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[Evgiz]

Hey everyone!

My name is Evgiz, and for Ludum Dare 36 I made this little game:



It was my first game made with LÖVE, which is a lightweight Lua game library. I have previous experience mostly from Java and LibGDX which isn't too different.

I found the process of making games with Lua and LÖVE to be so great I decided to use the game as inspiration for a much bigger project.
This eventually led to Depths of Limbo, which is a difficult, fast-paced roguelike with a quite dark theme and my biggest project thus far. One of the goals early on was to make the game feel as good as possible, so naturally I added a bit too much screenshake.

I'm only 19 and a student myself, so a project of this size is quite the undertaking. In order to keep track of my development and progress, I've decided to make a development log here. I've previously found it very difficult to find constructive criticism, so that would also be greatly appreciated.

Anyways, here is the progress I have so far. I started working on the game on September 2nd if I remember correctly, so that's about 6 weeks of development time. Also huge props to Bibiki who's making the music for the game. His twitter is @BibikiGL if you wanna check out his other work.





And some gifs:
 

 

The game is on steam greenlight if you wanna check it out:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=780504498

Lastly the games website:    http://DepthsOfLimbo.com
..and my own website:         http://evgiz.net

Again, any criticism/feedback on the game, art, music, website or anything else would be amazing. Thank you for reading!

[BeardLogic]

Quite the undertaking.  It has a nice arcade-y feel to it.  It's hard to give constructive feedback without having played the game but I have a few thoughts. 

I really like the text pop up you have for collecting special items, feels like you have accomplished something.  It may be better if the words didn't cover the character; it could lead to situations where you can't see what is coming at you.

I'm not sure how one would use items in the game.  I noticed you have a nice menu to cycle through them, if the items are meant to be quick use items it would be good to not have to access an inventory.  I guess part of my concern here is the inventory itself sort of contradicts the rest of the game in my mind.  It looks like a very fast paced game, and accessing an inventory would slow you down.  It may be that this is what you have intended and that I'm only seeing the parts of the game that are designed to be your 'up-time'; in which case please completely ignore this paragraph.

The game is looking good.  I like the polish that has been applied to it.  Keep up the good work!

[Evgiz]

I'm not sure how one would use items in the game.  I noticed you have a nice menu to cycle through them, if the items are meant to be quick use items it would be good to not have to access an inventory.  I guess part of my concern here is the inventory itself sort of contradicts the rest of the game in my mind.  It looks like a very fast paced game, and accessing an inventory would slow you down.  It may be that this is what you have intended and that I'm only seeing the parts of the game that are designed to be your 'up-time'; in which case please completely ignore this paragraph.

The game is looking good.  I like the polish that has been applied to it.  Keep up the good work!

Thank you so much for the feedback! The menu on the last gif is meant to be a collection of all the items you have discovered so far on all your runs, so its not something you would look at while playing. I can understand how that would be unclear to people who haven't played the game. As for the items they have what I would call "passive" effects. You can't activate them or use them, but they allow different types of gameplay.



An example would be the hourglass item which freezes all enemies for a couple seconds when you take damage. Another item called "Crying skull" makes you kill all enemies you touch. This combination can be quite deadly if you play well. Another item, the halo, actually protects you from the first damage you take in each room, meaning with these three items you can kill half the enemies in a room in a second without taking damage if you're good enough. And there are quite a few other interesting combinations so far!

[Evgiz]

Update 1 - Areas

Hi everyone, here's an update about the different areas that will be in the game.



There are three different types of areas so far. Their main purpose is to provide variation, not only visually but gameplay-wise as well.
The goal is to have as much variation as possible to challenge and surprise the player.

Each area should have:

• Different enemy types who act differently
• Unique rooms with interesting things in them. For example the forest may spawn a wasp nest (a type of miniboss)
• Different boss fights that require different skills and tactics to beat
• Unique items and weapons that can only be found in one area

Here are some of the enemies currently in the game:

The rat for instance is quick, bounces against walls and attacks you directly. They can be found in the cave.
The bees on the other hand move more unpredictably, fly over walls, have less health and stay in groups. They can be found in the forest.

There are a few unique rooms so far, but quite a few more have to be added to make sure they actually feel rare when you encounter them. Bosses and items are shared between the areas for now until there are more of them to choose from.

That's all for now, thanks for reading! Any feedback would be really awesome

[lobstersteve]

Judging by the name, i thought this would have something to do with the limbo platformer and will be one of those shitty platformers with black silhouettes^^
But that looks pretty fun

[Evgiz]

Judging by the name, i thought this would have something to do with the limbo platformer and will be one of those shitty platformers with black silhouettes^^
But that looks pretty fun

Limbo is a great game in my opinion, but the graphics might not be for everyone. Depths of Limbo however is something very different!
Thanks for the compliments! 

[lobstersteve]

Limbo is a great game in my opinion, but the graphics might not be for everyone.

I was talking about the cheap limbo reap-offs, not limbo itself, which i find great also
But alright, enough about limbo in your thread..^^

[Evgiz]

Hey everyone! It's been a while since my last update, but I've been quite busy studying for exams etc. Yesterday night I got the amazing news that my game has gotten the green light from Valve, and I'm ready to push for release hopefully in early 2017!

Its difficult to hide my excitement, as this is my biggest gamedev-milstone thus far. I'm only 19 and have only published a couple games on smaller platforms before, most notably OUYA (which is pretty much dead at this point unfortunately).

For those interested, I'd like to share a bit about my experience with Greenlight below. I know I was very interested in the process, and I'm sure some of you would find it helpful.

My experience with greenlight

• Make sure you have a decent trailer, and don't rush it! I believe I was a bit hasty with both the trailer and getting on greenlight in general. You shouldn't wait too long, but if I'd waited a couple more weeks I could include more features like multiplayer and more varied gameplay which would probably increase the amount of yes-votes and exposure.
• Don't make the trailer too long! If it fits the game, keep it fairly high-paced and full of content. People probably won't watch the whole video if its too long. 1 minute is most likely enough, and don't waste this time showing long animations of your developer name etc. Frankly I don't think people will actually care.
• Don't despair over yes-no votes and the % on the way to top 100. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to share, but I can say this: you don't need thousands of yes-votes or being top 100 to get greenlit. Most people don't like all genres, so you can expect a negative yes-no ratio. This is especially true if your game is niche, and it doesn't mean that a lot of people won't enjoy your game!
• Be patient! Your game might take a month or more to get greenlit. Mine took about 5 weeks with me checking in almost every day! Don't drive youreself crazy, it will happen eventually. I believe in you!

Thanks everyone for the interest, and I hope you find some of this useful! I look forward to releasing in early 2017, probably going Early Access first. If you wanna follow development more closely, check out my twitter http://twitter.com/evgiz or the game website http://DepthsofLimbo.com!