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Ex Astris's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #2 | 4.118 | 4.118 |
| X Factor | #4 | 4.059 | 4.059 |
| Overall | #7 | 3.694 | 3.694 |
| Engagement | #8 | 3.471 | 3.471 |
| Theme Usage | #13 | 3.294 | 3.294 |
| Visuals | #14 | 3.529 | 3.529 |
Ranked from 17 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
This was cool, I liked how you used the player's curiosity to read more as a mechanic. You have to pull yourself away from the text to survive. I think it could use a little more time to react at first, just to give the player more time to acclimate
this is one of the most vibey things ive ever experienced. the writing instantly draws me in.
only tiny note of feedback is the text is a little hard to read with the dithering for me, but at thesame time having to squint a little with the music and story kind of forces me to be immersed :)
even tho its text i actually think the design elements visually and gameplay are brilliant and work very well, and i love the music. the atmosphere is so awesome
Thank you :,)
Very fun, very cool game made by some really talented people!! Highly recommend!!
A darkly humorous, brutal descent into the depths of humanity and nature's cruelty....
The slither of the creatures is brilliantly applied with the audio cues. If they become formulaic, it's in service to keeping the tension when trespassing hallowed, murky ground. As a centurion, a beast is only as frightening as you allow it to be. The hopeless fatalism of trudging through a cave, without a torch, is captured in this short but devilishly sweet experience.
As much as I love the low tech DOS interface, the CRT blur and typeface made it just difficult enough to distinguish a's from o's.
However, as far as capturing the dread of a genuine crawl through a dangerous environment, like a cave of Qud filled with the darkest of souls, this game is an excellent jolt of horror.
Neat game!
Wow!!!!!!! This was so much fun! Great Job!
I absolutely loved this. Strong writing is increasingly rare to come by. So, when I see it, oh baby. I am in. And the audio! Foreboding. Squishy.
What feedback I do have mirrors what BC said. The scanline(?) effects led to some squinting, even in full screen. I also agree that the creature encounters take away from that part of it, many times I had to read from the beginning after being distracted by The Creature and go "wait, where was I?" I think this is generally a symptom of frequency - by having said Creature be so frequent (and honestly easy to take care of) the horror factor quickly vanishes. I don't know if this is intentional, but if the creature appears when looking at the map, I was stuck at the map. I could still take care of the creature, and doing so felt very powerful.
Not for nothing, I have never played anything like this before. And I mean that in the best way possible. Played all the way through, got the eagle, had a blast. Great work!
Getting stuck at the map is a bug for sure lol. Thanks so much for the feedback, and for playing all the way through! I noticed that taking care of the creature was so quick, and happens so frequently, that some people thought they were getting attacked by many small creatures rather than one big one
VERY interesting little experience! The writing is incredible, and the audio definitely enhances the experience. I died a couple times before I figured out how the fights work. (remind me somewhat of the game Enemy Zero, if you're familiar). At first the battles annoyed me because they were taking away from the stellar writing, but then once I had them figured out It sort of made me FEEL like I was really there, halting my train of thought to attack an unknown enemy. The experience is short enough that dying never felt like enough of a setback to be annoying, but still enough to be tense. I think games could stand to have a little more friction, and I think by the end you guys had me on board. Great stuff!!!
I’ll have to check out Enemy Zero, it looks cool. Thanks for playing! I’m glad to hear the creature encounters had the desired effect of sustaining tension, even as simple as they are
Love the writing, visuals, and design on this one! It feels like a very tense and well-composed dungeon-crawler with excellent writing and sound design.
I only wish the creature encounters were a bit more intuitive; even after figuring out the controls for combat, I often felt like I had no time to react to the creature appearing before I got hit with the death animation. And every time the creature appeared - it felt like I was being pulled away / discouraged from reading the excellent text.
Eventually to get the Aquila, I had to try a few runs rushing through the dungeon without reading anything - and even then I felt like I got lucky!
Bugs with the directional audio were a real problem in development unfortunately. Thanks so much for playing through to the end!
Thank you for the feedback and for sticking with it to the end! We hoped to incorporate more visual cues for the combat, and we looked into adjusting some of the creature's behavior as well. Getting this sort of input is invaluable, so thank you again!
Very unique and inspired!! Engaging from beginning to end! It has that perfect balance of helplessness and tactfulness that makes a horror game feel especially nerve racking and exciting. A wonderful twist on a classic dungeon crawler, with great visuals, great music and sfx, delightful mechanics and eye popping writing and storyline, this ones a 10/10 for me. Get that freaking aquila
Thank you so much! Very gratified to read all this. We definitely wanted to capture a certain tension or hesitance for the horror elements, and it's great to see people respond to it this way.
This was a neat one! The concept is especially intriguing, and I like the presentation as a more classic text-based dungeon crawler. I maybe would have liked the effects to be a bit less strong, as it did make the text a little more difficult to read, which of course makes the whole experience a little rougher in this case. I enjoyed the writing, but I found the creature killing mechanics to get in the way more than anything. It felt mostly like it was there to kill me once or twice before I understood the controls, and then after that to just make things take longer as it pulled me away from reading the text, but it didn't provide much in the way of challenge or variety. I really just wanted to read the text, which felt like the actual meat of the game, but the creatures just made me want to rush through and I ended up skimming a lot more than I would've liked. The text and storytelling are strong, so I don't think you should shy away from just leaning on that more wholeheartedly!
Thanks for the feedback, honestly I agree with all of that! We would have liked to build a better system for the creature encounters but we stuck to it in order to get the game finished on time. If I could do it again I'd put the encounters in hallways between text areas or something
Thoughtful and trenchant critiques, and definitely gets to the crux of what the fundamental mechanic is attempting! We certainly wanted to fine-tune certain elements of the "combat," and there are a few things I've already thought about to shift the experience towards "tense" and away from "tiresome." But this kind of feedback really does help guide our thinking in making our games as engaging as possible. Thank you for this!
clicked buttons then died... amazing game 10/10
A tour de force, a stunning piece of art, a story for the ages. The aesthetics and writing almost completely hide the fact that we don't really have much in the way of gameplay...
Did I say we? Oops!
This game has 3 endings btw