Mysticism pageant - Redeye [DONE]

[Andrew]

Greetings and salutations!
Mysticism
A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
OR
The pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight.

Based on this and several other themes, I bring you Redeye, a 48 hour game(+1 for tweaking) about among other things, discovery through experience. Other than gameplay, I'm very curious to hear opinions about your perception of the game as a whole, or even parts of it.

It requires java.

CLICK TO PLAY

[jabbyjim]

Just wanted to throw you a quick bone. I played the game real quick, and loved the lighting effects of the torch only lighting up so much. I am not one for games that talk a lot, and it seemed pretty simple. I jumped around and "touched" lots of things and found it interesting, but it got boring after awhile.

Overall it looked good, I just thought it needed more I guess, or maybe I missed the entire point.

[Ian Snyder]

It's a little too dark (visually) for my tastes. At least on my screen I have difficulty making things out.

I didn't find very much use for turning the torch off and on, although it could be an interesting mechanic to work with. Do you think the matches system is really necessary? After all, turning off the torch is already an action the player tries to avoid because it puts them in a powerless situation (it inhibits their movement, which is the main form of agency in this game), the possibility of running out of light (essentially a game over state) discourages me even further from turning out the torch.

I don't know if you plan to return to this or not, but if you do I'd recommend you also try to make the movement feel a bit better. As is, I find it a little clunky. I can understand if you'd want to use that clunkiness as a feature, and if so be sure to do it in such a way that feels intentional.

[Andrew]

Thank you for your feedback.

I'll address the issue of movement first. Most if not all complaints so far targeted the controls. The character jumps too high and the acceleration mechanic was found to be frustrating. Those are rather easy to fix, but I've found out about it too late(the game was entered in multiple game jams and the deadline for some was already over).

Spoilers beyond this point

While the torch is out both the character and and the red eyes can still move, and the red eyes still do(they are visible regardless of the torch being on or off) This is an excellent way to bait them into deathtraps which they'd normally try to jump over, or to escape if you're surrounded. The matches are necessary to avoid exploiting the mechanic. Additionally spending too much time in the dark has side effects.

Giving up your only defense (the light) and using that defense as a weapon wasn't given away but merely hinted at intentionally. Some players learned of this use and and some did not. I'm not certain if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet.

I certainly do plan on fleshing out the game more, as it's more of a prototype, a proof of concept in its current state.

[zovirl]

I like the way the torch looks (was the first thing I noticed when I loaded the game).

I like the idea of collecting bits of a poem as I run around, though I never collected enough of them to make sense

The torch mechanic is really cool. It is scary hiding in the dark and watching the red eyes moving around, wondering if they will find me or overlook me. I think this is a pretty powerful mechanic that you could keep expanding on. It reminds me of Penumbra, actually.

[Andrew]

I have a few more ideas on using the light as a central game mechanic, but nothing very definitive at the moment. I'll probably have to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, or most of it anyway, or some of it. I've yet to decide actually. It'll be next month though as I'm neck deep in other projects at the moment.

Penumbra was one of the inspirations. Though inspiration is too strong a word.

[Stephen L (inactive)]

Hey, assembling an archive of pageant entries - would you have a standalone version of this you could upload somewhere that I could include in it?

[Andrew]

Yes I do, I'll post a link to it tomorrow.

[Andrew]

pm-ed it