Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines
A jam submission

BeaconView game page

Submitted by ScorchSoft, CheeseSharp, koperplyar, WinnWhatify, Digiraven — 21 minutes, 54 seconds before the deadline
Add to collection

Play game

Beacon's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Interpretation of the Theme#273.5493.741
Art Direction#303.2333.407
Narrative#332.1782.296
Audio (Music and Sound)#362.4952.630
Gameplay#382.2492.370

Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Team Members
- Scorch (Director/Game Designer/ Programmer)
- Koperplyar (Programmer/Game Designer/3D Artist)
- Cheese (3D Artist)
- Whatify (3D Artist)
- Digiraven (Sound Engineer)

Leave a comment

Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.

Comments

Submitted(+1)

I like the idea of this one and I feel like I'm a glass house cos I also made a game about somewhat ambiguous signals and its tricky to know when you've done the right thing. But yeah I thought I set my switches correctly, but nothing happened. Wasn't sure if I just hadn't done everything or if there wasn't a confirmation for success - only for failure. Which fair enough that's the life of a lighthouse operator - but it makes it tricky as a player. 

I will also say the player movement was very fiddly. The main complaint I have is the extra weird lurching step you take whenever you stop moving. I also didn't realise I was a moth and thought the step sounds were triggering too much or something. Oh also I wasn't sure what the difference between a fuel horn and an odyssey horn was. 

Anyhow not to be too negative I like the idea a lot and a moth lighthouse keeper is very cute and I hope you had a rad time making it.

Submitted(+1)

I revisited this game with a friend, and the best way we found to play it was to run down stairs before switching the lighthouse on and taking screenshots of all the notes.  After doing that, and switching the light on, we seemed to be able to correctly(?) input a bunch of conditions into the switchboard and the light seemed to change from orange to green. Before going back to orange. We did this for a bunch of loops and managed to stay alive that way. 


I assume there's no end to the game loop or win condition other than not dying from an incorrect signal and the ship violently crashing into you?

Submitted(+1)

To be honest, the game concept is good, but the execution isn't quite there. The main issue is that the mouse sensitivity is too high, making it difficult to control movement direction. Additionally, the sound of the player moving is somewhat annoying due to its repetitive nature, and the player's movement speed is excessive. Also, considering this was a game jam project, it would have been better to design gameplay that was less complex for the player. Overall, the art style is cohesive, but more focus should have been placed on player movement—specifically, slowing it down.

This feedback  is not intended to belittle your game; rather, it is meant to point out mistakes so that you can create better games in the future.  ^v^ 

 (I translated this in google translator "sorry for any mistakes :3")

Submitted(+1)

can i get a few clarifications on how this game works? i am confused about the rules, and i think there are ambiguities or misunderstandings that are screwing me over. i've answered confidently and then lost enough times to know i'm not getting something

1. i see streaks of rain spawning white particles (like the last screenshot). what am i actually looking at? is that rain or hail or both?

2. if it's 35°c, do the "warm" rules apply or not? if it's -15°c, do the "cold" rules apply?

3. if i think i saw multiple fog colours in one run, do i count both, or only the last, or am i getting muddled up?

i really want to get on this game's level, but something's not clicking.

Developer

So hailing was a silly misunderstanding on my part, because i thought that it's simply raining but stronger.
No rain correlates to "nice weather", small amounts of rain is "raining" and significantly more rain is "hailing". xP
(normal rain is something like an emission rate of 5 whilst hailing is around 25)

For the temperature and all factors in general, it's always only the current situation that you need to set the switches for.

The third was because the tutorial runs on a timer and once the timer runs out, the game sets a new environment with a new switch-code.
We did this because i thought the tutorial had a bug, which made you eternally be in the tutorial phase.

(the light on the switchbox is grey in the tutorial! :3c)

I definitively recommend opening notepad and writing each note's on/off together with its must/should so you always get the right code,
mental-switches in the pause menu would have helped the eperience a bunch but we barely made something playable as is. x3 
To reiterate, theres always only 4 factors for the switches: the horn-wave, the temperature, the fog's color and the weather and you only need to account for what's currently happening. :3

Submitted(+1)

thank you for responding!!

this helped quite a bit as i was not even aware of the tutorial state at all actually, so when it ends it just seemed like the game was changing state silently? in fact i would say that tutorial being there is currently doing more harm than good because it is too easy to miss that it's happening at all and then the game just seems like it suddenly changed without explanation. your note says the game starts "after the light is lit" but i think most players will think that means the big light at the top of the lighthouse? i didn't even notice there is a light on the switch-box!

i guess i also thought the game was randomly generating the rule notes as well, which would make the game pretty much impossible as there is totally not enough time to go and copy down all of the rules at the start of the run. it took me a while to realise that they were not changing!

and, on top of that i was ALSO sometimes accidentally declaring the weather was "nice" incorrectly because i was looking at the wrong window! i think that one is actually intentional misdirection on your part but added to this other stuff its just another thingy causing me problems along the way to understanding ~

all that combined, plus the previously mentioned stuff, is why i was having so much trouble!

okay, okay. we got it all cleared up. this is actually pretty great when you get past all that! i'm sorry there was so much miscommunication which i think pretty much guarantees players will get stuck on something. for a while there i was actually thinking maybe the game was bugged and killing me incorrectly. if you get the chance it might be worth extending the info on the itch page perhaps, i feel like just a slightly richer explanation of where you got to would help players settle into the experience, in lieu of a better tutorial.

i love the use of weird coloured fog and these unsettling ship horns and also the weather through the smashed window. all good sources of info to feed into the puzzle while also being effective atmosphere in their own right. the first run is super stressful! i really AM a big fan of the timed puzzle, the papers-please, the keep-talking. this one is pretty good when you know what to do. a few simple changes would put it near the top of my picks for this jam. i'm not sure how you would extend it into a full release, but if you did manage it and you got it all smoothed out, i could see myself buying it ⭐

(+1)

This was an interesting idea. I love the idea of a moth in a lighthouse, but I really think that having time pressure on it was maybe not the best choice.

I tried it a few times and while I was still trying to even write down all the rules I got a Game Over.

I think you can have a logic puzzle and you can have time pressure but you kind of can't do both. The decision to always have a flapping noise while moving but not actually be able to fly was also a bit surprising. I spent a while assuming that I would be able to fly up and down the tower but that doesn't appear to be the case. 

Interesting idea though! Good interpretation of the them!

Submitted(+1)

Cute art, but the running for all the notes really makes it a bit hard to keep track of things. Still, a very neat take on the theme!

Submitted(+1)

Okay I'm so sad cause after like 6 attempts I couldn't manage to get nothing else than a game over lmao

And I say I'm sad cause the concept, the setting and all is amazing for a jam, the idea of management game in a lighthouse like this with a puzzle and narrative touch is so cool I love it, I think the must and should mechanic is a good idea, my problem is more the fact that yeah the controls are extremely clunky and mouse sensitivity is broken. Finding the idea behind the horns was also cool but sometimes after one horn I could hear another one and I just got so confused x)

I still find the idea and mechanics very cool, I really like it, the atmosphere is nice too.

Submitted(+1)

The idea behind the game is really cool and I love the moth. The controls are a big too floaty and I the "should, must" mechanic is a bit too difficult for me.

Submitted(+1)

This is cool!! the instructions were a bit complex, but I love the direction!! the interaction was really cool!

Submitted(+1)

Cute moth character ;3

Submitted(+1)

Ok so, I am going to try to be as constructive as possible because, this game idea is SO COOL and I WANT to play more of it. But… I had a very difficult time trying to do so.

Here’s what I think needs improvement:

  • The controls. The mouse sensitivity is way too high and I couldn’t find a setting for it, and the camera being animated with the character is a cool detail but it caused me to get dizzy.
  • Clarity on what I am supposed to do; i.e. the game design. I see all of the notes around, but I don’t really know when I am supposed to do something, or why. So I basically just looked around the area and took in the environment.

Ok BUT BUT BUT what I LOVE about this game is LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE. The concept of being a lighthouse operator moth is so brilliant and so fitting. I can’t believe there is a fully 3d modeled and animated moth character!! I wish I could see the entire dude. And the environment itself is actually quite detailed and beautiful. That combined with the sound effects, makes for a very atmospheric experience.

Overall I think it needs work, but you guys have my full support!!!

Developer

Thank you so much!! :3c

And yeah.. we only had a playable build around 1-2 days before the deadline. QwQ
So a bunch of very needed QOL and balancing is missing.

But im really proud n happy that we got something cool out. ^w^

(+1)

Really clunky :[