TIGSource Forums

Hey guys, I'm new to this forum, but thought I'd post the game I recently completed to get some feedback on!
It was made as my senior thesis project to graduate with my degree in Game Art. A lot of it was experimenting with minimal gameplay and obscured story, with a focus on creating an experience.

The game is about a father who takes his estranged son into the Russian wilderness, where they fall into something much bigger than themselves.

Here's a trailer I made:
http://youtu.be/zzsUOoVDlgY

And the game on IndieDB:
www.indiedb.com/games/katabasis

Screenshots:
(http://a1.4ormat.com/vfs/13981/thumbs/914340/700x0.jpg)

(http://a2.4ormat.com/vfs/13981/thumbs/914341/700x0.jpg)

(http://a2.4ormat.com/vfs/13981/thumbs/914338/700x0.jpg)

(http://a2.4ormat.com/vfs/13981/thumbs/463894/700x0.jpg)

Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! I'm trying to learn as much as I can from this project as I start up on a new one.

*spoilers*
The pacing, trigger events and atmosphere were very effective.  Went through a few different emotions: anger, confusion, fear.

The only times that I felt taken out of the game were the amorphous hallway (made me consider how far I had gone and started think about one possible theme being perseverance) & once when I clipped through a cliffside & fell just to the left of the clearing when you first see the cabins from downhill.

Also, I really wanted to bash the guy in the face with my flashlight.  >:(

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

Wait where was the cliffside that you clipped through? Was it up where the cabins are and you fell back down?

Perfect! I wasn't sure how well the confusion aspect would work, I thought players might just get annoyed at having almost no information presented to them, but so far it sounds like it worked well enough.
There's a very specific backstory going on, based on a myth by the Mansi/Vogul peoples of Russia, but ultimately that's not really important. I just wanted to hint at it enough that players realize that it's not just random.


And I just want to note there is a possible bug where the end cutscene doesn't play. If that happens to anyone here, please let me know and I'll send a link to a video of it. About to go try to fix the bug right now.

*spoilers too*

This is wonderful. I made a mistake to play this at around 1am last night - took some time to get to bed. You set the mood perfectly with the sounds and art. All the art was downright excellent. One thing that I found strange was that I didn't have much input into the game. I just followed the path and looked around. That's not a bad thing, and I understand you were going for minimal gameplay, but maybe playing a larger game would get awkward without some kind of input or challenge, e.g. running away from something. I've not played much of the genre so I don't know what the standard is.

At the start of the game I felt a bit unmotivated to leave the light of the campfire, having no particular objective that would take me out of it, and knowing that scary things were in store. But that's just my wussy attitude towards scary games. Also, I agree with AntiAntagonist that the amorphous hallway seemed out of place (or maybe it was just a little too long). At the end of the game, I went up to the kid, then my head got suddenly turned to the side, my vision froze and I heard whimpering, then everything went red. It did seem a little strange - can you tell me if that is the cutscene?

I think you did a good job of telling just part of the story. It seemed like there was a coherent bigger picture going on but I wasn't getting all of it.

Thanks!

Yes-looks like you got that cutscene bug. Darn, it seems to be happening more than I thought. I tried to fix it today but then when I got home it was running really slow for some reason. I have to go back to campus to work on it since I need to use the Unity license there, which unfortunately makes it a little hard.


I don't think there really is much of a standard at this point, but yeah I think having such minimal gameplay does kind of rely on being shorter. I'm all for shorter games, though.
I had originally planned on having the wolves chase you, but then I'd have to deal with player death, and I kind of ran out of time anyway. And besides, I like how it is now, with them seeming to be leading you.
One of my biggest self critiques is that it is very linear. The cathedral is a lot less so, but I think I really could've pushed having exploration before that.

(edit: removed that youtube link of the cutscene now that 1.1 is out)

Just want to say that I uploaded version 1.1 on the IndieDB page, which should fix that cutscene bug!
If anyone still gets that bug, please let me know. It's hard to be 100% certain that it's fixed, but it seemed to be working fine.
I also changed the title at the end to some text, and made a few small changes to try to draw attention to a few areas that people seemed to be missing.