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Thank you for the helpful criticism! You’ve raised a lot of good points, and honestly half of them are explained by the lack of time, and the other half by the lack of experience. But we will learn from it!

I feel especially bad about the ESC key that immediately quits the game instead of showing a pause menu. I knew it was not good at all and wanted to fix it before the deadline, but I didn’t manage. I’ll take care of this in an update, for the potential future players.

Very good point for the scroll to change item, I knew something was janky about it, and from your comment I realized I should have put some kind of debounce on it. I’ll add this to the list too, especially since it’s an easy fix once you know what is the problem.

I also do apologize for making you play through an emulator, while making a MacOS build isn’t a problem with Godot. I will upload one with the next version, and I’ll remember to make one on our future games as well.

Thanks again for playing and taking the time to make this detailed review. We hope you had a good time on the game despite the issues!

Thanks a lot for the detailed review, and for hosting this jam which was our first one! We’re really happy that we could convey the vibe we wanted into the game.

I understand for the level design, we had plans to put more things in the beginning, but the deadline brought us back to reality… We’ll make sure to work on this in our next game, start smaller and expand as needed.

Sorry about the bats =) Believe it or not i tuned them down in the last few days before completion, and I thought they were now too easy. I guess we need to find some people to playtest next time, it’s really hard the gauge the difficulty when you know how everything works under the hood. But, happy that you found them scary eventually, I just hope they weren’t too frustrating. If you go for another run, try getting the stake in the first cemetery on the right, it kills them in 2 hits.

To make this game, we used Godot 4.7, the models were made in Blockbench, and the 2D art in LibreSprite.

Thanks again, and count on us for the next GJ you’ll host!

Ha, they are indeed! But kinda cute in the same time, no ? =) Thanks for playing and the review!

First of all, thanks a lot for making a Linux build, and sorry I gave you extra work!

You can tell that a lot of work went into the art direction. The atmosphere is creepy, heavy, and uneasing. The colour palette enhances this perfectly, as well as the sound design, even though I felt the music was maybe a bit too “action oriented”. The lighting in the first level (outside) really gave that “bloody eclipse” vibe. If you do continue the game, I hope there’ll be more time in exterior!

The combat was reactive and I never got hurt because of the controls or the camera. It was quite simple but polished. Even though the attacks were limited, the fights were not boring, thanks to a good moveset including the dash and the sprinting, that gave a tactical aspect about how to approach combat.

There is a lot of lore to find here and there to understand better what’s going on in the story, and it’s a good way to let the player discover it gradually and as a reward, instead of info dumping the story. The notes were interesting and well written, and added a lot to the immersion.

The Doom 3 style mechanic of picking between a light and a weapon in the castle was a nice touch, that I haven’t seen in a while =)

As suggestions for improvements:

• the last boss arena looked super cool, it might be worth adding a bit of light in it, to be able to enjoy it more.
• the thoughts/dialogues of the character are a big too big, in terms of font size and vertical space, and are sometimes distracting. I would either reduce them and put them on a clear color background, or simply in a dialogue frame at the bottom of the screen.

Thanks a lot, I’ll try it right now!

Haha, sorry about the bloom with the Cross in the boss fight, I’ve playtested the boss only with the basic items and figured out too late how that one behaved in the boss arena.

Duly noted for the level design. I think we were too ambitious at the start and the world was supposed to be more filled up, unfortunately reality caught up and it’s true that it can feel either too empty or too big for what is there.

Thank you very much for the kind words, taking the time to play our game, and the constructive criticism =)

Thank you so much, we’re really happy that you liked it!

Thank you for your review! The combat is a bit lacking, we wanted to implement a stamina system taking in consideration the weight of the weapons, but we ran out of time. Glad you enjoyed the game =)

That was a fun game! It’s pretty hard at first and I kept dying a lot, until I figured out I could run past the enemies to get a ranged weapon, and then it gets better. There are a lot of mobs (at some point I had nearly 10 dudes blocking me a passage and 3 more in my back) and they have a lot of life, but the game is quite generous with the ammo and the controls are responsive, so it’s doable.

Visually, I enjoyed the 2D/3D mix which is really well implemented. I didn’t get lost too much thanks to the different statues and sculptures that help with the orientation.

As a point of improvement, it would be good to have a bit more feedback when the enemies get hit, sometimes I wasn’t sure if I was hurting them or not. Also, the mouse is not usable in the menu and it was a bit odd navigating there with the keyboard, but that’s just a detail.

I liked the creepy old school atmosphere, and the transformation into a vampire was a nice addition (and well thought, I think it’s the only way to regain life which makes sense).

I’m not a fan of visual novels either, so I’m not really gonna talk about the gameplay. The visuals are beautiful and the art direction fits perfectly the tone of the story. The sound design is well made and feels organic. The writing is very good, and the only small downside is that sometimes it wasn’t easy for me to know which character was speaking, but it might be due to my lack of experience in the genre. Also, it could help to know ahead if a conversation is gonna make you move to the next moment of the day, but if it’s a design choice I respect that.

Thank you for playing and for the kind words =) Level design is not my strong suit indeed, but I will work on that on the future games.

It looks really cool, unfortunately it seems it doesn’t run in on Linux, even through Proton, so I won’t be able to play it or rate it :/ If you’ll consider making a Linux build please let me know!

Nice experience, with a vampiric backrooms feel =) I liked the lighting and the confusing looping architecture. I found the key in the hidden room but couldn’t find the lock for it, I’ll keep trying for a bit.

Bloodshot is a fun, fast paced FPS. The general vibe reminds me a lot of early PC shooters such as Doom, Unreal and Quake. It adds a paranoid feeling to check if something is in your back and an urge to pick up the loot, as you’re literally shooting your life away and it goes down fast. It’s an interesting mechanic, and you have to constantly be careful to keep enough blood to kill the next enemy without dying from it. I’ve played it a few times, was able to win only once, and it was quite gratifying. The sound design is minimalist but efficient. A bell that announces the next wave, your rifles firing, and your character dying. Great job on the monster designs, they’re properly spooky.

Prodigal is a really interesting game, well polished (even the menus were carefully crafted), with an amazing artistic direction. The musics and SFX are creepy and well integrated. The aesthetics are simply beautiful, and the choice that has been made for the dithering filter works perfectly here. The gameplay itself is quite simple, even though I had troubles sometimes with some sentences (but that’s because I’m not a native english speaker, and the vocabulary used here is fairly advanced). I was not always sure of what I could or should do, but I think it’s part of the experience. I played 3 runs and was pleasantly surprised to see it had several endings. It’s impressive to know it was made in barely a month, congrats!

The shooting is quite satisfying, the feedback of the rifle is really well handled. The first part is quite easy, but the difficulty ramps up after sundown and it’s not uncommon then to let one or two vampire slip through. The cutscenes allow to get a better view of the camp and convey a good idea of what’s going on as well as what are the stakes. It would have been nice to be able to skip at least the intro for when you want to replay the game, but it’s not a big deal. The Halloween mode is a nice addition, and I enjoyed its music =)