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ARORA's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #56 | 3.862 | 3.862 |
| Overall | #116 | 3.707 | 3.707 |
| Innovation | #142 | 3.655 | 3.655 |
| Visuals | #174 | 4.069 | 4.069 |
| Theme | #224 | 3.724 | 3.724 |
| Gameplay | #229 | 3.379 | 3.379 |
| Enjoyment | #244 | 3.552 | 3.552 |
Ranked from 29 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
You're in deep uncharted space, talking to long forgotten civilizations.
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
The font is m5x7 by Daniel Linssen (here on itch.io).
Sound effects dowloaded from Pixabay (credited in game)
How many people worked on the game?2
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Comments
Omg this is super polished ! Super cohesive ! Love the proposition ! Congrats !
Feel free to test our game !
Wow, so cool! Super polished and smooth to play. Genuinely felt like you're digging through old logs and uncovering secrets from the past, with a slowly building feeling of dread. Definitely one of the best games I've played in this jam.
Can't believe you set up a text parser in a game jam (tbh I have no idea how complex that is, but it definitely feels like it is!)
Thank you!
To be honest I wanted to make it a bit more in depth but due to time we ended up using a keyword system. Since progress in the game is tied to knowing certain words, we tied that up with specific triggers for the messages that unlock them. So it's a very basic parser that just looks for those trigger words to make progress. Of course, there are other trigger words that return flavor text, then there's the commands (which also have variations internally), and we tried including some easter eggs in there too! (which I would have liked to include more but was running out of time!)
I had so much fun playing, I was totally captivated and immersed in it. I really enjoyed piecing together the story and figuring out what questions to ask was a really interesting way to move the story forward. Fantastic work!
Did you draw all that at the beginning? Nice!
Yes! I used lots of references because I'm not really an artist, so I'm trying to improve.
Yeah, but that's really dope even if you used references, the interpretation is there !
The storytelling here is so good. Despite I didnt complete it, it actually satisfied me every time I learn something new from these signals. Sometimes as I saw it might be inconsistent in words (answered to "consuming" but not "consume"?) but it's ok for gamejams. Great job
The game was so fun to play. I really felt like discovering something scary. but somehow i got stuck after like 30 mins. idk if i'm just dumb or something because i couldnt get like any new knowledge. the diffrent signels led to each other when i wrote help. But it was like the game that fit the theme the best from the ones i played. Very good job guys!!!
Thank you for your comment!
Yes, we feel like the narrative and specifically how you're guided could have been much better, but it's a risk we were taking especially with the time limit.
We are very encouraged by the comments, though, and really appreciate that most seem to appreciate the story!
Interesting concept and story, I just wish the "help" was more helpful as I couldn't figure out how to progress and I think I got pretty far in the story. Good job overall, this was fun and unique!
Very amazing concept and game i really like the idea and sounds. It just need some kind of tab of which command can at first i can't understand it.
Wow I love this concept so much, very good game and cool style. Good job!
Cool graphics and gameplay.
This game is very solid, all-around. It's like you're actually in space, trying to explore these strange places. I found it very hard to guess the correct words/phrases until I kept scanning away.
The music is well-composed and fit the theme of being in a space adventure.
My initial problem was that sometimes I would forget the commands that I can type in the query until I refreshed the game to make sure I understood the entire query input.
The art of being inside space is very good too.
I did the music! β« Thank you for appretiating that aspect too β₯
All the rest of this amazing project was made by one person only (SourLemon) and, honestly, I'm very proud of this, he dedicated a lot of creativity and effort, and It's our first game. So thank you for your feedback! :) This will keep us going and learning.
Pretty cool game! I didn't really know what to do at the kid though, perhaps representing what stage I was at or giving more help would be nice. I love the vibe though, very mysterious. Well done.
Genuinely an incredible game. The story was engaging and really took advantage of the premise and gameplay. It's already been said that some of the prompts/wordings are vague and I think part of that is that there's no way to speed up text you've already seen so every time you get a prompt wrong or travel to a new area you need to wait for the dialogue to finish. This might also be a "bug", but when you first visit a place the "node" doesn't get marked as visited or current so it was sometimes confusing to tell between the newly "discovered" node and where you were. Other than that, I really liked the visuals, music ,and UI.
Totally fair.
Yes, we tried to keep a balance between not outright giving the answers but also not keeping it so vague that it no one can finish it. Clearly the balance is off but it's something that we'll keep in mind in the future! Thank you so much for your feedback.
Oh and BTW, you can speed up text, it reacts to the spacebar, the ENTER and Z keys on the keyboard! And yes, what you bring up is totally not intended, the nodes should indeed be updated on visit.
Genuinely an incredible game. The story was engaging and really took advantage of the premise and gameplay. It's already been said that some of the prompts/wordings are vague and I think part of that is that there's no way to speed up text you've already seen so every time you get a prompt wrong or travel to a new area you need to wait for the dialogue to finish. This might also be a "bug", but when you first visit a place the "node" doesn't get marked as visited or current so it was sometimes confusing to tell between the newly "discovered" node and where you were. Other than that, I really liked the visuals, music ,and UI.
What an incredible game. I was glued to my screen the entire time. My only complaint is that you can realize that you fell for the bait awhile before the game ends, so the ending feels a little anti-climatic. Other than that though this was incredibly and insanely polished.
Thank you for the kind words!
Totally get that. We intended the last part to go by quickly. The game doesn't really have anything left to reveal after you figure out it was a trap. You can stay and get more replies but since it's essentially done you can pretty much visit the last few signals right as they unlock, as the path is already set then. I would have loved to give it more polish in that sense but this is our first game so we had to cut a lot of things out of the scope to make it to the deadline.
Implementation is really good, like complete game level of polish. Story itself is engaging but it kind of tells you to stop playing it to not attract hunger. Also sometimes it is hard to guess the right words. Especially when it tells you to ask about something and then you asked it and it replies with "i don't know".
What a fun and $Tr@ng3 game! Incredible visuals.. a bit heavy handed on the text.. but neverthless quite fun. The art work (esp that animated sphere) and the core concept would have been quite a lot of work! Well done!
Ha, surprisingly the ball wasn't too hard, it was just drawing lines in 3D space, rotating by a little bit for each one, then just a bunch of circles for the "latitudes". Then it was a simple animation to get it rolling, and some interaction to react to the mouse. For the signals, it's the same thing but drawing squares and crosses, with a bigger radiuses to compensate for the sphere size!
The bulk of the work went into the script and getting the interactions just right, which I don't think I nailed perfectly based on playtesting and some comments, but I think we struck a pretty good balance between it being too obvious and being hard. I would definitely like to take another crack at it, though!
I really enjoyed playing this!! My only feedback would be that the tips are kind of hard to decipher and I found it hard to get the correct responses sometimes.. The visuals are great and very polished though.Well done!
I really enjoyed it
Wow this had me pretty hooked, I loved the concept, it's creative, original and polished, like someone else said, the help should be a bit more specific. Other than that I think you should definitely continue developing the game after the jam, it has potential!