Game was uploaded within the deadline (just). All visual and audio assets were made during the jam weekend by myself. File size was too big for the GM48 so please forgive the external link.

https://frogoil.itch.io/illuminated

MAJOR BUGS:

  • God mode activated.
  • Spawns appear below player character. Thank god for god mode.
  • The main audio loops over itself after about a minute and starts to sound pretty rough. You'll be bored by then anyway.
  • Forgot to add the gameplay.

NOTE: Admins have approved this entry and verified it was uploaded before the deadline. Thank you Peter. Apologies again for the external link.

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  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    Relaxing, interesting game. I included it in my GM48: Colors are Important compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/5oPza5MRAiY

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Hey - I recently discovered your channel. Thanks for playing this broken mess. The tutorial screen explained the mechanics and you missed the main reveal, but I appreciate you giving it some time. You need to swim directly downwards on the intro screen to have the game explained. In the main room with the lights, you have to find the 'big' light, which will reveal the next part of the game.

      I appreciate that none of this was explained very well at all, so my bad for overscoping!

      Anyway - thank you!

  • Kwis
    Lv. 67

    Went out of the game to check the feedback/description to see if there was something I was missing, and when I came back to the game, the player instance was... blue? xD While I didn't figure how to change color it did it basically when I minimized the game lol

    So, yes, not really much to add from what was previously said, not much to do, but it's an interesting start at least. It felt so gloomy though, most of the game is you in a near-black screen. But at least the atmosphere feels like it was your intention, so that's nice

    Dye Hard
    Submitted

    Dye Hard

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Thank you for playing and leaving feedback kwis. The game did end up a bit darker than I'd hoped - but I will work on that aspect. Gloomy is the right word, which can be offputting for some. I think the audio had a big part to play in that so needs a bit of light. There are small coloured orbs that dart around near your player - one of each primary colour - eating them changes you to the respective colour.

      Appreciate your time playing this broken prototype (:

  • Redbeard
    Lv. 1

    Thanks for submitting a game!

    Played it for ~a minute, as you mention in the description there wasn't really any challenge. It is not clear to me with god mode off if there is fighting or something like that with the other creatures you discover, so I cant really comment on that part.

    Lets talk about what we can:

    I thought the sound and music was very good and fit the game very well.

    Visually I really liked the style. You didn't try to do too much, so even though we were looking at a combination of primitive shapes your avatar looked neat.

    I liked that the instructions for the game were written on the background, I like that style, but you might have made them a bit easier to find.

    Controls scheme, call me crazy but I feel like this might have played better as a point->click->move game. Not knowing where my cursor was caused me some problems for sure. I also kept boost held down the entire time, so not sure if this is something thats limited outside of god mode or not, but I would either take boost out and have you just move that fast, or make sure that there is some sort of a timer or cooldown to make sure i cant just use it always.

    Overall a neat concept. Would love to see some of the bugs fixed, the "game play loop" outside of the god mode fleshed out and some narrative added to the entry.

    Nice job and thanks for submitting!

  • Kyon
    Lv. 25

    Very interesting art-style. Too bad there wasn't much to do. Reminded me of the water-cell levels of Spore haha Well done! :)

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      I didn't play Spore but I have been told this by others! There are other games which have clearly inspired and influenced me, and there is a certain aesthetic that seems common throughout my games so far. Thanks for the feedback! I'll release a 'playable' version soon.

  • Hyper Freeze Games
    Lv. 17

    Hi! This is a very cool athmospheric game, I think! It had some element of horror, to swim around in darkness. The art was cool, and I loved how the little guy danced around, following my cursor. And I loved the music, very misteryous!

    But, as you wrote, you cannot die, what makes it a little bit too relaxing. But it's a bug, and bugs happen! Especially within such a strict time-frame,

    Nice entry, keep it up!

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Thanks! I seem to focus on atmosphere more than most other things. This time was mostly an experiment with movement and light. Next time I'll focus on something else (maybe gameplay... ) I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your experience with it. Despite the mostly positive feedback on the audio, it does bug and I think sounds a bit too much in this build so I will work on proper implementation for the patches. Stability rating will suffer for this one! ;)

  • trolog
    Lv. 6

    Hey the sound on this game, specially the music was amazing for game jam, so well done on that.

    There was a lot of strange bugs, I would have preferred to see my mouse as it coming outside the window and highlighting things on my start menu lol.

    There was no real challenge here, but I've read god mode is on by a bug?

    I thought the body trailing the head was nice and smooth, I liked this.

    So yeah the music and fluid movement were my best parts of this game.

    I thought that the theme was more of an after thought, really this game would work the same if you took the colors out, so aiming feed back would be aim more towards hitting the theme better.

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      I've had mixed feedback on the mouse cursor, so I may add an optional one. I believe there are ways to lock the mouse to the screen though, so I will think about this too. There is no gameplay at the moment with godmode and broken spawns, but thanks for all the feedback on the movement and audio. It needs a lot of work and the audio is horribly bugged, but it's good to hear how it 'felt' to play regardless. I may not have been completely on theme in this build, and as soon as I saw the fish themes in the final 10, I decided I wanted to play with fluid movement, so this seeded the underwater idea regardless of what the result was. The plan was to tie colour and light into the creature behaviours and dark caverns more, but I'm new to jams and clearly overscoped on this one. Thanks again for playing and taking the time to write.

  • battleZays
    Lv. 8

    very fun and looks good and sounds great

    only thing i didn't like was it was a little bit to dark and i wish the movement was faster

    oh so there is not a reply for gm48 but i can edit. the boost and it still was to slow :D

    the !color
    Submitted

    the !color

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      It did end up being a bit darker than expected. A very different vibe to most of the games here so I was a bit uncertain. Did you use the 'boost' function to increase you move speed out of curiousity? Do you think it needs to be faster still?

  • Croaks
    Lv. 4

    I fundamentally don't understand how you got that sound design done. It's so good.

    I really appreciate the reveal of the deep creatures. They came out of nowhere and that's honestly really true to what I was hoping for. Do you think you would add a depth mechanic similar to Flow? Managing color and depth could be a really cool experiment in how we visualize a layered gaming world from above.

    To bounce off the echo of gamification, I'm not sure honestly how you would gamify something this ethereal. It's easy to add the idea of an objective but there are some amazing art games where that takes a secondary spot (thanks, That Game Company). This would easily fall into that repertoire which is why I so quickly thought of flow. TLDR: I'm not mad about the lack of gamification. Sure, it needs some, but not much.

    Killer job with this.

    Ghosties
    Submitted

    Ghosties

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Dude, thank you so much for the detailed feedback. I've been messing around with digital sound design for a while now and have a knack for synths. I'm by no means a musician but I understand how to create soundscapes to a degree. I made the music during the jam weekend for my last jam entry 'Infectious' on my itch profile too if you want to check it out.

      Thanks for noting the reveal! I didn't get it perfect, but I wanted that 'wtf moment' and think I just about got there.

      I didn't realise how inspired this was by Flow until I'd almost finished programming the movement. I love all of the games you've referenced, and certainly take a page from their books (even if I didn't initially realize it). The initial plan was indeed to add depth, bigger procedural creatures (the tech is written so that the head generates the tail - i just didn't have time to add randomness to it) the deeper you go. You may have noticed the parallaxed background layers. The idea was to be able to move in the X, Y and Z axis to explore the caverns, but because I hacked it together, none of it would have been good for resources (I'm already over the size limit with just 3 layers). I'm going to look into generating and shading these dynamically and already have some ideas sketched out on how to do this.

      Thanks again for the kind words. I am genuinly awstricken that you have compared this style to the likes of flow, journey, flower, which are some of my favorite games of all time.

  • voxeledphoton
    Lv. 4

    I loved the lighting, super smooth movement, the way it started, the little particles and other thing swimmin around. The atmosphere was ominous and I really felt the deep sea vibe. I would suggest maybe keeping the characters a bit darker and maybe use bio-luminescence patterns (now that I'm thinking about this it would be really fun to mess with and can maybe incorporate the patterns as another mechanic such as somehow copying other creatures patterns to lure them in or maybe have meters that tell you how much color you've obtained and can use until it's used up). Thanks I really enjoyed this one!

    CHAMO
    Submitted

    CHAMO

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Thanks so much for the feedback and suggestions. I was actually planning to have 'colour meters' (RGB) rather than three fixed colours, so you could mix your 'hue' to your advantage. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to do any kind of resource system, but that is planned for hte post-jam. I'm really happy you enjoyed the atmosphere - that tends to be what I go for with my jam games. Next time, I'll put more focus into gameplay first. Really great ideas here, so thank you again.

  • Tero Hannula
    Patron

    This felt really nice game, it had atmoshpere. Though did you make the music during the 48 hour period, as artistic content should be? Nevertheless, it really fit the game. I would see here some potential if you make some more gameplay here. Graphics were pleasing, but you should work on player design to be more unique. The geometric shapes don't fit the overall game, so maybe you should redo it to be more vivid, lifelike, wavy, or something.

    Edit. Good to know, gonna check those :D Many times I have used AudioSauna for making short pieces of music, but I can't make any long melodies :P

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Hey, thanks for the feedback. Yes, the music was made on sunday morning in about 2 or 3 hours using Ableton Live and the Serum synth. All code, art, and sound effects were made during the weekend and not before. Although not believing it was is the best compliment ;) Appreciate you enjoying the atmosphere and the music, and i look forward to expanding this game.

  • Naxos
    Lv. 7

    I so wish this game had worked like you intended! I can see a lot of potential here. Very reminiscent of Subnautica, in a way!

    I thought the game was beautifully rendered and the music was very appropriate.

    I would have liked some indication of where the mouse cursor was, in order to help me control the character, but that's a small gripe. The character also seemed to do a wiggle motion if it swam too close to the mouse point.

    I hope you work on this post-jam and make it as you imagined!

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Thanks so much for this positive feedback. I'm encouraged to continue. Yeah i wanted to add some auto swimming type feature, so if you stop swimming you gently drift about, but time ;) thank you so much for playing nd writing.

  • jack
    Patron

    The artwork and the sound effects in this are really nice. This game has a great atmosphere and I'd be happy to play it again if all the bug were fixed.

    UGBY MUMBA
    Submitted

    UGBY MUMBA

    • FrogWax
      Lv. 5

      Thanks Moo! Lots of people telling me I should released the un-bugged playable version, but I don't want to affect the rating system. Considering I already had trouble uploading to the official GM48 site and had to use a 3rd party, I won't risk it. That being said, I will post a link to the working version provided people judge me for what I was able to complete in 48 hours, and not for the working product. Appreciate you playing and taking the time to write feedback.

  • SpritePainter
    Lv. 21

    The audio and visuals are very impressive. I would love to see this with more game play mechanics.

  • Joe Wetmore
    Lv. 1

    Really cool creature design on the fish and that presumably bad fish guy (even if he can't hurt you in this version he looks cool XD )

  • G-rizzy
    Lv. 2

    Really nice looking game, too bad there is no objective/loss condition but I can imagine what it could be like with objectives and progression.

    the controls feel great and really interesting to play around with.

    the sounds used are really nice an atmospheric and really add to the game