Into The Nightmare

nice game! I like intro and trauma sfx is really creepy (until you meet them face to face XD)

@beareye Thank youuuu :D yeah I'm definitely not an artist and traumas prove it haha. I'll test your game as soon as I get to my laptop :) and here's a unicorn for you :unicorn:

This has a mood to it that I really like, and some great audio design. Movement was a bit clunky though

Excellent atmosphere, and I particularly like the perspective given by the torch / flashlight. It's just enough to remove all peripheral vision but not so much it feels needlessly small. It's a great balance that makes everything much more tense, but not annoying which is a hard balance to strike.

The SFX is great, and really adds to the mood. Thanks!

@weglove Thank youuu for playing :) Yeah maybe sometimes it's a bit odd, I hope to improve the next time :D

@slippers Thank you for your review, I'm so happy to see you here :D SFX could have been great but man, the KEKIA. I will spam your game to others haha

The sfx is really well done! And i love how the flashlight feels

I love this style, it definitely has me on my toes after a few replays, thank you for making the bad things not as scary lol I was bracing myself!

Thanks for sharing this on stream! For a first LD entry from a new dev, there are some really nice details in this game. Directional audio is a really cool way to navigate (sorry my headphones were kinda busted for that one), and I like how enemies are hidden by shadows EXCEPT for their eyes... which blink too! Really nice details.

The random map generation is genuinely very impressive, I'm not sure how I would go about making something like this. Procedural maps are very often grid-based patterns, lots of uniformity within the randomness. This map gen is way more reminiscent of The Backrooms, with weird unexpected corridors crammed in uncanny places - it's very cool.

Rooms are empty except for the enemies, so that's a natural expansion point for potential future dev. Some different room types with different props, and possibly new enemy types too. It's cool that they already have some pathing to chase you, and there could be more with different behaviours to spice things up.

Thanks for the game!

@skyeward Thank you for your nice review! :) For the procedural generation I used some binary space partitioning and then just put corridors around to be sure the map was all connected, without any disconnected room in the "graph". Model wise it took mostly quads and cubes with textures I found on the asset store.

I worked with what I got in my skillset, trying to give this eerie mood with (admittedly) modest graphics haha mainly with sound (the frequency cut behind walls), delayed torch and the emit light and blinking on the enemies haha :)

Really thank you for playing, rating and reviewing my game :D

@7moons Yeah, it just felt too simple and "fake" to have the torch pointing straight with no delay. Also this way the player can't turn around super quick :) Thank you so much for playing, rating and reviewing :D

@tenthousandfireants YAY! That was my intention, to give a feeling of tension trying to hook up the player into running around the maze :) I couldn't afford any different style for the bad things, as I really didn't have the time nor the skills to model a better / animated one haha. Really thank you for playing, rating and reviewing too (: I'll try and rate yours now!

Don't know why but i used my headphones correctly but when trauma was on left side i heard it from right. But animations was very good! I liked eyes!

@vydra ouch! :( Runs fine here so it's probably a bug I didn't catch in time. I'm so sorry, I'll inspect more with different hardware to see if I can replicate it :cry:

Super thank you for reporting it and playing my game. Very appreciated :smile: (and well done with the compo)

The game is super fun! The sounds kept me on the edge, and I honestly enjoyed playing until the end.

I like the Traumas whispers and eyes, they really add to the atmosphere.

I also appreciate the fact that you didn't implement jumpscares ahahah

Cool game! I liked that you added an opening cutscene to give broader context. Was disorienting trying to navigate the maze, and the delayed flashlight is a nice touch. I think the beeps lead me straight to my actual goal without helping me navigate, which makes sense, but is a bit frustrating for larger levels with dead ends. Was fun kiting the bad guy and the sound effects are well down. Overall, nice cohesive entry!

Very uneasy feeling whilst playing the game, I like voices following you really made me feel tense. I found it got a lot less scary once I saw one of the traumas up close though, they look quite chill xD. The mazes difficulty seemed a bit inconsistent, the first one felt like a decent level of difficulty, but the second I walked for ages and couldn't find a way to get to the sound, then just searched the maze entirely and still couldn't find it (not sure if it was a bugged gen). After purposely dying and retrying the level, it only took about 10 seconds to find it. Nonetheless really cool entry good job!

Was a nice spin on the theme. I do feel at times the beeping wasn't massively helping me and I ended up searching manually for the end of the level. The trauma chasing you was nice, didn't feel overly oppressive, but also still stressed me when it got close!

Not bad! I like the sound

Cool. Nice use of directional audio. I liked the flashlight, it felt well implemented and added a lot to the ambience. The minimal art style works for what you were going for, and from an engineering perspective I was impressed with the procedural generation.

I do wish there was a bit more gameplay or variation. Even something simple like keys and locks, more enemy types, or a sprint meter for tense moments could help.

Random nit: it felt like there might be some carryover input or velocity between levels. When a new level started, I sometimes felt like I was moving uncontrollably for a moment.

Thanks for the game!

@nyanra Thank you for playing :D no haha, it wansn't in my bingo card to implement jumpscares :)

@dan-whiffing @pegasys @hi-im-greg Yeah that's surely a rough edge. My first implementation generated a not fully connected building so I kind of "fixed" it by putting corridors in a not so clean way between disconnected rooms. That sometimes leads to weird structures that can result in a too easy or too difficult run. So I totally get the frustration that can happen sometimes and I'm sorry for that :sweat:
So overall balancing is far from perfect, I'll definitely look into that. Thank you very very much for playing and providing a valuable feedback also on what didn't work :heartbeat:

@itero-proto Thank youu (: It's my first time joining a jam, I'm having a course at university on videogame programming with unity since march and kind of rushed everything :smiley:

@beastpanda Definitely! I had the idea of some different and faster traumas wandering around whistling creepily. The keys / locks is a nice idea and the sprint was a thing I had in mind from the start but couldn't manage to implement. And there definitely is a carryover input between levels. Another bug I'll have to fix :sweat_smile: Thank you a lot for playing!! I'm really having a good experience so far here! :D

scary things scare me...

It was such a scary game, like *Liminal Spaces* like *Backrooms*

It's a really weird game, the initial introduction is okay, but the gameplay itself is weak.

@kkritselis @irkar thank youuu for playing :)

Well done! I like the horror idea, it's fun. I didn't run into too many enemies but the gameplay was nice, it was smooth and responsive, and the sound effects were great. Maybe a way to fight the enemies occasionally would've been good, but overall great entry!

@pixel-studios Thank you very much for playing and reviewing :D Yeah a bit more variation would have been good, maybe different enemies or as you said a fight system progressing with the levels :)

Thank you again for your time (:

The idea is nice on paper but I never really felt like the beep is leading me towards the final room. Some sort of higher or lower frequency depending on your distance would make sense. Also the levels felt a bit big. I think I kept running in circles for a few minutes without any Trauma spawning in.
My biggest issue was the camera that was lagging behind quite a bit. It just felt weird.

@coro-yy I think finding the optimal strategy to use the positional audio is the key to solve the game. I was even fearing that the game would have been at some point too easy :sweat_smile: However with more time and skills I could have balanced the difficulty better :)

I don't exactly get what is the camera lag. The spotlight that simulates the torchlight is intentionally lagging behind the camera via a lerp transform to give a feeling of increased "realism". I'm sorry you didn't like it :(

Really loved the atmosphere here, especially the sound and visual style. Felt oddly hypnotic))

Cool entry! The limited vision/movement is working well. I personally was glad that the traumas were not as scary as the audio. Good atmosphere!

Nice game ! I liked the ambience :)