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A jam submission

THE LURKERView game page

Explore your home and survive
Submitted by MZ STUDIOS — 6 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Play Horror

THE LURKER's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sound/Music#1912.3332.333
Controls / UI#2282.0002.000
Overall Fun#2302.0002.000
Art / Graphics#2402.0002.000

Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Ai Usage

Human made

Genre

Horror

Any Horror

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

I normally play 30 minutes of a game for Feedback Quest, but since this one was shorter than that, I played the whole game.

I love horror games, and I probably play 20-30 a year, mostly indie ones.  And I have to admit, this one fell short of my expectations.  While I understand it was intentionally short, it never really felt like a horror game, and the game description didn't quite fit the experience.

The rooms and hall were absolutely cavernous and so sparsely decorated for no apparent reason.  Finding the 3 numbers needed was ridiculously easy with so little to look through.  The kitchen seemed like the only fully fleshed-out room, with the living room also being at least somewhat better as well.

The note from the character's mom was way too small and could be hard to read for some players, and the spinning that happened at 27 was nauseating.  The zombie that spawned in was less than scary, as it clipped through a wall, stood still at one point, and clearly posed no actual danger; it just made noise.  

Story-wise, we're just left hanging, without the explanation from Mom on why we weren't supposed to answer the knock or what actually happened because we did.  It ended up leaving it feeling incomplete.

VOD Link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2880630045?t=03h45m52s

(1 edit)
  • Youtube Link / Twitch Link
  • Graphics : A hodgepodge of presumed bought assets , things are sized strangely , one object is highly detailed while the thing right next to it looks like it's from 15 years ago, no consistency.
  • GUI : Really rather lackluster , the font isn't great , the options menu is more of a suggestion.
  • Performance : Fine.
  • Music / Sfx : 
    • Music : Absent.
    • SFX : Mostly fine
  • Gameplay : Incredibly lackluster 'horror' game that's mostly a glorified walking sim with your roommate who has a skin condition.
  • Misc Issues : 
    • No Fullscreen
    • Light sources act strangely
    • Shadows are misplaced and glitch
    • Various objects disappear / appear when you stand in certain areas (e.g. trees at window)
    • Interacting with the notes makes you spin endlessly
    • The ending takes forever to actually "end"
  • Notes : 
    • Clip One
    • Clip Two
    • The monster just exists without any real reason , he trundles about the house and might as well just be a roommate.
    • The keypad codes don't really have any hint as to which order they go in, requiring you to guess the order. [Aside from the last two]
    • The house is large and open with a lot of unused space.
    • Why is there one semi-functional lightswitch?
    • The ending is just lackluster.
  • Final Thoughts : This is an incredibly rough game. I can only assume it is a learning first attempt , or very close to being so.
(+1)

Hello! Your game was the first one I streamed!  Here is the link to the VOD on twitch, and I will repeat my feedback here as well: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2862205206.  If you want to see the VOD after it leaves Twitch, just let me know, and I will upload it to YouTube and post the link here.

First off, the game was scary!  The jumpscare got me pretty good (you can't tell in the video, but it made my heart leap into my throat!)  

I also appreciate how smoothly the game ran.  A lot of games that I get from Itch.io take so much of my computer's resources that they're literally unstreamable, but I had no issue with your game.

The order of events was confusing to me.  The game starts with a note that says do not open the door, so of course I did not open the door for about twenty minutes while I wandered around the house trying to find something to do to protect myself from the monster.  Eventually I decided to end the game and open the door, only to discover that that was what I was supposed to do.  With the monster in the house, I could now look for a code.

The monster floated through the walls into the bedroom, which made the monster significantly less intimidating.

While the jumpscare really scared me, I don't understand why our character had to die there.  Is the monster real, or is it more like a hallucination?

I found a knife in the kitchen, but the game didn't let me pick it up.  It's totally fine if you don't want the player to fight the monster, it just felt a little annoying as a player to see a weapon that I can't interact with.

There were several interactable drawers that I did not know where interactable because they did not have an [E] prompt like the doors did.  There was also a bug with the code panel by the door.  If you hit escape instead of [E] while you're in the code menu, the menu stays open while the the player moves around the house.

Overall, not bad for an alpha, especially for your first game!  I hope you continue to work on it and bring it to the finish line!  Thank you for sharing your game with us!

Developer

Hey. First of all thank you for the playing the game I really appreciate it and secondly I wrote in the note not to open the door so the player gets more exciting to open the door. The monster is real and he is in the house and you have tk escape the house . Since It was my first game so I didn't add more interactable drawers because i5 got confusing for me . I will really like The VOD video if you can provide it . 

Again Thank you very much for taking your time and playing the game . 

Here is the link to the edited video on YouTube!

Jam Host (1 edit) (+1)

Hello and welcome to Feedback Quest 9! My name is Hythrain, and I'm one of the hosts for this lovely event! I'm also one of the streamers, so both the game and this feedback are being done live! If you want to see the see the VOD, let me know and I'll link you to it when it's uploaded to YouTube!

So... I'll be honest: I didn't get to finish the game because... well, the last part of the code didn't exist. Instead, what I got was a monster that just... kept making me laugh. So I got a bunch of small notes that I'm just gonna bring up now.

First, I'd like for there to be an option to put the game in full screen. The way it shows now is a window that's at 1920x1080, but when I try to make that full screen it doesn't behave right and leads to part of the window cutting off in OBS. You can see what I mean in the VOD.

I also found that there are several lighting issues, where the lights flicker on and off depending on where the player is standing and what direction they're facing. It's just kinda odd. Also, the lack of objects to act as light sources would be nice.

Speaking of, I felt like the house was very sparse. I'd love to see more furniture and items added to make it feel like a real house. I'm particularly concerned about mom. Where's her bed? Does she use my bed? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

Also, while I know you state that the knocking is meant to be from "all around," I feel like it'd be better if it was coming from the direction of the front door. It would feel more atmospheric and engaging, instead of taking me out. It would also mean that I don't have this very loud knocking in my ears all the time until I answer the door.

Which brings me to the next note: why did I open the door? While this isn't as important, I'd love for there to be a reason for me to open the door initially. Like maybe I was already waiting for something and decided to ignore mom's note, or maybe I can hear mom's voice and she's saying she forgot her key. Just something to make it make sense.

While you have a slider for sound (which is good), I would suggest bringing the volume of the some of the available sound effects. I already mentioned the knocking, but the heavy breathing is just too loud as is the sound of the monster. Since I stream, I have my own controls for handling sound and normally they're enough to do the job. However, with my standard sound settings this was too loud.

I also would suggest adding a confirmation button when the player is looking at notes or the keypad that tells them to press a button to exit out. Otherwise, the player could end up feeling stuck. In a similar vein, I'd recommend having the player hit this confirm button when they enter in the code instead of just automatically ending it, since otherwise they don't naturally exit out of it.

The game could use some more sound as well. The only real sounds are opening and closing doors, pressing a light switch, footsteps and then the zombie. I'd love for some ambient sounds, maybe even some light music. Just something so I'm not just hearing the zombie's groans non-stop.

Before I talk about what I felt was the biggest issue, there are some other small things I want to cover.

1. The game has the option for jumping and crouching, but neither of these are really needed to play the game. I'd recommend disabling these.

2. I noticed when interacting with notes that sometimes I'll just start spinning in place. It's weird.

3. When checking the menu while in game, it's way off centre. Unless there's some sort of UI that makes it off centre, this just gives things a poor quality look.

This all brings me to the big thing: out zombie friend.  Instead of it being a threat, it just felt like he was a delightful companion in this zombie pet simulation game (which, honestly, would also be a fun game if it went in that direction. But that's not what we're doing here). He would just pop in and start groaning, causing me to just run after him to make him go away. He'd then pop out of existence (but sometimes his groans would keep going but get distant), only to appear again a short time later. He wasn't a threat in any sort of way, and I spent more time yelling at him to get out of my house than I did trying to find the last part of the code (which, again, I could not find at all. It just didn't exist). He would even walk through objects and walls as if he didn't even have a corporeal form... even though both objects AND the zombo could stop me.

Overall, it's a good start as an alpha but I feel like it still has a lot of work to do before it could be considered "done." The zombie needs to be an active threat rather than being My Pet Zombo, and he should be beholden to corporeal objects. Also, the third part of the code needs to exist. If you happen to update the game such that it can be beaten, let me know and I'll happily give it another go on stream.

Developer

Hey! First of all, thank you so much for playing my game on stream and leaving such a detailed review. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.

About the game, I know I didn't add as much horror as I could have, and I understand your points about the lack of sounds, furniture, lighting, and other details. This was my first game, and I mainly made it as a learning experience, so there are definitely a lot of things I could have done better and polished more.

Secondly, I checked the game myself just now, and the third code piece is actually there. If you played version 1.1, the code itself shouldn't be the issue, but I did make some changes and improvements in version 1.2. So please make sure you're playing version 1.2 if you decide to try it again.

Again, thank you so much for playing the game and taking the time to leave a review. I'll definitely consider all of this feedback and make sure I improve these things in my next game.

Jam Host

I should ask where it is then, 'cause I looked everywhere and couldn't find anything

Developer

You can find it in the drawer of bedroom

Jam Host(+1)

I'm really behind on this but here is the VOD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSyAqZgt7ow

Jam HostSubmitted

The AI tags issue has been fixed, please update your game submission to reflect your AI usage.