Heritage Game Jam 2020 - Block 101
Best played in 16:9 and with headphones.
Background:
Most people choose to live their own lives and ignore the evil that can be happening around us. The evilness/darkness in the game is a metaphor to cyberbullying, racism, and other forms of societal negativity. A psychological horror game experience in a Singapore HDB setting.
The game starts out in a peaceful scene representing the uninterrupted lifestyle of day-to-day Singaporeans, seemingly unaware and oblivious to the presence of a darkness/evil gateway. This is only sensed by a single passerby in the first scene, other than the player himself.
Comments
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I really liked the sound design but I wasn't big on the gameplay, it was just too punishing for me.
I also wasn't sure how the evil/darkness was supposed to represent the forms of societal negativity, were it not stated in-game or in the description. I feel that some appropriate audio/textures could have brought your message across better.
Thanks for playing! The intended gameplay was meant to be a thought-provoking one rather than stating every detail up front, hence the description only contains the fact that the evil gateway is a metaphor to all forms of negavity in Singapore and leaving it open-ended for the players' interpretation. Really do appreciate the feedback though, will take it into consideration for my subsequent projects!
I played through your game, at first I thought it's gonna be just a game about fighting off monsters but after playing and failing 3 times, this is how I interpret it:
The monsters as described, represents cyberbullying, racism and all the super negative stuff happening. You can fight them, but every time you fight them, you risk getting hurt. You can run through them, but energy is finite and eventually they will catch up to you, hurting you as well. You can rest to recuperate energy, so you can run again, but there's no way to recuperate health. TBH I love the metaphor as it represents mental energy (the energy bar) to fight off these negative news. Sometimes we just need to take a break and do a news/social media detox, then we have the energy again. If we keep fighting head on, eventually our emotional energy (the health bar) will deplete and never recover. So ultimately there are 2 ways to deal with negativity - confront/fight it head on (which is risky but eliminates the problem), or let it pass (running away, bit it's akin to sweeping it under the carpet and will still haunt you eventually)
- GwenAlso loved the usage of sound!!! The introduction to the monsters using stingers really worked out.
Thank you for playing the game and your positive feedback! Glad you got the message as a player! I was a little worried players might not get the message so clearly haha.. Do let me know if you have pointers for me to improve on as well!
The spookiness of the music really helped immerse me in the game. It's quite difficult to get past those ghouls!
Thank you for playing! Glad to know you've gotten the intended experience :) Do let me know if you have any feedback towards improving the gameplay!