This is dope!
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Sanguine Roses's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Enjoyment | #1 | 4.680 | 4.680 |
| Toasty Rank | #3 | n/a | n/a |
| Presentation | #6 | 4.760 | 4.760 |
| Creativity | #13 | 4.440 | 4.440 |
| Adherence to Theme | #16 | 4.480 | 4.480 |
Ranked from 25 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
I'm one of the artists, so I can answer one of your questions! We had a team of three people: Thurapy did all of the coding, level design, dialogue, and wrote the story. I made the (visual part of the) UI, character/card art, trailer and voiced the rat enemy. Zedi2912 had a simpler involvement and drew the environments/tilesets. Other assets featured in this game were either royalty free or previous creations from friends of ours.
Your art, *mwah* (chef's kiss) beautiful. I sketched a version of your heart health gauge into my notebook and the section seperaters on the actual page below the game.
What was your organization like? Did you guys have any issues getting organized and communicating?
It sounds like Thurapy was the creative director/lead on this. Is that accurate?
Really, I was quite surprised and played the game through to the end on my first try. It was very well paced, Just enough handholding and time at the start to get me...somewhat... ready for the last few areas.
Doing that on your notebook sounds really cool. I'm glad you enjoyed it that much, but I can't actually remember who came up with the rose as HP lol. While I gave an idea of the general outline of the story, Thurapy was the one to really bring it all together and make it as fancy and mysterious as it was in the final game. Thurapy was also the one to originally design the character you play as. So yes, you could definitely say Thurapy was the creative lead. I was basically just throwing vague ideas Thurapy's way which were later refined (or scrapped); and that leads me into the part about communication, which was fine for the most part. We only had to slow down to really talk things through about the finer details in regards to level design, direction, sound design and others a few times, but I'd say we handled it as well as we could within the jam's time frame.
I really enjoyed the dynamic blend of turn base and real time based combat, this side of the game is strong enough to warrant further exploration in other projects (in my opinion) the large amount of cards only further expand the game-play possibilities, it's a shame that in a single run a player only gets to see a handful before finishing, where the game is lacking a bit is dialogue, it seems overly dramatic at times, while it does set a very well defined oppressive and dark tone, at some places it reaches a level of parody as for example describing an ordinary rat as a grotesque beast is so over the board that it got a chuckle out of me, if everything is described as the most vile, dark, depressing, bloodied and gutted thing in history it starts to loose a bit of it's meaning, if the instances of vivid descriptions were relegated mostly to the final part of the game it would really underline the terrifying power of the rose pedals, another a bit strange part of the experience is is the lack of graphic detail in art direction, while the written descriptions sound like we are exploring the dungeons of fear and hunger on benadryl our actual protagonist looks fine most of the time, if a little shaken, I was disappointed to see that in despite picking a body part to be essentially mauled into uselessness at the beginning of the game, this has no effect on the in game sprite, another part of this was that despite being brought to a near death state during the game, the protagonist does not bleed, not on their clothes, armor and not on the floor, only a flash of red as we take damage, this softer way of showing damage bring to mind less serious games like Block Tales or Bloody Hell, the desings of the monsters seem to be more goofy than scary at times, especially with the case of the previously mentioned, frankly cute, rat, with all that in mind there is one more area of the game that needs to be mentioned, the story is engaging, cool, unique and doesn't overstay it's welcome with long descriptions or cutscenes, frankly almost all of it can be skipped if the player decides not to read the in game notes, a shame really but it's good that the player has a choice.
If anything that I might have mentioned as a flaw is intended game design, please disregard it as my personal lack of comprehension, I personally had a grand old time with the game and managed to beat it first try :D
this was so cool !! the visuals were beautiful and polished, the combat is something i've never played before and it's a lot of fun, the vibe and atmosphere were really cool. this is mad impressive for a 1 week jam !
Submitted
DESCENT DOWN INFINITYSanguine Roses
“What’s that! Looks suspicious!”-my PC
First Impressions:
Stunning Artwork, Unique Gameplay, Chilling Narrative, Not RPGMaker, Classy Card Combat System, Great Music
Mini Essay:
When I started playing I thought this was an RPGMaker game and was impressed by how smooth the movement was, it’s still very impressive how fluid the motion of all the sprites and map are but more understandable as something not made in RM.
In the first playthrough not only was I unable to read the starting text I also gave up on the run partway through because I was terribly lost. The lack of maps and menu screen and even the ability to save or exit the game from within the game were contributeing factors to what was almost the end of my experience, but the reviews and comments I had seen convinced me to give SR a second chance. I’m very glad I did.
This time, after a snack break, I started a new game prepared to read the narrative. The storyline is gripping! The writing of the grusome scenes was visceral and set my hair on end. (I’m pretty sure the second and third to last text blocks of the intro are dupes). The jarring crash sound effects at the beggining appear to only be used twice in the whole game and feel a little out of place but the rest of the sound design was on point.
The music was extremely fitting and in the second playthrough a joy to listen to. In the first I ended up with a little bit of sound fatigue from hearing the same thing too many times. Although the pathing is fairly intuitive when considering the phrase “Up and Out” It was less clear in casual passing.
The combat was really fun, I’ve been searching for games with similar combat systems and the interactive environment in combat was chefs kiss!
Thanks for the Great Game!
This is excellent!! I'm having such a great time with it. Aesthetics and combat are 5/5.
I ran into a bug that ended my run. I tried interacting with something on the opposite side of an impassible object. I got stuck and softlocked the game. I assume "Skip if cannot move" would fix that? In any case, I look forward to starting it up again soon once I get a chance. It's so good!!
Submitted
Hungry DungeoneerThis was beautiful. a Rogue-like Card based battler? this deserves a full release.
Submitted
Aliens took my brother's brain!Insanely good. I'd love to see this as a full standalone game.
Submitted
Cave of the CatalystEasily one of the top game's in the jam for me so far, hooooly that's rad!
Submitted
Oriana: Delvehollow
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