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A jam submission

PENDULUM "a Short Horror Game"View game page

You decide to stay in an abandoned house, but that night, things don't go as expected.
Submitted by the._.eren (@the__erenz) — 6 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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PENDULUM "a Short Horror Game"'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Controls / UI#973.1673.167
Art / Graphics#1363.1673.167
Overall Fun#1403.0003.000
Sound/Music#1642.6672.667

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

For 13+

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Comments

(1 edit)

I love a good walking simulator horror game, so I was excited to see one in the submissions for FBQ9.  Sadly, I have to admit I found this one to be a bit lackluster and underwhelming.

First, the lack of options at all was a little frustrating.  I know there are some games that just skip the title screen and jump right in, but for streamers, especially, having that title screen would be a nice touch.  As would having options to adjust the mouse sensitivity.

When the game started, it seemed to have no sound at all.  Other than the jump scares, the sounds were either missing or super quiet.  A key component of a good horror game is using sound to build atmosphere and tension.  With a game like this where you're mostly walking around an empty house, you could add some good music and maybe some sounds like the floors creaking as you walk.

I didn't mind the graphics since I fully understand that an indie game dev often has to use free assets.  Most of the letters were hard to read, however, except the one asking where the baby was looking.  That doll, BTW, was delightfully cursed :D 

The ceilings also felt a bit low; that or the character is super tall.  

Most of the jump scares were predictable, and only one made me jump.  The story felt predictable and was mostly just dumped at the end of the game.  The whole parent-killing-kid and still haunting-the-house tropes do feel a little overdone among indie horror games, and I feel like the game would have more punch if you spoon-fed the story more and went for something a bit more original.

VOD of gameplay: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2881486951?t=03h15m01s

(2 edits)
  • Youtube Link / Twitch Link
  • Graphics : The assets are mostly fine but there's a few issues like clipping or text being utterly illegible or look like they're out of entirely unrelated sources.
  • GUI : Absent. 
    • FOV wasn't good
    • Complete lacking of options , video, audio or otherwise.
  • Performance : Not great , UE5 isn't great.
  • Music / Sfx : 
    • Music : Absent.
    • SFX : Unreasonably loud, this doesn't make jumpscares scary or good.
  • Gameplay :  Quite frankly a bit rough and really rather is lacking
  • Misc Issues : 
    • The game has serious issues progressing , it's a bit unclear as to why.
    • There's invisible walls where there really shouldn't be , kitchen namely.
    • Couldn't close the game off, had to alt-f4
  • Notes : 
    • The flashlight mechanic being somewhat of a freelook is actually kind of nice.
    • The text/notes are rather inane.
  • Final Thoughts : Overall I really rather didn't like this , it's extremely rough. It runs poorly and feels rather insulting in the way that it attempts to get any sort of reaction in the player is to try to destroy their ability to hear.

This game is really good, I liked it!

(1 edit)

Hi, I played your game during Feedback Quest 9, the game is super dark and the jump scares are cheep. The only reason they were scary was because they were so damn loud.  You can find the VOD of me playing it here. https://www.twitch.tv/twentysevenxl

Developer

Thank you so much for playing my game. By the way, there was a flashlight in the game—you could turn it on by pressing the F key. As for the sounds, the jump scare sound was way too loud when I was making the game, so I had to turn it down for various reasons, but never mind I’m glad you played it :)

Jam Host (1 edit)

Hi there!

So I went to play your game on stream but I'll admit I had some issues with it. More specifically, I had an abysmal framerate, found the mouse sensitivity too high and just couldn't see anything. However, I want to give it proper coverage. As such, I'm going to wait to see if you can update the game to allow players to change graphic settings (including limiting framerate to 60 FPS, because if you don't put this sort of thing in then my graphics card just tries and fails to go much higher), mouse sensitivity and lighting.

edit: Also, an option to use windowed mode instead of pure fullscreen. I found that when the game launched, it broke my stream as well. I ended up having to restart OBS to fix it. Being able to have the game open in a windowed fullscreen mode instead of dedicated fullscreen may correct this)

Developer

Hello, thank you for playing my game. I’ll fix the issue as soon as I can, and I’d also like to mention the following:

In the game, you can quickly switch to windowed mode by pressing F11. If you “forget,” you can press F to turn on the flashlight, which will illuminate your surroundings.

I’ll release the update as soon as possible. Thank you for letting me know, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Developer(+1)

Hey @hythrain!

Fixed OBS capture / display crash issues.

Optimized performance and resolved FPS issues.

Increased flashlight brightness and range.

Rebalanced mouse sensitivity and camera motion.

Thanks for the feedback and playing!

Jam Host

I didn't even know there was a flashlight. XD

Jam Host

I'm a bit behind on this but here is the VOD where I got to play your game fully: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJp5PzPyJ8c

Jam HostSubmitted

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