i really liked the art, the vibe, the story, and setting are all really good. super impressed by the writing too. i do think i was one of those players that optimized the fun out the game. i got good with managing the lighthouse and was only losing ships when they would crash into each other away from the beacon so some feedback maybe barks to reassure the player that this is supposed to be happening could help. i also didnt get what i needed to do when everything turned evil so i went to read from the bookshelf and wait for the timer to run out. the bug getting stuck at the corner of the stairs ended the game for me dawn of the 4th night so that was unfortunate. all around cool game though and i enjoyed the experience even though it felt like a bit of a waiting game.
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The Beacon's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Game Design | #1 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
| Narrative/Mood | #1 | 4.429 | 4.429 |
| Overall | #2 | 3.714 | 3.714 |
| Audio | #2 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
| Polish | #2 | 3.143 | 3.143 |
| Art | #4 | 3.429 | 3.429 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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ThrstyMnd
Comments
I'm glad you liked it... you did the right thing on the 4th night... its pretty much just a climax with some time to catch up on journals... I had fun with all of it but really dug into the lore. Some other things probably suffered on account of that. I may pull this back down from the shelf and expand/polish it a bit more in the future. Thanks for the feedback though, it all helps me get better.
Loved the vibe and loop for this one. I did find it to be a little hard but that could just be a personal skill issue. Overall really well done and I had a blast despite my struggles!
Very tense atmosphere, well done!
It took me a while to figure out that what I was doing (polishing, fueling) had any effect. Adding some visual in-world feedback to player action would improve this a lot. I also found some font hard to read.
I didnt quite understand why some ships still crashed even though my light was on. It seemed a little inconsistent, and a bit like my actions didn't matter the way I expected them to.
Anyway, overall very well done. I also really liked the theme/setting of being a lonely lighthouse keeper.
The ships crashing in spite of the light is either because the light was too dim/didn't cross over them...or it could've been ships crashing into existing wrecks. I made it that way to keep the power dynamic flipped against the player. It's basically impossible to save all of the ships, you're real goal is to make it to the end without starving or going insane. the different fonts were an effort to give each character a different voice visually but it kinda fell flat and proved to be more difficult to exucute thoroughly (and some font symbols didn't render in the browser). My biggest takeaway from the last two jams is that I really need to focus more time on onboarding/tutorial pacing and make sure everything is clear before shoving the player into the action...it works well for creating tension, but not neccesarily in the way I intended. I also need to upload and playtest outside of the engine before the deadline lol. thank you for checking it out and giving me some feedback.
Awesome game! I really liked how it made me feel - helpless at the start, then starting to manage things, then looking for things to do while I was acing all the maintenance. Took me a while to figure out how the energy and sanity worked as it wasn't very intuitive (usually you sleep to restore energy and maybe sanity as well). This could've been solved by calling Energy simply Hunger, and calling Sanity Energy (though my Sanity never got low enough to find out what it did).
I also was really impressed by how well written most of the lore was. The fonts weren't very consistent however, and some of the special characters like [ and ] didn't display correctly (I'm guessing you took your screenshots from in-engine).
Only thing I would say is that it's a little easy to skim past the tutorial - ideally it's not just a block of text (I admit, I did this too lol) but rather you show the player why something is happening and what to do about it, when introducing mechanics that are not intuitive just by looking at it (i.e. how would I know the you refill fuel from the back if I didn't read the text). Something like flashing the back of the light red when fuel runs low might help. I also think that if you want to make it even more immersive, take as many UI bars out of the HUD as possible and teach the player how to hear and/or see when those resources are running low through sound, VFX, etc.
Overall, very immersive and isolating, perfect for a horror jam. And great work on the pixel art thumbnail too!
thank you for the kind words and feedback. your comments on "hunger" and energy restoration through sleep is actually how it ran originally but i changed it to force the player to visit the pantry more...in hindsight I probably should have left it. It was hunger and HP but it felt too common I went with energy and sanity lol. I really wish i'd checked the web build further ahead of time for the font issue (i'm gonna find something to smooth that out in the future) and eliminated some of the harder to read variations. I had alot of fun with this and learned a lot about several aspects of development, and made my first pixel art, but i'm really seeing the importance of getting my tutorials and onboarding paced out better. I think the game would be more enjoyable with just a bit more thought put into helping the player understand how everything ties together, without spoiling any plot. I think playtesting solo is also another drawback, I think there were big blindspots for me as the developer as far as knowing what to do and balancing lore delivery when I wrote and already know the whole story. Thanks again, the next one will be even better!
Hey Thrsty, you have a good way of building atmosphere and from what I have seen really like to build a whole world in your games. Super cool and I think you have a nice vision.
It took me a few tries to figure out. With the fog "being over top of" or at least seeming like it was over top of the UI, I did not see the lens and fuel bars my first few attempts and didnt realize why my light was sucking :p. Once I got it figured out I was like "oh this could be a cool fast paced little management game". After going back and playing it quickly now while writing this Im thinking "how tf did I miss that initially?" which I think goes to show 1) how blind players can be 2) how hard it can be to teach properly.
It felt like a good early mobile game in a good way. I remember having a first gen ipad and loving some of the games and the mechanics brought me back to stuff like that.
I did get bugged and stuck in between the wall and the stairs on one attempt and couldnt move.
I'm glad it gave you that retro-mobile vibe...thats definitely the feel I wanted to emulate. you got me dead to rights on the world building, I almost have to create lore and backstory to then let that guide the actual plot...and I really enjoy that part of game design. I was unsure of the clarity and pacing as I developed it because it's easy to get blinded to that kind of thing. I also left several things in as easy ways to expand in the future, and to make the world feel bigger than it is, because i really enjoyed this project and may revisit it in the future. I'm sorry about the wall/stairs bug, I know exactly where you're talking about and there are invisible colliders to stop it but i guess i missed a spot, lol. Thanks for trying it out though, I hope the story got across well enough, I wanted it to be playable even if you never visit the bookshelf, or only once...but i also wanted to reward players who kept going back and give them enough detail to make it worth their trouble.
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