suspense! It definitely kept my attention the entire time I played. I also think, given it's on stairs, the use of the up-key in jumping felt appropriate; my having to be more aware of what keys I was pressing added to the suspense. I do think the enemies could've been more unnerving and contrasted with the background more. Maybe having them move slightly faster with a more obvious audial cue. Besides that, love it. Great job!

I never thought all of this was caused by broken pr.... ahem, never mind.
This game is really depth, literally and technically. I really dislike the extra effort just for jumping properly, it only adds frustration instead of adding tense. But I'm okay with reloading feature cause it's natural.
The stairs graphic is repetitive but I believe it's deliberate and adds to difficulty.
That being said, I love the fact that this game offers more stu.. enemies as the game gets deeper, makes the game varying and not boring.

Awesome addition. I love the atmosphere and suspense. For me the controls are a little clunky. I get the point of stopping for shoting, like in resident evil, i would have used different keys.
Jumping mechanic is ok, but kind of does not add to the game.
It's a good idea to restart the level like you do, so the waiting time is very short.

Overall, it's one of the most polished games i played this LD and i liked it.

Very well done, great idea well executed! Very good audio any visuals, and whenever I felt the game was starting to lose me you added a new enemy. It kept me captured to the end of the game. Great choice to restart the level. The jump mechanic wasn't my favourite, but I get that you needed to add a little something extra to the game. Generally you executed your idea very well!

I do have some feedback, though it may seem nitpicky, that is just because there are no mayor flaws/problems I could find, so just small suggestions :)

The audio is great, especially the ost (though one of the tracks with the droning ambient noise could be a tad bit quiter), but it I think it would benefit greatly from positional audio. When you enter the level you are immediately spoilt by audio cues of new monsters, giving away the surprise. It would also allow you to play audio behind the player, scaring them to look up the stairs. The text audio could also be a bit filtered and less loud.

Another thing is that the enemies, whilst well made, do take a bit away from the creepyness. I thought I would be stalked, loose my mates one by one, or see eyes distant in the dark. At some point I just started running past obstacles I deemed annoying.

Nerve racking and interesting. I think I lost around level 5 when reloads did not seem to work for me anymore. Nice job with the enemy variety.

Ok, so I have mixed feelings about this one. First off, immediate SCP vibes, reminded me a bit of this one: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-087

I also had exactly zero problems running it on Linux under Pop_OS 22.04 using Bottles, didn't even have to try the shaderless version because the normal one worked perfectly fine.

That's not bad at all, just an observation. Graphics and mood were amazing. I didn't really like the controls, felt like it was too much for aiming/shooting to need an aim button, then arrows to aim and then another key to fire, maybe mouse aim/shoot would be better. Creepy vibes were a M O O D (in a very good way)

The stupid bugs. OMG the bugs were the worst thing ever! Not anything wrong with the code, the literal flying insect thingies that kept slapping me lol

It did start to feel a little "same-y", almost like when you buy a Steam game that starts to feel like the dev wants you to play more than 2 hours so you can't refund it? But you did mix it up with the platforming vs having to fight different types of enemies, so it wasn't a terrible time.

Last complaint, though. WHAT kind of gun holds 5 bullets, at least from what appears to be like a SWAT unit or something sent in by emergency services to check out an anomaly in a basement? And how many magazines did you bring, because I reloaded like, a half million times easy. Where do you keep all that ammo? :sweat_smile:

Overall, great vibes, good mood, and a fun experience (I probably legit played it for over an hour before getting to the end) so great job!

It doesn't boot on my computer idk why :(

@transkuja habe you tried the shadeless version? It might help for some devices

@sn4pi Yes it worked!
Really cool creepy ambiance, I love the animation of the guy reloading :smile:

Quick working my way through a few more games before the rating period is over, so didn't reach the end (got up to the mummy level). But the game has some intense vibes! The controls take some getting used to, but it's satisfying to learn how things work, and it introduces things gradually enough that it's never frustrating.

The soundtrack is awesome! I love how it fades through subtly different tracks and sections (and silence). It helps it feel like something in the air is always changing, even though it's the same staircase. Some of it reminds me of the soundtrack to This War of Mine.

@sudocoffee that is one of the nicest things I've ever been told; thank you!