As a first thing a question. Was this game endless, or was it supposed to end somewhere? For I think it mentioned at beginning to save at least 8 people, and I did, actually I had 5 people following me, since I couldnt find the church, and found more people along the way, and when I got there, 4 of them disappeared, making rescued amount be 8/6 or something else similarly confusin like that, and I couldnt get that last one to stay at church, even I tried to go back.

Hence I was wondering if there was a bug which prevented me from seeing the ending, and which could have changed my view on the "Best Christian Teaching"-category, as now you had a very nicely implemented game based upon the verse, but not much of actual teaching. I liked the parable of showing light to people to save them and taking them to church to save them, and fighting against the demons and basically praying to charge your light etc. Great parallelism there, which also taught a christian stuff a bit, but was expecting there to be some end which would have given the final "teaching" that this was still missing for this jams purpose.

I mean, for a regular game this had been a 5 start christianity already in all the parallelism, and church being there etc. but for a christian game jam, I would expect a bit more still.

But so the game otherwise. I liked it very much. It was very very buggy, but not in a critical way, stayed playable and occasionally confused a bit, but it worked well enough and was fun enough to play, despite all the bugs.

Basically only twice I had potentially a bad bug, as in, had they happened at wrong timing, could have ruined the experience.

One was a house that didnt disappear. As in, normally when you went behing the house, the house became transparent, there were couple of houses in which this  didnt happen, and one time I had several enemies on me, I went down towards the house, and suddenly couldnt see myself, nor the enemies, that could have resulted in game over with bad luck.

Similarly, there were couple houses that didnt seem to really be there at all. You could get through their walls just like that, and they never changed transparent. At first I thought that was how they were supposed to be, as one enemy happened to come from side opening out, and then I followed it there and went through the whole house. Only at later point I realised it was not supposed to be so, and also, that there actually was no house at all there, and that again, had enemies attacked inside that blind space, could have killed me.

Couple of times trees also didnt go transparent properly,

Rest of the bugs werent that critical, well, except for the possibly not triggering game end one, if game was supposed to end after 8 people were rescued. I think it said so when I played the first time, but when I played the second time, it didnt show the tutorial anymore.

It took me quite long time to find the first people to rescue, didnt find until I realised to go behind a house for house to turn transparent, and human becoming visible, as quite many were that way.

As others said too, map, or any other indicator had been nice. There could have been a picture of the town, which had showed how many people in which areas there are supposed to be.

And on top of that, signs pointing back to church, since most annoying part of the game, was looking for church.

I would also more clearly make the edges of the game. For one thing that was confusing was that forest seemed to continue for ever, making me wonder if I should continue there or not, even worse, 1 or 2 people actually were in those forest, adding to the confusion even more.

I was also wondering if I continue long enough up or down, will I eventually go around the map or not.

Lots of confusion about the edges of the map, if there were any, seemed like at least to the right there was more clear edge finally, although behind trees.

Upgrades made game so much more fun, and especially the movement upgrade was something I started appreciating quite soon, since it was really annoying looking for church at slow speed.

Good thing was that houses were unique, so you could have figured out where you were all the time, but I didnt. Need to have more landmarks more clearly there.

I liked how enemies started fleeing when they got low health, that made them seem much more alive. And also there were areas where more enemies would attack etc. which kept the game varied, despite there being just one type of enemy.

Mood worked well, it was scary but not scary. Similar to Luigis Mansion, or that Mario Party or Nintendoland, or where ever it was level where one or more players are chacing ghosts with flashlights, this reminded them in a positive way.

When considering how buggy this was, it really shows how strong this game was in that despite such bad bugs still existing, it was very much a joy playing it.

That basically my main complain is that end was missing. And basically if there was an end after rescuing 8 people, then perhaps the upgrades would have needed to be rethought to having only 3 upgrade levels for example, to keep the upgrades more varied, for I started by maxing the extra XP as a first thing, then damage and speed, and didnt get elsewhere yet at all.

Edit: almost forgot to mention properly. what was it with that Rescued people amount keeping changing. like 0/5, 1/9, 2/8. 4/14? That second number seemed to keep changing randomly, while the first number was constantly based upon how many people had actually been rescued.

Really fun, I could have kept playing for hours getting upgrades! I will say, I wouldn't necessarily need map markers for the citizens who need rescue, but it would be nice to have something directing you back to the church! I had a line of 5 people following me for a good while because I was lost, haha. Maybe a compass or something pointing at the church? 

Overall really nice and satisfying gameplay!

Really impressive game!!

Your use of lighting is super-effective, and I think you did an incredible job with that. I really loved how you handled the lighting of various elements (you weren't just powering up by adding a light, but the Bible you're holding glows). You handled your 3D assets extremely well, and everything felt very visually cohesive.

The behavior of the enemies feels very natural and intuitive -- I like how they attack for a bit, then wander, and it feels very organic, with just the right levels of unpredictable but kindof predictable.

Gameplay-wise, I liked the in-game tutorial. That felt good! I was confused at first what was meant by the people you were supposed to rescue, and spent time trying to collect / return the bad guys, without realizing that the people I was supposed to rescue were something else entirely. I had to wander the map for a fair bit before I actually found my first person, and I'm just glad I didn't get lost. A minimap or arrows would have helped, but I also liked the feeling of exploration that I got -- maybe just road signs or a minimap that uncovers and grows as I walk, so that it doesn't spoil the whole map for me from the beginning, but it's at least easier to find my way back to the church. That might be all I want -- just a way to know that I can find my way back to the church.

Speaking of the map, I really enjoyed your whole layout. Everything from the little stores, to the gas stations, to the various houses with their For Sale signs and various yard elements like pools or doghouses or things -- the game felt VERY hand-crafted, which was such a welcome sight. I'm really really glad that the houses weren't simply all copy-pasted in a row, and that the roads and neighborhood layout felt very organic and handmade. That was just delightful, and exploring the world was part of why I played it as long as I did.

I think I made it to leverl 6 or 7, rescued 7 people and eliminated over 300 baddies. Eventually the game began to feel a bit tedious (I didn't really know when I should stop?) -- I eventually found a couple of shields (wasn't quite sure what these did but I assumed if I ever got hit they would have helped me), and recharged my health back to full, where it remained for the rest of the game.

The "treadmill" of progression was fun, but would have appreciated having more of a goal to work towards. People keep spawning, baddies keep spawning, the difficulty doesn't ramp up (if anything, it gets easier as I ramp up in level-ups), and so the only reason I would ever stop is boredom. From a game perspective, I think you want the game to end when it's fun, in order for people to walk away in a moment of fun / challenge (since that will be the impression they're left with), rather than leaving because there's nothing else to accomplish.

Regardless, it was a super-fun game. I think a lot of the spiritual analogies were there, but I think there are some easy opportunities to insert more explicitly Christian teaching into the game. Not sure how you would feel about this, but one example that comes to mind is to choose a selection of verses that talk about reading God's word, and to display them when you're charging up your faith-o-meter. Not sure how best to balance that, but I think there are definitely some opportunities to make it more explicitly instructive.

There were a few bugs in the game that I encountered (such as yourself or your followers clipping through the floor), but none of those were show-stoppers, and I was always able to jump to get me (or my follower) out of the ground and recover.

I'm still so impressed at how you handled everything in the game -- especially the atmosphere and the visuals. It's really difficult to balance the lighting in such a dark game like this, and you handled it masterfully. Very very well done -- this game felt like it had a lot of polish, and it was a lot of fun to play!

This was fun until the game froze and the screen went white with a frowny face in the top left corner on the browser (MS Edge) while charging with two villagers following me after getting rid of some shadow monsters.

It was not clear where to find people to rescue at first but I would have kept playing to get the upgrades if it hadn't of froze!