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Spirit of Light [thatgamejam #01]'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Community's Voice | #20 | 3.857 | 3.857 |
Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Creative Vision / Rationale / How Did You Incorporate the Theme
The atmosphere of the theme image evoked a feeling of lighting up a path for others, and offering a helping hand calmly with compassion.
We translated the feeling of "lighting up" into a light that reveals parts of a blank misty world, and the emotions of "helping another soul" into searching for and guiding animals back to where they want to be.
Through the animated cutscenes at the end of each level, we aimed to tell small, melancholic yet wholesome moments for each soul we helped.
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Comments
It’s such a beautiful game, the art is amazing, the gameplay is smooth, and the cinematic effects are really cool aswell. The ambient feel was so fitting, and with the intent to convey a message after each task was executed perfectly. This is my favorite game in the jam! Great work!!🦊
Thank you for playing our game! Great to hear you had a good time 🦊🐤
认可，蛮有心流体验的。挺像风之旅人游戏里的呼喊，画风感受很不错。
Thank you for the kind words and playing our game!
This is easily the best looking jam game i've ever seen. It looks incredible and everything is super well polished. The only thing i'd change is add an option to exit straight to desktop. But yeah, fantastic entry, congrats.
Thank you for playing! And great you had fun 😃
In our big project we will keep that with direct quit in mind.
Very very pretty game, and mesmerizing shader magic! 😍 Also glad to see another existing team using this jam to test things for a full project! Best of luck to you and Harpy Seal Games~
Thank you! 🦭
Absolutely gorgeous art direction! It is just so aesthetically pleasing to the eyes, the pastel colour palette on that slightly off-white canvas, with the world rendered in that washed watercolour post-processing effect is just SO GOOD. It’s especially beautiful when the world slowly reveals itself and it feels like a painting being gradually drawn on a canvas.
And did I say that the violin and the flute are just the two of my most favourite instruments? I loved the music so much, it’s so calm and relaxing and has got a certain feeling of nostalgia to it with its slightly melancholic undertones. Combined with the art, it makes the atmosphere feel very peaceful and zen, and evokes the fond memories of reading a fairy tale book from one’s childhood. Absolutely wonderful!
Some of the scenes I really loved:
The twin jizo statues in the field of nemophilas and morning glories
The fox shrine beneath the cherry blossoms
And these two especially wholesome ones. Really love the little ducklings!💖
Would love to see you folks build upon this further. I think it might be nice to improve the pathfinding for the ducklings a bit since the ones further down the line kept staying behind, especially if the line had three or more at once. Also some kind of restriction against using the reveal ability without any limitations might help in making the gameplay loop feel more engaging, since it would encourage the player to be more thoughtful in their actions.
I also went ahead and checked your other project Rokoh and it looks absolutely fantastic as well. Classical Japanese aesthetics are some of my absolute favourite, so it looks like a real treat for me. I’m definitely gonna check it out properly when I have a nice chunk of time in hand. I’m curious though, did you write this haiku yourself: “朧々の… 儚き命… 煌めかん”? Cause I couldn’t find it in literary sources myself, though it’s likely I didn’t look hard enough.
Thank you so so much for your great feedback! I'm delighted to hear you liked the visuals and the music, especially as the soundtrack was composed, played on my instruments and recorded by me 🎻
Oh you even checked out Rokoh as well, that's so kind! Yes all Haikus in that game were written by me (I'm Japanese and Swiss) to fit the in-game moments 🐸
By the way I remember seeing you back then on the thatgamedevbistro servers team-recruitment board, where you mentioned being a doctor doing gamedev right? I was surprised to see that as I'm also doing gamedev alongside currently being a med student, never met someone else like that until now haha
We're planning to incorporate ideas from this jam game into a larger project we're currently developing, so we'll definitely be thinking about interesting reveal-ability limitations and variations. It may become a bit more puzzly but we'll see, there are so many options :)
If you’d ever like to casually follow our development or chat with us, we also have a small, newly made Discord server named "Harpy Seal Games", just thought I’d mention it in case you’re interested 😊
Again thank you very much for your thoughtful message 🩵
Woah, you actually played and recorded them! That’s just so very impressive, I am totally in awe. 🙏 The most I can do is play on my Casio keyboard, so I usually just use VSTs when I’m trying to compose something myself. I’m just an amateur though ha ha.
And wow, you wrote the haikus yourself too! That’s some sheer dedication to one’s art. I’m excited to check them all out when I play the game with some proper time in hand. My Japanese is only at the level of modern literature with some basic familiarity of classical forms, but I’ll be sure to take my time to appreciate them properly!
I’ve never met someone else as such doing gamedev either, so this is a pleasant surprise for me as well! Most of my peers were, well, very muted creatively, and I really felt lost and out of place having no one else to really share my creative passion with. In a country like mine with an enormous patient load, the work environment in the medical field is just soul crushing, it reduces a person to something… not quite human. Thankfully I’m gonna be moving into a branch focused more on research and academia, so maybe I will find my place there, and also find more time to pursue my creative endeavours.
I just saw your ongoing project now on your website, the premise looks very interesting and gives me Rune Factory vibes. Mikos are also one of my favourite character archetypes in Japanese media, really love their traditional red and white outfit, very elegant and graceful. The reveal mechanic could work really well, maybe with her holding a kumiko lantern, could lead to some really cool light effects I imagine. Lots of interesting possibilities to explore.
And sure I’ll be visiting your discord! (I’m guessing the link is on your website.) Would love to observe and learn from your creative process. My best wishes to you folks!
Wow, impressive, and extremly well polished! Really good visual and music + some little cinematics, GG!
How did you achieved that fog effect?
Thank you very much for playing! Great to hear you had a good time.
The "Fog" is a environment without light, using Omni Lights and masking out the not lit parts of the screen in a post to create that effect. Everything else is color adjustment and some other post effects :)
A charming and artistic game.
The beautiful world, excellent music, and attention to detail made the entire experience a joy.
I enjoyed every moment of it.
Thank you!✨
A game with such an atmosphere, where the beautiful art is complemented by the music, gives me a very comfortable feeling. I really like its color scheme. The green tones make me feel particularly fresh and relaxed.
Thank you for playing!
The art style is beautiful, and the music fits the game very well. I played on a Mac, and after the game finished loading, there was a long white screen that almost made me think it wouldn’t run.
It has a bit of a Zelda vibe. I do feel the gameplay could be more varied. While the emotional expression is great, the pacing sometimes feels a bit too slow. Possibly because I’m not very patient.
Thank you for playing! We will continue on this concept and add more depth later 😄
The issue with long loading time is currently a limitation of Godot. They solve it pretty soon with the next minor release.
The art work here is beautiful guys! I enjoyed playing through it. Great job!
Thank you very much! Great to hear you had a good time playing it :)
Works of art！Had quiet beautiful time during playing!
Thank you very much! 🩵
Super impressive visuals and aesthetic! Fantastic!
I enjoyed my ducky conga line.
Hehe thank you so much! 🐤🐤🐤
Easily the most beautiful game in this jam (maybe in all the jams I've ever done). The tech art is super impressive technically and very expressive emotionally. Adding the beautiful score on top it was such an beautiful experience. Even the level design is very well thought out constantly guiding player where to explore with different objects like lights and trails.
That said, a minor complaint is that the technical side is getting in the gameplay enjoyment a little bit. The light reveal mechanics is fairly weak and gets a bit repetitive on the second and third level. As well as the AI on 3rd level would sometime just stop following. As a programmer I appreciate the technical side of things but as a player a bit annoyed. Still, love the experience and can't wait for the full game you guys are working on!
Thank you very much for your feedback and praise! Nice that you played through the whole game. We put a lot of effort into the music, visuals and mechanics.
For the light method we knew we needed to add something to keep it interesting. Therefore the fox only walks in lit areas and the ducklings only stay in a certain distance to the player. But it looks like when it happens the first time, we need to communicate it, so that it does not look like bad AI 😅
Small clarification, Would not call it bad AI, just that it is hard to get more than 4 ducks to follow since they follow further away. I do think it is very thoughtfully made, when the duck start follow and stops follow they make a quack sound to indicate that the state has changed. Very good attention to detail.
A very pretty game! I wonder if some limits on your light source could add some gameplay depth? Definitely very cute. I loved the aesthetic.
Thank you! We tried to add some limits with the fox only walking in lit areas and ducklings only stay in line while near the player. We will in future try to add more hints and depth.