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Trauma Smells Like Rotten Flesh!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Aesthetics | #96 | 4.094 | 4.094 |
| Enjoyment (Best Game) | #210 | 3.219 | 3.219 |
| Horror | #233 | 2.812 | 2.812 |
| Story | #253 | 2.625 | 2.625 |
| Sound Design | #321 | 2.906 | 2.906 |
| Creativity | #327 | 3.031 | 3.031 |
Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What game engine did you make this project in?
Unity
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Comments
Thanks for adding three weapons. You really know your FPS games, lol.
The fun of these game jams is that you can see ideas like combining a 3D visual novel with floating text and a shooter game come to life in just a week. I think this game is perfectly fine as-is without needing extra enemies. It's not like Destiny where you need different enemies each season to get better loot, right? I'm glad I didn't encounter the weapon bug mentioned in other comments! I genuinely enjoyed the shooting throughout the entire game.
thank you so much! Really happy you had fun 😁
Very cool aesthetics and shaders! Very atmospheric and isolating vibes. The reload animation went so hard! Like its really good reload, not sure if that was made in house or its stock assets. The words floating was very cool! Helped tell the story well and I wasn't really that lost at all. Overall a very fun little experience and felt like I was tackling some of my own problems too. It does reference our real issues!
The sound effects and music was a bit too loud especially footsteps and collision? It sounded like glass breaking or I'm smashing stuff as I walk. There were parts where it does lag a lot and my gun stops shooting, like it bugs out and the gun is unable to fire unless I swap to a different gun to see which gun still fires.
I'm glad you had fun with our game :)
The weapons was a tricky part as the fps mechanic was done from scratch, some bugs I just couldn't get rid of, sorry about that!
Definitely keeping the floating text as my trump card :D
The aesthetics are great even if not polished, it feels like sometimes the shaders compliment the viewing experience, and sometimes do a disservice to the assets depending on distance. Overall a very fun game and experience, with a few minor shortcomings preventing it from being great.
The enemies feel a bit too harmless, the shotgun just oneshots everything and they're overall pretty slow, seeing their hands stick out the doors didn't help their surprise factor either. The puzzles feel a little out of place? Feels like you're about to play Ready or not, indie horror game edition, and then you have to scan every room in the level for numbers for a lock, or squint at picture to guess which object is supposed to be where. It didn't help the puzzles were pretty simple, but the fun part was the shooting.
I really loved the world space text, the messages as well felt very well designed with a clear message. And the sound design was decent, my biggest gripe being that the sound the revolver made lacked any punch and basically made me not want to use it.
Thank you for your insightful feedback!
What was the issue with the shader from distance?
I suppose it just pixelated things a lot, making it difficult to make out what something is from a distance, for example the last puzzle, I really had to squint just because I couldn't tell which object was which as they all looked so similar. Also, when you get close to a wall or a door for the first time, is when you finally get to see that actually the textures on them are pretty good, the shader hides that quality from a distance.
Very cool shaders! Made it feel like it's an ink sketch on paper, which adds to the surreal feel of it all. Also, cool idea with the messages floating around in the space. Puzzles are interesting, but I'm not sure about the shooter part. The weapons didn't feel juicy enough, and also due to a bug, they clipped out of existence several times, so I only saw my bare hands. Also, the monsters just didn't feel scary for me for whatever reason.
With that said, the game is still very impressive and looks quite unique. Nice job!
Cool game, lots of great visual polish. I think the volume on some of the sound effects was off compared to the rest. I played until the shuffle puzzle and stopped there because I can never seem to wrap my head around them. nice entry
hey man than you for the review!
That was the last puzzle ;)
This is another good game entry. You tied your gameplay with the story, and made us curious enough to keep playing. The game desing is above everage as well. Congratulations.
Heh, you can spam the shotgun. I mean it literally does not help you in any way, but I found it fun how you can automatic fire with it lol
Anyways, aesthetically / visually really coherent, even a bit bold which I can always respect. The concepts of doing symbolic-acts to progress (freeing yourself, organizing yourself, etc) is neat way to tie the narrative and gameplay, something one can kinda analyse and think about the meaning themselves even if it was quite direct narrative. On that note, I also quite enjoyed the way you did the narration/description/text, sometimes it was bit challenging to read for the placement of it, but quite the addition to the vibe and mood of the game. I wish the monsters were bit more though, like more variations, more difficult, made any noise, but I do say; One did manage to give me a jump, I don't know where it came in the first level, or how, but seeing one run at me from the stairs at full speed was nice wake up call.
Nevertheless, fun and shot game, good work on this!
Heey thanks for your valuable feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Sound designer here, I'll try to add the enemies sounds after the gamejam, for now we'll say that it was an artistic choice 😅
Really liked the bold tone of Trauma Smells Like Rotten Flesh! — the horror framing and visuals grabbed me right away. The concept is strong and the atmosphere did a good job of keeping me uneasy. Would love to see more detail in the story or variations in encounters in future updates. Nice job! Rated + commented :)
Amazing visual style, it immediately caught my eye and I think going monochrome/greyscale was a cool choice! The level design itself is really nice too, I like the level layouts and the enemies, great work
The aesthetic is very cool! The black-and-white look and the floating text make the whole game feel like a very stylized experience, and I think that's one of its biggest pros for me. I like that you have three guns you can switch between at any time, so you can change your playstyle whenever.
I do think the enemy AI is a bit wonky sometimes. For example, they’ll sometimes walk into walls, and they’re pretty dumb, so it’s easy to win. It makes sense because AI for enemies is hard to implement, especially in a week. I also didn’t like the idea of looking for numbers in so many rooms just to check things; it feels like a way to pad content. Still, I think it was a solid shooter, especially one that looks really nice and unique. I think this visual style has a lot of potential.
I liked the visual style and music the most. I also liked the variety of situations, the game seems more dynamic. The only drawback, on the first level, is that some mobs are visible behind the walls, sometimes it breaks the moments of horror. But, on the other hand, it was unexpected to open the door, thinking that there was definitely no monster there)))
realy cool game best part of it as the art in my opinion i realy liked how it looked and i tought the way the words show up was a realy cool way to do that instead of just writing it on the wall and te reload animations are very clean also having the weaping variety made the gameplay a lot more interesting tough i did have some isues the main one being i didnt get past level one after i killed all the enemies and gatherd the code which was 8505 right i spent 25 minutes trying to put the code into the lock but each time noting happend maby i missed something or my code is just wrong lol overall realy cool game
Really cool aesthetics and premise here-I enjoyed playing through all three of the levels. I'd be curious to see how your game would play differently if it focused more exclusively on the FPS mechanics, the puzzle-solving mechanics, or the intersection of those. Right now, both the FPS and puzzle-solving mechanics are present, but they feel disjoint and independent to each other. I think you've got a strong foundation in here, but it might take some more iteration to make the game really shine. Thanks for making and sharing it!
Thank you for the very insightful feedback!
What do you mean that the fps and puzzle mechanics solving are disjoint?
Yeah! Let me try to explain.
After I finished the game, I was trying to consider whether this was more of a FPS game or more of a puzzle game since it combines elements from both. I wasn't sure.
The first level leaned FPS-heavy but those aiming/shooting mechanics weren't involved in solving the puzzle other than helping the player survive and unblocking the way. The second level required using FPS skills to survive and solve the puzzle, which I thought was a really great way to tie both genres together. The last level didn't involve FPS skills to solve the puzzle.
The FPS and puzzle mechanics felt disjoint to me because the player isn't consistently using their FPS skills to solve all of the puzzles. I think the second level did a good job of requiring those skills, but the first and final levels could be solved even if there weren't any enemies spawned on those levels.
I think you've got something special here, but I do think the game could be stronger if it was more focused towards one genre or the other, or if the game really leaned into combining the genres: e.g. consistent combat in every level and requires FPS skills to solve all puzzles.
What do you think?
I see what you mean!
Perhaps the thinking process behind the game design caused this that you're explaining. Last year, my entry performed well in art but not much in the fun experience of the game, so I focused on the main mechanics first this year to try to improve my game design (which was developing 3 well defined puzzles).
Then, I thought that once the core game loop was done (enter level - do puzzle - exit opens) I started to think how to enrich the experience with fps elements, so the player would have some fun during his journey towards the puzzle.
Since I draw ideas from doom eternal and deathloop focusing on making it work in isolation, it resulted in the fps elements and art being developed separated from the puzzle ideas and I never thought about integrating them together. At all times, the fps, art and sound elements were enriching the experience around the core loop (at least in my head).
Now that you mentioned and I think of it, indeed even doom eternal connects the dots making you shoot buttons instead of pressing them (per example), it's really interesting to look at this from this perspective you suggested!
I cannot wait to see the result of this jam this year, the team approach was different and I want to see how much people liked the game, what it lacks and if it could turn into a commercial project!
The vibe and aesthetic of this one are super cool! The reloading felt a bit jank to me, particularly on the shotgun. More enemy variety would have been nice but I understand jam constraints. Either way, great job submitting a game to the jam!
Thank you!
I think i got lost in the first level i couldnt find any numbers I dont know how hard I was supposed to look
They are inside the rooms, check all walls ;)
Smooth gameplay, and the art style was effective. I found two of the numbers in the first level, but didn't know what to do after that and lost patience.
Bro that was the funniest comment lol
Very well made! I got to the puzzle room but unfortunately will have to stop playing because it's very laggy for me lol (low-end laptop)
I really liked how you integrated the tutorial into the game. Reminded me of Afraid of Monsters/Cry of Fear
The visual style is great! I would've liked more enemy variety, though
Oh, and also - I got a visual bug with a revolver cylinder being ejected all the time, and I got some issues with the shotgun where I couldn't shoot it sometimes after reloading
Hi, thanks for playing! Thanks for letting us know about the performance issues, definitely gonna look over those and give an update. We're glad you liked it overall though!
This was probably the best game I’ve played so far from the game jam. The graphic style, floating text, and music all fit together perfectly. The story was great too. My only critique would be the monsters — they didn’t have any sound and were pretty easy to deal with. I also didn’t encounter any jump scares, which felt like a missed opportunity. Still, I’m definitely giving this a high rating. Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for such nice review!
I reckon I could have sprinkled some jump scares here and there to improve the experience! Noted for next time!
Perhaps the fact that I focused on developing puzzles at the end of each level didn't give me much time to balance the monsters, lesson learned haha
Understandable, 7 days are just not enough to implement & polish. We cut a lot of corners as well :(
Hey, remember me from last year?
I like the art style in this one.
haha thank you!
The had no idea what to do in the second level I tried a couple of times, explored all the rooms, tried to kill all the monsters but the rate of them spawning just didn't give me the time to explore enough to figure out what to do. Other then that the first level was amazing especially the first time you encounter the monster. It is paced exceptionally as well. The starting area is good as well, tho I was hoping for some easter egg or something when I went the wrong way. XD
Hey man I reviewed the level of the mini zombies and there was a game inbalance issue, as well as performance.
It's fixed now if you want to have another go, the third level is clever ;-)