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A jam submission

Light Up the Dark (alpha)View game page

A colony survival sim set in a dark world filled with unseen horrors.
Submitted by team-lutd — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Light Up the Dark (alpha)'s itch.io page

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Comments

It's got an addicting gameplay. Got a lot of systems going on but thought all the information was laid out clearly. I like the task window where you can see all the existing orders that are ongoing. I also like the way schedule editor is built, how you create these presets and assign colonists to it. I agree with the others about making it a little bit faster in the beginning. I also didn't understand why the colonists were gaining traits, it was hard to see what triggered them and to see what effect it even had.  I do like the log window. Noticed the UI looks different in game compared to the ones in the screenshots. The old one's got a lot of charm and hope you explore a way to keep that in while keeping everything clear. 

I'm trying to create a similar rimworld / timberborn inspired game, so it was really interesting to see how you approached it. The whole light system and concept works great. 

Developer

Thank you!

We've added a Gained by section to trait tooltips after similar feedback. It'll be included in the next update. Some examples to make it clearer: If a colonist spends too much time idle, they roll for the Lazy trait. If they sleep outside they roll for Insomniac. Having low sanity for too long may also trigger rolls for random insanity traits like Naked. Number of traits is low for the moment and they become somewhat repetitive, soon there will be way more of them.

You can see the effects of traits by hovering over them in the colonist UI, but I also plan to add a Traits screen that shows all traits in a tree-like structure (in the future, maybe).

We've gradually replaced almost the entire old UI because it was taking up too much screen space. It was also a one-time job by an artist who we can no longer ask to make adjustments.

Btw, I've seen your proggy posts before and your game looks very cool. Good luck!

Submitted

it superficially reminds me of Village in the Shade x Danganronpa, if you see what I mean

personally I do think it is okay to cheat the angle of the sprites near the camera / bottom of the screen, 

Developer(+1)

thanks for playing! we do tilt the sprites slightly as your example but the angle is the same everywhere

Submitted

Played for 8 days - died while alt-tabbed.

Edge pan and drag should not have any delays, feels really off when using them. Dragging should also not have any/much less smoothing.

Edge pan and drag does not work while placing buildings. 

You can order units directly so not sure why you can't use right click to move them around too?

Getting ~100 FPS with a 3080, seems pretty low.

Holding shift while placing buildings should allow you to place multiple without it closing.

Why do dirt roads cost wood? I suppose there isn't any other resource that would be fit either though...

The "move work zone" button is very awkwardly placed. Also seems like mostly tedious busywork to keep moving it around, any reason to have them go to all resources starting with the closest ones? A dedicated work zone could be an optional option if you want it to, imo.

In the tech tree you can't hover over the secondary tooltip links while hovering a technology, very annoying when you want to know what the stuff is you're unlocking.

Game feels very slow, 2x speed or faster should probably be the default. Even 3x felt pretty slow when there's not much to do. I was mostly waiting for tech to research, occasionally moving the work zones. Then died while waiting alt-tabbed.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

We're aware of most of the issues you mentioned and agree with you. Hopefully, we'll be able to fix them soon. I'll skip those points below.

I couldn't find a better cost for dirt roads. Some games make them free (aside from construction time), but I found that too generous for this game.

Work zones are useful when you want to avoid chopping down all the trees in an area and give them a chance to regrow. This way, you can also make sure some forest is preserved for resources other than wood (resin, seeds). The work zone ranges of some other buildings could be increased though.

You can actually click on secondary tooltip links (Crusader Kings 3 style). You just have to wait a bit for the first tooltip to lock in to prevent accidental nesting. CK3 has some additional options for this that we haven't implemented yet.

Submitted

I spent quite a lot of time playing this, it's pretty interesting. It reminds me of a really old game called Cultures. 

My only complaint so far is that progress seems a bit slow, even though I played a lot I didn't feel like I accomplished that much. One of the best things about these types of games is the exponential growth and having to manage more and more things.  And how are we going to get more colonists if all of them are male? Some of the controls could be improved a bit too. For example if I'm collecting berries and want to switch to collecting something else there has to be an easier way than canceling the order and setting a new one. I guess what I want is being able to switch some of the details on an existing order. Good work so far, I would definitely play more in the future.

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you! We also noticed the initial progression should be much faster after watching brimstonewalker's stream yesterday. Because of the slow progress, he got the impression that there wasn't much content in the game yet. In the next update, we'll make the initial technologies much easier to unlock and will keep the grind for mid- and late-game technologies.

New colonists can find you after you build the Beacon (requires Beacon technology: Workshop > Torch Pole > Beacon). There are other survivors scattered across the Dark after the crash. They've managed to survive on their own, but most are in pretty bad shape. The Beacon helps them find your camp (inspired by Frostpunk's beacon).

Your suggestion makes sense. We can add an option to reorder the job list.

Thanks again! We're trying to add new content and make balance adjustments every week or two.

ps. Never heard about the Cultures, will look into it.

Submitted(+1)

You should play it then, I think it has some interesting mechanics that could work in your game.

I just assumed that the beacon was another light source so I ignored it because the cost was too high and I needed other buildings

Submitted

Game art seems good but it lack a lot a feature that would ease friction such as:

- close the menu by just right clicking outside their box

- close all menu quick button

- music

- hut are not automatically attributed to colonist

Otherwise keep on deving

Developer

Merci Azurdev! Noted all.
About the huts, you don't have to assign colonists to them. They can just use any available hut if none is assigned.