OMG. Those starting platforms are too hard to navigate I got to the end one but then couldn't jump into the next room. Nicely presented though.
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A Dungeon Crawler with a new and innovative combat system (still in development).
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We'd be up for another one in the New Year
Derek Deagle - The Case of the Unknowable jam comments · Posted in Derek Deagle - The Case of the Unknowable jam comments
Very good entry to the jam. The graphics were low poly, but consistent and well presented with volumetric fog and particle effects adding to the atmosphere.
The game started well with a nice title and options screen. The entry voice over was extremely good, so good that I thought AI voiceovers had come along massively with perfect pausing and intonation that wasn't present in the text displayed on screen but when delivered as audio added depth and character that I've never heard before in AI. We then had to see what you'd used and found it was a real voice actor, and a great one at that, so AI still isn't quite there. Good choice here.
The in-game user interface was very nicely presented with the inventory (and background image), compass and special item slots for weapons, hat, etc. We only found one of each during our play but that did give us the anticipation that we would find a hat or helmet and we were satisfied when we could put the fancy hat in its slot. All this looked great, although you might want to remove the background embossed version of the slot item when its filled as it looked strange to see the actual dagger and ghost outline of a sword behind it at a different angle. On one of our machines we got a constant flicker from from the UI when the inventory panel was up. It might have been tooltips being shown for a frame and then hidden again, but it was a bit off-putting.
We loved the gun cartridge and reload animations, again making it really satisfying to reload while also giving you all the information needed to know how many bullets you had left and how many were chambered. You also seemed to have a map on load/save/restart (we think). It appeared but we didn't know what we were looking at and couldn't find key to bring it up in-game.
Combat worked OK. We noticed that once you were in combat you couldn't seem to retreat, which avoids the two-step to evade enemies. The health bars were good, but when we did 3/4 damage we weren't sure what the scale was to understand what that meant in relation to how much they had left. It's interesting to be able to see your weapons on front of you. We liked that but a lot of the more classic games and copies don't show any weapons and might only show a slash graphic when you use them. It was good to see you go the other way. Enemy animations were nice to see and you'd put in enough audio and visual feedback on hits to make them have a satisfying feel.
The font choice seemed nice and appropriate but there were times where there might have been up to four different fonts on the screen at once, all from different font families, which made the UI seem less cohesive and more glued together. For example there were different fonts for:
- The damage/log text on the top left
- The "Young Man..." dialog box
- The compass directions NSEW
- Inventory titles "Derek" and "Paranormal Detective" (maybe these were just SmallCaps/Narrow versions?)
Movement and turning were good for the most part. Free-look would have been nice so you could appreciate your surroundings more, such as the asset for the house, which looked great, with lots of "clutter"/"set dressing". This also added to the feeling of depth and atmosphere in the game. Things like the message in blood on the walls and doors, and the odd cobweb or broken window, were nice touches. The portraits with the dark highlights on the low poly characters looked amazing.
However, parts of the house didn't seem well aligned with the dungeon crawler movement grid, so often you would be a long way away from a wall, but not be able to move as close as you expected to be able to. Or there were doors you couldn't reach, or doors, that you (or enemies) went through, that were off center on the screen which looked a bit janky at times. You did well to try to fit an existing asset into this genre though, all things considered. The fact that the house was different on your return was a great touch too. At first we thought, "nice, the mirror is now broken", and then we realized it was essentially a new level with lots of changes. This worked very well.
The music and sound effects were good and added to the polish of the game a lot. As we've mentioned, we loved the voiceover!
We enjoyed playing Derek Deagle very much. Possibly a few more puzzle type elements, some UI fixes and level layouts, and this would have been a near perfect entry in our opinion. Great job.
We've never seen RPG in a Box before so that was really interesting to experience a game in it. We're guessing the UI issues were related to the game engine?
The graphics were nice and self-consistent. The voxel approach worked well here. Even the ambient occlusion added something unexpected to what were basically extruded sprites. The variety of the items you could interact with was great. The level design was excellent. You really felt like you were on a spaceship or on different planets. You'd incorporated all the themes in a way that wasn't a stretch, even the Infinite bit where the game restarted at the end (and we groaned). Picking up things from cupboards was very satisfying.
A/D to rotate. Q/E to strafe. NOOOOOOOOOOOO...!!!!!! This almost made the game unplayable for us, especially on the lava planet maze where we were constantly strafing when we meant to turn and then ended up in the lava taking damage.
The user interface was a bit frustrating. Sometimes you were blocked from moving and sometimes you weren't. It was neat that you could move windows around but sometimes they lingered when you moved away from the place they were supposed to be. We had the Neutride Engine slots visible while we were on the planets. We thought putting the crystals in the slots at that point would cause a bug so we didn't but it was a bit messy. The Inventory was also on the screen when were were in the space view navigating to planets. The window configurations seemed to change randomly and it ultimately detracted a bit from the fun of the game. The madness bar made us mad, because we couldn't tell whether it was full or empty. It should probably have had the same background color as the health bar, even if the foreground color was different.
The combat worked well, even though it didn't kick in until we were 30 mins+ into the game. It was simple, and you only had one weapon (that we found) but we could feel the potential for more in there. The enemies had health bars that were nice, so you could see if you were close to killing them, even the boss at the end. The enemies even had animations to them in their voxel form which was a nice touch.
The narrative text was at the right level. Most of the time you didn't show more than one or two lines of text so it wasn't overwhelming to read. It would have been better if you didn't have to click out of it to continue moving, it stalled the gameplay when it didn't need to. Perhaps this was an RPG in a box issue?
The sounds helped with the immersion and you got audible feedback on things you did in game which was nice.
We finished the game after 56 minutes of play time and we enjoyed it a lot. Good consistent graphics and sound, atmospheric with good narration. Nearly perfect for a jam, had it not been for the UI and controls. Well done!
The graphics seemed nice, even though the wall textures were limited and overall it lacked a bit of variety. The monsters were self-consistent in themselves but graphically being 2D black and red sprites, they weren't in keeping with the rest of the game which was nicely 3D and had some color differences. Font was OK - Did you create it yourself.
Movement and camera angles were good, although no freelook. Controls were .... infuriating. Pretty much every game on the planet uses A/D to strafe and Q/E to rotate. Why go against everyone's muscle memory? Is there a reason why you went with this, like it's default in some classic Dungeon Crawler that we haven't played?
User Interface was nice and clean, and self-consistent. The 10 inventory slots that you could use with the number keys were easy to use and understand. The tooltips showing the item's stats were great. The idea that you could only use something a certain number of times with the Durability (or even the key) was a nice way to do it.
Chests looked great and opened nicely and presented you the item for your inventory. Until you could only chose 1 of 3? If we've opened a chest, we want the whole loot. It's not Trick Or Treat and we're saving something for the next visitor! It's interesting in some ways because it is a choice and a decision the player can make, and possibly on replays you might chose a different path, but it wasn't what we were expecting when we opened it.
It wasn't clear what our max health was (we think 100), you just knew what your current health was. For the enemies you had no idea how much health they had so you couldn't make an informed decision about whether they were about to die and you could get away with a sword hit, or if they needed a mega-wallop from the hammer, reducing it's durability. You could see damage being done and received and the feedback was good there but without enemy health numbers there was no context to understand what effect the numbers were having.
Enemies seemed to spawn (and re-spawn) at random, which discourages you from exploring as you may randomly be attack at all times, even after you think you've cleared an area. We forgot/missed the 'F' to parry so we don't know how good that might of been. We partly forgot we think because 'F' was also used to interact with chests. You could have made the left mouse button be the attack and the right mouse button be parry, especially since there was no freelook. There was no chance to retreat and you couldn't see them coming so it was hard to prepare for combat.
The destructible walls, using the hammer (at the expense of its durability), was a great addition. It was clear where it was breakable and it was satisfying to break it. It kind of felt like you should have to hit it twice though as the hole wasn't big enough to walk though , but you could walk through it anyway, which was slightly immersion breaking. The graphics for before and after for the break in the wall were very good and completely consistent with the surrounding textures and artwork.
We only played for about 10-15 minutes in the end because the random combat encounters were so brutal we just died before we felt we had a chance to get any further, even using up all our hammer hits. If this had been easier, or you respawned close to where you died, and not at the beginning again, we may have played for longer.
Really nice game overall. Simple but effective graphics and bug free. Not too many puzzle mechanics (maybe there were later on) but those that were there were well done. It's just a shame the combat was too difficult for us to play and didn't make us want to replay. Well done with your jam entry!
Sorry about the double post, we didn't notice we'd done that. Please show a play through video, we'd love to see all the content of the game, even if it doesn't change our rating and review.
Arlorean's wife is called Jil(l) so we felt OK saying this and we're always ready for the earful!
That had a lot of potential. It was great to see classic dungeon crawler elements like fireball emitters (very nicely done), hidden walls (brutal from the first room though), secret door with secret buttons, teleporters (aggrrr), random rotations (very disorienting). You were only missing push/pull blocks, pressure plates and pit traps for the full monty.
The opening screen was nice, if you made it by hand especially. The logo could perhaps have been more solid, rather than as soft as it was. It didn't stand out enough from the background art style. Font was just the Unity default, it would be nice to have seen a font choice made to match the art style in some way.
The first voiceover had us impressed, it sounded good (for AI we assume). But then there was too much of it, and too much narrative text that didn't add enough to the start of the game when you just wanted to start playing. One paragraph, start the game and then maybe reveal some of those lines as you progress through the game. When you added narrative in game you blocked the player until they pressed Next which affected the flow of the game negatively. It didn't add enough to the "fun" or "playability" of the game to warrant forcing you to take notice of it before continuing.
Movement was OK, but it was very fast and snappy, not very smooth and the movement between tiles was very linear and didn't suggest you were walking. Tile size and camera angle seemed on point. There was no free look, which would have been nice in the larger rooms.
Combat was OK, although it wasn't very satisfying when you did damage, or eliminated an enemy. They just disappeared with no sound effects or graphical effects to indicate you'd won. We actually looked around to see if the enemy had run away. We only found two attacks you could do, close up melee or a ranged attack. Some enemies fired diagonally at you, which was a surprise, and not in classic grid crawlers. It also meant you could easily two step and range attack on the other square after it shoots. We died almost instantly, after 35 mins of player when we encountered a brutal guy with demonic symbol behind him. With them all being sprites there was no rotation element to their movement which might let you get a side attack in before they could launch an attack. This may have been deliberate but then it's attacks perhaps shouldn't be so devastating.
The lighting and shadows were a bit confusing in places. Sometimes they cast through walls from other rooms when they shouldn't have, making it disorienting and immersion breaking. The textures were OK but they didn't seem to fit with the lighting and shadow styles somehow. In some cases, like the brickwork, the textures didn't tile correctly so it was visually jarring to see. The lighting seemed to be blown out in places too (possibly a Unity URP issue). The textures were all just diffuse, possibly with a specular component to some parts, but no normal maps, ambient occlusion, etc. They might have enhanced the atmosphere a bit more, and disguised some of the texture tiling problems as well.
Sound effects were OK with the ambient background noise and doors opening. We didn't hear any music at the start or during the game, which might have added to the combat a bit.
Overall, a good entry with lots of interesting aspects, but perhaps it didn't come together quite as cohesively as your NeuroNexus entry last year. We had some fun in places, but we had more fun with your previous entry.
Thanks for you feedback and for playing our game. Sorry about the bugs with the rat and combat in general. We will try to do an update with a fix post jam and we'll let you know when we think it's worth having another try, if you're up for it. Glad you liked the graphics, puzzles and atmosphere.
We look forward to playing your game soon.
Thanks very much for playing our game. Sorry about the bugs in the combat. We just ran out of time to finish it and test it properly. You did well to persevere after a restart, so we appreciate that. Hopefully we'll have fixes for all this post jam if you fancy a replay.
We look forward to playing your game soon.
Brilliant game. That checked every box for us for what a dungeon crawler should be. Multiple characters with inventories, pickups, equip-able items, skills, different attack types, health and mana. You have multiple puzzles, different biomes, verticality, steps (half height - is that legal @Zooperdan? - we don't care, we loved them), secret walls, pressure plates (activated by your character or items), wall buttons, keys, etc. Just excellent!!!
A-D Rotate, Q-E Strafe. OMG, why oh why did you do this? We nearly stopped playing straight away because of this, which would have been a travesty. Please, please, please use the same keys as every other game ever written (apart from this one).
The sound was good, perfect for pickups, combat music, ambient sound, enemy grunts. Very complete and served its purpose well. Feedback from these sounds for all actions was great to have.
The user interface was very good. Nice to have inventories for characters. We weren't sure how the Strength/Dexterity/Body/Mind stats affected things. We also didn't work out what AP stood for. If it's action points, what are they and how do they work? We kept trying to put pickups in the skills slots for some reason (well Dan did). It was nice to be able to see equipped items as green and save you having to create a separate UI for body slots, which was reasonable.
Combat ability slots weren't visible while you were in combat, or maybe if they stayed visible until you clicked a close button. It was off the screen so you couldn't tell what attack you were doing with which character while you were spamming the left click button. The weapons and skills clearly had some effect on combat but there wasn't enough time to make an informed decision about which weapon to use in each situation. Was there an ordering to our team members in terms of who got hit first? It was nice to have multiple enemy and be able to target them individually. The two step was still there though as you danced around doing an attack and then stepping back to avoid being hit and then attacking again. It wasn't clear how many hit points each enemy had in total, or remaining, so you couldn't make a tactical decision to one or the other. Health bars/numbers might have made combat more informed and engaging.
Although the graphics were clearly pixel based, they were very nicely done and self-consistent. The font was simple and used consistently throughout. It would be nice to see a devlog showing what artwork you created with AI and how you did it.
We played for 46 minutes but didn't finish it. We didn't want to stop, we really wanted to finish it but we ran out of time and had to move onto another game. This was a great sign though as had it not been a jam, we would have played it to the end. We did feel a bit lost at the end though so a map may have been good. although with the verticality it may have been hard to present and interpret. Level design overall was very, very good and interesting and engaging. We wanted to explore.
Well done for producing such a great jam game. We absolutely loved it.
Jil was really annoying.
On the surface this game looks amazing and gives the impression it's very complete with character inventories, level and skill advancement, etc. However, when we played it felt like the graphics were really not part of the game, they were just set pieces outside of a very linear path. The starting town for example. It looked great, but you couldn't interact with anything or even go onto the grass, just follow the brick road.
Jil was really annoying.
The combat wasn't as exciting as we were hoping it was going to be. We were doing damage but had no idea what the damage numbers meant since we couldn't see an enemy health bar to judge how much health they had in total or remaining. The enemies teleported between tiles in a way that was a bit jarring since the attack animations were so good (Courtesy of Protofactor - good choice!). DamageNumbersPro added a bit to the enjoyment as numbers appeared and disappeared with nice animations. Perhaps use a different font next time though so it isn't so obviously a dropped in asset.
Movement, turns and camera angles looked good, although the lack of free look felt like a missed opportunity, given how nice the visuals were.
We think we were caught out by the teleporter bug because we ended up in an area underground that we couldn't get out of. This was after 30 minutes of play time.
Jil was really annoying.
It would have been nice to have clicked on doors to interact with them to open them, rather than using the keyboard, although you did mention this on your submission page.
Almost as annoying as Jil, were the constant 1XP messages that appeared every time you moved one tile. It seemed unnecessary, although the Jake and Jil Level Up was nice. Allocating the points after levelling up was above and beyond most jam entries and a nice touch, although we seemed to have to randomly jab around the plus symbol to get them to increase. Were some of them locked? We didn't see a reason if they couldn't be increased beyond that number and there was no visual or audible feedback that you'd hit a limit. On the stats "Interlect" should probably be spelt "Intellect" but if English isn't your first language (or even if it is Dan), spelling is hard.
We picked up a key from a chest but never saw where it went or whether it was in our inventory. Or maybe it got used and we didn't realize?
The was a graphical glitch when the double doors slid open and the door was partially visible in the wall.
Very well presented game that looked like it could be really fun to play, but at the end of the day seemed to lack content in terms of puzzles and things to explore and find. Maybe we hit the bug too soon. We'd like to see a full play through video of this so we can experience what the whole game was like. Great job. The toolkit looks very promising, best of luck with it.
We found Jil slightly annoying, in case you couldn't tell.
Amazingly well presented, great user interface. It oozed potential with the backpack, item descriptions, stats modifiers and character traits and abilities. The "What have you learned", etc. journal/quests page was a great touch. This really felt like a classic RPG of old. Great job. Font was a great choice as well BTW!
As you've probably noticed, we're not huge fans of the retro 8 bit style graphics ourselves but it was all self-consistent. The instant movement and lack of free look made it feel a bit clunky and disorienting when moving around. The textures for walls were almost identical in many places, like the dark cave in the forest, so sometimes I wasn't even sure if I'd moved forwards or not.
Verticality was a nice touch and worked pretty well in the library.
We spotted some typos in the narrative text. On the "New Books Table" the "Well" at the end should probably be "Will". The "Cursed Book" "draw" should probably be "drawn". It's OK. Dan (our artist) can't spell either.
Combat was nicely done. Turn based like the original rogue type combat mechanic. You move and then they move at the same time. Don't move and nothing happens. It's more tactical, which can be good and less sweaty. You avoided the two step by locking into combat when an enemy was next to you. Multiple enemies could attack at once as well and you saw an arrow indicating when they were there but offscreen. The special abilities like Frenzy and Defend which showed an active icon and the number of turns remaining for that effect was excellent. We weren't sure what the scale of health was for any of the enemies so when we did 5 damage, we couldn't understand what that meant. The enemy health light did change color but it was a very coarse way of describing enemy health. It didn't make for meaningful combat decisions.
Lots of really nice narrative touches were in there like walking up to the walls with number lines etches into them and it mentioning counting the days. This enhanced the theme of solitude. Having a conversation with someone and not killing them and them telling you about a key was something rarely done in the dungeon crawler jam and we did like that. Intro was nice, we were worried it was going to be too wordy but actually you hit the sweet spot on that.
We played for 47 minutes but couldn't get out of the forest so we quit the game. At one point a Hint came up that suggested we might have hit a bug as it said we could interact with the books of the walls, but all we saw were trees.
Sound was good with nice UI and combat sound effects.
Very small point, and we're only mentioning it because everything was so polished and well done. The light direction on your buttons seemed off on the start menu. The title "Library of Endless Souls" has the light from the top left, but the buttons/panel edges suggest it's coming from the top right. Also, when your backpack needed a scrollbar, the mouse scroll wheel didn't seem to be calibrated properly so you couldn't move more than a few pixels at a time. Thankfully you could drag to scroll. Again, small point but you might want to fix it in your toolkit.
Overall that is one of the best entries we've seen in a game jam. It felt very complete and so much thought had gone into everything, from the UI to the narrative and then the combat system. Great job. We're inspired by your entry to try to do more things like yours in our next game.