Umbra and Lumos
Follow Umbra on her journey to make herself a friend! The world is dark but you are the key to bring back the light! Solve puzzles to advance Umbra on her journey.
If you're interested in the game's development, please visit us on our discord! https://discord.gg/gypduQj2er
Controls: (Only has PC Keyboard and Mouse controls or Gamepad controls. Nothing for mobile yet)
WASD => Movement
Q/E => Rotate certain objects
F => Interact with certain objects.
Shift-Tab/Tab to cycle through carried vials
Development log
- Preview: New Tutorial + Discord!Aug 26, 2024
- Version 0.20 is out!Aug 19, 2024
- GameJam is now over! What happens next...Aug 14, 2024
- Early Feedback and Post-mortemAug 07, 2024
Comments
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This is in the order that I encountered these issues and I do apologize in advance that this may seem mean.
Question on the stutter: Did your internet browser have hardware acceleration enabled? If it didn't, enabling that usually fixes that.
Walk audio: Hmm. I'll have to have a think on that.
Pick-ups: Pick-ups in general are getting an overhaul (working on it now, actually) and there will be a little inventory in the top left of what you've picked up.
Widdershins: It means counter-clockwise. :) I firmly believe more people should use this word.
Tiny targets: Hmm. That's valid. We're in the middle of re-doing the sprites for the sensors, so we'll keep that in mind when designing it.
Glass Colors: The whole tutorial is being reworked, so already on it.
This is such a beautiful and well crafted puzzle game.
I just need to know why you made it so hard to see the main character! And why are they so slow?! Arghhh waiting on them moving across the room was an exercise in patience that frustrated me so much! Half the time I couldn't see the character because the beautiful light was blinding me to them because they were pitch black and didn't stand out (unless they were holding a vial which was cool)
Anyways enough of all that, that's my only issues with the game. Otherwise it's a fantastic and beautiful experience. The art is great and I especially love how detailed the dungeon tiles were. The lights look great though they were probably a bit too bright for my liking the bloom seems to be cranked up to 200% on those lasers. I really liked the dynamic camera and zooming but it would have been nice to have some sort of control over this and the ability to make the game fullscreen.
The audio was great and all the sound cues were super helpful in understanding and feeding back to the player what was/wasn't successful.
The gameplay was fantastic (with the exception of the move speed and not being able to see the character most of the time) figuring out the puzzles / light combinations / bouncing the light all over the room was so much fun and worked SUPER well.
Although I got stuck on the large room with the 3 doors at the start. I figured out I had to grab the red vial from the previous door to gain entry but I could not figure out this puzzle at all. Even if I got 1 of the pairs to match up with the correct colours they just would not light up. I'm not sure if there was something I was misunderstanding or it just doesn't work at all. Would love to know.
Other than the minor issues I mentioned this was a really fantastic game and I'd like to play more if I could figure it out.
Thanks for the super detailed feedback!
Addressing a few points:
* We're going to add a little outline visual effect to Umbra to make her a tad more visible when she's in 'dark mode'.
* The lasers themselves are getting dimmed down a bit more (maybe put this as a user setting? IDK)
* I'll have to think on what to do about Umbra's slow movement. I'm not sure if the maps are too big or if she really needs the speed increase. Definitely one of the two.
* The camera definitely needs some work. The current camera system was a last minute change. Before the camera was just on Umbra the whole time, which made some aspects of the puzzles be off camera.
* I'm glad the sound effects helped! We're probably going to add additional ones to make hitting different things more distinct.
* Yeah.. There's a bug with the sensors in the last room. I wasn't able to reproduce it, so I'm still trying to figure out what's causing it >_>
WOW, Everything about this was awesome! Great visuals, SFX and music, I would love to see more of it :D
i love this ! very good job! lasers were fun (if you hold them down as your rotating it, its like a helicopter led light show xD) very quick to pick up and i like that you had description for what was missing at the door if you didnt pick it up!
In one of the earlier prototypes, I didn't even bother capping the max rotation speed. So it just kept accelerating endlessly the longer you held it :D
I'm tempted to put in a settings option to un-cap it for fun shenanigans.
Is always fun to play with lazers.
Sfx and music are total mood
I wold like to have a key to zoom out and one to run, for the rest puzzles was preatty hard but fun to complete.
Little note : if there are too much light on screen the little slime can be lost under them. Anyways GG !
The light pollution issue was something that wasn't noticed until pretty late.
Earlier versions had the camera zoomed in more and it just followed the character, but it made it hard to do some of the puzzles when some of it was off screen. So then we made it center on room, but then it made the character harder to see :(
Definitely on our to-do list thoug
absolutely love this. good job!! I had such a fun time :D
I think you could fix visibility at least for player by having an outline, maybe it takes on the color (or opposing) of any lasers overtop.
I stopped at this point cause the camera not being zoomed out made it tricky.
but i fully intend to come back and finish cause I really love the game! good job!!
-Alex
I liked that you had to leave the red vial in the door to walk through the glass wall as a shadow after the first puzzle, that was a really neat touch.
I also think that it was a little hard to see due to the brightness of the lasers. Great job making the puzzles and designing the color changing walls!
My second note its that visibility in general in the game is really low, the lasers are very bright but all the other assets are so dark and desaturated that they blend together
Hmm. I'll keep that in mind. We want to keep the dark/shadowy vibe, but visibility definitely needs improvement. The windows/filters need something to make it more obvious they're there (and what they do) and the little slime friend needs something to make them easier to spot in all the stuff.
And probably the light bloom on the lasers needs to go down a bit more too. (Earlier in development, it was even brighter)
Got stuck on the light puzzle with the four transmitters. The light would not travel through the left hand wall to go to the right hand transmitter, would stop on the wall. The wall did not stop the light when it was white or yellow, but did stop it when it was purple
Hmm. I think the difficulty might have spiked too much for that last puzzle.
The glass/transparent walls are filters for the light. So Blue light can go through a purple window and come out purple. But a blue light through a Yellow filter stops because yellow allows red and green light through, but not blue.