April 26th-29th 2013 :: Theme: Minimalism
Ludum Dare 26 — April 26-29th, 2013
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You awake in complete darkness. You have no memory of who you are or how you got there. You know only one thing: You must escape.
Downloads and Links
Ratings
 | Coolness | 100% |
 | Innovation | 4.61 |
| Overall | 4.36 |
 | Theme | 4.57 |
| #6 | Mood | 4.45 |
| #26 | Audio | 3.98 |
| #28 | Fun | 3.90 |
| #94 | Graphics | 3.94 |
| #594 | Humor | 2.18 |
Comments
Very good gameplay. Innovative. Fucking love it. Now I'm jealous :S
The monsters are terrifying! Dying is terrifying! This game is wonderful. xD
WOW! Fantastic. That was an excellent game. Innovative, Minimal, Great audio, Nice graphics. The gameplay was fun and I found myself genuinely horrified of the red lines. Oh man that death sound. Only thing I found a bit off was the "Shift to Silent Walk" thing. I always founf myself stuck in a wall, having to walk anyway, plus I could usually outrun them if I needed to. Perhaps giving a really small pulse while shift is held instead of complete darkness. Otherwise, this was a fantastic game. I think my favorite so far.
Been a while since I've seen a game that incorporates sound as a gameplay mechanic like this. The mood is excellent and ties the whole experience together.
Wow, that was really cool. I loved the aesthetic and the audio design. Great work!
Very interesting mechanic. I couldn't keep track of where I was while walking silently, but I enjoyed everything up to that point.
This is a good implementation of a really neat premise. It reminds me of a documentary I saw on how some blind people use sound. I was already sold at the beginning, especially with the really cool visual effects to represent the sound, but then you had to go and add monsters. It's a really wonderful mechanic to have your only way of seeing the maze also attract monsters, and make the way to avoid them be blinding yourself and withholding the mechanic you just got attached to using.
That. Was terrifying.
Haha, awesome game, love the visual representation of the sounds. All round nice work!
Brilliant idea, and terrifying use of the theme. I shouldn't have played this right before bed...
Very interesting, the sounds are great! Check out my entry, I tried a similar idea but without being able to see the walls visually (it is very hard to navigate :P)
I like how sound expands. Its a really nice touch. My game plays with same idea but i didnt think about such a cool graphic touch :)
Brilliant idea. I love it, although having to give up the ability to locate yourself in order to avoid detection has lead to me more dying more times than just running. Great game!
WOW! Awesome idea, great execution, and nice interpretation of the theme. Really tense gameplay once you get into the higher levels! FANTASTIC ENTRY!
Wow, absolutely love this! It's beautiful. Vaguely similar idea to mine.
this was pretty cool. it was really awesome to be able to see sound. lol i've never been afraid of lines before :b
This is one of those games that makes me happy we have Ludum Dare.
Damn, so simple yet so awesome. One of the best I've seen yet. The initial mechanics reminded me a lot of one of the levels in Gumboy Crazy Adventure, but you expanded on it with traps and enemies to keep it fresh.
I couldn't work out the level where I started was surrounded by enemies and couldn't find a way out. Not sure what level though, the game is *that* minimalistic :P.
For those of you having trouble navigating in the dark - remember that you can quickly tap the spacebar to generate tiny noises to help locate yourself. Thanks everyone!
Very, Very Nice, really enjoyed it, great sound effects, great idea!
So awesome!, The whole concept, super simple yet so involving.
Congratulations !
This is a much better entry than my version of "Darkness"! Nice one!
This is my favourite game so far of this Ludum Dare! I really like the way you use the rays to show the level outlines, and its darn pretty when you do. Great job!
Awesome work, one of the best games I've played this ludum dare, innovative, great use of sounds and the mood is very suspenseful.
It is very good. I am not sure it feels like I'm using sound. I do like the little particles traveling in the space and exposing the structure around me. It is very unique to me as I don't remember seeing anything similar previously. Nicely done.
damn yes, near perfect. my only complaint is the pace of the levels becomes slightly tiresome after you introduce the baddies then have us walk around traps a bit with no baddies. i get that that increases tension for when they do come back, but it still might have been a level too long of tension building. regardless this is the best game i've played all dare. awesome job
I think that this is a really cool game. It has a good style, and the mechanic is used in some interesting ways. I do feel like running is USUALLY a better strategy than sneaking.
On that subject, I cannot beat the tiny level where you are surrounded by monsters.
@nintendoeats: You almost answered your own question there. Running is usually better if you know where to go, but sometimes sneaking is the only way out - especially when surrounded.
A very innovative and fun mechanic. Really nicely executed. Great game!
this is fantastic! wonderful sense of dread and tension from so little. the silent walking felt like it could use a little tweaking somehow, but that's just nitpicking
Very stylish game. It is also very creepy. Fiths the theme perfectly. Full scores for me all around :)
It's so creepy when you're caught and your screams echo through the levels. Thanks!
Simple and beautiful. Very nice job creating a suspenseful. Excellent work!
Fucking genius game!!!!!!!!!
Brillant idea, totally minimalist, and really fun to play. I enjoy every level, every nice touch of leveldesign you put. The gameplay is really pure, but it fits the theme, and it is kind of awesome. Thanks for an amazing game!
Excellent game! What a great idea! Would love to see this developed even further!
Really well done, all around. The audio, the mood, the fear. It's all there!
Cool idea, well executed, good use of theme! I think you could have just skipped the story as it is very cliche and unnecessary especially considering the theme is minimalism. The effect is nice and well used but visually it looks a bit sparse, it might stand out better if the lines were thicker and didn't fade out quite so fast. I felt the movement was a bit slow, maybe a run button would help. While I thought this was a solid entry but I didn't have that much fun playing it because really the only thing making the game difficult is the fact that you can't see well which isn't fun in and of itself. I ended up throwing in the towel after about 5 levels that seemed pretty similar with no change in gameplay so confess that I didn't make it all the way to the end.
Really fantastic concept - I was actually pretty tense when I was being chased.
This is outstanding, excellent idea executed perfectly! Looks and sounds great
Wow, that was pretty clever. Got frustrating in some of the later, fiddler levels though, where the big step size of your apparent movement made it pretty difficult to avoid the traps.
While there's not a lot of audio, what you made was very professional sounding to have been done in the time.
Wow. This is by far the most scary, most tense, most creative and most amazing game I've played so far. The notion of only being able to locate yourself by also telling all the monsters where you are is pure genius. This game could only work with excellent sound effects, and you nailed it.
great game i liked the ideas so much but i guess you should adjust the sound effects a little bit
One of the best use of themes in this LD that I've seen. Tension and narrative is conveyed with very little use of words and visuals. Great job!
Brilliant game concept and, overall, good execution. The tension-filled mood and graphics are superb. The notion of echolocation actually came up while I was working on my entry as well, but we eventually decided to go a different route with audiovisual gameplay. I do think that there are a few things holding this entry back from being truly great, and, while each one is individually relatively minor, they combined to make me almost want to give up out of frustration several times before making it to the end.
1. The tutorial levels seemed very pedantic and not very much in line with the theme of minimalism. The central mechanics are pure enough to be self evident as soon as the player knows which buttons to press, and the text detracts from the potential of exploratory gameplay that entries like Orbfuscated excel at. By the same token, I think the escape narrative could have been conveyed more effectively using only sounds and graphics.
2. The controls felt off during the entire time I played the game. The movement speed felt awkward and the footstep sound didn't mesh well with the movement distance. The sneak mechanic was aggravating because I kept getting trapped in walls. The sneak movement speed was especially frustrating. On some of the last levels, I tediously moved around until I thought I was at the other side of the level only to realize that I was only halfway through it. The lack of feedback was frustrating, and making up for it by continuously tapping the space bar lightly was tedious. I also had no sense of my own size and that of the enemies. The visuals made me feel like a point source, but running into traps and enemies convinced me that I had a non-zero radius.
3. The level completion sound felt really great, but the accompanying visual animation was almost-but-not-quite a beautiful animation that illuminated the entire room, which I think would have greatly enhanced the experience of getting to the next level.
Overall, great work, and I'm really excited to see what you make in the future.
@Julian:
I too would rather have no tutorial, but after some playtesting it became obvious certain people need a push in the right direction. Sometimes a big push, hence the explicitness. I'd much rather have a less minimal tutorial than a more minimal audience.
Regarding your second point, it sounds like I've accurately modeled the experience of moving around in a dark, unfamiliar space. One of the core parts of the game is that all of your information is imperfect. Behind the scenes everything is done with points and rectangles, but you'll only ever see rough approximations of where walls, traps and monsters are, because uncertainty made the game a lot more fun. That said, I totally agree the controls and speeds can be improved, but a lot of what you mention is intentional.
I really appreciate the feedback, thanks for playing!
reallly coool. graphics are great, love the particle effect to show off the map and the audio is very well done. bravo!
Great game, not anything to fault here, innovative idea, gameplay progression was perfect, just as i was thinking this would be scary with enemies there they were :D
The gameplay is very innovative and the work in general is amazing. Great use of the theme.
@GertJohnny
"I too would rather have no tutorial, but after some playtesting it became obvious certain people need a push in the right direction. Sometimes a big push, hence the explicitness. I'd much rather have a less minimal tutorial than a more minimal audience."
That's interesting. I still think you could tone the invasiveness of the tutorial down without losing your audience; lots of successful games get by with more minimal tutorials. It all comes down to playtesting, though, and there isn't really enough time to make and test enough iterations over the course of LD, especially the 48-hour version, to create a perfectly scaled tutorial.
"Regarding your second point, it sounds like I've accurately modeled the experience of moving around in a dark, unfamiliar space. One of the core parts of the game is that all of your information is imperfect. Behind the scenes everything is done with points and rectangles, but you'll only ever see rough approximations of where walls, traps and monsters are, because uncertainty made the game a lot more fun."
I totally get that, but even in a dark environment, you have a sense of your own body matrix and know approximately what your step size is. You can determine the distance you cover based on how many steps you take and can touch objects to sense how far away they are. If I were blindfolded, I might run into a wall, but I certainly wouldn't continuously walk into it. The sense of uncertainty worked really well for me in some cases, but in others my emotions bordered on frustration with the controls rather than tension directed toward my situation.
@Julian
Totally agree. One of the bigger flaws in the 48H version is how walking into walls is handled. The continuous footsteps were left in to cause less confusion, as it's much easier to see that you're not moving by seeing identical footstep locations. Having the footsteps disappear almost made it feel as though you've lost keyboard focus, especially if you catch an edge going around a corner. A lot of what made it into the 48H version was never fully iterated on due to time constraints, so I completely agree certain tunings are less than ideal.
Amazing game! The closest I saw a game like this was Sonar but you made it much more enjoyable! AWESOME! Please, develop it a bit more and release as a full game. The world needs more games like this!
Wow, this was pretty inspired. One of the better survival games I've played in a while.
I'm so bad at these blind sound-dependent games. I wish I was better at them. Good job.
Wow, this is one of the best theme oriented games I've played yet. Very well done. It's almost frightening, you feel a sense of dread when they come after you. Graphics, sounds, and game play all worked extremely well together. Bravo.
Very good! I really enjoyed it, I was thinking about doing something similar, but this is way better than my ideas!
Wow! This is fantastic. There are a few other games this LD that are about not being able to see but I think this has the coolest mechanic and best finish out of them all. I'm definitely going to be checking out the source for this! Really nice job.
Sneaking didn't really work for me. I never moved as far as I thought I would. Other than that, I love the concept and execution!
fuck this game. I almost fell out of my chair...
btw GOTY imho. Awesome work!
This was a very dark game. It was very fun to play through, but also terrifying.
Really enjoyed playing this game. Interesting sound mechanics and tense atmosphere of the unknown makes this game one of my favorites.
Personally I thought that this hit the nail on the head with the theme. Was really good and somehow was pretty damn tense for a bunch of lines. Really nicely made, expecting this to be at least in the top 100. Good job!
Oh my! What a delightfully scary experience to walk, bounce rays of light and hope I remember where to go sneak past the ghastly sounding redness!
I love the sonar-like mechanics, and how it gets rather scary as you begin escaping from monsters, too. Great work!
I liked the choice of silent walking or being chased by monsters. Both were equally terrifying, the monsters for obvious reasons but walking silent gives the player zero information, and the unknown is quite a scary thing. Very cool.
The theme was minimalism, your game is perfect! The same goal as me but even more minimalist, and you managed to scary me with just red color ^^ Good job!
Oh man, this is amazing! I think I enjoyed it more than the Devil's Tuning Fork for having enemies and no forced storyline. 5 stars!
This game is awesome. What a funny idea. You should continue working on it!
Completely loved the use of sound as a gameplay mechanic. The atmosphere you've created fits perfectly too.
This is scary stuff, really innovative, fun mechanic - and a lovely take on the theme.
WOW!! Boy, this is just great! I felt the tension while running from the red thing. Good job!!!!!! :D
You may change your picture presentation, because your the graphics effect are really nice and give a new aspect of mazing game. Great job.
This is my favorite game I've played so far (out of 115 or so). Really great, in all respects. Totally atmospheric while being completely minimal; great sounds, innovative gameplay - I was actually scared of clusters of red lines. I love this game.
Really well done. The basic idea and its implementation are already nice, but you also added other very good gameplay elements. Great level design too.
This is a great concept, and it's executed so well. This is one of my favorites.
I loved this game. I just think that to make it more difficult, the enemies should move faster because you can easily outrun them, meaning you don't really need the shift key.
AWESOME AWESOME!!!! It definitely should be in the top 5!!! I love the idea so much!!! It is such an AWESOME Game!!! Congratulations... You deserve it!
Wow... this is awesome! I can't believe how scared I was of some moving red lines!
good stuff man :) pretty much the same idea as my 22 entry 'blind' hehe http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8824
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This is gorgeous. The footstep sounds are a little harsh I think, given the tone of the game, but the monsters work well and the sound of opening the door is really satisfying.