Great submission!

Firing it up without reading your page or the instructions was a treat. It was very intuitive to find the bells in the room. Then I peeked inside the levels folder to find that there were more! So I modified the .bat file and tried them all out. The zigzag map was a fun challenge, but I got completely lost on the fourth bell in the cave—even while trying to keep a wall always at my right.

It sounded great on both my studio monitors and headphones! And it was unintentionally rhythmic enough that I often found my head bobbing or tapping my feet. Maybe this could alternatively procedurally generate IDM beats?

At this point it’s just missing some polish for me. It wasn’t obvious to me or my screen reader that the instructions are printed to the terminal. I’d love a way to select the level—or more simply a random one could be chosen after completing the level. The soundscape could also be filled out with footsteps, collisions with walls, and environmental sounds (or ambient drones if you’re me)—anything to enhance our connection with the space.

Overall, it’s a cool experiment that deserves to be explored further.

Hi! I really like the soundscape of this game, but I wasn’t able to figure out how to ring a bell. I also played it with earbuds, which you have mentioned is not the best way to play it. And like others mentioned and so did I, it wasn’t totally obvious what I had to do to start the game, even once it was opened. I guess for a sighted person this would be harder.

Like Computergamer, it definitly also felt like a bit too much of sound but I am presuming this would be less overwhelming and strange if I’d followed your instructions of using stereo speakers at a distance from me. I like the flavor of the sounds, I guess that’s what I mean, but I think it can get a bit loud.

I also need to know how to ring a bell, I don’t think that was explained in the itch page nor the command panel. I thought I also rang a bell but, if they are already ringing, didn’t someone ring them already? So I thought if I rang one, it’d actually stop ringing, but that’s the opposite. It’s been a little bit of struggle every time I try to play the game, and it seems that finally I’ve made into it, but still can’t figure my way around! I’m so sorry.

Congrats on making a submission, and being able to participate in the jam!

Like others mentioned, I think it wasn't totally obvious what to exactly do to start the game, definitely worth adding something to the itch.io page on how to build and run the game for different platforms if possible (and which files to specifically open).

I tried using NVDA on windows, and didn't get any kind of audio affordance for the instructions. I think if these were in itch.io, that would be a good substitute, or conversely, just include an audio recording of the instructions at the start of the game! I think testing and making sure that the game is easy to run and launch with a screen reader (VoiceOver on Mac, or NVDA on Windows) would be extremely valuable.

All of that said, once I was able to run it, I understood and was able to find my way through the room. I was able to complete it in just under 2 minutes, and navigating around wasn't challenging at all. 

Congrats again on building and sharing this for the jam.

Hello there! I was finally able to get the game working on my copmuter and i have some feedback to give you. First of all, i actually think the concept was really good, i was able to find the bells to ring and the objective qwas clear. My problem was that i fealt the setup was a bit confusing, i thought i had to press the exe file i got in the main folder to play and had no idea i had to use a console to run the map files. So that could have been better explained. I also noticed when i was walking around in the maps, i couldn't really tell if i hit a wall or if i was moving at all. So some way of adding footstep sounds or some wall bump sound could have made it better. I was also overwhlemed with the sounds i heard, it fealt like i was hearing too many weird sounds at same time. So i think you could have made it more distinct what the sounds were. I was also only able to complete the room map, i did try out cave and oval, but couldn't find where the large bell was located. I do see potential for improvements in the game, it did grab my attention for a while and i wanted to try out the different maps. I was able to find most of the bells in the maps i mentioned.

I thought I'd give it a go, but if I run make darkecho, I get an error: main.c:9:10: fatal error: SDL.h: No such file or directory. I dont think everyone has the sdl development headers installed. I installed them with sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev.

Then I got an error that it could not find libm. I had to add -lm to the LDLIBS line in Makefile. Then it compiled.

And now it works! I played room.txt
You completed the level in 2 minutes and 39 seconds!

I think it's an open door to state that only someone experienced in the terminal can play the game. I'm sure you are aware. What I really liked is your echolocation system. It took me a minute to understand what I was listening at. But then I understood it's like a radar system going around and there are wall and bell sounds. After that, it was quite doable to collect the rings/bells! I go tthat ooooh feeling and wanted to finish the level, that counts for fun! 

Well done on submitting something, even if it's a very rough gem. Hope you will create a linux/windows/mac executable for it, or at least a shell script to build the game, select the level and play ;).