K bro
Reviews for "Gloom"
Kwing responds:
Works fine for me and I see scores from people that played a week ago. Try switching browsers or seeing if other games are having issues with Ruffle?
Played this right when you posted but I put off writing a review because I wanted to try the mobile version. The game is pretty fun and challenging, I'm gonna break down my thoughts:
First I wanna say it runs well on mobile(tried it on my shitty moto g1) and even tough I couldn't use more than one button simultaneously, I love the touch screen joystick, I've always found that default touch screen control from Pico8 awesome, but I wish we had that on different Flash engines that weren't all necessarily using that resolution with pixel art thing Pico8 has, and you kinda granted my wish. Makes me wanna dive into a game project just to expand the "KwingControls" library. I gotta try to mess around with the code assets sometime, actually got some narrative walksimulator-y ideas that I'd love to try to do.
Secondly, the desktop version was optimal and pretty fun, plus the weird shift aligning thing actually felt like an nice added challenge to me, I dunno I just imagined the character was limping or was dragging some weight so they had to adjust theirselves constantly. I remember seeing some first person maze games on NG that are basically well mapped 2d point and click games, but I dont remember seeing what it seems like an actual 3d enviroment with made (entirely?) in Flash. I'm just very intrigued by the techincal stuff behind it and wondering how much polish this 3D engine could reach but I'll just get on to my final point...
Lastly, the actual game, even though it seems pretty barebones, it plays well, its actually fun and challenging, an it atually pulls off a creepy ambiance pretty nicely. The specters and summoners look simple but they work for me, and the ambient music is a nice touch. I still wanna see things done here expanded further.
I'm glad I saw you linking this on a thread and reminded me of how much I liked it.
I hope you mess around with this 3D flash thing more!
Kwing responds:
I'm pleasantly surprised that you enjoyed this on mobile - while I did feel good about the joystick, I couldn't stand using one button at a time. Power to you if you liked it though (along with the mediocre-at-best shift system.)
I do think the 3D engine lends itself to a walking simulator more than most other genres (you could probably do a racing game too,) though the most problematic issue with the engine as a whole is that you can't draw things to the screen that aren't easily represented by a single point (such as a wall of any significant length.) Part of the reason the game plays so well is that the engine's weaknesses (ugly walls, no floor textures, significant lag if rendering more than a few objects) are covered up by design choices (open environment, darkness to reduce draw distance, punishing the player for moving too far from bonfire.) I'd like to expand on the basic idea more, but the engine is unfortunately very limited.
Thanks for the review!
Fun
So this game is pretty intense and the 3/d element really is nice kind of hard at first but is still pretty fun OK so how do I start off this review as these types of submissions tend to have me stumped, but they are still unique in there own way, they bring some nifty elements to the table, and theres alot to visualize among other things, so in general its a decent entry, it was alright in my eyes.
~~THINGS TO IMPROVE ON~~
I have no major changes in mind for this fun game.
~X~
69 time alive
I went into this without any expectations, and it's not bad in the least bit. It works as a simple time killer, and provided you're not expecting a fully fleshed out experience it's a fun time. Obviously this was more of an experiment than anything else, and you did manage to come up with a good method of progression; collecting logs is easy to begin with, but the more you gather, the farther away you have to travel to find them, and the more baddies you need to micromanage. The beams of light were a good choice for alerting the player to danger, and while I would probably find them obnoxious in other games, the already simplistic nature of this game gives the mechanic room to breathe.
Some critiques I can offer:
The wealth of information provided in your description would probably have been better off in the game itself. Maybe a page for detailed instructions? If you just jump in and play, you'll find yourself a bit overwhelmed, especially by the game's biggest problem, the mouse look. There has to be a better way of keeping the mouse in check, because having to manually recenter it yourself every time you make a particularly sharp turn? It's awful, and it adds a layer of difficulty that is nothing more than artificial, without any fun to be gained from it; It feels like busywork.
I haven't had a chance to play it on mobile yet, but I'll definitely be checking it out to see if it controls a bit better on that.
In regards to other player's complaints regarding enemy speed, it seemed alright to me for the most part. I say most part because I feel like I did encounter some anomalously speedy creatures at only two logs, who could zip out of the way of my attack at near point blank range. This was admittedly rare, however.
I look forward to seeing more from you!
Kwing responds:
Thanks, this is some really great feedback!
I admit the light indicators are rather big. I wasn't really sure what the alternative was (AS2 can't control left/right audio channels, and I didn't want the player to constantly be turning around looking for new enemies.) I suppose I could make a smaller indicator, but I do think a visual tell is pretty important, especially considering the insta-death mechanic.
I only added the information into the description once judging for the Game Jam began. My original intention was to give the player no guidance and let them discover the mechanics for themselves. Unfortunately the low scores (player scores, not review scores) that I noticed for the first couple of weeks indicated that people were REALLY struggling, so I put a full strategy guide in the description to help them out a bit. Looking back I think having a bestiary might have been a good middle ground - a player is free to fight a new and mysterious enemy on their own, but if they get killed by it they can look up information for that specific enemy type.
I've responded to this a bit in other reviews but I was pretty frustrated with the shift lock and it seemed like the best I could do under the circumstances. After seeing how Doom Triple Pack runs with the "click and drag" mechanic, I think it might have been a good idea to have shooting happen exclusively through the spacebar, so that the player could click and drag the mouse off-screen to pan farther in either direction (then again, this is completely useless if you're playing in full-screen...) Camera controls are something I'll definitely look into if this ever gets a sequel.
Just to clear some things up, enemy speed is dependent on the strength of the fire and your proximity to it, NOT the number of logs delivered. This means you can encounter impossibly fast enemies immediately after delivering your first log, provided you're too slow in delivering the next one, wander too far from the fire, or both. There's no direct correlation between number of logs delivered and enemy speed, but there is an INDIRECT correlation in that the part of your search which takes you farthest from the fire will be the most difficult, and the longer it takes to find and retrieve the wood, the more the fire will die, causing enemies to become more difficult. Similar to my comment about making enemy types ambiguous, I did consider adding information to the HUD which would tell players how fast enemies were moving, but in the interest of immersion I made the HUD as minimalistic as possible (hence why you don't even see your score until you die.)