Play space horror
DON'T READ CHAT's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Cleverness | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme Implementation | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Judges Choice | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N9SPK4y1m8ruu8sK3NE4vRk66okUXr7oKfWAADn_sWI/edit?usp=sharing
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarize your game!
A story-driven space horror where you stream yourself exploring an abandoned spaceship. Something inside the ship learns by watching. Your curiosity changes the environment, unleashing danger and forcing you to decide what to do with the truth you uncover.
As you explore a luxury space-cruiser room by room, reading environmental text, solving system-based puzzles, you interact with a live audience and a co-host over comms. Later, a roaming entity moves through the ship independently, forcing avoidance and attention. There is no combat, instead, knowledge, observation, and choices drive progression and outcomes.
Please explain how your game fits the theme.
You are literally being watched: by an audience, by your co-host, and by something inside the ship that learns through observation. And, you're watching something too. Don't read chat.
Did you use Generative AI to make any assets in your game?
No
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
My goal with this game was to write a killer story where all the game mechanics exist purely to elevate the story. Let me know how that went!
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Comments
Playability:
Easy to play and understand. Insanely immersive, voice acted, and gives fantastic horror vibes. Incredible.
Theme:
The theme is tied directly into gameplay through use of viewers on a stream. All of the writing ties back to this as well so it's not just an afterthught. This works great and doesn't feel tacked on.
Cleverness:
Using slang such as Internet and Pre-Internet era in a pseudo-dystopian setting is great. The gameplay and implementation feel well thought out and remind me of Bioshock. Awesome job.
Artistic Style:
The whole game feels like it's played from consoles inside of an exploration ship. UI is well designed and consistent throughout. Colored text for different characters and to draw attention. Great overall.
Appreciate you guys 🙏
Hey, the ‘go fullscreen to start’ idea is really neat! The game is VERY immersive and a well-crafted experience overall. I loved how the suspense builds up and how much is left to the player’s imagination.
The point when I stopped playing: as I explored more rooms the map kinda got messed up. After that point it was hard to orient myself and I got lost in the end :)
Some minor proposals and bugs:
– I needed some time to get used to the floaty WASD controls
– The response timer for VERA could use more contrast and was little hard to see the first time
– Movement speed sometimes doesn’t feel consistent between different rooms (not entirely sure about this one).
– After reloading my save file, the main menu music kept playing.
All in all, this is really impressive for a game jam! The fact that you managed to create such a solid experience in just two weeks is kind of crazy!
Also that chat responds with "suffering" and "enough" when you do nothing is hilarious haha
Hey GamedevGoblin, thanks for playing!
Glad you enjoyed the suspense and imagination components. I'm workshopping a 3D version and wondering whether some of that "left to the imagination" stuff would be lost by making the graphics more explicit 🤔 Still, I do love 3D space horror.
Appreciate your thoughts on the bugs and proposals, all have been incorporated 👍
This is an amazing game! The polish for the sound effects and the visuals is really good for just a game jam it honestly feels like something out of a full game release!
The game is super long which I didn't expect and it does give that very creepy vibe and is super interesting
I have to say the writing is very well done and it kept me compelled and the voice acting is super well done, like that's something I would expect from a full release game.
Really great game jam entry loved it :D
Thanks JustSomePikachu! Yeah I pretty aggressively subtracted everything from the game that wasn't directly benefitting the delivery of the story. So I only focused on what felt core to the experience I wanted to deliver. I was concerned that I may have removed too much, but I'm glad you enjoyed what was left! 😅 There are a bunch of endings you can explore, with more that will become accessible post-jam, once I fix a few issues related to the logic gating.
Wow okay, the whole game was great... But I couldn't finish the game due to some bugs which was a damn shame cause I loved the whole thing except for that. Playing the "Oh Sweet Release" build in browser, I reached the command core and got the black box, at which point Vera said I was infected (I think she actually said it before picking up the black box). I figured I was supposed to enter the override code (I looked at the override panel before getting the black box) and trigger a self destruct, but couldn't get an option to enter a code (the number of days the captain held out for maybe? I did see that before getting the black box, though I did go back after getting the black box to see the number and still couldn't enter a code). I also tried to force my way back onto the Cairn by following the bioluminescence, but after using the fungal sample on the airlock, nothing happened and I was stuck without getting an ending.
Other bugs (minor maybe) I noticed included:
There were a lot of great things that I loved too, including but not limited to:
In hindsight all the reloading I did might have broke something and blocked me from getting an ending. You mentioned working on a post-results build to fix bugs, and I hope my report here helps with that and I'd love to get an ending with it. If you need more information, let me know and I'll see if I can help! Oh and one more thing, please let us press space or something to click the buttons when examining stuff! The entire rest of the game could be controlled with keyboard only, and having to use the mouse just to click buttons kinda broke immersion at times. Great work, and looking forward to the final version!
Hey ShenTzu! Wow, coming from the creator of Death and Progress that's quite the compliment. Thanks for being so thorough with the bug reporting, it really does help a lot that I know where to look and what to test. I've already eliminated most of the issues reported so far – and tbh, most of the issues came from not having enough time to run through a proper QA test in each of the routes. Plus, unfortunately I was unable to resolve a bug with the logic gating so in the end, with 5 minutes to spare, I was forced to turn it all off (which felt better than to permanently lock end-game content). Hence why you could skip all the puzzles. 😅
Great point on using the keyboard to select options, which also makes it fully controller supported. A game like this would probably work well on the Steam Deck / with a controller.
I'll post an update shortly after results are in. When you come back, make sure to try a different approach to what you did last time!
I totally get the lack of QA. As you mentioned in your post on my submission, it's probably one of biggest issues with these game jams. That's why I try to be thorough when giving feedback. Your workaround was the right choice imo given right choice, I just wish I could have seen an ending xD
I was pleasantly surprised to hear you played Death and Progress, especially considering how old it is now, and I'll definitely give your game another go when you're done with the new updates! Best of luck!
Great game, was spending quite a lot of time going through this and I'm surprised at the length.
I think I may have right clicked or something and I got the black screen bug someone else mentioned, where I couldn't continue.
I'm not a fan of horror games really, but this one sucked me in and I was having fun.
Reminds me of old choose your own adventure games and muds.
Great work, Great presentation. May have to come back to this one and hope I don't get another black screen to try to complete it.
Thanks Pauper Tim!
Ahh, right clicking. That's unexpected. Ok thanks! That helps narrow it down.
I'm glad you enjoyed it! Check back in post-results and I'll have patched a tonne of bugs! Also, your save should work backwards compatible just fine. But if it doesn't, I've designed a bunch of different pathways through the game so you may like to try alternative routes the second time.
Cheers,
Nat
I got sucked into it quite a bit. The voice acting and live-streaming component provided an extra source of things to pay attention to it and it made the game feel more alive in games like this which can end up feeling very lonely. I also liked the writing a lot, the whole mood and small little jokes thrown at the concept of a luxury space cruise. I read that the puzzles weren't solvable fully and I'm glad that there was a save system in place in order to not lose progress. I did get stuck I believe at the final moment of the game where I jump into the escape pod and my partner tells me to get out, and tells me that if I go back home then I'll bring back whatever has infected me. I continued to walk around and chase the spores around but didn't figure out what to do from that point forward. All in all very compelling and very gripping especially considering this isn't my usual genre to play.
Thanks cryaning! So glad to hear the V.O. paid off, it was definitely a gamble. But we've been watching a lot of Blown Away lately, and all the contestants on there are constantly talking about how they're taking risks, pushing themselves, and trying techniques they've never done before. I felt inspired to do the same here, and I'm just glad it came out as slightly coherent enough to pay off.
You're right that your save will stay intact (in the same browser), so once I fix the logic gating, you can jump back in and try again! Also, there are loads of different endings, so even if you did start again, you might find that with your familiarity of the content, you're able to take a different path the second time. I packed the layers pretty dense with this one. 😅
What a vibe. Very compelling, I didn't think it would be for me, but it was for me. The setting, the sfx and the dialogue were super especially with the voice acting. My only complaint was that I found it difficult to navigate at first, not really knowing what the different colours of dots were and then later as the map became very cluttered and some rooms were obscuring rooms underneath. I knew I missed some stuff and then didn't really feel like going back due to not knowing which way to go. Anyway I think my progress through the ship overtook my actual progress through what I was meant to be doing and so I didn't finish and didn't really know how to finish. So I definitely missed something. Anyway. Great game, enjoyed it immensely.
Orangudan 🙌 you're too kind. Thank you mate, really appreciate your time playing and providing feedback.
I've got some ideas for improving the readability of the Explore Mode dots so will have a play over the coming days to see what lands best. I'm interested in your comment "I think my progress through the ship overtook my actual progress through what I was meant to be doing" - it sounds like you felt you got past where you felt you were supposed to be? That may be that I had to disable the logic gating in the end as there was a bug I couldn't solve with it in time, but it may also be a pacing issue with you feeling out of step with the content. Once I fix the logic gating bug and address the readability of Explore Mode, I'd really love to know if you engage with it better!
This got me sucked in like no other game jam game ever has. I got really invested in the story, and the mechanics felt super good. I do think I broke it, as the screen went to black at some point in the electrical room.
If this doesn't make top 3 in the jam, I'll be really dissapointed.
Ah ok, thanks! I did some testing today and haven't been able to reproduce a black screen in the electrical room, but will keep at it. An issue I've been coming across is how enormously difficult it is to test every room's connection, since there are so many branching pathways, and each run takes 30+ minutes. I think next on the roadmap is to build a cheat system so I can get around the rooms faster to test specific things.
Thanks for the kind words 😄 it's my first solo game (publicly), so it means a lot!
God damn this feels like a fully-fledged game. Unfortunately I don't have the time to continue playing, but this is really good. The writing feels solid, and I for sure got the creepy chills reading some passages. The chat is really fun as well, and is surprisingly dynamic, very nice job!
The aesthetics, the polish, and the juice are all there. The interactions feel great. Nothing to point out really, very nice job!
Hey thank you! That's very kind 😊
Stop by again if you ever have time to play post jam! I hid a bunch of easter eggs inside.